August 28, 2003
The Compaq CarePaq (tm) saga: the tunnel is dark
... but the light approaching ain't that of a runaway train. Let's see where we are.The Compaq laptop is still broken. The service engineer still hasn't come to check out. This morning, dear colleague Marc called the CarePaq helpdesk, but apparently got switched to the Dutch (as in: Holland) desk, and they couldn't help him. They promised to call back however, which, of course, they didn't do. After I got in the office, becoming slightly pissed off with this situation, I called again, and this time a friendly girl named Tine got on the phone. She was the same girl who activated my case in the system. She put me on hold for a couple of minutes, just enough to open a terminal window to check my mail on the server I'm abusing as temporary workhorse - more on that later. She came back, explaining me she couldn't get hold of the person responsible for the scheduling of field visits, but she really, really promised to get back to me as soon as she got news for me. I explained her this situation was becoming annoying, and that I would call her back myself two hours later. That's about it from the Compaq front so far.
On the TiBook front, while being on hold with Tine, I saw an email from Peter from the local Apple store. He basically said he had managed to shuffle things around, and that I could come and fetch my new TiBook tomorrow afternoon. I had called him yesterday, telling him about my state of aggravation with my old laptop failing on me the day after ordering the TiBook. And he had promised to look into it. Well, he sure did.
Conclusion so far? Number of promises I got from Compaq until now: 3. Number of occasions they could effectively live up to them: 0. On the Apple front the balance is 1 on 1. Cool.
Update: immediately after typing the last paragraph, Tine called back. She explained me that her manager had contacted the field service, and that they would be calling me back to schedule a visit. I explained her that this visit was supposed to have happened yesterday already, and I asked her if she could provide me with further contact details of the field service desk. She explained me that she wasn't allowed herself to contact that desk, that only her manager could possibly do this, and, should there be any problem, I could get in touch with her again. Tine is simply adorable: while her organization is messing up her ability to actually help people, she invites these people to call her and explain that to her. She must be a very loyal person.