Reading what isn’t there
When I bought the extended warrantee on my daughter’s HP laptop, I read the contract but failed to notice what wasn’t there. I’d seen that laptops were excluded from the on-site service guarantee. But now that her hard drive has died 7 months into the contract, I’ve discovered that there’s nothing in there about how quickly they’re required to fix it. So, the company that provides the warrantee services for TigerDirect has just informed me that I will receive a box to ship the laptop within seven days, should expect the repair (slapping in a new hard drive: 5 minutes of work plus 40 minutes to reinstall from the disk image on a CD) to take “a few days” and then should allow another few days for it to be shipped back.
So the “We’ll send a technician to your house” promise has turned into a “We’ll eventually send you a box and you’ll be without your computer for two weeks, assuming the guy at the local shop we’re sending it to isn’t on vacation.”
Caveat emptor. Remember to read what isn’t there.
