Complainin' Hour Episode 1: Cracked Lappy

Welcome to another exciting episode of COMPLAININ' HOUR! where Austin dedicates an entire post to complaining about some awry aspect of his life. Feel free to join in the fun!

"When [we] write down our murmurings on paper, it's not annoying."

 – Very credible psychologist

TODAY'S EPISODE: CRACKED LAPPY

So it all started last July. I bought a brand new Laptop Computer from HP and was totally stoked to use it. It was totally worth the $800. I pimped it out with all my programs that I had on my original computer and customized it like crazy. It was my new best friend! I loved the great resolution and the state-of-the-art features it had because it was a custom-ordered computer. It even had a backlit keyboard! 

We went on a trip to Washington for a family reunion, and I brought Lappy with me to keep my company on the ride. I played the awesome game Chrono Trigger almost the entire 14-hour or however long drive, and it was awesome.

But it wasn't meant to last, unfortunately.

I was shocked and quite nauseated to find my Lappy on the back seat where I left it earlier. Or rather, I was excited to play it again. What I was shocked and nauseated to find was that when I opened it, the horrible sight seen above glowed darkly into my face. Through some inexplicable way, my Lappy....had been cracked.

I called HP to find out what they could do, but I hadn't bought the extended warranty, so they could do nothing. Funny how, in order to avoid paying $200 in damage repair, you have to buy a $200 extended warranty...

They actually estimated that the stupid repair would cost $400, which of course was met with sadness from me. Luckily, the cracks in the LCD weren't bad enough(at the time) to impair my playing ability. So I was able to continue playing Chrono Trigger and WarCraft 3 without problems. Eventually, however, the burst ink cells started seeping through more and more, till the black veiny stains on the screen began to cloud over important areas of the screen that made the games hard to play.

So, to avoid paying half the Lappy's cost just to fix one part of it, we took it to a local computer store so that they could try and order a screen and do it themselves, possibly cutting the price into several halves. We took it there, they dismantled it(thus voiding whatever warranty I had left), and took two weeks of promising to find out that they probably weren't going to find the right screen. Why? Because the Lappy was so new. It was apparently too awesome to be fixed by mere mortal local comp-geeks.

I got my Lappy back and had a brief, tearful reunion with it, before biting the bullet and sending it off for professional surgery at HP's headquarters. The sending box came quickly, and it was sent away, with an estimated repair and return time of 1 week.

Exactly 1 week later, I received a voice mail that said "This message is for Austin... your laptop will have to be delayed a little bit, we are still awaiting the part to come, so you can expect your laptop to come in two weeks or less time."

I was furious, but still patient. My dad called them demanding some kind of recompense for the wait, but they simply sent it on rush order to be fixed faster.

Instead, the expected date changed to another week later. They were flustered by my dad's constant pestering of them(which was more than well deserved for somebody on their staff), but could not lower the price at all. Instead, they offered to send me a brand new laptop, equal in awesomeness, and in fact better; an upgraded hard drive and processor would be new benefits to this new computer. It would even still have Bluetooth and a backlit keyboard.

They promised it would come within a few days. It didn't. It's been since July that my laptop has been in some form of medical facility, and here I am gaining new songs, programs, and media with nowhere to put it but a "hopeful" folder on my main desktop computer.

And what's worse, they aren't possible to get ahold of these days, for whatever reason. We expect that they're just buying time for that stupid, stupid, awesome part to come in so they can fix Lappy and send him home.

I await until today.

My only question, to wrap up this episode of COMPLAININ' HOUR is this:

"HP, what if your granny had a heart attack, and has spent a month in an intensive care facility, and is waiting because no one has any organs to donate? Maybe I should take the organ donor status off my driver's license just in case that happens! GIVE ME BACK MY LAPPY!"  C