Watch Out for TPC

I gave my computer an angry stare this past Tuesday afternoon. I had a 17-page paper due Friday and an inbox full of unanswered mail. But my computer was not sitting in its customary spot my desk. It was packed in a cardboard box at the University Information Systems (UIS) parking lot in Allston.

This pathetic scene ended my three-week ordeal with UIS. The CD-ROM drive on my Dell Optiplex Gs* had stopped working more than a half-year before, weeks after I purchased it from the Technology Product Center. Because of my thesis, I waited to bring it for repairs until April, when I had a two-week window with no written assignments.

UIS assured me that they could fix my drive in less than two weeks, but I was suspicious of their promise. My roommate had received a similar pledge earlier in the year, before her broken printer set on the UIS shelves for two months. When she finally picked it up, it still would not turn on.

But maybe UIS had reformed, I thought, as I drove across the river to give them my machine. I began worrying a week and a half later, when I still had no word on a diagnosis. I started calling. And calling. UIS kept a record of these calls, and the log printed onto the receipt they gave me when I picked up the computer:

4/28 9:40A: CUST CALLED FOR STATUS-NORMAL. E-MAILED FDT.

4/29 2:55P: CUST CALLED FOR STATUS (NORMAL)

4/30 1:15P: CUST. CALLED FOR STATUS (NORMAL) - CUST IS ANXIOUS, WILL CALL AGAIN LATER. E-MAILED FDT.

I called four more times before May 7th, when the following appears in the log:

THE CD ROM DRIVE DOES NOT NEED REPLACING. THE COMPUTER NEEDS A SOUNDCARD.

I'm no computer genius, but I know that you don't need a soundcard to load software off a CD. The technician called me to personally relate his brilliant discovery. I told him I did not believe that the drive had miraculously repaired itself. He entered in the log:

CUSTOMER IS IRATE BECAUSE SHE IS CONVINCED THAT THE CDROM NEEDS REPLACING. ASKED TO TALK WITH MANAGER. I WILL REFER THIS TO MAY.

Enter May the Manager. May and I agreed that I had better come in personally to demonstrate the problem. She would help me set up an appointment with the technician. But where was the technician?

Not in the Allston shop, apparently. He was on the road the first time May and I spoke about making an appointment. When I called again on Monday, May told me he would not be in until Friday.

I sincerely hope that the technician's "absence" was only an unwillingness to meet with me. If I waited until Friday, though, UIS would have had my computer a full month. I was tired of arguing, so I trekked across the river to get my computer. It had been in Allston for 22 days.

My CD drive still doesn't work. I hope to have it repaired after I graduate in June. I am sure one of the repair shops in my hometown will be happy for my business, even if UIS wants to chase me away. I also would bet that any chain computer super store would fall over itself to take over management of UIS in an arrangement similar to the one between Barnes and Noble and the Coop. Harvard may be good at education, but it stinks at computer repair. It will save its students and employees a lot of headaches if it leaves the job to someone else.