By SHELLEY WHITE – Globe and Mail Update
Published Tuesday, May. 17, 2011 6:24AM EDT
“Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?”
The infamous words of Johnny Rotten, spoken at the end of the last Sid Vicious-era Sex Pistols show, in 1978, came to mind recently. The context was my laptop, a year-old machine that had left me feeling more than a little swindled.
In February, 2010, I bought the laptop for $529.73. It was a great price and I was thrilled to have wireless capability at last. As a freelance writer, I’d be freed up to work anywhere, instead of being tethered to my ancient, slow desktop computer.
For several months my laptop worked as it should. Then, one day, my wireless capability turned off. Upon investigation, I realized it didn’t just turn off – my laptop would no longer recognize that I even had wireless capability. It was as if communication had broken down between the laptop and my wireless card. Not a good sign.
I called the manufacturer – I was under a one-year warranty – and after a bit of remote poking around, the IT technician told me to send my laptop back to the company for repair. He figured I probably had a bum wireless card.
I wasn’t thrilled to be without my laptop for a week, but I needed it fixed, so I packed it in the padded cardboard box they sent and waved goodbye.
Several days later, the laptop came back. The company had replaced the wireless card, and everything seemed to be functioning properly again. But a few months later, out of the blue, boom. Once again my laptop was telling me it was not equipped with wireless capability.
I made another call to the manufacturer, angrier this time. After more remote poking around, the service rep decided I should send my laptop in for a second time. He thought it was a malfunctioning wireless card again. I was dubious.
“Isn’t it strange that I ended up with a bad wireless card twice?” I asked. No, no, he assured me, these things do happen. So, once again, I packed my laptop in a cardboard box and off it went.
Back it came a few days later with another new wireless card. Just like last time, it seemed to be functioning properly. A few more months went by, then bam! The old problem reared its head once again. Meanwhile, I was getting very close to the end of my warranty.
This time, the rep decided it couldn’t be the wireless card again (I should think not), but decided it was likely corrupt files. To remedy the problem, he would send me recovery discs that would restore factory settings and should fix my problem. Fine.
The discs came in the mail, and I sat down one night to start the recovery process. I’d never done this before, and quickly realized that I would need to back up all the data on my laptop before using the recovery discs, which would erase everything.
At the time we were renovating our house, so we were in a condo temporarily while the work was being done, with most of our belongings packed away. We owned an external hard drive, but it was somewhere in a box. I also needed to have a conversation with the iTunes service rep, as I was deathly afraid of losing the 4,000 or so tracks I had ripped or purchased over the years.
By the time we had moved back home and unpacked our stuff, two months had gone by. Finally, I went through the recovery process. The outcome? My laptop was still telling me I had no wireless capability. Obviously it hadn’t worked.
I called the company, knowing full well my warranty had ended a month and a half earlier. As I feared, they told me they couldn’t help me, and I should contact one of their business partners.
“So you’re saying I need to pay to get it fixed myself,” I asked.
“Yes. I’m sorry, ma’am.”
Now, I know I could have spent a lot of time on the phone, complaining vociferously that this was an ongoing problem that they never really fixed while I was on warranty, and get them to go at it again. However, the thought of sending my laptop off so they could perform another temporary patch job didn’t work for me.
So I took the laptop to my local computer repair guys. They suspected it must be a problem inside the laptop in the connection with the wireless card. Their suggestion? An external wireless adaptor.
I paid $131.40 to see my problem go away, and I now have wireless capability again. I’m hoping it’s a permanent solution.
Is it unjust that I paid for wireless capability in my laptop and it didn’t work? Yes. But I did what I suspect many people do (and what computer companies probably count on): I chose the quickest and easiest option in order to get my work done. I settled for injustice to save myself from a serious hassle and waste of time.
Next time, maybe I’ll get a Mac.
Shelley White blogs for Home Cents at globeinvestor.com