Everything In Between

I recently discovered TEDTalks, a fantastic web site that shares the lectures and presentations at the Technology Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, California. I just watched Helen Fisher’s talk, which the TED web site describes like this:

Helen Fisher is an anthropologist with Rutgers University, specializing in gender differences and the evolution of human emotions. Her most recent book is “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.” In this wide-ranging talk, she outlines the bio-chemical foundations of love (and lust), and discusses the natural talents of women, and their new significance in the modern world. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 24:13)

However, listen carefully, and you’ll hear her also make a case for polyamory, something I’ve written about before. Helen says:

However…these three brain systems, lust, romantic love, and attachment…aren’t always connected to each other. You can feel deep attachment to a long term partner, while you feel intense romantic love for somebody else, while you feel the sex drive for people unrelated to these other partners. In short, we’re capable of loving more than one person at a time.

It’s a good talk, and definitely worth a listen.

I thought I’d write an update to this ongoing saga with HP’s terrible customer service department. If you need a refresher, be sure to read the whole story from the beginning.

So when I last updated this tale, I had been trying to get in touch with Iano, a Quality Case Manager at Hewlett-Packard. I had left him numerous voicemails, and even spoke with someone who appeared to be his secretary, but no luck. To this day, I still have not heard from him.

So after a few more times demanding that he give me a call back so I can learn how to return my $129.04 battery (now useless, since I have no more HP laptop, and will probably never buy another one ever again), I filed a Better Business Bureau complaint against HP. The complaint paraphrases the salient points of a letter I wrote to HP’s customer relations department. The letter reads as follows (identifying information somewhat censored):

To whom it may concern at HP’s Customer Relations Department:

I am, unfortunately, writing to express my frustrations over the recent service and (lack of) support I have received from your company. What is now months ago, I sent my HP Pavillion ze4800us notebook computer (serial number XXX, model number PC768AV) in for repair at one of your service centers due to consistently recurring system-wide crashes. This, after I had already been experiencing horrendously poor battery life (the notebook was less than two years old and was hardly giving me a 15 minute charge under near-idle load), a failure of the HP-installed hard drive, and a number of software issues caused or exaggerated by the default HP-installed system drivers and update programs. I got so fed up that I eventually uninstalled them all, which left my HP notebook (with all its special buttons) stripped of many of its bullet-pointed features.

Yet, I digress. After I called your TotalCare support line, the agent created a repair case for me (case number ### associated with order number XXX) and told me a box would be delivered to my apartment with instructions on how to proceed. I also ordered from him a replacement battery (order number XXX), because he said that was my only route for solving the issues of the extremely short battery life my notebook was experiencing. I was not pleased with spending an additional $129.04 on this in addition to my $322.96 computer repair, but ultimately ordered the battery anyway, expecting to replace my existing battery when my computer returned from repair. When the two boxes arrived I followed the directions and I placed my computer in the box, arranged for a FedEx employee to pick up the delivery, and waited.

A week went by without any word. Anxious, I checked the support web site for any updated information on the status of my repair, but there was none available. I checked again the following week, assuming the repair could take some time as the phone support agent I spoke with told me that may be the case. However, there was still no information.

I finally decided to call your TotalCare support representatives again. When I got through, I gave the agent my case number (mentioned previously), and was subsequently put on hold for over 45 minutes. As I did not have the time that day to wait for your phone agents to pick up the telephone, (I had already been on the phone for an hour by this point) I hung up and called again some time later. By now, it had been nearly a month since I had been without my computer (though much longer since the last time it had been working “properly”).

Suffice it to say that after several more phone calls that followed this pattern and after receiving yet another case number (this one was ###), and another week without my computer or any word from HP on what had gone so ludicrously wrong during this repair process, I was contacted by one of your Quality Case Managers, named Iano.

He explained to me that what appears to have happened is that FedEx never delivered, nor even picked up, my computer and that it appears to have been stolen. Fearing something like this was a possibility when I spoke to your TotalCare representative the first time I called, I had asked that agent directly, as well as each successive agent I encountered, what HP’s policy was in the case of such an event. Every single one assured me, without fail, that, and I quote, “Not to worry, HP will take care of the value of the laptop.” I must have heard that phrase more than 10 times during my phone calls, so I was fairly confident that Iano would be able to reimburse or otherwise replace the product.

Unfortunately, I was very upset when he told me that reimbursement or replacement was not an option because the laptop, according to all records HP had, was probably stolen, not lost. Frankly, I consider a laptop which may have been stolen very much lost, but this reasoning seemed to fall on deaf ears. His suggestion was to take the matter up with FedEx, with whom I am currently in the process of filing a claim.

