Service Economy, My Ass

I called Sirius radio yesterday. Since I'm paid up until February, I went ahead and bought one of their portable radios to put in the truck. I wish I could have talked to a native English speaker, however. Working in weld shops and around hot rods and race cars all these years, my hearing is not all that it was, and when you toss in someone from a service center located in India it's a bit tough for both of us. It got worse when I called Dell.

The little laptop I bought in March ran low on memory about the time I took it out of the package. Windows has a couple of updates which basically brought the thing to the point is was barely useable. After being on the phone with their service rep for about 45 minutes he fixed it up so it no longer works at all. He was very nice but I had even more trouble understanding him. After he gave up on the fix he transferred me to someone else who said since it wasn't a hardware problem, he could fix me up but I would be charged for the service. Again, he was hard to understand but I understood enough to know I'm not going to pay to upgrade something that's only three months old. I think I'll scrap it first. Or mail it back to Dell and tell them what they can do with it. I did fill out the online form for problem resolution. Maybe I'll get somewhere with that. In the meantime my big computer was getting a message about the hard drive going bad. I filled out the form and they're sending me a new hard drive. Since it too is a Dell and less than a year old, I'm not too happy with them. 

I hate talking on the phone. By the time I was done talking with the "service" people, I was about as frustrated as a cardiac patient needs to be, so I had a bite of lunch and then headed to the shop. Did some cleaning and putzin' around, including sharpening some drill bits. Good therapy there. As was going to the gym working the heavy bag and the mitts last evening. Still waiting for the well guy to show up also. Be nice if service economy actually offered some decent service.