Do I need help

I am in Aarhus in Jutland in Denmark, on my way to see the longest bridge in Europe. When going through security at London Stansted airport this morning I realised that I was carrying a laptop, a PDA/Pocket PC, a Blackberry, an iPod, a mobile phone, and a digital camera. I think this might be excessive.

Dell sins, that may not necessarily yet have condemned them to the special place reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theatre

Jackie has been referring to Jeff Jarvis' ongoing "Dell Hell" customer relations saga. There are no comments on her blog for me to leave a description of my own slightly odd Dell customer service experience, so I may as well blog about it myself. I haven't had "Dell Hell", but none the less I have just had a customer service experience which might suggest that their eyes aren't entirely on the ball.

I recently decided to send my Inspiron 8600 off to Dell to have them repair it. This laptop is nearly two years old, was well made (if a little heavy and not all that elegant) and has served me well. However, due to the best part of two years of intensive and at times a little rough use, it had suffered some damage. This was mainly physical damage to the case - its electronics were still working okay, although damage to the connector between the on switch and the motherboard also meant it was on the brink of becoming non-functional.

However, I didn't really want to throw the laptop away, because it was a high end machine when new and if it is in good order then it will still be useful for at least a couple of years, it has a beautiful (WUXGA - 1920x1200) screen, a new laptop of a similar spec would still cost about £800, and (although it is not my "travel" laptop anymore - I have a Sony T2XP for that, and although I do have a desktop as well) it is in many ways my "main" computer. My e-mail and my definitive music collection, as well as all my correspondence and financial information, are on its hard drive. (Yes, I do also have backups). As the damage was mainly to the case, I thought it likely it could be fixed for a lot less than the cost of buying a new one. Therefore, I thought I would look into getting Dell to repair it.

I sent them a description of the problem, and some photographs, and they quoted me a price for the repair. Fine, they sent a courier to pick it up last Thursday and I sent it off. A day later my credit card was charged the agreed amount.

Now, Dell have a strict written policy for out of warranty repairs. They look at the machine, they make a quote, if you agree to the quote they fix it and if you don't they return it without charging you anything. No trouble there. That's a good policy. However, on Friday, Dell left a voicemail message saying that additional parts needed replacing above those that I had already been quoted the cost of, and we needed to discuss this. Okay. Not entirely happy but I would talk to them on Monday. On Monday morning, I received the laptop back, returned to perfect as new condition. Several bits were replaced that I wouldn't have asked them to replace.

I then received a phone call from Dell telling me again that several bits needed replacing. We didn't get to discussing the price because I mentioned that I had already received the laptop back. The Dell guy on the phone from Chennai was puzzled by this, and said he would get back to me on Tuesday.

I haven't heard from him since. I assume that either (a) they have decided that since they have returned the laptop to me, there is no reasonable way they can now ask me for more money (particularly given that they are in breach of their own contract) or (b) the mistake was actually having this guy call me, and that in fact they decided that they would ultimately do the full repair for what they quoted me, and forgot to tell him that.

What is interesting here is that if it weren't for the two phone calls, I would actually be very happy with Dell's customer service. They did an excellent job repairing the laptop (what was a very beaten up laptop has been returned to as-new condition), did it extremely fast (I received the laptop back two business days after it was collected) and what they did charge me was quite reasonable. However, having received a quote, then having received phone calls telling me that they were taking that quote back and charging me more, and then not calling me when they said they would does ruin the experience somewhat. In a sense I don't mind never hearing from them again, as I have my laptop fixed and I am not at this point going to pay them any more money, so there is nothing to discuss. Still, however, I think there is merit in calling people when you say you will.

I also recently had a service issue with Sony, and the impression I get is that Sony's official service policies are less kind to the customer than are Dell's. They charge you more and for more things, and they are much more eager to find a loophole to their warranty in order to make you pay. And the people at Sony act in a reasonable well coordinated way to enforce these policies.

However, Dell seem to have logistical and organisational problems at this point. The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing. It might be a "The company is now too large" proplem, I think. I didn't get the impression that there was anyone who has not trying to help me, and I also didn't get the impression that Dell's service policies were bad. They just don't seem to be implementing them that well at the moment.

Update: A different gentleman from Dell has just rung me up to tell me that there are additional parts that need to be replaced in addition to those for which I was initially quoted a price, blah blah blah. He seems to have no knowledge that somebody else rung me up for the same reason earlier this week, or that that person said he would get back to me and then failed to do so. This is not impressive. The temptation to turn my phone off in the hope that they will go away is strong, but I am not in truth going to do this.

Redirection

I have a piece on visiting the locations of Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo over at Samizdata.

Australia grows more complex, or perhaps doesn't

My native Australia did not start receiving large numbers of immigrants from East Asian countries until around 1980. It has received a great many since, so that there are now perhaps half a million people of East Asian background in Sydney. Of these people, the most predominant are Chinese people of various backgrounds and origins. However, due to this relatively late start, the majority of adult Chinese-Australians were born overseas. And at least when I was a student and a young adult in Australia in the late 1980s, I knew lots of Chinese people, but these people had been born in Hong Kong, Malaysia, or elsewhere. When I first visited California one thing that was striking was that there were ethnically Chinese people there who were so Americanised. They had been born in America, and so probably had their parents, and there were no hints in their mannerisms or accents or day to day attitudes that they were different in any way from other Californians. They were just Asian looking rather than European looking.

