Arrgh it’s been a frustrating day today. I’m still struggling with my broken notebook, which has a fried closing pin (the one that activates and shuts off the screen when you shut down the machine). Currently I have to disassemble the cover of the machine to reliably turn the screen on and off when coming out of sleep mode, which is a drag to say the very least.

This originally started in Germany a couple of weeks ago, so when I returned I called Dell to try and order a replacement part. I turns out that the pin is attached to the top assembly that also hosts the ON/Off switch, the volume controls and a all the LEDs. But the whole thing pries off the computer with snaps so it’s easy to get out and to replace.

So I called Dell last week and after getting the run around for about 2 hours I finally found somebody who could actually sell me spare parts that aren’t consumer level components. Another half an hour on the phone was required to try and tell them what I needed – apparently the serial number on the damn thing doesn’t mean anything that Dell can link back to. After some back and forth and my insistence that they describe the part to me I was glad to find the actual part was only $30. Needless to say I was stoked…

Until today, when it arrived and I found out that they didn’t ship the right thing. Instead of the panel with the buttons that I described explicitly to the rep I got a top cover for the machine. A top cover – how do you get power button, volume control and LEDs out of that???  It’s unbelievable…

So today I got back on the phone, and wasted another 2 hours, this time first dealing with returns then trying to hunt down the part. In the end the only way to do this right was for me to send a picture of the part and have them send me back an image of the part from their catalogue. All this time I was talking to obviously foreign people – presumably from India. That might have been Ok (the last guy especially was very helpful), but the phone connection was absolutely horrible. The connection kept breaking up and between the accent and trying to pass part numbers back and forth a lot of time was wasted. Whatever Dell is doing to forward their phone calls to India is ruining the call quality something fierce.

I’m pretty sure this time I’m going to get the right part and I’m relieved that it’s still a $30 replacement item. But I’m just pissed off at the amount of time I wasted with this. This should be easy – the part has a serial number on it – if the number actually meant something I would have had my part by now and could have taken a fully functional laptop to Australia with me this week for a conference. Instead I get to poke at my machine with knifes for another week to the amused stares of the attendees who think that I’m obviously out of my mind to be poking at a presentation machine like that <g>…

I had calling any company. Customer Service is such a pain in the ass today that sometimes it’s just easier not to deal with it. In addition to the above routine I had to also deal with NOVA which is my old CC. I cancelled my account when I switched to Authorize.NET via MerchantPlus about 3 months ago.

I cancelled my NOVA account a few weeks later after I had hooked up and tested the new interface. This was in September sometime. To cancel the account I called my old merchant provider and NOVA. With NOVA I also had to fax a cancellation notice. I’ve faxed this thing 3 times already which is either not making it or being purposefully ignored. Frankly I think it’s the latter…

So now I’ve called NOVA about 5 times trying to get status information and I get the same everytime – we can’t suspend your account unless you fax us that form. I have here 5 confirmation reports of faxes that Nova says were never sent. Give me a freaking break. In the meantime they’re charging me $35 for the privilege of holding a cancelled account.

I’m so tired of business being unable to perform their regular business functions.  In the case of NOVA, them being a CC provider, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this is standard business practice to get people to keep paying them money unless they start harassing them. Which I will do if I don’t hear back and get a refund for those months of non-service.

Any suggestions on where to complain about stuff like this? For CC companies this ought to be a fairly serious issue although NOVA is one of the big companies in this field…

Like I have time for this, but in this case it’s a matter of principle. This sort of thing pisses me off!