Where in the world?!

My laptop is in Holland! Evidently PC World’s policy with hardware is to send it back to meet its maker. Wish God had a UK base…

The first callcentre monkey I spoke to sounded quite bored. I’m glad I had to hang up to find the courier’s tracking label as I doubt he’d have had enough energy to do anything with it. The next person was much more chirpy, a coffee break must have just recharged him.

Bafflingly he wanted to know where my laptop had been sent. If I knew that I wouldn’t be sat freezing my balls off on the fire escape, running down my phone’s battery. I can’t call from inside, the walls are too thick and lead lined or something. When aliens or Americans invade I’m staying inside.

After being put on hold for a while Mr Callcentre told me my laptop was off getting stoned, but had no idea when it’d run out of weed and decide to come home. Hope it sends a postcard.

What I don’t understand about callcentres is why there’s so much typing and question asking involved. Surely once I’ve been identified, they know exactly what I have covered under their service plan. They should also know its serial number, courier tracking number and when it was collected from me. And why did it take time to locate the laptop. Isn’t that what a tracking number is for?

If online shops can do this, why can’t everyone else? It’s the same thing but in reverse. Dabs.com are quite efficient like that. Maybe I should have just bought a new drive myself. Unless the motherboard is broken - burning DVDs sometimes failed, and the machine ground to a halt if any intensive disk I/O happened. Not the performance expected from a P4 based machine.

Tags: Hardware, Idiots, Weird