In Which Our Hero Asks For Advice on Stickin' It To The Man

[the_wanlorn]

I do not aim with my hand; he who aims with his hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I aim with my eye.

I do not shoot with my hand; he who shoots with my hand has forgotten the face of his father.
I shoot with my mind.

I do not kill with my gun; he who kills with his gun has forgotten the face of his father.
I kill with my heart.
~from The Gunslinger, by Stephen King

My brand new laptop's hard drive crashed and burned after a bare three months of use, taking three months worth of bookmarks, music, fic ideas, etc. with it.

I got the hard drive replaced and so I have my laptop back. The company finally contacted me with regards to data recovery. It will cost me almost $700 to recover the (70 gigs of) data on the drive. It'd be about $500 to recover the (12 gigs of) data in the My Documents folder. In addition to that, they won't return the hard drive to me because Toshiba requires them to send all replaced parts back.

This is the only repair company for Toshiba laptops. On their website, this is who they direct you to for laptop repairs.

I'm not sure what to do, because, as far as I'm concerned (and I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary) this is both extortion and a big scam. I have yet to find an email to Toshiba customer service, and I'm loathe to call either company and bitch them out because, no matter what I tell myself before I make a call, my general reaction to dissent on the phone is to cave immediately and agree to anything and everything the other person wants.

I hate phones, you see.

In other news, I spent the afternoon butchering a pork butt for the animals. The cat ate a good quarter pound of it as I hacked it up to put in baggies. The dog doesn't get any until she finishes the fucking ground chicken and boneless turkey thighs in her bowl. I now have a good 6 pounds of pork in the freezer.

The tradeoff, of course, is that I got blood all over the counter and floor and, even though I've cleaned it all up, the kitchen still reeks of uncooked bacon. (I am maybe also drooling a lot.) If the windchill weren't in the negative-teens, I'd open all the windows to get the smell out.

Anyone want to bring me over some bacon?
 

Comments

[shoiryu.livejournal.com]

That definitely sounds like a huge ripoff to me. I'd totally call for you if I thought it could do any good. :( Maybe write up a script for yourself before you call, so you'll have guidelines to stick to? Sometimes that helps MY paralyzing phone phobia...

[emiweebee.livejournal.com]

Email the Consumerist blog. And/or go to them and find their super nasty and effective ways of dealing with asswipe companies.

[katiefoolery.livejournal.com]

Data recovery can be pretty pricy but even so, that seems pretty expensive. If you do end up calling either company, shoiryu's advice of a script is well given. Make sure you know what you want to get out of the conversation and stick to it. And invest in a usb drive or two (or even get into the habit of uploading stories and things to a gmail account or something similar). I'm so paranoid about archiving everything, purely because I've lived through so many hard drive crashes.

[flamingsword.livejournal.com]

Have an older male do it for you. Call center employees know that men who are dealing with someone else's problem are a lot less likely to be reasonable and THEY will be the ones doing more of the caving in. If you channel your inner bitch, get someone who can.