very simple

I recognize that I’m a particularly heavy and aggressive computer user, and that as a consequence, I’m likely to experience more than my fair share of technology-related problems (hey, if you only turn on your computer once a month, it’s that much less likely that it’s going to crash, right?). But lately, it’s like I’m cursed.

I didn’t write about this on Saturday, when I was in a much rantier mood, but the cable company managed to screw up my service appointment. The one that the technician made the week before. As I mentioned earlier, he had managed to fix my immediate problem by replacing my modem and reconfiguring the wiring, but there was a "signal bleed" problem in the trunk line to my apartment. So he called it in so that it could get replaced because he couldn’t take down the molding by himself, and let me know that a "team" would be showing up on Saturday to fix it.

So Saturday rolls around, and guess what? One guy shows up. And as he’s walking to the door, he’s already telling me that the job got misclassified as a regular service call. And it wouldn’t be getting fixed today. Now note, I, personally, don’t have any service problems at this point. The sole reason that I sat around all day on Saturday was so that they could access the end of the trunk line that enters my apartment. I was essentially doing them a really big favor. So, of course, I feel I deserve some sort of compensation from the cable company for my time, inconvenience, aggravation, etc.

I get on the phone with customer service guy, who proceeds to explain to me that they *never* give billing credit to customers unless the service person fails to show up. And since the service person showed up (albeit a completely useless person), I have no claim. Oh, and it’s somehow my fault that they misclassified the call because I was apparently not specific enough. Mind you, I never spoke to them. I just stood next to the technician as he made the appointment. And he was very specific (I mean, if it was handle-able by an individual technician, he would have just done it himself).

So I get the supervisor. Who, after I posit my argument that technically I was entitled to a month free under their policy because they failed to send a technician who was actually qualified to fix my problem, that I wouldn’t be receiving the correct service within the four hour window, eventually agreed and I’m getting a $145 credit (and yes, that is what my monthly digital cable/dvr/road runner package costs).

Oh, and when I finally get the call to reschedule, again, they claim they don’t need access to my apartment. which is funny, because the line actually runs through a hole in the wall from the hallway above my front door, and then gets connected to my "internal" line – I can’t wait to see how this one turns out.

On the iMac front – I spoke to the tech today, and they’ve now also replaced the entire hard drive, as well as the cable that connects the hard drive to the logic board (they couldn’t figure out which was causing the latest problem). I’m guessing that they just had a loose connection after installing the new logic board, but I’m not going to argue with a new hard drive. At this point, the tech pointed out to me, the only parts they haven’t replaced are the screen and the power source. It was actually all fixed last week, but they hadn’t called me because they decided to just run the computer continuously for a few days to avoid the whole problem of my bringing the computer home only to have it fail the next day. I’ll hopefully be able to pick it up tomorrow. I still think giving me a new G5 iMac would have been cheaper, but since I didn’t pay for any of this, I don’t really have grounds to argue.

Tags: apple, bitching, technology