mindsquirt

I deposited my thesis today. It was over 200 hundred pages and about 1.5 inches thick. It was as long as alot of PhD dissertations.

anyway, That means I am done. Forever. It is a big day for me. It really hit me when I looked at my yellow backpack and realized that I never had to carry it around again. That backpack has followed me everywhere for 3 years. Vacations, weekend trips, shower, everywhere. It is very liberating to be free of my master.

Hooray!

But, this great day is overshadowed by something that has brought me great sadness. You see, I have been to customer hell-on-earth. I recently bought a computer from tigerdirect.com. It was a refurbished computer that came directly from gateway. From the minute I hooked it up I have had problems. It started freezing up. I called technical support and we tried to find the culprit. We uninstalled some software, reinstalled windows, and when that didn’t work, I shipped it back for repair. This took about a week. I was told to ship everything, the tower, mouse and keyboard, manuals, cords, windows, and other CD-Roms, and the remote* that came with it. I called a few days later, and the dildo that answered the phone informed me that I shouldn’t have sent in anything but the tower, and anything other than that was going to be lost forever.

“WHAT!!!? THE FUCK THEY ARE!!!“

These are words that actually came out of my mouth. Now, I generally know better than to yell and toss around the f-bomb to anyone whom I am asking for help. Besides, it is rude. I don’t condone this and wish I hadn’t done it. But on the other hand, WTF? Suddenly hearing that a good part of your $800+ brand-new computer system is now gone forever is rather alarming.

Not only that, but it is completely ridiculous. Even if they didn’t need all of that stuff for the repair, how difficult is it for them to keep everything together?

When I go in for an oil change, they don’t discard parts of my car that don’t pertain to the changing of my oil.

“Sir, next time we are going to need you to just bring in your engine.”

Anyhoo, after the naughty words, I ask to talk to a supervisor. I am on hold for about an half of an hour, intermittently talking to this snooty girl in Utah with a 4th grade education. She tells me repeatedly that I will never see any of this stuff again. I finally get through to a supervisor (7th grade education) named Ryan. This guy talked at a mile-a-minute and had a dirty New York accent (think the Bronx version of Speedy Gonzalez). He said “LikeIsaid” preceding every 3rd statement.

I hate him immediately.

Actually, the first time I talked to him, he told me that when they received my PC and peripherals, they would just ship back the peripherals. Or, if they had already thrown them away, he would send me new stuff.

After hearing the warnings from the gal I talked to before, I was very happy to hear this, and I thanked him and let him go.

I called back about 3 days later to check the progress of the fixing of my computer. I asked to talk to the same guy, and he informed me that my peripherals were never received, and therefore he couldn’t help me. I went back to steaming mad. Why would they say this? I know I sent them, and it was basically my word against whomever unpacked my box (whom he emailed). He was taking their side. I couldn’t believe it. What ever happened to the “customer is always right?” My guess is that he or someone else threw them out and they just didn’t want to get in trouble.

I stayed on the phone with him for about 30 minutes, where I tried to convince him that I sent in my peripherals and he should replace them since they were lost somehow. He contended that I never sent them in, and I was SOL. It was the most frustrated I have ever been and I was shaking with rage at the end of the conversation when he hung up with me. The worst part was, I couldn’t talk to his boss, and “he didn’t know how to file a complaint”.

After this episode, I called sales at gateway. I finally talked to someone helpful, and she tried to help me. Unfortunately, the direct sales from Gateway, and the retail refurbished gateway people are two totally different places and ultimately always got directed back to that original call center which would lead me back to said doushbag.

I decided to give this call center one more shot, and I called them and asked to talk to “a supervisor that wasn’t Ryan”. When I talked to this guy, I laid out my sob story, and told him that if I wasn’t satisfied then I would “talk to corporate”. That was a total stab in the dark, but was apparently what these guys needed to hear to snap into action. He told me that he would replace the wireless mouse and keyboard, but he couldn’t order anything else (BS). I told him that I needed everything replaced, but he asked if he could have some more time to rustle up the other stuff. I told him I would call him back on Friday. This happened on Tuesday. This same day, my “fixed” computer came back sans peripherals. Luckily I had a working mouse. I plugged in the PC, and tested to see if it would freeze.

It froze.

Is there no end to this? Given all of the crap I went through, I think the least they could have done was to fix the very thing that I sent it in for.

At every level they displayed incompetence. The managers can’t replace stuff, the unpacking guys throw stuff out instead of keeping it with the tower, and the techs cannot fix the computer. Poor customer service and a lack of communication abounds. The whole outfit should be swallowed by the earth.

So here I am with an unfixed computer tower, no peripherals, and plenty of fiery rage.

I am glad I made my next call to Tigerdirect, the place where I bought it. I was skeptical that they would go for it, but I told them my story, and they allowed me to take it back for a full refund, without all of the peripherals.

The happy ending to this story is that I bought a Dell and got a good deal and Gateway can go to hell. In fact, Gateway went to the top of my list of products to boycott along with Cingular, Hitachi, and Orville Redenbacher popcorn**.


**UPDATE** today I received 2 wireless mice, 2 wireless keyboards, and 1 receiver. What a bunch of idiots. I bet I get Ryan’s sandwich next.

*It was a “media center” PC and came with a TV tuner and remote that would have allowed me to record TV from the comfort of my own fat hiney, among other stuff.

** This man was a murderous blood-thirsty pirate, who later founded a popcorn company when he wanted to escape the pirate life. More on this later.