Excuse me while I rant this out
Silly me for assuming that a laptop repair place would be able to replace a simple part on my laptop and return it to me, relatively unscathed (or at least with minimal additional scathing) in a timely manner.
Three weeks ago, I talked to West Seattle Laptop Repair/Quidnunc about getting my CPU fan in my laptop replaced. Everything else about my laptop was fine, and working in peak condition, it just sounded like a jet engine, and on really hot days it would start to overheat and shut itself down periodically. They ordered that part, and a week later I dropped it off with them, and they said it should be ready to go the next day. Oops, they ordered the wrong part. Oops, the second part had to be ordered from Singapore and was taking forever. Oops, the part from Singapore finally arrived, and it looks like it's "rubbing up" against other parts of the computer. Can't have that. But then, yay, they ordered a third part that should be sent overnight and have things working by EOD Tuesday, noon Wednesday at the latest (we're on this week now).
So I called yesterday at about 1 to see if I could pick it up yet (I was getting ready to go do some errands, I didn't want to miss the call or go out of my way unnecessarily. Oops again! Your computer is completely non-functional, the hard drive/motherboard (they switched back & forth) is broken, please give us an additional $200 to fix it! Well, hey, we don't know if your computer was broken when you gave it to us (it wasn't), but you should have had a full diagnostic run when you brought it in like we told you to (they didn't tell me to, and I never would have assumed there was a need for a diagnostic on a computer that was working just fine).
I admit it, I cried. I cried loudly on the phone with them, ranted a bit (semi-coherently) about being unemployed, needing that computer, and not being able to afford the additional cost. And then I hung up on him, really just to save us both further embarassment. Then they called back laterly, and magnanimously offered to transfer my data to another computer (I thought the hard drive was broken? Oh, wait, maybe it was the motherboard?), and sell me that computer, for a little bit more than what I originally paid them. Also, the unspoken part of this is that they would keep my bricked laptop, fix it up, and probably be able to resell it, because that's another part of their business. So basically, they'd get to double profit off of breaking my computer.
Paul is going to come with me today and we're going to give them a serious talking to. And hopefully get my data transferred to a hardrive we provide, get my money back, and possibly get my laptop back (if for no other reason than so they can't have it, Paul said he'd rather get it back and smash it outside their window than let them have it & potentially resell it).
Three weeks ago, I talked to West Seattle Laptop Repair/Quidnunc about getting my CPU fan in my laptop replaced. Everything else about my laptop was fine, and working in peak condition, it just sounded like a jet engine, and on really hot days it would start to overheat and shut itself down periodically. They ordered that part, and a week later I dropped it off with them, and they said it should be ready to go the next day. Oops, they ordered the wrong part. Oops, the second part had to be ordered from Singapore and was taking forever. Oops, the part from Singapore finally arrived, and it looks like it's "rubbing up" against other parts of the computer. Can't have that. But then, yay, they ordered a third part that should be sent overnight and have things working by EOD Tuesday, noon Wednesday at the latest (we're on this week now).
So I called yesterday at about 1 to see if I could pick it up yet (I was getting ready to go do some errands, I didn't want to miss the call or go out of my way unnecessarily. Oops again! Your computer is completely non-functional, the hard drive/motherboard (they switched back & forth) is broken, please give us an additional $200 to fix it! Well, hey, we don't know if your computer was broken when you gave it to us (it wasn't), but you should have had a full diagnostic run when you brought it in like we told you to (they didn't tell me to, and I never would have assumed there was a need for a diagnostic on a computer that was working just fine).
I admit it, I cried. I cried loudly on the phone with them, ranted a bit (semi-coherently) about being unemployed, needing that computer, and not being able to afford the additional cost. And then I hung up on him, really just to save us both further embarassment. Then they called back laterly, and magnanimously offered to transfer my data to another computer (I thought the hard drive was broken? Oh, wait, maybe it was the motherboard?), and sell me that computer, for a little bit more than what I originally paid them. Also, the unspoken part of this is that they would keep my bricked laptop, fix it up, and probably be able to resell it, because that's another part of their business. So basically, they'd get to double profit off of breaking my computer.
Paul is going to come with me today and we're going to give them a serious talking to. And hopefully get my data transferred to a hardrive we provide, get my money back, and possibly get my laptop back (if for no other reason than so they can't have it, Paul said he'd rather get it back and smash it outside their window than let them have it & potentially resell it).