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Hi ho, the derry-o, the assholes at the Dell.
After a stressful Monday morning for both me (almost all wasted first finding out I'd need to make a useless court appearance because of asshat opponents and then making said appearance) and Eleanor (heavy traffic to and from an appointment, then Pepper being all verklempt for reasons below plus her barely being outside due to heavy rains all day), I settled in for a long autumn's tech support call. By Monday morning, the bottom row of my laptop keyboard was completely unresponsive. It's passed on. Drawn the curtain and gone to join the choir invisible. I had confirmed over the weekend that I still have two full months on my original one-year Dell warranty, so after running an hour's worth of tests (all of which it passed, though none, oddly, appearing to test anything about the keyboard), I put in my call to Rishabh. Yes, he would be very happy to assist me. Yes, he has sent me the return authorization package and FedEx label so they can very perfectly replace my keyboard. In 6-12 business days from its receipt.
Um, no. Maybe you could send me a keyboard and I could put it in, or have someone? That is not authorized, because the laptop is not designed for the user to access internal parts. And no, they cannot send me a loaner to transfer my files and software to in order to, I don't know, DO MY BLEEPMEEPBORP JOB! for those 6-12 business days. So my choices, basically, came down to:
- Have an unauthorized third party order and replace the keyboard, knocking out the remainder of the warranty; or
- Buy a new, probably scaled down, computer and load it up before shipping this one so I'll be able to work during the 6-12 day wait, then keep it as a backup when (not if, when) this happens again.
I choose both.
Monday night, I went to a local repair joint where a coworker has gotten good results. They will order the replacement KB and their turnaround, once it arrives, is more like one business day. Also sometime next week, I will likely find a replacement for my long-dead backup laptop, and THEN will ship this one out if the replacement KB hasn't come in yet.
----
It's frustrating as all get-out that you are "sold" service that turns out to be no sale at all. My history with laptops this century shows the obsolescence that has gotten worse and worse over the years.
-Circa 2000: my then-office ordered me an HP laptop (the last one I would ever have an office buy for me- no, I think by then I realized it would be good to buy my own to avoid BS over it), and around the same time, I bought a Compaq for Eleanor. Both came running XP. Mine lasted in that form until the October storm of 2006, when a freak laundromat accident wrecked it; my then-guru put its hard disk into a desktop tower, I attached externals to it, and that Frankenputer lasted all through Vista and Windows 7. Eleanor's Compaq STILL works, though slowly, when we drag it out of retirement and at the moment, it's the only backup I've got which I can move out of the house.
- November 2008- Election Night: as I documented at the time, "my prior Frankenputer got so excited over Obama's victory that it instantly died." Bought a new one. I have little recollection of its bugs and features, but I do see that it lasted almost six years, until....
-February 2016, and a virtually identical Toshiba, named Twobor. This came after multiple fails with the power on the Tobor device, and the repair joint, quite rightly, elected to send me a gift card to replace it rather than repair it. Only problem was, this time frame was right around the Office Max/Depot merger, and the stores they were closing had ridiculously good deals. Twobor turned out to still be available at a very low price on the last day they were open, which happened to be the day the gift card arrived. This one was my first to come with Windows 10 onboard, and I had little trouble with it except for its keyboard, which lost a lot of keys to cat hair, and its casing, which must've been dropped at some point. Fortunately, I'd bought the purchase protection again; unfortunately, this time, again, despite it being what I thought would be a quick repair, they offered the switchout again in....
November 2017- so for the third time in just over three years, I had to go through buying a new laptop (at least the gift card came electronically now), restoring all my backups and reinstalling all my software (my iTunes is a pigmess of nested subfolders from all of this). Plus, remember that great deal I got last time? That's the amount they based the gift card on, so between that and the (what else?) purchase protection, I had to both shell out more $ out of pocket and settle for a different brand- a Dell, dude. My first, and also my last.
The KB on this thing looks sturdier than the previous models. Part of that sturdiness is it being built into the case in a way that seems to involve using heavy explosives to remove it. (Even the fucking battery is locked down with about 14 screws.) But it's failed far sooner than any I've ever owned. Look at those time gaps between replacements: 2000 (perhaps even earlier) to 2006 (resurrection)/2008 (death), to 2014 to early 2016 to late 2017 and now failure in the first year.
I'm resisting going through it all again, even if it means spending extra money and voiding the remaining month or so (by then) of full coverage. It's just depressing how they've turned these things into virtual throwaways. Meanwhile, in all this time since Tobor arrived, I think I've had three mobile phones- an iPhone 3, traded for a 4, and then replaced by the current 5ish which I've had for going on four years.
I know, get a Mac.
----
Even better, a Maytag.
Pepper's previously mentioned verklemptness was because just as Eleanor was getting ready for work Monday (and I was just entering court), the repair guy came to fix our probably 20-year-old dryer. It crapped out Thursday night, and I made the appointment Friday to have them come Monday morning. It might have been a waste of a service call fee, because who could fix something that old?
Matt could. Same guy who fixed a different part on it the last time it crapped out in 2014. Two tiny parts, which not only he had, but which fixed the thing. I'd kept the appliance store circulars from Sunday's paper just in case, but that would've been the same as the computer experiences- shiny and new for a little while, then things would go just after the warranty was up and there'd be no calling Matt to fix it but some LG-approved contractor who, if we were lucky, would not require us to ship it back to them in a big box.
