Tenacity in Tech Support

MacWarehouse merged with CDW a while back which has caused me endless grief. Their website is annoying because their browse function no longer functions and you end up with all kinds of non-Mac results to your searches.

But worse, I think that the quality has deteriorated. Our poor sales rep seems to get a call about nearly every order we place. When I emailed him asking if there was a possibility that my new G5 had been an open box or refurb he emailed me back "no" and recommended I call tech support.

So I do. I talk to the general number person, who transfers me to the tech support dispatch. That person sends me to Fred, who tries to get me to get be put on a callback list. Since I'm 20 minutes in at this point, I say "no" and suddenly "Clay" is available to talk to me.

I explain to Clay what's happening (basically, RAM that shipped with the computer is bad, please send new RAM) and he tries to pawn this off as an Apple problem and I have to call them. I explain that no, this is a CDW problem because according to all hints on my computer and the discussion I have with my sales guy, CDW opened the computer and fired it up (hence the $48 install charge which will of course be refunded by mail in rebate blah blah blah) that they either a) didn't really fire it up, which double irks me that they charged me for install, or b) they did fire it up, saw that it didn't boot, and shipped me a bunk computer anyway. This seems to help my cause and Clay says he'll talk to install and try to get some new RAM shipped out to me.

Ah, but the saga continues. Stephen, the good sales guy, calls this morning because he's gotten a messge from Tech Support. For the 5th time, I explain the RAM issue. Very apologetically, but very nicely he explains that because it was Apple RAM that it would need to be sent back to Apple. Um, not just the RAM, but the whole computer.

Noooooooo!

See, I 'splain, my current computer's hardrive is failing, I'm in a bit of a hurry to get this new computer working. I've spent 4 hours troubleshooting and 4 hours installing new software. Shipping the computer back would be expensive. Shipping a new computer out would be expensive. Isn't there any way that we can work something out? I offer to "buy" a new stick of 512MB RAM if he'll knock off the price of the "install" that they did on the first batch of RAM.

Deal. $90 out of pocket, but saved myself at least 4 hours of work. I think it was worth it.

What's the moral of the story? Talk to the sales guy because Tech Support ain't listening.