Excellent Customer Service

Three years ago, when we were poised to move out to California, I finished Petty Treason and printed it out and turned it in. The following Monday, within half an hour of each other, my trusty old Powerbook 1400 and my Palm Pilot died. Sort of romantic, I guess. So I went out and got a shiny new iBook G3, which has been a trusty companion, but prone to irritable inflamations of the video card. The number of times I have had to take the thing in to be fixed, while not countless, were pretty significant; only having had the wit to purchase Apple Care has saved me from paying for the damned thing three times over. So today, since my Apple Care is within a month of running out, I took the beast in to the Apple Store one more time and went over the litany of woes. And the nice young Genius listened (aparently the new problem was familiar enough so that I only had to outline it for him to nod and finish the description for me) and looked, not at the display, but at the number of bar code stickers that had been plastered, one over the other, as the logic board and video cards and motherboard and hard disk have been replaced and replaced and replaced. "This is totally unacceptable," he said firmly. Since I had been singing this song for a while, I could only nod. "We're gonna give you a new replacement. This is simply not the way we do things."

It will take two weeks, apparently, to process everything. Then I get a new iBook G4 with everything grand about it. In the meantime I have backed-off the crucial writing files, and will be reduced to writing longhand in cafes or working on Spouse's computer (whence I write right now). But I was much struck by the nice Genius's fervent belief in How Things Oughta Be, particularly as it worked in my favor.

Edited to Add: I type from my bright n' shiny new G4 laptop. They transfered the files, all my prefs and mail and stuff was still intact, and I just watched the first episode of Firefly on it. Bright n' shiny, captain. I'm going to write the Apple Store a nice note; store clerks and customer service people get a lot of grief, frequently deserved. I figure, when the system works, let them know you noticed.

Mood: cheery.

That Movie

So I went to see a lovely movie today, one apparently based upon the work of Jane Austen. I enjoyed it very much, although there were certainly points at which Miss Austen would have swooned dead away.

Spoilers abound...( Read more... )