More On My Fried Hard Drive

This is a follow-up to my receiving the wrath of the computer gods (http://cdubgee.blogspot.com/2008/08/punished-by-computer-gods.html).

I got a second opinion, and it's not looking good. My hard drive needs major surgery and it's not covered by my insurance. I was hoping that my second opinion would be sort of like going to a surgeon in India who used to practice in the U.S. but got his license revoked for some kind of nasty malpractice (drunk in surgery, something like that--sort of like the drunken has-been surgeon who initially helped Jason Bourne in the novel) but has great hands while sober so could fix my computer for cents on the dollar.

No such luck. Drive Savers gave me a quote that could range from $500 to $1500 for data recovery (real surgeons), and Best Buy's Geek Squad (drunk surgeon in India) gave me the same quote. The drive has a heartbeat, but it's slipped into a coma. I suppose that the bright side is that what data there still is won't deteriorate or anything over time, so as soon as I can drop a grand to recover my journals, past school work, etc., I should be able to get it.

Can I just gripe a bit about Apple's customer service? I can remember when Anna's 1st generation iPod was giving us fits after a year and a half of use. Apple was already well into the 3rd generation iPod, so when we called to get some help, their advice was that we buy a new iPod because ours was really old. I think the little customer service rep even said that there wasn't anyone around who'd worked there long enough to have ever worked on 1st generation iPods. Ouch.

With my recent hard drive mess, I wrote a letter to Apple expressing my discontent. I made no demands (I'm not naive enough to think I'd get anything out of it), conceded that I shot myself in the foot by not backing up my data, and merely wanted to tell them that I was disappointed in their product. They got back to me quickly, but their form letter basically said, "Don't blame me if you didn't back up your data! S&$! happens and you should know that!" It's amazing how far customer service can get with a mere apology, and it's amazing how rarely they give one.