Thursday, July 15, 2010

Could it really be fixed?

This morning the "Give-you" truck (PC's definition for a UPS truck) delivered my computer to our front door. If you're interested in the saga that's taken place regarding my all-in-one computer this year, keep reading. Other wise check back in a few days - I might have a chance to write about normal life sometime.

You might not remember, but sometime between March 26th and April 8th, my new computer (Sir got it for me on a Boxing Day sale) died. Apparently it had something wrong with the memory part of it, but as far as I was concerned it just wouldn't turn on completely which made it unusable. Sir looked at it for a couple of days, copied my files in case the hard drive needed to be wiped and then drove hours on his only days off to deliver it to a 'warranty repair' shop and home again. That shop had it for five days and decided that they actually didn't do warranty work for the company we'd purchased the computer from. However, they did 'take a look at it' reseated something and it looked like the machine was working again. Except five hours after I turned it on it died a second time.

I think it took us a week to get around to calling the computer company, but once we did they arranged for a technician to come to our house and repair it. The first tech showed up about 3 days after we'd contacted the company, but he had the wrong mother board. They had decided to replace the mother board, hard drive and memory 'just to be sure' they fixed the problem. The next week a different tech arranged to come with the right parts. He was hours late and then called me from our driveway to say he grabbed the wrong part and couldn't do the repair that day after all. Another week later, the first tech came back with the right parts and replaced the hard drive, motherboard and memory. In the process he broke the optical drive and lost the rubber foot for the monitor stand. Then we discovered that Sir's copy of my operating system was corrupted and we'd need a system recovery disk since the computer had a new hard drive.

So, we called the company back and told them about the optical drive, rubber foot and that we'd also need a system restore. 3 weeks later they were 'still waiting for the parts to be shipped to them'. Did I mention we were in the middle of moving during all of this? Anyway, they finally 'had the parts' (ten days later) and scheduled another service call for the following week. Except when the tech arrived, I discovered that they forgot to send the rubber foot and the system restore cd. The guy tried telling me that it wasn't the optical drive that was broken but he cover and he didn't bring the cover that day. I had to show him that the cover was just fine and that he did indeed bring the right part (the optical drive). He wanted to install the drive later when they had the rest of the stuff he was supposed to bring but I told him I'd rather he did what he could since the next guy they sent out wouldn't be any more intelligent in the matter and with the way things had been going, the optical drive would be forgotten. So, he fixed the optical drive and my computer was still out of commission.

June 22nd, the day after the optical drive was repaired, the computer company called to check that the repair had been done. I told them only the optical drive had been attended to and that we were still waiting for the rubber foot for the monitor stand and the operating system recovery cd. They said they'd mail the recovery cd directly to us and have the technicians come out again to fix the foot. Ten minutes later they called back and said that I had to ship the whole machine to the company because they didn't have any recovery cds that they could ship and that it had to be done at the factory. Two days later I receive a postage paid box to return my computer in, and the tracking number indicated my computer arrived in Ontario three days after that. The repair at the company was supposed to take three days. Two weeks later I called them to find out why I hadn't seen the computer back yet and they were 'waiting to receive a recovery cd, but they would make a note to "expedite" the repair'.

That was Sunday evening. Less than four days later my computer arrived at the door. Dare I hope it's actually repaired? For real this time? Now I'll go open the box and see what I can find.


  1. Wow, how frustrating! Hope it's really fixed this time.

  2. WOW. Talk about having patience. Hope it's fixed for GOOD.