Blog Jones

*sniff*

My laptop has been sent off for repairs. You may remember my computer woes from a while back. Short version: My laptop overheats and shuts down whenever you try to do anything really CPU intensive, like play a game, convert a video or sound file from one format to another, or run an virus scan.

That’s obviously not acceptable.

So, we brought the computer to Circuit City in hopes of getting it shipped off and repaired… wow, almost a year ago. Yech. I’ve been living with this for nearly a year. Anyways, the Circuit City employee told me to call a phone number and they’d ship me a box. Instead of taking care of the problem for me.

Well, OK. So, I went home and was given a run-around for the rest of the night. We had planned to take my computer in to be repaired later on that week, but for whatever reason we didn’t. Pretty soon, school started, and I need my laptop for school. Now that school’s out for a long enough period of time, we’re free to try again, and so we did.

“We” being my dad, who’s been handling this for me this time. My dad and I started off by trying to get it taken care of by taking it to the Circuit City store. Once again, we were rebuffed and sent to the telephone. Four hours and three telephone calls later, we finally get them to send us a box to ship the laptop in.

(One side note: At one point, the technical service person told us to run Disk Cleanup for some reason. This was taking an interminable amount of time, so she said she’d hang up and call us back in half an hour. A full hour later, we still had not received any calls.)

(Another: Before hanging up on us, this same technician, sent us to this link to download the latest version of my computer’s BIOS: http://csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/tais/su/
su_sc_modItemList.jsp?moid=429789&ct=DL&BV_SessionID=
@@@@0725458437.1116371843@@@@&BV_EngineID=
cccdaddejgdleehcgfkceghdgngdgmm.0

This is roughly how she sent us there:

Tech Lady: OK, I need you to go to this web address. Do you have a pen handy?

Dad: Yes

TL: OK, write H-T-T-P-colon-slash-slash-w-w-w-dot-c as in candy-s as in sugar-d as in dog-dot-t as in turtle-o as in orange-s as in sugar-h as in hat-i as in iris-b as in boy-a as in apple-dot-c as in candy-o as in orangutan-m as in monkey-slash-c as in cable-g as in grief-i as in iris-dash or hyphen or whatever that thing is-b as in boy-i as in iris-n as in nonsense-slash-t as in turtle-a as in apple-i as in irish-s as in stupid-slash-s as in severe-u as in under-slash-s as in stupendous-u as in unbelievable-underscore-s as in south-c as in carolina-underscore-m as in monkey-o as in oliphant-d as in dog-capital I as in iris-t as in totem-e as in ear-m as in mole-Capital L as in list-i as in iris-s as in socks-t as in total-dot-j as in Jennifer-s as in sugar-p as in penguin-questionmark-m as in mole-o as in orange-i as in iris-d as in daniel-equals mark-the number 4-2-9-7-8-9-and sign-c as in cut–

Dad: I’m sorry, that was 7-8-9-ampersand-c, right?

TL: No, not the ampersand, the and sign. See the one over the the number 7?

Me: ::stifling laughter because we’re on the speaker phone::

Dad: OK.

TL: 8-9-and sign-c as in cat-t as in tabby-equals mark-capital D as in dog-capital L as in lover-and sign-capital B as in boy-capital V as in verily-underscore-capital S as in secret-e as in egret-s as in sucker-s as in sucker-i as in iris-o as in oval-n as in nougat-capital I as in iris-capital D as in dementia-equals mark-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand

Dad: I’m sorry, which was that again?

TL: The ampersand–see the one over the two?

Me: ::stifling a chuckle::

Dad: Ah.

TL: ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-0-7-2-5-4-5-8-4-3-7-dot-1-1-1-6-3-7-1-8-4-3-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-ampersand-and sign-capital B as in boy-capital V as in valium-underscore–you know, this is really too long to read out loud.

Me: ::nodding in agreement, because I just went to the Toshiba site and found the download link through the menus in a couple of minutes ago.::

TL: ::finishes in much the same fashion.::)

Before we shipped the laptop, we returned to Circuit City and voiced our dissatisfaction with their “No Hassle” plan to the manager, who promised to call Corporate and let them know of our problems. He also promised to help us if anything should go wrong.

Then we called the DHL shipping company, which is currently transporting my laptop to the shop in Atlanta, GA which will finally repair the thing. Hopefully it will return working and without any more problems than it started with. ::fingers cross::

The moral of the story: Go with Best Buy–the “Geek Squad” will handle your problem in the store.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 at 7:39 pm and is filed under Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.