Oops

When I got to work this morning I started pulling my Powerbook G4 out of its sleeve... and it slipped out of my hand and fell on a stack of motherboards. (Don't laugh, I work at a computer repair shop, heh.)
It wasn't a long fall, at all. So internally all is well.
Unfortunately, the metal and silicon of a motherboard does not-so-pretty things to the outside of an Aluminum computer. The back of the display now has some nice lil gouges on it. Meh.
This is only the second time in my life that I've dropped a computer. Wow.
I'll be getting some pictures of the damage when I get home.

Apologies to all that it has been so long since I posted here. (Or should I be apologizing for tormenting you with more senseless content?) Life started happening on me. Heh.

Stuff started piling up, new job keeping me busy, midterm projects and papers and just a bunch of random stuff happening.

A lot has happened since the last time I posted. A lot.

Start by updating on the computer situation(s).

I’ve installed my mom’s hard drive, all seems to be running as expected now. Hopefully that will keep it in working order for a while to come. There are some programs left to be installed, (School curriculum, etc.) but that should all be taken care of in short order.

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Now… for the PNY debacle. More headaches there. I don’t even want the replacement card anymore, my brother went and bought himself a new one. Now I’m just going to get a hold of a ‘service’ representative and not let go until they agree to some sort of restitution for the chunk of my life they’ve stolen.

That’s the theory anyways.

Three days after my last post a guy from PNY called me back, in typical form, I wasn’t home. I called him back about an hour later and got their answering system. Left him my name and number and synopsis of who I was, etc. Have yet to hear back from him. This is ridiculous.

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I spent most of Thursday hunched over either computer or radio devouring every tidbit I could about the bombings in the London underground. Very unfortunate happening. :-(

For news coverage of this (and any other item), I’d recommend you check out WikiNews. Awesome site, I love community efforts, I’m part of this one, I’ve created a few articles and edited a few more, and I’ll try to continue to be active.

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For some more geeky news:

Microsoft has reportedly been distributing invitations to check out Longhorn Beta 1 to their best beta testers. I can’t wait to get my hands on this one. Let’s hope it’s as good as it’s hyped up as being.

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I have to get out of her for a while, later.

My mom’s hard drive came in today, and I installed it. Still running the recovery. Let’s hope this fixes everything.

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Got an email from PNY today:

Please give me a call at <phone number> to resolve this issue

Regards
        Rafael
PNY Technologies

Tried to call him, got an answering service. Hopefully they’ll call me back.

Happy July 4th! I’ll be going out to the fireworks this evening, those of you who know where I live, and where that will be, feel free to show up and look out for me!

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I'm going to give PNY until Wednesday to either call me back or respond to my email, and then I will be contacting them again.

More updates on that as needed.

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Google Earth is amazing, and slightly disturbing. Check it out.

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I’ll edit this if I think of something more post-worthy.

Hello? Anybody home?

I just shot this email to PNY technical support:

[The box here said something like “Describe the problem”]

Problem? The problem is your 'customer service'. I need an RMA completed on a 128MB SD Flash Memory Card, and I can't get it.

This started last week, I called and was left on hold for 45 minutes, I was finally sent to a voice mail line, when a technician called back, I was out of the house, he left a message, I called him back, left him a message, and never heard from him again.

I decided to try again.

I spent 35 minutes on hold yesterday, waiting to get through, someone finally picks up, he puts me back on hold for 15 more minutes, when he answers again he goes through and gets all my information and then tells me he's going to "send this RMA request through, and then call [me] back in 20 minutes."
He read back my telephone number to me, so I know you have it on file correctly.
I waited by the phone for 8 hours, and never heard back from him.

To top it all off, you've made this email form very difficult to find, I actually had to use Google to find this, your own site was no help.

This is one of the worst 'customer service' experiences I've ever been submitted to.

I'm still waiting for my RMA number so I can have this replaced.

I'm afraid you've lost at least one customer, and probably more than that, I've been blogging this:
[Link]
[Link]
[Link]

I'll be blogging this until it is resolved.