While I can ultimately understand a company’s policies such as those Iano was explaining to me (I happen to work in the customer service and technology industries myself for another major OEM), this letter is about customer service, not policy. Iano, while polite, was extremely unhelpful, giving me no options to pursue other than to seek help elsewhere, and has since become completely unavailable to my multiple additional attempts to get in touch with him since that first phone call. I have left voicemail after voicemail on his line and have not so much as received a single call back from him or anyone at HP.

And why am I calling so insistently? Because I still have that battery I paid 129 dollars and 4 cents for sitting on my desk, for which I have no computer to place it into. The only time I managed to get through to a human when I tried reaching Iano (who had given me his direct line at 1-877-917-4380 ext. 94, option 1, and invited me to call back), it was a polite-sounding lady who seemed to be a secretary. Nevertheless, I took the opportunity to ask her about the situation with my battery. She told me I’d have to speak to Iano and that she’d forward me to his voicemail. So I left yet another message. It’s now been yet another several weeks since I’ve begun trying to reach Iano and I still have not received a single contact, phone, email, postal mail, or otherwise.

Let me put this bluntly when I say that this kind of non-response from someone who is supposed to be a “Quality Case Manager” is completely brand-shattering. It says to me in no uncertain terms that at least this department in Hewlett-Packard does not even care enough about its customers to return the courtesy of a phone call. I am bewildered, angered, and disappointed at the kind of so-called support such a company’s customer service department has shown, and will seriously reconsider any HP purchase I will ever need again.

In the mean time, I am still trying to reach Iano (or anybody at HP Customer Relations) and return this battery for which I have no machine. It seems HP is all too eager to sell me things like batteries and repair service, (the first phone agent I spoke with even tried to convince me my notebook was “definitely experiencing a hardware problem and needs to be sent for service” before even asking me a single troubleshooting question), but cares little whether or not I actually get any use out of these purchases. I have better places to spend my money and, more importantly, my time, and I am continuously growing more and more upset with HP for leading me through this incredible time-wasting ordeal that began with my purchase of the HP Pavillion notebook.

I ask now yet again, how can I return this battery and get my money back? It has never been opened; the tape around the cardboard box has not even been stripped. I would very much appreciate an answer to this remarkably simple question.

Additionally, please be advised that I am forwarding this letter to the following publications, as well as reporting these incidents to the Better Business Bureau.

1. ArsTechnica
2. About.com Computer Reviews
3. CNet
4. AnandTech
5. PCMagazine

Thank you,
-Meitar Moscovitz

Finally, several days later, I recieved a call from a woman who identified herself only as Ginger from HP’s Corporate Office (apparently, either Hewlett-Packard employees have no last names or they’re afraid of some kind of retribution, which doesn’t surprise me anymore) saying that she would be willing to refund the cost I paid for the battery, but that’s all she could do. She asked for a proof of purchase to be faxed to her at her office fax number (which seems sort of silly, since I know they know I purchased and paid for the darned thing). No worries, I saved the receipt I was emailed so I faxed that, along with a short cover letter demanding my money back, to the number she provided. It’s now approaching another week later and I’ve heard nothing at all since then.

But wait. There’s more. I spent tonight going over my finances for the past month (something I routinely do to keep things on record and in order, a lesson I’m glad to have learned), when I noticed something rather strange near the end of August. I came across a charge (that is, a debit transaction) from my checking account paid to “HP RETURN REPAIR” for $107.28 on August the 21^st. There was no more information other than that.

If you take a look at the timeline of these events, you’ll note that this charge was posted to my account well after my computer went missing and I had been calling in for status updates. Is this a repair charge? It doesn’t match the quote I was given by the agent on the phone. Is this a cancellation charge? If so, that’s outrageous. What is it? I have no idea. Naturally, with far less of a patient tone, I immediately picked up the phone and called Iano. I once again demanded a call back from him, an explanation of the charge, and a refund.

And that is where things stand. So that’s that. I’m pretty much a devoted anti-HP customer. Unless I’m buying a 6 dollar pack of paper (which seems to be about the only thing they can support properly), I’m never buying an HP product again.

I’ve always loved teaching (for many reasons, some of which are too arrogant to get away with mentioning) and today my supervisor asked me if we could spend a little while talking about the command line and Mac OS X’s UNIX underbelly. Of course, I was thrilled at the prospect (see earlier statement on my love of teaching) and so I offered up a couple of resources. Since I think they’d be helpful for a lot of Mac users who’ve gotten bit by the UNIX bug (no pun intended), I expanded my list into a mini-guide.

Shells and Terminals: What’s the difference?

