Kiss Your Day Goodbye When You Need Tech Support

Here's more proof that you can't get what you want, even when you pay for it.

A friend of mine bought a Toshiba laptop at J&R in New York City but hated Vista so much that he brought the laptop back and bought a Mac. J&R says they are doing land office business on people making the switch to Mac once they try Vista.

Knowing that I made the switch to Mac recently, my friend asked me to help him hook his laptop up to his cable modem. That should have taken a few minutes. Instead, it ate our Friday afternoon.

English is not my friend's native language, so I spent several hours on the phone, first with RCN and then with a Mac support person in India. His native language also wasn't English. Even more hours later, the Indian support person, who clearly had no clue how to deal with the issue, escalated the call to a person in Toronto whose native language was English.

It was eventually determined that the network card in my friend's new Mac is defective. "Why," I wanted to know, "should it take hours to find that out, including the better part of one hour spent on hold? Surely this is not the first time a person with a Mac laptop had a problem connecting to the Internet."

"Well," said the native English speaking Mac support person, "When you talk to someone in India, the only problem is communication...and different people you speak to have different skill levels."

Yes, and when you dance with a wombat the only problem is that it doesn't know the steps.

We can't get our day back, but tomorrow, my friend will set out to get his Mac replaced with one that works. Wish him luck.

But aren't we all just dancing with wombats when you get right down to it?

I watched the first 8 episodes of Gene Simmons The Family Jewels, so I guess we can all waste time when we try hard. : )