Regards,
[My name, phone number and email address, which I summarily edited for privacy reasons]

It's all a waiting game..

I think the theory behind’s PNY’s ‘customer service’ goes something like this:

“We will offer a lifetime warranty on every product we sell, then we will make it so hard to make a claim on this warranty that 99% of our customers will just give up and go buy a replacement.”

PNY isn’t the only company doing this… but they’re the one I’m struggling with at the moment.

PNY: I will get my replacement product, and you will be providing it, and it will be provided at no cost to me. (And, yes, that includes shipping, I’m not going to pay shipping on a ‘free’ replacement product, that’s ridiculous.) That’s what ‘lifetime warranty’ means, and if you’re not willing to comply to that standard, then don’t say that you are. At this point I’m going to hound you with phone calls and emails, get my replacement and then never buy another PNY product.

Up until this point I have been pretty satisfied with your products, they really are pretty decent, but if you’re going to give me such a hard time just to get a replacement for an SD Flash Memory card, well, that’s fine, you obviously don’t need my business.

I hope you’re satisfied, you’ve lost a customer.

Quick update...

In this post I talked about my mom’s computer crashing…

This is the second time this has happened in the last month, and I’ve had Sony dispatch a new hard drive, hopefully that will fix the problem, more updates as that progresses.

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I still have not heard back from PNY (See previous post.) It’s been an hour and a half, and counting.

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I started to blog extensively about Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor leaving the bench, but I backspaced it. If you’re interested though, check out the online coverage.

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Another thing I really like about BlogJet: it’s actually much faster as far as publishing/editing goes then the Blogger.com backend that they provide to their users. This really makes me giddy with happiness, that was the only thing I disliked about Blogger.com… the slow interface. So… w00t w00t for BlogJet!

Still no call from PNY, not that I’m expecting one anymore.

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OK, so now I’m closing on 2 hours since I was promised a call back within twenty minutes. I’m really vexed with PNY, really, really vexed.

This takes the cake..

The big ol’ “Worst Customer Service Experience” cake that is…

At this point I’ve been on hold with PNY Technology for over half an hour, and still haven’t spoken with a “Customer Service Representative”. This canned voice comes on the line every five minutes suggesting I “Press 0 to leave a message.” I refuse to. I absolutely refuse to let their system shunt me away from actually getting some service.

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Someone just picked up, he’s “finishing up with someone else, and [he]’ll be right with [me].” ‘Bout time. 35 minutes on hold, and right back there again. What a saga. All I have to say is that when I do talk to him, he better remedy this situation* quickly.

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Ok, just spoke with the representative, he’s issuing an RMA (Return Merchandise Authorisation) on the card, and he’s supposed to call me back in less than 20 minutes.

…

 

In other news, I’m now using the excellent BlogJet blog publishing tool, it works with many different blogging services (Check their site for a complete list.) and is a nice lil WYSIWYG text editor + publishing/editing tool. Excellent application, major props to the developer.

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Sorry about all the spacing out, I’ve written some of this off-line and some online.. Microsoft Windows memory ‘management’ is the devil, I’m sorry to be so blunt about it, but it just is. I got so frustrated with my Windows XP laptop just now that I shut it down, closed the top and switched over to my Powerbook. I figured I’d better get away from it before I tried to re-program it with a very large axe. Which reminds me, on my way to work today I ended up behind a light-blue Mitsubishi Eclipse with a “DNTPANIC” custom license plate and a “If you don’t like blogging, try crying yourself to sleep” bumper sticker (Which I can’t find anywhere online, for some reason). Obvious geek, I wonder who it was.

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It’s been over an hour now since I was promised a call back in twenty minutes, I’m so annoyed at PNY right now. Anyone reading this: I’d advise not buying any more PNY products. If they can’t even provide the most base level of customer support, then they don’t deserve your business.

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*My brother’s 128MB SD card has died, it’s stuck in “Read-only” mode, rendering it practically useless.