And now of course we do have a few Australians like this: people of Chinese ancestry who were either born in Australia or came as small children, and have gone through the Australian education system, and are now in their early twenties. Early twenties is of course the age at which Australians go abroad en masse. The tradition has long been for Australians to finish their university career, get a job in Australia for a couple of years to make some money, and then make a prolonged trip to the rest of the world for a year or so (possibly or probably doing some work along the way - stereotypically Australians do this and return with more money than they had when they went away) before getting married, having children, buying a house etc. (Those of us who leave and become permanent expats are a different category that has always existed, but I think we may have been getting bigger at the expense of the traditional year away people). This is quite distinct from the British "Gap Year" experience, where British people go away from a year between school and university. Australians tend to get older before leaving home.

These early twenties Australian trips away often start by going to London, and I therefore see early twenties Aussies all the time: on the tube, in pubs (on both sides of the bar), working as hairdressers, decorators, builders, and quite a few of those kinds of jobs that require skills but in which people are often employed for months rather than years.

And in the last couple of years the appearances of the Australians doing this have become notably more diverse. Yesterday, on the tube I was sitting opposite a particularly good example: an early twenties young woman, who was dressed in a casually Australian way, was speaking in a quintisentially Australian way, with very strong upwards inflections. (People don't always think about just what it is that distinguishes an accent, but the most notable thing about the Australian accent is the upwards inflection at the end of the sentences. Whereas in most other versions of English I know of people raise the pitch of their voice at the end of a question but not at the end of other sentences, Australians raise the pitch of statements as well. If you are attempting to immitate an Australian accent you have to get that right. Even if the resulting accent is imperfect in most other ways, it will still sound "Australian" if you get this right). And there was something about her mannerisms (a particular way of shrugging I supposed) that just screamed "Australian". And she was discussing the normal young Australian in London things: cheap places to live, good bars, possible sources of work.

But of course she was ethnically Chinese. Even the non-Anglo Australians follow the same pattern and get to the old colonial hunting-grounds. But seeing them in London is still something one notes mentally. In a couple more years it will be entirely unremarkable.

(And yes, I am very deliberately ignorning the descendents of the Chinese people who came to Australia for the gold rushes of the 1850s, before the immigration of non-Europeans was outlawed. These were a much smaller group, and while their descendents do still live in Australia, they are now so well integrated that they fit into a different categoty still).

Redirection

I have a brief overview of the solar system over at Samizdata.

Update: I also have some thoughts on today's very exciting cricket test (and some reminiscences about the MCG test of 1982-83) over at ubersportingpundit. It is now time for bed. Good night.

Some observations are just too easy to make.

I see the Koreans have produced the world's first cloned dog. Presumably they will clone quite a few until they find the tastiest, and then clone that one lots of times.

Very Belated Redirection

While the first test was going on between Australia and England last week, I made a couple of posts to übersportingpundit: a report on play on day 3, and a few brief comments on the press reaction to the Australian victory.

Crater Lake, Oregon



Of course, technically it is a caldera lake.

Redirection

I have a piece in which I attack an article by Laurie Garrett in Foreign Affairs with unexpected vehemence over at Samizdata.

Redirecation

I have a piece on the ridiculously late start to the Ashes series (and the ridiculously early start to the football season) over at ubersportingpundit

This jetlag is irritating

In William Gibson's 2003 novel "Pattern Recognition", the central character has a theory that when one travels by air, one is moving faster than one's soul can keep up with, and jetlag is what you feel before your sould has returned.

And it is a strange feeling. People had told me before that jetlag coming back from the west coast of the US to Europe was particularly bad, and I now see what they mean. The time difference is 8 hours, and at the end of the journey you are at about the same latitude where you started - the journey thus having an unusually large time shift given the travel time. Plus there is the nasty fact that when it is 7am in London it is midnight in San Francisco, so you have to get up just when you are falling asleep.

And for me right now the situation is odd. I had a good holiday and I returned to London relaxed and invigorated. Normally when I am tired it is as much mental as physical, but at the moment I am not mentally tired at all - precisely the opposite in fact. I am raring to go. But my body refuses to go along with this, demanding sleep at odd times, which all leads to the weirdest of sensations.

In a day or two I shall be over it though.

Wednesday morning song lyrics

I know there's something in the wake of your smile.
I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yea.
You've built a love but that love falls apart.
Your little piece of heaven turns too dark.

Listen to your heart
when he's calling for you.
Listen to your heart
there's nothing else you can do.
I don't know where you're going
and I don't know why,
but listen to your heart
before you tell him goodbye.

Sometimes you wonder if this fight is worthwhile.
The precious moments are all lost in the tide, yea.
They're swept away and nothing is what is seems,
the feeling of belonging to your dreams.

And there are voices
that want to be heard.
So much to mention
but you can't find the words.
The scent of magic,
the beauty that's been
when love was wilder than the wind.

