Customer Service: Take This Foot

Unfortunately my brilliant fix of discharging the static to solve my stray touchpad twerks (and yes, I realize to all the young Miley Cyrus fans that I’m using that term incorrectly, but I’m old school and we call em’ like we see them) didn’t last and I still find myself haphazardly typing all over the page as my touchpad makes my cursor jump willy nilly <– another technical term.

So I bit the bullet and called Dell today for help.  And of course, by “call”, I mean to say that I opened a live chat window.  Because as anyone who knows me knows, I’m much better on chat than I am in real life.  🙂

I had expected to be connected oversees with a young support drone who would make me jump through hoops to troubleshoot the problem.  So in attempt to mitigate the wasted efforts, I lead with a blurb about having already updated my drivers, tried all of the touchguard settings and of course discharged the mystery static in my laptop all to no avail.  I didn’t throw in my usual “I was the head of IT for two decades”, but that was as always waiting in the wings (cut and paste).

I was surprised to hear that the recommendation was to replace the touchpad and pleased to hear that it was under warranty.

Unfortunately, the tech also seemed to say that it would take two days, and I simply couldn’t fathom what I would do without a laptop for two days.  So I countered with further details about how the 3rd party app TouchFreeze would fix the problem so I was betting it was a software solution.  Because you know, as the head of AT&T for 99 years (which is what my redneck boyfriend recalls me to say) I know a thing or two about computers.

It was then we began to discuss sports medicine a field I know nothing about.

From our actual conversation:

Agent:  “It’s like a person with broken foot in basketball. They can tape it heavily, have some steroidal spray to alleviate the pain. All these are temporary remedies.  Until the person foot have some surgery, those new ways of treatment will all be temporary.”

Me: “Okay, but I need the foot replaced onsite. I can’t be without my foot for two days. Or you can send me a foot in the mail and I can replace my own foot.”

After enjoying a good and from what I understand, much needed laugh, the agent explained they could do either, for free.  Turns out, they can send a technician to my house who can replace my touchpad on the spot.  Tell me that’s not totally cool.  Highfive to Dell for the best hardware maintenance program in the industry.