zero fatalities…

I’m impressed with my patience so far this morning. My laptop hard drive is dying, no doubt about it, so I e-mailed HP to see if they could replace or re-image the drive and what I’d have to do to get that done.
I got some e-mails back that were half form-letter and half 1st-grade grammar signed by “Patrick”. After a little back and forth, I got a call from someone that I assume (my bad, I know) was from India. The way he mangled my last name (“Ga-ray”) and calls me “Mr. Brian” is usually a good tip-off.
Still I managed to get through all that, not raise my voice or get upset, since when I do that, they usually hang up on me. And they’ll be sending me a new hard drive and asking me to return my old one to them. Not too shabby. I just wish that I had an option of speaking to someone whose English skills are better. I don’t care where they’re from, but if I can’t understand them and they can’t understand me, how much support can they truly provide?
And the upshot of it all is that after a year of having the laptop, I’ll pretty much be getting a fresh start with it.