Sunday, March 18, 2007

rebate hell

Entry for the contest to win a Macbook from a local radio station, provides me with a venue for my wrath. I am to write about my computer nightmare story (PC only) but I can’t even get past the wrapping….

In order to spare you the 'War and Peace' of computer nightmare stories, I am going to relate a synopsis of my ongoing NIGHTMARE that I hope will warrant the coveted MacBook. (Barring that, I would settle for a date with MacDreamy...)

As an artist, art instructor and producer of our school's annual 'slide show' I went computer hunting a few years ago. Our school uses Macs, but, as a single parent on a pathetic teacher's salary, the MacBooks were out of my price range. In full denial of reality, I set out to have a myriad of under trained personnel, all with the names of 'Bob', and wearing matching brown and yellow shirts, convince me that a PC would do everything a Mac could do and more.

Even more enticing, says one of the 'Bobs', was an exciting mail in rebate, guaranteed to save me a ton of cash. I waded my way through the world of gigabytes, megabytes, pixel something or others, punctuated with anxious phone calls to my fifteen year old nephew, who knew more than the 'Bobs'.
I settle on a PC (henceforth referred to as '______' and go home to send in the UPC code on the back of the box. I call my best friend who shrieks, 'You should have bought a Mac; and READ THE FINE PRINT ON THE REBATE!!" She is the director of the Sarah McLaughlin Music School. They use Macs.

The fine print on the PC rebate form lets me know I have to cut out every single UPC code I can see on the boxes. 

"O.k., how hard could this be?" and set out to get my exact o knife. TWENTY EIGHT UPC codes were sporadically and deviously hidden throughout the boxes. Because the cartons were made with triple cardboard, it was the equivalent of carving through petrified wood. Four hours later, there is a mountain of little cardboard pieces. I am sweating. I am pissed. I refuse to quit. Armed with my twenty eight UPC codes, I read the instructions further. They sound something like this: “Thank you for purchasing your _____ personal computer. For your rebate, send ALL ORIGINAL UPC codes from the box to the following TWO separate addresses."
?????

"As well, please photocopy the seven codes from the bottom of the box, and the two from the northeast side of the box and send them to a third address, including two originals from the south corner of the second box." There is no phone number. I hire someone to set up my computer, who dutifully tells me....."You should have bought a Mac".

Once on the computer,(six hours and a million dollars later) I search for a phone number to call the 'customer service representatives' of ______ p.c.'s. The regular phone web ensues, (another monologue of monolithic proportions of which I’ll spare you the details) and I finally get a person on the phone. (Keep in mind, I only have thirty days to complete this task, according to the box.)
 
I am now searching for the little airline vodka bottle I had stashed in my drawer as a reminder of my first trip backpacking around Europe in 1979.

The 'lady' tells me to put some in one envelope, and others in another envelope and send them to the same address. I decide, while this is the equivalent to plugging her ears and singing la la la la, I will follow her questionable directions. I buy two large envelopes, fill them with various pieces of cardboard, photocopies, copies of the warranty, and copies of the sales receipt and spent $25.00 sending them to California as the weight of the five inch cardboard was significant.

Three weeks later, and one day after the deadline, I receive a letter stating that I did not, in fact, put the right pieces in the right envelopes, and why they wish me mazel-tov on purchasing my PC, they cannot grant me my significant rebate. During this time, a colleague has purchased her MacBook, and shows me an  IMovie which she produced in an hour and a half. It's brilliant, and I am busy trying to buy a program that will allow me to integrate video with the photos I have taken for the school. I give up, and work on her MacBook at her house.

I call California. Work my way through the phone chain and eventually get another 'lady'. I feel a shrill one coming on. She says she has my two envelopes in front of her, and that I put some pieces of cardboard in the wrong one.

"Perhaps you could manually change them?" I ask. 

"I don't think so." she says. 

"Could I speak to your manager?" I ask.

She sniffs; I am subjected to a further twenty two minutes of infuriating Enya hold music and then am told by a voice "We are now closed. Goodbye." Promptly I am cut off.

Back to the PC. We (the $80.00 an hour computer guy and I) are attempting to install something one of the 'Bobs' told me was just as efficient as the coveted IMovie. It makes a movie, alright, but what is a transition? It doesn't know. Music timing? Nnnnnope. 

I have worked now on my colleague's MacBook and because it is hers, I am unable to take it back and forth to my home; so instead, I drive up and down the dreaded Kingsway Avenue. I swear and mutter under my breath as I delete porno spam on my e-mail, and as unidentified red 'x's come up with a bunch of adjectives that only Bill Gates would understand.

I wait for my paycheque to go up, or the prices to go down, or, for the morning I receive a call from the radio station and tell me that my maniacal days driving down Kingsway are over; that brown and yellow shirts are a thing of the past, and that this talented art instructor will not heard screaming, 'Die you !!#$@%%* piece of *&&#%@@%! in front of my impressionable daughter again.
The fate of the motorists on Kingsway is uncertain at best.


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