RejectReality

Customer Service is a funny thing. It only takes one customer service representative to falter when presented with a question that is slightly out of the ordinary to ruin the illusion.

The CPU fan in my laptop has been unhappy for a long time. The Toshie is hitting close to two years old, and there’s been a slight grind in the fan for around half of that. Fortunately, this laptop seems to be fairly user serviceable - memory, wireless card, modem, CPU fan, heatsink and processor can be easily swapped out - so I figured it was finally time to do do something about it.

Well, that and I’m stupid enough to do these things myself

Starting with the obvious, I tried Toshiba’s support line - these are the guys to call when you have any problems with your kit. Being out of warranty, I was not expecting much assistance, but some information would have gone down well.

I posed a seemingly simple question to find out how can I buy spare parts for laptops (only to be quizzed on my serial number, which was rather amusing - can you not get a phone number of a spares group out of a support line these days without coughing up a serial?). The response of which greeted me with the support guy (audibly) furrowing his brow and asking the question, “You want to buy a fan?”, followed incredulously by, “You want to buy it outright?”

I will admit - I honestly considered my options. I was rather concerned that I might be making a fiscal nightmare for myself by not consulting a financial adviser and several independent accountants to discuss the pros and cons of leasing, hire purchase, second mortgages, margin lending or business loans when considering the purchase of a CPU fan. I mean, the interest alone on an anticipated 50-buck fan could easily destroy the delicately balanced price of eggs in China.

Throwing caution to the wind, I answered in the affirmative.

Twice.

Scandalous, I know.

The result? “Ah. We don’t sell parts. Dunno where you can get ‘em”.

<sigh>

Round two - the sales guys. Considering their number was advertised for new equipment only (and not spares), I was expecting a similar outcome - I was pleasantly surprised. I did receive a similar response (”Ah. We don’t sell parts…..”), which was actually followed by something useful - “Actually, you might be able to buy them from <completely separate third party company that is not mentioned anywhere as a Toshiba affiliate>”.

With a rush of enthusiasm, I pushed on and contacted <completely separate third party company that is not mentioned anywhere as a Toshiba affiliate>

A really nice girl answered the phone, and was actually able to do something to help my poor fan situation.

Nice girl on phone: “Sure. We’ve got the part you need. $10.47 each.”

Me (mentally): “I was expecting to pay $50. Score! I’m 40 bucks ahead!”

Me (verbally): “One please.”

NGOP: “No problems - I’ll just grab your details. By the way, we’ve got a minimum order of $20″.

Me (mentally): “Crap!”

Me (verbally): “Seriously? I don’t need any other parts. Can you do anything about it?”

NGOP: “Well, I can give you one fan for $20, or two fans for $20.94″.

Me (mentally): “Bollocks! Oh well, I’m still $30 up”.

Me (verbally): “Hrm. Two please.”

NGOP: “Plus tax.”

Me (mentally): “You’ve got to be kidding me”

Me (verbally): “OK - not too much I can do about that. Any more surprises?”

NGOP: “Nope. Oh, hang on a sec. You’re not in Melbourne, are you?

Me (mentally): “Here we go….”

Me (verbally): “No - why?”

NGOP: “Plus freight. I could have saved you that if you were in Melbourne”

Me (mentally): “This is nuts! It’s only a fan - just bubble wrap the bloody thing and stick it in a PostPak”

Me (verbally): “<sigh> Just do what you have to do”

Long story short: I now have my $10 fan installed, my laptop is now happy, my wallet is 35 bucks lighter, I have a spare fan that will probably be completely useless to me as this lappie will be retired long before I need to swap it in and I’ve learnt that the support guys don’t seem to like oddball queries.

You’d think it would be easier, eh?

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I’m usually not a big fan of job interviews.

Most interviews that I’ve had for technical positions feel like a dog’n'pony show, where a bunch of psychological and personality based questions are asked in preference to technical questions. This sometimes occurs to the point where you are unable to obtain the opportunity to prove what you know and what you can do.

As an example, around 6 months ago I went though a bunch of interviews for a Systems Administrator / Engineer role, the mix was around 90% psychological, 10% technical - spread over three sessions, each over an hour long.

From what I’ve seen, this usually happens when people too high up interview for a position without someone already in that position being around to keep them close to what the job actually is.

Now, don’t get me wrong; the psych stuff is important - it’s the mix of the questions that needs to change based on what the interview is for.

To drag this theory back to a recent event, today I rocked up to an interview for a network support / administrator position - an interview where I was extremely surprised. I was in and out in just under three quarters of an hour. A good mix of questions where my technical knowledge and logical thought processes were able to be demonstrated reasonably effectively and any personality traits that they were looking for had been exposed. The interviewers were good at asking the questions, and good at interpreting the result.

Overall, I would have to say this was the smoothest interview I’ve been through in a loooooong time. Here’s hoping something comes out of it.

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After telling one too many people that I was contemplating setting up a blog, someone finally called my bluff.

With such an impressive back story (yes, that’s about the entirety of it) and vast fanfare, I now present RejectReality.

RejectReality will be a place for me to spout all sorts of useless crap, bollocks and rants in a satirical, cynical and hopefully humorous fashion. This will also allow me to post my multi-page, overly-in-depth, technology-related-articles-and-rants in a safe location rather than foisting them upon my unsuspecting friends whenever one of them was silly enough to pique my interest.

Or I could just post links. <shrug>

Just as a warning, stuff’s going to change, shit’s going to break - don’t be surprised if something looks funny from time to time.

Hope you enjoy. Email, comments, tracks and pings are welcome.

Cheers!

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