The very first thing anyone thinks about when they think UNIX is the command line interface (or CLI, for short). The funny thing about the CLI is that it’s actually a program in and of itself called a shell that takes what you write on the command line and basically translates it to the computer so it will do what you tell it to do.

So the computer (or the OS) is really only accessible through this shell. This is fairly straightforward until you realize that the shell is usually only accessible through another program, commonly called a terminal, which on Mac OS X is called Terminal.app. Therefor the terminal is really a window to a shell which is another window to the OS, which then talks to the computer for you. So when people say they want to learn to use the command line, you can understand the confusion that might cause. What shell do they want to use? And on top of that, which program are they intending to use to access their shell? Even on the Mac, there are at least two built-in terminals you can use (Terminal.app and XTerm) and maybe half a dozen shells.

As far as terminals go, Terminal.app is the most accessible (and you can find it in your Utilities folder in your Applications folder on your startup disk). My favorite resource for getting started with Terminal was MacDevCenter’s excellent article, Learning the Mac OS X Terminal, the title of which makes a lot more sense after understanding the previous two paragraphs. That article will show off some of Terminal’s impressive features that make a GUI environment complement the command line environment nicely.

The Command Line: Speak and it will be so

The command line itself is, of course, yet another subject entirely. Thanks to its spartan appearance, I think the best way to learn it is to just use it. If you’re feeling brave and have a spare computer lying around, take the leap and install a Linux or a BSD distro, but run it all from the command line (which is simply a matter of changing the active runlevel on most UNIX-like OS distros). This will effectively boot you into a shell, with no GUI coating. For Mac users who want to stay closer to home, you can do the same thing by logging into Mac OS X as the >console user (with no password). This strips Mac OS X of its Aqua interface and drops you into a login shell.

The important thing to remember is that, while in a shell, you can do everything you can do in a GUI mode. You can browse the web, edit and view documents, and even read and compose email. Of course, there won’t be any pictures, but the point remains that these things can be done. A week of running your computer in a shell and you’ll feel more comfortable than ever at the command line.

But while you’re there, you’ll want to acquaint yourself with several commands you can use to get help. The most important is the man command, which will let you browse the documentation for any command you want to use. You can even browse the documentation on the man command itself by typing man man (and I strongly recommend that you do that).

Another command you’ll want to get familiar with is apropos. If you type man apropos, you’ll get a very description of what that command does. (I won’t spoil the treat for you.) A similar command to apropos is whatis. All these commands are just programs like any other, absolutely identical to the ones you’re already using with the sole exception that instead of outputting pixels to a screen, they output characters to a shell.

On the web, one of my oft-referenced resources for learning the basics of a shell environment (and thus the command line) is TuxFiles. It’s geared towards Linux users, but the things you can learn there apply to all UNIX-like operating systems. Another one is LinuxCommand. Check them both out.

Inside the Shells

By now you’re hopefully running your computer with a terminal window constantly open in the background, or at least you’re excited about trying it. So what’s next? Learn a new shell! By default, most OS’s will use bash, an abbreviation for the Bourne Again Shell, which itself is based on the Bourne Shell (get it, get it?), written by Steve Bourne.

Different shells all do the same thing, which is enable you to speak with (by typing to) your computer and have it do your bidding, but they understand different dialects so you need to speak to them in slightly different ways. There are dozens of shells you can use, and which one you ultimately choose depends on the features and syntax of each. I spent a good deal of time reading about them all on Wikipedia before I decided to scrap the whole ordeal and stick with Mac OS X’s default bash shell. However, I learned a lot along the way, and that was really the point.

Speaking Command Line is like learning a new language

Ultimately however, it’s not about the shell or terminal you use, but about the things you can do. This, unfortunately, has to come with time. It’s exactly like learning a language. Every command you learn is akin to learning and using a new verb. The more you use a new language to communicate, the better you’ll become at speaking it. The same is true of the command line.

Keep your terminal program open 24/7/365, and whenever you’re doing something, ask yourself if you could do the same thing on the command line. If you’re not sure, Google it, and if the answer is yes, do it that way the next time. This is especially useful when what you’re doing is more than one thing. It takes a dozen or so clicks to open a file in TextEdit, copy it to the clipboard, past it to a new document, then add some text to the end of the new document, and finally save it again, but all of that can be done by typing a single line in a terminal. (Hint: use your shell’s piping and I/O redirection features.)

The more you immerse yourself, the better you’ll become. If you’re really dedicated, I’ve heard nothing but great things about the book Learning Unix for Mac OS X Tiger, which describes itself as a guided tour of Unix designed for a Mac user. Ah, just what the curiosity ordered.