Having been told yester-day that GeekAvailable.com (AKA Geek Available) would close to-day at 15:00, I arrived at their suite at 14:10. No prize for guessing that they were completely closed-up.

Had they told me yester-day that they would not be open to-day (in spite of their having been there the previous Saturday), I could have picked-up my computer in the late after-noon yester-day.

I left an angry message on their answering machine, noting that I'd been told that they'd be open until 15:00, and explaining that, when I got home, I would file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, that if that didn't produce satisfactory results then I'd take them to court, and that the reason that I was going to the BBB first was because it would actually take more out of the hide of GeekAvailable.com to have an outstanding complaint there.

I have indeed filed the complaint.

Poking around, I see that GeekAvailable ordered the replacement part for my computer on eBay. The part was ordered on 17 May at 13:26:22 PDT, about 3 minutes before the call from Rod in which he told me that he'd ordered it on Thursday or on Friday but couldn't find a tracking number for it in his e.mail.

And he ordered it from originalpartsglobal. Now, if Rod had used ToolHaus.org, then he might have learned that, while originalpartsglobal listed the unit location as Albuquerque, his merchandise actually ships from China. Not much chance of it having got to San Diego in 72 hours. Really, even without ToolHaus.org, Rod should know better than to rely upon a seller with 63 negatives and 107 neutrals out of 7926 feedback entries in the last year.

I called GeekAvailable.com yet again to-day, after the time at which they had previously indicated that they received parts, and asked them for the status of my computer. I was again told that they were trying to get a tracking number from the supplier of the needed part.

I asked them at what time they would close to-morrow, and was told that they would close at 15:00. I said that I would come to-morrow to pick-up my computer, as this has gone on too long.

I think that it's remarkable that a business would be so amateurish as to utterly alienate a customer to try to avoid replacing an relatively inexpensive part gone astray. GeekAvailable.com has already lost the cost of that part! Now they've additionally lost the profit associated with ordering a new part and installing it for me.

I called GeekAvailable.com at just before 18:00 PDT to query about the status of my computer. I was told that they are trying to get a tracking number from their parts supplier to ascertain what has happened to the part that was ordered to fix my computer, and that they would call me as soon as they had any news.

As the Woman of Interest subsequently noted, it is really poor practice for them to have waited for my query rather than calling me to tell me where things stood. I need to decide on a response to further continuation of this situation.

I've received no phone call to-day from GeekAvailable.com; I'm quite unhappy with how a turn-around time estimated to be 72 hour has thus far run something more than 150 hours.

Meanwhile, Bessie is being further cantankerous, confusing two separate drives, and deleted files from the one when told to remove files from the other.

I called GeekAvailable.com this morning at about 10:00 PDT; I was told that they expected receipt of a part to-day, and to have my note-book computer fixed about half an hour after that; and that they would call me as soon as it was ready.

I surely hope that I'll have it back to-day.

On Wednesday, while waiting at IAH between flights, I spoke with a representative from GeekAvailable.com about repair of my note-book computer. The rep said that turn-around time would typically be about 72 hours, allowing for order and receipt of parts.

I took my computer to them on Thursday morning. On Saturday after-noon, a technician (the same fellow with whom I had spoken on Wednesday) told me that he believed that a voltage inverter had failed, and that he had ordered a replacement on Thursday or on Friday. (My computer has a large screen with an odd aspect ratio — 1920×1200 — so it's no surprise that this part would require a special order.)

(It's not good policy for them to order such a part without my clearance to actually effect the repair, but in this case I would have given my okay.)

I'm hoping, then, to have my note-book computer back to-morrow or on Tuesday.

While I await the return of that computer, I am using Bessie, a desktop computer that I maintain as a Win9x legacy machine.

As such, Bessie has only 512MB of RAM — Win9x actually becomes more dysfunctional if there is more RAM than that installed, though Win9x can handle GBs of virtual memory. But, with that memory constraint and with Windows' otherwise poor memory management, applications frequently hang or crash or otherwise do intensely annoying things. I really need to clean-up Bessie's file system and free-up a drive so that I can alternately boot Linux on it.

And Bessie connects to the 'Net at noticeably lower speed, probably because of crummy telephone wiring to the computer room.

So I am not doing nearly as much on-line as I otherwise would.

(The Woman of Interest has been kind enough to manage my principal character in the Kingdom of Loathing since my return to San Diego.)