The (Mostly) Happy Ending

No, I don't have my computer back yet, and I miss it terribly (although I think the withdrawal syptoms are beginning to subside a little). And the story got a lot worse - $460 and 7-10 business days worse, to be precise - before it got better.

I heard back from the local Mac repair shop yesterday about noon, and up until that moment I'd been hoping that just maybe I'd get away with a few (expensive) hours of repair and have my computer back by Tuesday so that I could get started on the transcriptions I'm supposed to have done before I leave on Friday as well as get to work on those pre-Christmas projects, check email from the comfort of my own home, rent a DVD or two, and be able to write with a keyboard instead of a pen. Any and every hope was dashed when I heard how long it would take and how much it would cost - if I add on the $80 diagonostic fee, that's over half what it would cost just to buy myself a new one! And I very much do not have that kind of money available to me right now.

I told them that I'd get back to them and called my parents in a panic, but wasn't able to get through to them until about half an hour later when I'd calmed down a bit (which was probably a good thing). My mom told me to call Apple and give them my sob story because a computer that I bought because I'd heard such good things about its reliability should not have a massive breakdown three weeks past its warranty. I'm not good at being a pesky customer and I wasn't looking forward to it, but it turns out that customer care representatives are apt to be nice to customers who are very upset for good reason, and the process was painless once I finally got through to someone who could help me. Of course, actually getting through to that person turned out to be the most frustrating experience of the week - all told, I think I spent a good hour and a half or more on hold, was given the wrong phone number once, lost my connection twice because cell phone reception is iffy in the School of Education building, and spent some very long minutes shivering outside in twenty degree weather so that I wouldn't lose my connection again (but I did anyway and finally decided to wait until after my meeting when I could go back to my warm and cell-phone-friendly apartment).

At home I was put on hold again for an hour (there go my cell phone minutes for the month) and kept myself at ease by plunking out the top hand of a Haydn sonata or two on the piano, but in the end it was worth it because Apple is going to cover the cost of the repairs. I'll still have to wait for my computer, and I've still already handed over the $80 diagnostic fee, but I'm quite happy to take $80 over $540. I was thinking that there are some nice life analogies to be made here, and if I was sitting at home with my iBook on my lap instead of in the fishbowl computer lab here on campus, I might take the time to elaborate on some of my thoughts.

But until I have that luxury again, I thought the story I'd written here at least deserved its resolution.