Dell Hell II: Purgatory

[dira]

So what happened is that at about eleven this morning, after about half of y'all who've commented had offered various unencouraging thoughts on Dell's customer service, Blondo here started flickering from AC to battery power even when I didn't goddamn MOVE anything or TOUCH anything or even BREATHE funny. I freaked out a little bit, hit eBay, and bought a new power cord immediately, because I figured that, really, I had no idea how long it might take me to negotiate with Dell, nor whether they would ever actually send me a power cord, and I wanted it on its way NOW. Plus, $37 with shipping! From New Jersey!

So after I did that, of course, the AC power elected to be all well-behaved for several hours, several more people commented - most notably including fairmer, who explained how she'd gotten Dell to send her a new power cord in the past, which boiled down to "don't overexplain" - at which point I began to feel a bit sheepish. I hit Dell tech support to give Mer's method a try, sending off an automated email in which I revealed only that the light on my AC adapter was green and yet my computer was not always receiving power. Then I sat around and fidgeted a lot, while neither my ebay seller nor Dell got back to me. I did get a birthday card from my Grandma with a check in it, though. It's really too bad I STILL DON'T HAVE AN ATM CARD FOR MY LOCAL CHECKING ACCOUNT, DAMN YOU CHEVY CHASE.

*koffs*

Anyway, so I finally shut Blondo down for a while, rewatched last week's episode of Numb3rs (OMG SQUEE!) and wandered around the apartment doing fun exotic things like taking out the trash and adopting the delusion that Red Wings games start at the same time as Caps games (they don't - evening games in Detroit start at 7:30, evening games in Washington start at 7). So I turned on my computer at 7:05, ready to join the Red Wings webradio broadcast in progress, only to realize that a) the game hadn't started yet and b) I had an email from Dell.

Ms. Sudis, as per the information provided by your email the issue could either be due to the Motherboard or the AC Adapter and Power Cord.

So, in order to resolve the issue, i have setup a service to send you the replacement AC Adapter and Power Cord

...so, yay? I win! I guess I can feel all smug about spending my $37 if the ebay one gets here first. And either way, I should now be able to keep one power cord at my desk and the other in my backpack and NEVER HAVE TO FORGET MY POWER CORD AGAIN!

Of course, I still have to make the cranky one last until probably Tuesday, so if I abruptly disappear from the internet, you'll know why.