The Glass is Too Big - Home

Today I got notice from the FedEx tracking that my new laptop had been delivered. So, as I worked to rebuild a workstation on the client site, I looked forward to doing the exact same thing tonight at home. It had been since Feb 9th that they said it was shipped, so it was about time.

I got home to see the box on the step, grabbed the mail and stumbled inside with my arms full. I set the whole thing on the kitchen table and started unpacking it while also starting dinner.

I plopped the battery in the bottom, plugged it in and powered it on to go through the setup. I at least wanted to see how they had it setup before nuking the bundled XP Home and putting a straight copy on it. So, while it was booting up, I went downstairs to grab an XP disc. When I came back up, I noticed one of the irritating stickers below the keyboard (the ones trying to sell you the computer you already bought) and it said "3700" series.

Uh oh. I *ordered* a 4155.

"Well, maybe the sticker is just wrong. It was refurbished after all", said the rational J on my right shoulder.

"Yeah, right," said the cynic on my left, "Flip it over and check the serial number."

My cynic had a point. So, I flipped it over and watched my cynic beat the crap out of my rational J.

Sure enough, it was a 3715. So, I went and looked to see what exactly a 3715 was.

Basically, it is a Sempron instead of a Turion64 and a few other differences like an inch smaller on the screen. Oh, and it's $140 cheaper than what I actually ordered.

Off to the phone to straighten this out.

Fortunately, Compgeeks is on the west coast and I'm in the Central time zone, so they were still around. I explained the mixup and was handed off to the person who would fix the problem.

The solution that was proposed was less than stellar. I would have to wait for a FedEx label in the "next 24 hours" to print out. Then, when the *receive* the old one, they'd send out the new one. Given that it took 7 days for the first one to get here, it was reasonable to assume 7 days in their direction (and I'd be shipping out on the weekend, which usually adds to the time) and 7 days back. 2 weeks to get a replacement is just not reasonable.

And, I said so. I give them credit, because the final result is that I have a label an hour later and they'll be shipping the replacement by next day air as soon as I ship this one back.

Goes to show what happens if you push back a bit.

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