A rant.

Oof. Just ordered a new HP laptop from HP online. I think that I’m getting a good deal, and I hope that this laptop lasts until I get it, but man, was that a frustrating experience. For one thing, the website froze up by the time I was ready to order it. So I gave them a call. Now, I fully expected a long wait to get a rep, but surprisingly, the wait was not long. It was the order with the rep that took forever. At first I really thought that I had a garbled connection. And she spoke English reasonably well. I’m not so naive to think that I’m going to get an American on the phone, since our free-trade loving politicians on the left and right sent our mid-range jobs overseas.

So, this woman not only is trying to upsell me (expected and shut down quickly), not only immediately trying to put my email down for a newsletter, not only immediately quotes me the most expensive shipping rate, but she is SLOWWWWWWWW. I tell her that I don’t have much time, I get off the phone a couple of times to take care of somebody quickly, I watch as a order that I should be able to rattle off in five minutes takes 35 minutes to complete. She repeats back every letter in every word slowwwwwly. E as in Edward. S as in Sam. She needs my credit card’s customer service phone number. What? Why? She puts it in wrong and spends five minutes figuring that out. I threaten to cancel my order if we don’t wrap it up quickly after 30 minutes of this.

The best part was this bit which sent me over the edge.

“How will you pay?”
“Visa.”
“Papul?”
“What? Visa.”
“Papul?”
“What are you saying? Visa!”
“Papul?”
“No, not Paypal! VISA!”

Jesus. This is why I hate politicians. Democrats and Republicans let business do this to us. It’s their fault mental illness is on the rise.

Thank God I no longer have to do business with AT&T, but I learned how to deal with their customer service. I put on my broadest Southern drawl and said, “I need to tawk to sumbody in the U.S.A.” And I was surprised when it worked, but it did!

Anyway, I hope to have a new laptop in a couple of weeks that will be able to handle the 21st century. I’d like to have a CD/DVD drive again, and be able to open more than one web page at a time, and play iTunes. I got out under $500 including shipping and tax. It’s my Christmas present to myself. I checked the website, since she didn’t send me an email with the order details as she promised, and it looks okay.