Danita and I are very stable.
(OK, now that you’ve stopped laughing hysterically and picked yourself up off the floor, I’ll explain.)
In many ways we operate a lot like the old Mortein by-line (which is showing my age): “When you’re on a good thing, stick to it.”
For example our last three cars have been a Toyota Yaris, followed by another Toyota Yaris and now a Toyota Prius – get the idea?
My phone number (0412 613 613) has been the same from my first mobile phone in the late 1980’s.
Our computers, for over ten years have all been Acers.
One reason we haven’t switched to any other brand is that we’ve been very happy with the quality, price and support we’d received from our local Acer dealer; Angus and Brett from Ozsmart Corporate Computers.
Of course, you don’t know how good things really are until something goes wrong.
As Joni Mitchell told us; “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”
Recently, Danita’s computer went badly wrong and it’s been a very traumatic experience. (Disclaimer: Please be mindful that this is discussing a seriously first world problem.)
It all started 6 weeks ago (on Friday 13th May – OK, maybe the date had some influence but I won’t go down that rabbit hole for now).
Applications wouldn’t run and those that did were incredibly slow.
This drove us to call our trusty geek, Angus.
This is where things started to go pear-shaped.
Angus now works for a different, much larger organisation and so the personalised, direct contact we were used to, doesn’t apply anymore.
We were now dealing with a technician we didn’t know.
Under normal circumstances that’s OK.
Angus is now with a much bigger organisation than Ozsmart was and so our expectation was; we’d be able to get access to a greater level of service – not quite.
After spending a couple of days with Danita’s computer we received a phone call saying everything had been sorted; there’d been quite a bit of malware and this had been cleaned up and all was good to go.
Danita, being a detailed minded person with lots of experience running offices and businesses, asked for the computer to be properly tested.
We were assured that it had been and all was good.
We got the computer back and things were EXACTLY the same as they’d been when we sent it in for repairs; operating erratically and extremely slowly.
Sending it back resulted in us being informed there was a problem with the hard-drive and they’d replace the drive and reinstall the software from scratch.
That made sense because reinstalling from an image from the previous drive meant there was s distinct possibility of bringing across any corruption.
Computer came back with new hard-drive.
Still the same.
Back to the geeks and this time the motherboard was replaced.
Still no improvement, although by now the technicians were testing it before sending it back to us; at least there’d been an improvement there.
Because the computer was still under warranty, Acer was called out.
The Acer technician came, saw and declared there was a problem, but he didn’t have the right parts – more delays.
After that part (whatever it was) had been replaced, it still wasn’t operating correctly and so it was sent off to Acer.
Acer tested it and declared the hardware was fine and the problem was software.
Bit odd, considering that it had a new hard-drive, motherboard and the only software loaded was the operating system which was a new installation.
After declaring it wasn’t their problem Acer returned the computer.
And then, finally, the Universe intervened.
Somewhere in transit, Danita’s computer got lost.
By this time Danita was going ballistic.
I love her dearly but I’ve learned that crossing her can be a matter of taking your life in your hands – she can be very direct and forceful when she feels it’s appropriate – and by now she definitely felt it was.
Acer’s only response was “Sorry for the hassle”.
That was until we sent a message saying I was going to write this blog.
Don’t know if that was the trigger but we then got a message saying the situation had been “a trainwreck” (a sentiment we entirely concurred with – in fact it was the first time we’d agreed with Acer since this started).
They’ve now promised to replace the computer.
At the time of writing, Danita is still sans computer.
The good side of this saga is that my approach to discarding anything is the Richard Glover philosophy: “You’ll keep something for ten years and won’t use it but as soon as you throw it out, you’ll need it.”
Danita is a minimalist and so you can imagine this attitude of mine can be the source of some “interesting” conversations (see note above about her being direct).
However, in this instance my RG approach to keeping old equipment proved to be a life saver.
We still have one of our previous laptops and so Danita has been able to keep working.
Imagine what it would be like trying to run your business (whatever it is) without a computer for six weeks.
Without our personal backup, that’s what Danita would have been faced with, with no offer of help from the service company nor Acer.
If you need to have your car being serviced or repaired for any length of time they will often provide a loan vehicle for that period (the good ones will).
Sadly, in the computer world the best they could manage was “sorry for the hassle”.
And that’s why we won’t be buying Acer again.