Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were trying to travel around North America alone, blogging, basically using technology as your medium to get from one place to the next. You use your computer or cell phone to look up driving routes, plan a to-do list for the next city you're going to visit, upload pictures from your camera, book hostels or try and find a host on Couchsurfing. You use your computer to blog, stay in touch with friends and family, it has all your important information and documents. Then on the very day that your university has promised to post the 2013 income tax information forms online you decide to drop your computer on the ground and it won't turn back on.
Suddenly all that blogging and uploading of pictures, accessing documents and e-mails becomes virtually impossible. Sure, you can try it on a phone but you'll quickly learn: not everything is mobile compatible.
So you get out your GPS, another extension of your technological communication with the world, and you look up the nearest Apple store. In a city you've never been before you hop in the car and hit the road. You pull up to a gigantic, outdoor outlet mall with temptations like Forever 21 and Bath and Body Works, to name a few, staring you right in the eye. But you restrain. You walk into the Apple store only to find out that they are being renovated and their computer department is not open right now. The employee gives you the address of the next nearest store and you, again, hop in the car and are on your way.
Pull up to yet another mall, with just as many - if not more - temptations as mall number one. You walk inside and check out the map to see where the Apple store is located. When you arrive at the store it's 10:30 a.m. and the employee tells you that they next appointment they have available isn't until 1:45 p.m. and you're more than welcome to shop around in the mall and then come back.
That would be a great idea, my friend, if I wasn't travelling on a budget. And suddenly you're starting to have flashbacks to that horrific experience you had at the Apple store in St Louis. You remember, the one where they tried to sell you a phone even though you had no way to make it work. You roll your eyes and in the back of your mind you say a little prayer that this time it's going to be different.
Would it be okay if you just hung around in the store until it was time for your appointment, you ask. Afterall, the Apple store offers free wifi. At least you can kill time on your iPhone. So you pull up a chair and start browsing things like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and then the gentleman that is working "triage" as he likes to call it comes over to help you. You tell him that its no big deal but your appointment isn't until 1:45. He insists that he will try and help as much as he can in between customers that are already checked in. And he does.
One trial and error after the next to diagnose how a less than 1 foot fall could result in a computer that won't power on. One after the next, nothing seems to be working. So this guy, this nice guy, takes your computer back to the "techs" and they see if they can't figure something out. All the while you're sitting with conflicted feelings because you're extremely grateful that this stranger is doing everything in his power to prevent you from having to sit in those awfully uncomfortable black, wooden stools in the Apple store for another 3 hours. Yet, at the same time your stomach is doing back flips because deep down you know something is seriously wrong with your computer and all you want to know is: how much is this going to cost me.
The diagnosis comes in, and it's not what you're hoping for. It never is. The techs in-store cannot figure out what is wrong with the computer and they are going to have to send it out to the depot to be fixed. Now, the problem is that tomorrow you're leaving Arizona for Nevada so that 5-8 day turn-around-time on repairs poses a problem.
Again, without hesitation, the employees of this store brainstorm a solution. They'll send the computer out from their store and then have it shipped to where you're going to be staying in Vegas. Awesome! This is moving along relatively painless. You exchange information on where you'll be staying, then you give them your billing address and credit card so that they can charge that $326.00 (US) for the repair. In a few minutes your new friend, the Apple store employee, comes back with some bad news. Because you have a Canadian billing address our system won't accept your card as a form of payment.
Well, of course not. That would have been too simple and that just really isn't the type of luck that you have. Then, once more, these Apple "geniuses" brainstorm a solution - I will buy a gift card for the cost of the repair then once my computer is fixed the depot will send it back to Arizona. Once back in Arizona, the store will pay for the repair using the gift card, then they will ship the computer to Vegas from the store. Amazing.
Now your only question is: what if the machine can't be fixed? What if the depot gets your computer and they try everything and the machine can't be fixed. No problem. If the computer cannot be fixed we will refund your $326.00.
Can I get that in writing, you ask.
All before 1:30 you've gone through the back-and-forth of trying to solve this computer problem. All before 1:30, on a day you were supposed to be relaxing around the pool, not spending a dime, you've dropped almost $350.00 (US) on yet another unforeseen cost. A cost that is doing quite the damage to your travel budget. As you walk out of the store, out of the mall, empty computer case in one hand, written promise of a refund in the event that your computer cannot be fixed in the other you know: you haven't suffered a problem until you've suffered a First World Problem.
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