Jul 17, '07 4:10 PM
for loretta's contacts
What a very stressful few days this has been. As I have said I do have technophobe tendencies and stuff like this just brings out herds of nasty little gremlins to haunt me. And of course the simplest of solutions just evade anyone when they are totally stressed out. I think it was sometime Saturday afternoon when the blindingly obvious slapped me in the face. I have (had) a completely unused pristine 1 gig memory stick laying around in a draw somewhere. So, immediate problem solved. After frantically emptying draws full of junk all over the house I located this beautiful unassuming little black memory stick at the back of the kitchen draw, I promptly and unceremoniously shoved it into a spare USB and immediately transferred ALL of my pictures. That was immediate cure for growing waves of paranoia and gave me a bit of breathing space, whew……………..
And now, crisis over, rational service was resumed, I do feel a bit of a fool for panicking so much. I have a Toshiba laptop and an external Sony rewriter. I have never used the internal rewriter, I’ve always used the external one. Then one day my beautiful, pretty shiny external Sony stopped working!! Ahhhhhhhhhh
I did what I normally do, disconnected and uninstalled everything, reconnected and attempted to reinstall everything. Then I discovered a problem, this beautiful, pretty, shiny external rewriter was supplied with something called a ‘link’ cable used only for installing the software, and it appeared to be hopelessly lost!!, ummmmmmmmm
More frantic turning out of draws all over the house but this time to no avail, it remained absolutely, utterly and completely lost. Bright Idea!!..............look up Sony support number and/or web page and ask to order another ‘link’ lead. Simple enough I thought, not so said the man from Sony, not simple at all. In fact his exact words were ‘’well if you have lost the lead there’s not much I can do about it is there?’’, ‘’can’t you supply a replacement lead’’ I asked, determined not to be intimidated by this rather abrupt man, ‘’no, we don’t do that’’, said the man from Sony. I don’t like being rude or getting angry, so I hung up instead. And then ‘PING’ another bright idea and another frantic search, this time for the receipt, which I found and, oh halleluiah, I was right, this appliance is less than one year old (just). Ok so now I thought contact Sony again but this time lets try another tactic. ‘’’ hello’’, said I, ‘’I have a problem with my Sony rewriter, it simply doesn’t work and it is less than a year old’’. There followed an inquisition any intelligence organisation would have been proud of. Can you tell me the date of purchase?, the place of purchase?, the model number?, the cereal number?, describe in detail what the problem is?, (what a dam fool question! It doesn’t work!) can you supply proof of purchase?, do you have the original packaging?, have you tried uninstalling & reinstalling?’ is it connected via a USB port or are you using a hub?, have you tried it on another computer?’ (Implication here was obviously that MY computer was at fault), and on and on and on, more and more increasingly mundane and irritating questions. Sometimes she asked the same question with slightly different wording, thinly veiled as a new, unasked question. I watch CSI too you know, I know when someone is trying to trip you up with trick questions. But, happily she ran out of steam and presumably questions, well before my determination expired.
And finally RESULT, I swear I detected the tone of defeated resignation in her voice,
‘’What is your email address please?’’
‘’We will email you a return form and postage label, please complete the details on the return form and email it back to us with a copy of your proof of purchase, and then print off the return label and return the rewriter to us. As the rewriter is less than one year old we will send you a replacement one once we have received your old one’’.
Yep that is what I call a result. I would recommend you bear this little story in mind if you ever have the misfortune to call the Sony help line, as HELP lines go, this is defiantly NOT the most helpful I have ever encountered.
So, email arrived was filled in and returned, returns label was printed and attached to rewriter, rewriter was posted. Sorted!!
The final task was to get the as yet unused Toshiba internal rewriter to work. I tried all ways imaginable just to coax my machine into performing the simple task of copying pictures from file to CD, and every time my machine told me nope, no can do. The machine seemed to be saying I could only copy to DVD’s and not to CD’s but I knew it was lying, my machine often lies to me. I have gotton to know the little tricks my machine plays on me and I knew it was hiding the little tick box that would allow me to copy to CD as well as to DVD. I looked and I looked and I looked but I just couldn’t find it, by this time I had grown very weary of the whole process. I thought; well if I can survive the rigors of the Sony helpline or customer support or whatever it was then talking to Toshiba will be a walk in the park. And so it was. The Toshiba man turned out to be a very nice young man who understood the problem immediately and took me directly to the elusive little ticky box that allows me to copy to both CD and DVD. Well thank you Toshiba and your very nice and incredibly helpful young man.
And that is what I have been doing with myself these last few days. Those of you who have absolutely no insight into the daily dilemmas of the technophobe will probably be rolling around the floor laughing at my ineptitude by now. But for me…………..this has been a learning curve and if it brings a little merriment in its wake, well that’s ok too.
Tags: 360 import, computer, internet
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