Past my bedtime...

Today started kind of slowly, and then sped up.

First of all, I'm still trying to figure out what to do about my Dell order.

My original order was made in December. When they sent me the wrong parts, I called several times, spent a long time talking to a bunch of people who couldn't help me, and finally arranged for them to send me the right parts. I even convinced them to throw in next-day delivery, which is what I'd gotten as a freebie on the wrong-parts order.

I was less than thrilled when the ship date turned out to be about a week away, on January 7.

I was even less impressed when, on January 6 or 7, I received a computer-generated phone call informing me that my ship date was moved to January 28.

You can imagine my chagrin when I went to their web site yesterday to find out what happened to my order, only to be informed that my order had been cancelled.

It sure was nice of them to tell me about the cancellation, you betcha! (Not!)

So - against my better judgment - I called customer service.

Same old routine. Customer service can't help me (either because I'm not a customer, or they're incapable of providing service, I haven't decided), so they switch me over to sales. Sales sure is busy (10 minutes on hold), but you know what? The poor wanker I spoke to couldn't help me either (he must've been one of those unfortunate interns), so he vectors me off to the spare parts department.

(Hey! Based on my experience, this is typical of what you can expect when you call Dell. And based on comments from other LJers, their experiences haven't differed much from mine!)

Finally, I get some straight skinny from spare parts. It turns out that the CD-ROM drive I wanted is available, but it's not on sale anymore (now I'll have to shell out $54 instead of $49). Talking to the young lady who was on the line with me about how I had ordered the thing when it was on sale just seemed to confuse her. (I didn't even try to ask why, if the thing was available, it wasn't sent to me in the first place... I doubt I would have survived Yet Another Eternity on Hold.)

The DVD-ROM I ordered now only comes in a model that includes a CD burner, for $169. While in itself that may not be a bad deal, I only wanted a DVD reader, which I ordered in December for something like $69.

So the main question arises: should I risk ordering from Dell, or should I write the two units I bought from them off as boat anchors and go look for a supplier who takes less than a month to fulfill an order for a CD or DVD drive and can handle customer inquiries in minutes and not hours?

* * *It had to happen eventually. I got careless and fried the Pentium II. I'm sure one of the memory cards bought the farm, but I'm not sure as to the extent of the rest of the damage. I'm thinking I ought to write this unit off and cannibalize the hard drive (new, 120GB... ye gods), the 58x CD, and the Zip drive.

Assuming their electronics didn't fry as well.

Criminy.

* * *Things got interesting in the late afternoon as I undertook some rush translation for a good client. I just finished a few minutes ago. (Things would have gone faster if it weren't for the handwritten legalese, although I've seen much worse penmanship.) Tomorrow, I shall resume my regularly scheduled translation.

Cheers...