1: I bought a HP printer at Costco about six weeks ago – one of those ink jet multi-function jobbers that cost about $200 but every time you by new ink you drop another $75 (which by the way only last for about 11 pages). Anyhow it sucked. First HP print software is bloated it takes up literally 200MB of disk space and takes over 30 minutes to install (I don’t know what it’s doing but I’m sure it is sucking all sorts of system resources), second I hate the quality of ink jet printing (which I knew going in but I thought my wife could live with it – she can’t). So I take the product back after 6 weeks – I don’t have the receipt since my wife shredded it, I’ve used up all the provided ink, the box is mangled and my reason for returning it was “I don’t like it anymore.” You know what the Costco customer rep said – “Would you like cash or store credit?” Amazing – only in America!
2: Last week we went on a trip to LA to get out of the cold (Malibu was 78 and clear skies – beautiful). We had a rental car from Budget – we get there and end up waiting 20 minutes for a bus to arrive, They pack the bus so full the driver blows off other stops down the line. Only 3 dudes on the bus are going to the “Fast Break” aisle. I immediately size up the situation and tell my Renee to make “fast break” off this jinky bus and be the first in line when we stop. We stop – she bolts – I deal with the luggage and when I get off I see her standing in line with about a dozen people in front of her. There are 8 agents working, they take about 10 minutes to process one person – 30 minutes later we have our car. As we’re walking out the line has grown to over 70 people – it’s outside and wrapping around the building. The people waiting to catch the bus back to the airport are standing under a sign that says “Buses arrive every 5 minutes – time since last bus left: 18:23” and counting. Never again.
3: I bought Vista and Office 2007 to install on my Mac using Parallels. I purchased the upgrade version since I owned XP Professional but it wasn’t installed on my machine. Low and behold Microsoft has a help line for Vista. I was reluctant to call India and be placed on hold for 90 minutes only to get an unsatisfactory answer but I figured what the hell I’ll try. I called India via a US 800 number, talked to someone whose birth name isn’t Renee and in less than 3 minutes I got patched through to Bob. Bob was nice but told me I had to do two OS installs. I was unsatisfied but happy that it only took 4 minutes to get to that state. I then surfed the web and found out how to do it with just one install. Lyla from Microsoft then called me a day later to make sure I was satisfied with their support – I said “Yes” because I didn’t want to get into it – she then sent me an email saying the issue was closed – or was it?