-- Listen to Your Heart, originally written and performed in the 1980s by Roxette. However, when I was driving around the US last week I heard a cover version by DHT getting a lot of radio airplay. Apparently DHT are a dance act from Belgium, who have taken an 80s pop song and created their own dance version from it, and have gone from there to creating a simple "unplugged piano version" which has managed to crossover into the mainstream. (It was this simple ballad version that was getting all the radion airplay in the US last week). This seems to be exactly the same thing that DJ Sammy did with Bryan Adams' Heaven a couple of years ago come to think of it.

But I will confess I rather like this new slightly overblown ballad version of Listen to your heart. I have a bit of a weakness for overblown love ballads.

Back in London

I finished my trip with a quick little trip to San Juan Bautista south of San Francisco, the location of the scenes in Hitchcock's Vertigo where Kim Novak falls off the tower at the end of the movie (and appears to fall of the tower earlier in the movie). (Oops, I may have just given away some of the plot, although this is a movie that is about character, not plot). I knew that the tower was actually a creation of Hollywood and that the actual Mission where the film was shot had a much smaller tower, so I was I suppose not disappointed on this score. However, the location in the movie appears to be in the middle of nowhere, whereas in reality it is a church in the middle of a town.

Some reports on my drive up through California to Crater Lake in Oregon and my drive back down the northern California coast in due course.

Welcome to Edge City

I am in the Apple Store in Walnut Creek. This is one of the line of exceedingly prosperous Bay Area suburbs over the mountains east from the Oakland side of the bay. Washington Post journalist Joel Garreau fifteen years ago wrote the book Edge City about these kinds of places, of which the explicit subject was America's recent urban grown, but which in fact was an extraordinarily prescient book about the future of retail, of the information economy, the growth of the mentalities of red and blue states, and the kind of country that America was coming. This book influenced me as much as any book ever had. People like David Brooks and Virginia Postrel have spent the years since explaining the same things much later and with less insight. And as someone interested in how the modern world is growing, this book taught me what to look at.

Travelling

Right now I am in an internet cafe in Mendocino in northern California drinking espresso and listening to Suzanne Vega being played in the background in the cafe. This is very northern California somehow. I went to a friend's wedding in Sonoma county just north of San Francisco last Sunday. Since then I drove up the I5 inland, ultimately visiting Crater Lake in southern Oregon (which is a truly glorious and remarkable place) and I am now making my way down the coast back to San Francisco.

Unfortunately the screen of my almost brand new Sony Vaio T2 laptop died horribly on the flight over, which has led to extreme frustration, as WiFi hotspots are plentiful in this part of the US but internet cafes are rare.

The striking thing of course about leaving the big cities of California is just how culturally different the rest of the state is: physically enormous and not extensively populated, and culturally the conservative American heartland. One imagines the American coast as quite densely populated, but the north of California is actually very sparsely populated - it feels like the southern coast of New South Wales in Australia or something like that.

More when I get back to London

Possible redirection

The Samizdata Illuminatus (who is a collective identity that we use when one of us wants to say something anonymously) has over the last couple of days had a couple of things to say about the terrorist attacks on London.

Brief Update

Firstly, if anyone is wondering, like most people in London I was rather shaken by today's terrorist attacks, but I am fine. The Citigroup Centre at Canary Wharf where I work is clearly potentially a major terrorist target, and we were all extremely nervous after the atrocities of this morning. We were given the option of going home if we wished to, and everyone in my team took up the option. As the London Underground and Docklands Light Railway were out of action (as were many mainline rail services) getting home initially seemed like it might be a problem, but things weren't too bad. I walked to Lewisham, and the number 75 bus to Croydon was still running, as were most buses outside the centre of London. I felt a certain trepidation about getting on a London bus given the events of the morning, but obviously I was fine.

Sadly, it has been at the back of my mind for a long time that a terrorist atteck on London was inevitable at some point, and today it happened. That doesn't make it any more pleasant, and doesn't make my wish that the terrorists who did this be hunted down and shot like dogs any the less heatfelt. Thankfully I know of nobody amongst my friends and relatives who were injured or killed today. One friend was on the tube two stops from Liverpool Street when the bomb went off there, and one other went through King's Cross station ten minutes before the bomb went off there. Both of them were lucky. Hopefully everybody else I know is okay. I have plans to go into central London tomorrow evening for dinner with friends. I shall probably still do this.

Redirection

I have posted a couple of cricket related photographs on ubersportingpundit, with commentary on Bangladeshi cricket supporters and Shane Warne.

And alas Natalie, unlike the case with you and Patrick your wish is not my command.

Redirection

I have a piece on visiting Italian gourmet food shops and bringing cheese back from abroad over at gastroblog.

My boss yesterday became aware of the existence of this website

The timestamps on posts on this blog are actually US Eastern time. This is because (a) that is the default for blogger and I was too lazy to change it and (b) back in the days when I used to post every day this meant that I did not have to post before midnight to make a post "that day". However, it also means that if (say) the timestamp says that I posted at 3pm on a wednesday, that actually means I posted at 8pm London time.

Just thought I'd mention that.