National treat BuggedMei like an idiot week.

[Geek King]

Bugged, the best way to get anywhere with the computer shop is to go in person. Pick a day when you can spend some time. Bring a book. A big one.

When they give you the, "Oh, so-and-so isn't here at the moment," tell them you'll wait. Then go sit down and start reading. You may have to sit for a little while, hence why you need the book. Make it clear you are ready to wait until you speak to someone, or the world ends. Once they convince themselves you're not going away, you should get to speak to someone.

[TheMike]

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results
Beowulf copies on Project Gutenberg (awesome resource)

I call them up demanding to speak to the owner, manager, whoever. They take a message and say they will call back as soon as they are in. No call back yet. I called a second time but got voicemail.

sounds like its time to either threaten to, or actually start telling people how bad this place was, spread it around campus till they lose enough business.

[It's me]

Are you sure it's your drive in the machine? They may have yanked the drive so they could back it up using another computer, and put the wrong one back in.

[Shalom]

Are you sure it's your drive in the machine? They may have yanked the drive so they could back it up using another computer, and put the wrong one back in.

Well we hope that's not the case. That could be good, or it could be very bad.

Good, if they still have your old drive somewhere on premises (and it works or is recoverable).

Bad, if they found the drive was trashed (or trashed it themselves) and threw it out, hoping you wouldn't notice that it's not the same drive. (Average user doesn't know about data recovery; as far as they know, if a drive is formatted that's the end of it. If they think you don't know this isn't 100% true, they might be telling you they formatted the drive when they actually replaced it and thinking you won't know the difference.)

Can't do data recovery if it's not the right drive. If you do run the recovery and find someone else's shit on there instead of your own stuff, go back and raise holy hell. Hopefully they will still have the right drive there.

(G. Carlin: "Ever notice that your shit is 'stuff', and everyone else's stuff is 'shit'? 'Get that shit outta there, I need a place for my stuff.' ")

Still don't know why they made five partitions. I've got about seven on my HD, but there are valid historical reasons for that. (Each time I got a new, larger hard drive, the old one got copied to a separate partition on the new drive. I have stuff on my F: partition that dates back to the Windows 3.1 days. Then I started adding HDs instead of replacing them, due to the old 137GB limit. Once I got around that (new IDE controller, upgrade from Win98 to XP), those got consolidated to one new HD, but each of the old drives got its own partition as well.) Another reason is so that when my MP3 collection gets too big, it won't start crowding out the OS files.

(I still remember my dad's first computer, an original 6MHz IBM-PC/AT running PC-Dos 3.3, with a 32 Meg limit on partition size. He had the most enormous HD I'd ever seen - 65 Megabytes! Who could possibly fill up so much space? so he cut it up into three partitions.)

[BuggedMei]

Are you sure it's your drive in the machine? They may have yanked the drive so they could back it up using another computer, and put the wrong one back in.

I've managed to salvage bits and pieces so far (had to do that work thing, boo) and it LOOKS like my shit. Granted, what I've gotten so far is little bits of some pretty popular meme-type images but.. i'm just hoping my text is in there still.

It was a 100gb drive I partitioned (10/90), now its 40/20/20/10/10.. I don't get the reasoning behind it. I left them another message today, perhaps I'll try visiting them this weekend.

(Thank you everyone who has left program links for recovery. I feel a little better knowing I might actually see my things again)

(Also thanks for the Beowulf links)

[Arcade Man D]

http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/results
Beowulf copies on Project Gutenberg (awesome resource)

Yes, Project Gutenberg is awesome. I need to get some ebooks off that for my nook, actually. However if you want an audiobook version, you can also go to LibriVox for public domain books read by volunteers. I've done a reading for them, too (though I won't say which one because I used my real name, not a pseudonym).

[Pagan]

(G. Carlin: "Ever notice that your shit is 'stuff', and everyone else's stuff is 'shit'? 'Get that shit outta there, I need a place for my stuff.' ")

And you relax in Honolulu on that basis.

(I still remember my dad's first computer, an original 6MHz IBM-PC/AT running PC-Dos 3.3, with a 32 Meg limit on partition size. He had the most enormous HD I'd ever seen - 65 Megabytes! Who could possibly fill up so much space? so he cut it up into three partitions.)

This is why I love the movie "WarGames". The computers, huge floppy disks, the modem!

I also remember the first computer my mom's work had. An Osborne.

[Chromatix]

With the computer shop... stop leaving messages and making phone calls.

Write letters.

Letters have a much better chance of going to a higher-up who needs to know about it. Also, if you send it by registered post and keep a copy of it for yourself, it is admissible in court as evidence if needed.

[wagegoth]

Also make sure to have polite chats with other customers about what you are waiting for, you know, to be friendly and kill time.

Oh, yes, I've threatened to do that myself. Certainly can get their attention.

[Andara Bledin]

Yikes, what a time you had.

#1) The account was likely locked out for too many bad attempts to log in, and calling in and proving you were who you said you were was all that was needed to unlock it. But the person you talked to was an ass, and you should make a customer service complaint about it.

#3) Definitely let the professor know that the girl at the store said he was a liar. That ought to go over real well with him...

#2) Absolutely demand your money back. You paid for labor that wasn't performed and they damaged your system on top of that.

On a related note, my aunt once had a car repair shop rip her off because they thought she wouldn't give them too much trouble because she was female and it was car stuff. She stood on the sidewalk outside their shop telling people going in about how they had treated her. They gave her her money back to make her go away. Which, of course, was all she wanted in the first place.

^-.-^

[Arcade Man D]

#3) Definitely let the professor know that the girl at the store said he was a liar. That ought to go over real well with him...

Actually, having worked in a college bookstore, 90% of the time, it is the case that the professor hasn't given us his order. But before I tell a customer that, I'll actually ask the textbook manager.

[Magpie]

Actually, having worked in a college bookstore, 90% of the time, it is the case that the professor hasn't given us his order.

Calling him a liar, while explained by the fact that they're busier than all get out that time of term, is overboard. Besides, the professor did order it. Three days ago. (Mine admit to that though, although it generally includes a "they expect us to order it so early *grumble*").

[Arcade Man D]

Calling him a liar, while explained by the fact that they're busier than all get out that time of term, is overboard. Besides, the professor did order it. Three days ago. (Mine admit to that though, although it generally includes a "they expect us to order it so early *grumble*").

Maybe it's just my college, then, where our social sciences department is notoriously tardy with theirs. The TM expects the orders in by halfway through the prior semester, which is not "early" by any means, especially considering there generally aren't huge changes from semester to semester, however there are professors in that department who will give us their order the day the semester starts and then have the gall to wonder why we don't have it by that Friday, when it takes around a week or 2 to get orders before the rush period.

But yes, explicitly saying "your professor lied" like that is not something I'd do. I tell them "we can only buy the book back if we have the order from your professor", or something similar, and sometimes tell them (especially around the time we're getting all the orders in) "the TM has a stack of orders to put in the system, and that won't be finished for about another week". The absolute closest I'd come is saying "we haven't received your professor's order", which is, of course, absolutely true, whether it had been sent already or not, as it isn't on the TM's desk yet.