Yay! My computer is back

I've been hounding Micro Center to get my computer back to me. Late last week, they said they'd follow up on it with HP (it was still under the HP warranty, so it had to be sent to them for the screen repair). On Saturday, the "tech" from Micro Center called to say that HP was done and sending it back.

He gave me the FedEx tracking number, in case I wanted to follow its progress. Given how he sounded, I wasn't terribly surprised at the result--when I entered the tracking number, I found that this brilliant young man had given me the tracking number from when they sent it to HP a couple of weeks ago! Yeah, that was a lot of help.

So I just relied upon his statement that it "should be back on Monday or Tuesday." He also indicated that he'd prefer I waited until Tuesday, since he was out on Monday. Uh huh. I was going to wait for him, since he was so damn sharp. Pleez!

So I called Monday and got someone else on the phone. He indicated that the computer was back, but they have a policy requiring that it run for eight hours to be sure the repair was done correctly.

Okay, okay, so I'd wait until Tuesday. Tuesday came, and I didn't bother calling. I went there after lunch and asked for my computer.

The guy at the desk said it wasn't there. Well, I'm usually pretty laid back, but I just dropped into New Yorker mode for this. "It's here. It got here yesterday."

He said, "it is?"

"Yes, it's here. In the store. It got here yesterday, and you wanted to 'burn it in' for eight hours to be sure the repair was done right. Now you need to go find it and give it back to me."

Well, that got him moving. "Oh, let me go see if I can find it."

This was followed by over half an hour of waiting that included their asking for $50 for shipping. Their claim was that warranty service didn't include the cost of shipping it back to the manufacturer. I was forced to explain that they didn't mention this charge before this point, and, to put it bluntly, it would be a cold day in Crawford before I paid them $50 for a repair that was supposed to be free.

The bottom line is that my lovely computer is back. Marc's Mac is a wonderful machine, but it's not what I'm used to. This is what I'm used to, and I'm glad to have it back! Yay! :)