I suppose one of Murphy’s laws could be, “The more you need a piece of technology, the more likely it is for it to break.” I have experienced that on this weekend. Not only with one items, but two as a matter of fact. First, my iPod is in for minor repairs which will take two weeks longer than a mistake on BestBuy’s part. Secondly, my laptop harddrive decided this weekend would be the perfect time to fail. Both of these items I really needed for my long trip this weekend, yet I’m having to cope without both. Oh well.
I do love tech support however, I tried to call Sony up since I wanted to replace my laptop harddrive ASAP, and needed to know if a new harddrive was compatable with an older standard on my laptop. A simple question with a simple “yes” or “no” answer… at least so I thought. My conversation with Sony went something like this:
Me: I need to replace my laptop harddrive. Are newer ATA-6 harddrives compatable with the ATA-5 standard on my laptop?
Sony: (Some mumbo jumbo about how they can’t provide support for new hardware, even though I only asked a simple question that could be solved with such a simple answer)
– Here I explained the problem I have, the steps I tooked to come to the solution that my harddrive no longer works.
Sony: You need to [some steps to reinstall Windows] and [some more steps].
Me: I can’t even follow those steps, because the bios doesn’t even recognize the harddrive.
Sony: Then you need a new drive.
Me: … (Internal Thoughts: Well d’oh. )
I decided at this point, I would be better off with my time spent on google, and sure enough I found the answer within 2 minutes. It frustrates me to no end that tech support can not answer such a simple question reguarding their product. Customer service should be just that, service, and should not feel like a diservice to the very customers you are supposed to be serving.
I have bought a new drive already. It is a good thing though, even though my old harddrive went bad. I’ll have a lot more space for doing things (2x the space infact) and might even try to install Linux. Who knows?