[ubuntu-uk] Packard Bell, what wonderful support!

[Liam Proven]

On 9 May 2013 18:06, Gareth France <gareth.france at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 09/05/13 18:03, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> On 9 May 2013 16:36, Gareth France <gareth.france at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 884
>>>
>>> I have used saynoto0870 and got nowhere. Calling the numbers listed
>>> resulted
>>> in me being told to use the website support, which I have been. I have
>>> been
>>> an IT technician however insulting my technical ability based on my
>>> financial circumstances is unfair. I chose this laptop because it was the
>>> only one I was able to obtain at the time and I'm not in the position to
>>> spend 'a hundred quid' on a hard drive. That does not make me a poor
>>> technician by any means.
>>
>> Uhuh. And yet you're buying brand-new hardware on the high street,
>> rather than, say, scouring your local Freecycle group, or buying used
>> kit off eBay?
>>
>> Nope, sorry, I don't buy it.
>>
> Actually, no. This laptop was a birthday present from a friend, she bought
> it for me because my antiquated Dell was dying and I couldn't afford a
> replacement. Is there any particular reason why you seem to be looking for
> reasons to look down on me? Or does this just come naturally to you?

I am not looking down upon you. I am a fairly penniless freelancer
myself, as my business has suffered dramatically from the credit
crunch.

But what I am trying to point out to you is that you are acting in an
irrational and unfair fashion. The company is trying to help you, but
you are not playing by their rules. Neither I nor Packard-Bell is
victimising you, but if you want their help, you have to meet them in
the middle.

As an example - I can't afford new hardware either. I have not had a
new machine since 2001. My current machine is a Core 2 Quad Extreme
running at 3GHz with 8GB of RAM. I got it on my local Freegle group.
It cost me £3.80 - the cost of a return rail fare from Wimbledon to
Stoneleigh. I cycled to and from the station. I transplanted into it
the graphics card and hard disks from my old machine, which was a free
cast-off from a friend, as was the one before that.

(OK, true, I did soon after have to replace the hard disks when they
failed. That cost me £43 for a terabyte drive.)

If you need to back up your stuff, there are ways to do that. You
could use Google Drive, or Dropbox, or Ubuntu One, or all of them. You
could burn it onto DVDs, which are very cheap now - you can buy
hundreds of gigs for the cost of a small cheap meal. £3 will buy you a
USB to SATA cable, and then you could collect some old disks from
Freegle or the like and backup your stuff on to them.

Presumably you have not generated all this data from scratch since you
got the laptop. Do you still have the old computer? Use its hard
disk(s) for backups using the above-mentioned external-drive cable.

But refusing to send the machine in its entirety, and refusing to
phone the supplier, and then complaining that they are not  helping
you, is grossly unfair and unreasonable. You want them to help you.
Well, play the game, cooperate with them, or they can't, and they are
not to blame.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
Email: lproven at cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven
MSN: lproven at hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven
Tel: +44 20-8685-0498 • Cell: +44 7939-087884