Yesterday was a pretty bizarre and frustrating day, though at least I managed to unwind at the end of it.
It started, for me, with waking up at about 0600 from a dream thinking that I’d heard somebody screaming for help. As it turned out, it wasn’t a dream; there really were screams for help coming from somewhere. I grabbed the cordless phone and started dialing 911 while heading downstairs. Helen was eating breakfast, but hadn’t heard anything; the dining room is in the back of the house. I stepped out the front door in a nightshirt, and saw a woman down at the corner, screaming “he took my bag!” (I’d originally heard this as “he took my dad!”, which when combined with the volume of her screams, made me expect to find someone who’d been knifed or something.)
As I was describing the scene to the 911 dispatcher (who said that I wasn’t the first call they’d had), the woman walked toward me, and I said “here, I’m handing her the phone”. I gave it to her and headed inside to put on something warmer (fleece pants and a winterweight bathrobe) before heading back outside to see what was happening.
By this point, another neighbor had come out and was standing on the corner talking to the victim as she waited for another police car to arrive (the first had apparently already taken off looking for the culprit). As we stood there talking, a third neighbor came running out saying “are you all right ma’am? are you okay?”
Shortly after this, the second police car arrived, the victim got in, and the rest of us headed back home. After that start, it was basically impossible to get back to sleep, so I didn’t even try; I had breakfast, did the other usual morning stuff, and headed in to work.
After that start, the usual grind of email and other work stuff was pretty anticlimactic, and the morning relatively uneventful.
After lunch I headed down to the mall to get our (currently broken) DVD player replaced. I was pretty frustrated about that; we’d already taken it to the authorized service center, which held on to it for about three weeks (since they were backlogged); then, when it got to the bench, they found out that the manufacturer’s policy on this model is to do exchanges through the retailer instead of repairs. (At least the service folks were honest; when I brought it in, they told me that it could be a few weeks before it got looked at, and longer if it needed parts shipped in. They were as much victims of this secret policy as I was.)
I’d called the manufacturer’s support line Wednesday night to confirm all this, they said that it was the case, and we’d headed over to the service place Thursday to pick the unit up. I gathered all the cables, manual, remote, etc and made sure everything was together, and took them to work so we could get this done before the weekend.
Naturally, this was not to be the case.
We got to the mall, went to the store’s customer “service” desk, and got the “our policy is 30 days on returns unless you buy our protection racketplan” speech, and told that we’d have to contact the manufacturer.
When I pointed out that I had contacted the manufacturer, who had sent me to the retailer, and gave them a copy of the documentation the service center had given me, showing this model and saying that there were no repairs and it was a retail carry-in exchange, they were adamant.
Talking to a supervisor got the same speech, with the slight bending that “we will ship the unit back to the manufacturer for you if you’d like”. Gee, thanks.
I wound up calling the manufacturer’s customer relations line again, this time on my cell phone while standing to the side of the counter. After waiting on hold for the requisite three weeks, I got through to a helpful person; he said that they’d had problems with this retail chain before, and that they’d take care of it by contacting the store manager through their channels.
When I called later that night to check on the situation, they said that I should expect to hear back “within two business days”. Sigh. We’ll see what happens between now and Tuesday.
(After that? More work, this time fighting with the backup system; once that was beaten into submission, home for dinner, and off to my usual Friday gaming session, which is how I finally unwound from the day.)
Saturday? Saturday was great.
