"RoseGarden" - - - - - - - from - nscave

I had the opportunity to call a major drive manufacturer's customer service line the other day. Notice I said customer service line. I won't mention any names but the fourth last letter of the alphabet would be a place to start.

You call that sweet number that is included with the literature in superfine print. You know the routine, if you want this, press 1, if you want that, press 2, if you don't want anything, press 3 and you will get this message again.

After getting the press number right, the wait begins."Our agents are extremely busy and will get to your call as soon as possible (which means someday)." Then that horrible music begins, and I do mean horrible, the worst I ever heard. Talk about loop music! Then the interruption: "All our agents are busy, estimated wait time is 15 minutes."

More horrible music for a lot of minutes. Then the interruption again: "All our agents are busy, estimated wait time is 15 minutes." 17 minutes after that interruption a real person comes online accent and all. "What is the serial number of your drive?" I am asked. After giving the serial number the reciter begins: "You have 30 days of free customer service calls starting right now. Any call after that will cost you $14.95."

"Don't bother with the instructions," I say,"I wouldn't pay you guys anything for a routine like that, especially for a defective product." I am asked the operating system of computer I am running it on. "Vista," I say. "Can you try it on an XP machine," he asks. "Are you telling me this can't run on Vista?" I ask. " No no, XP is just easier to work with," I am told.

I had already mentioned to him in the beginning I had tried the drive on both machines using all possibilities. "Still doesn't work" I say, "same error message as before." "Where have you got that plugged in, the front or the back?" he asks. "The front" I answer.

"Plug it in the back" he says. "The back isn't readily accessible," I mention, "It will take a few minutes, and that won't make any difference." "Oh yes," he says, "sometimes the front connections don't work as good." "On my mother board they are both plugged in side by side," I inject. Of course, the drive still didn't work.

"Have you got another cord you can try?" asks the expert. "Don't know if I can find one with that type of end," I answer. I took a quick look around and had reached my saturation point. "I can't find the proper cord," I say, "I don't think it is up to me to have to find another cord anyway." "Your drive is defective sir." he says. "You think?" I say with a certain tone. "Yes it is defective," he says.

Well there was no suggestion of what to do, no offers of replacement, nothing except "Have a nice day sir!".

I mentioned the fourth last letter of the alphabet was a good place to start. Well the fourth letter at the beginning of the alphabet is a good place to end up. Don't add any numbers or you will end up with some freaky oil.

This has been quite the ordeal. The retailer where I bought it replaced it the next day, which was good service, but they charged me twice for the same drive. So the last letter is 'S'. So much for online ordering. Seems these days the larger companies can't keep anything straight.

-=One Day At A Time=-

This work by NSCAVE is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License