----
Final oddities: ever since bringing this laptop in to be looked at, the keyboard has improved. Not perfect, but I haven't needed an external KB for this entire post. And Imma running wash tonight, so we'll see if Matt can keep sitting on his ass waiting for another call:
After a stressful Monday morning for both me (almost all wasted first finding out I'd need to make a useless court appearance because of asshat opponents and then making said appearance) and Eleanor (heavy traffic to and from an appointment, then Pepper being all verklempt for reasons below plus her barely being outside due to heavy rains all day), I settled in for a long autumn's tech support call. By Monday morning, the bottom row of my laptop keyboard was completely unresponsive. It's passed on. Drawn the curtain and gone to join the choir invisible. I had confirmed over the weekend that I still have two full months on my original one-year Dell warranty, so after running an hour's worth of tests (all of which it passed, though none, oddly, appearing to test anything about the keyboard), I put in my call to Rishabh. Yes, he would be very happy to assist me. Yes, he has sent me the return authorization package and FedEx label so they can very perfectly replace my keyboard. In 6-12 business days from its receipt.
Um, no. Maybe you could send me a keyboard and I could put it in, or have someone? That is not authorized, because the laptop is not designed for the user to access internal parts. And no, they cannot send me a loaner to transfer my files and software to in order to, I don't know, DO MY BLEEPMEEPBORP JOB! for those 6-12 business days. So my choices, basically, came down to:
- Have an unauthorized third party order and replace the keyboard, knocking out the remainder of the warranty; or
- Buy a new, probably scaled down, computer and load it up before shipping this one so I'll be able to work during the 6-12 day wait, then keep it as a backup when (not if, when) this happens again.
I choose both.
Monday night, I went to a local repair joint where a coworker has gotten good results. They will order the replacement KB and their turnaround, once it arrives, is more like one business day. Also sometime next week, I will likely find a replacement for my long-dead backup laptop, and THEN will ship this one out if the replacement KB hasn't come in yet.
----
It's frustrating as all get-out that you are "sold" service that turns out to be no sale at all. My history with laptops this century shows the obsolescence that has gotten worse and worse over the years.
-Circa 2000: my then-office ordered me an HP laptop (the last one I would ever have an office buy for me- no, I think by then I realized it would be good to buy my own to avoid BS over it), and around the same time, I bought a Compaq for Eleanor. Both came running XP. Mine lasted in that form until the October storm of 2006, when a freak laundromat accident wrecked it; my then-guru put its hard disk into a desktop tower, I attached externals to it, and that Frankenputer lasted all through Vista and Windows 7. Eleanor's Compaq STILL works, though slowly, when we drag it out of retirement and at the moment, it's the only backup I've got which I can move out of the house.
- November 2008- Election Night: as I documented at the time, "my prior Frankenputer got so excited over Obama's victory that it instantly died." Bought a new one. I have little recollection of its bugs and features, but I do see that it lasted almost six years, until....
- April 2014: my first Toshiba, quickly named Tobor, because it had Windows 8. Smartly bought the purchase protection on this one, which came in handy when, not quite two years later, it failed to make the jump to 10, or some other thing on it went, and along came....
-February 2016, and a virtually identical Toshiba, named Twobor. This came after multiple fails with the power on the Tobor device, and the repair joint, quite rightly, elected to send me a gift card to replace it rather than repair it. Only problem was, this time frame was right around the Office Max/Depot merger, and the stores they were closing had ridiculously good deals. Twobor turned out to still be available at a very low price on the last day they were open, which happened to be the day the gift card arrived. This one was my first to come with Windows 10 onboard, and I had little trouble with it except for its keyboard, which lost a lot of keys to cat hair, and its casing, which must've been dropped at some point. Fortunately, I'd bought the purchase protection again; unfortunately, this time, again, despite it being what I thought would be a quick repair, they offered the switchout again in....
November 2017- so for the third time in just over three years, I had to go through buying a new laptop (at least the gift card came electronically now), restoring all my backups and reinstalling all my software (my iTunes is a pigmess of nested subfolders from all of this). Plus, remember that great deal I got last time? That's the amount they based the gift card on, so between that and the (what else?) purchase protection, I had to both shell out more $ out of pocket and settle for a different brand- a Dell, dude. My first, and also my last.
The KB on this thing looks sturdier than the previous models. Part of that sturdiness is it being built into the case in a way that seems to involve using heavy explosives to remove it. (Even the fucking battery is locked down with about 14 screws.) But it's failed far sooner than any I've ever owned. Look at those time gaps between replacements: 2000 (perhaps even earlier) to 2006 (resurrection)/2008 (death), to 2014 to early 2016 to late 2017 and now failure in the first year.
I'm resisting going through it all again, even if it means spending extra money and voiding the remaining month or so (by then) of full coverage. It's just depressing how they've turned these things into virtual throwaways. Meanwhile, in all this time since Tobor arrived, I think I've had three mobile phones- an iPhone 3, traded for a 4, and then replaced by the current 5ish which I've had for going on four years.
I know, get a Mac.
----
Even better, a Maytag.
Pepper's previously mentioned verklemptness was because just as Eleanor was getting ready for work Monday (and I was just entering court), the repair guy came to fix our probably 20-year-old dryer. It crapped out Thursday night, and I made the appointment Friday to have them come Monday morning. It might have been a waste of a service call fee, because who could fix something that old?
Matt could. Same guy who fixed a different part on it the last time it crapped out in 2014. Two tiny parts, which not only he had, but which fixed the thing. I'd kept the appliance store circulars from Sunday's paper just in case, but that would've been the same as the computer experiences- shiny and new for a little while, then things would go just after the warranty was up and there'd be no calling Matt to fix it but some LG-approved contractor who, if we were lucky, would not require us to ship it back to them in a big box.
----
Final oddities: ever since bringing this laptop in to be looked at, the keyboard has improved. Not perfect, but I haven't needed an external KB for this entire post. And Imma running wash tonight, so we'll see if Matt can keep sitting on his ass waiting for another call: