Demon Clown Baby

Short story: eastcoastlaptops was supposed to ship an item on 12/13, didn’t do it until 1/3, and were nothing but rude, condescending, and duplicitous in their communication. Don’t buy anything from them. They’re rubbish.

Long story: My wife left her laptop on the floor and the screen got cracked. Might have been me that stepped on it or rocked the recliner on it. Doesn’t matter. Laptops don’t belong on the floor!

But, she never complained, never asked if we could afford a new laptop, because we couldn’t. Just made do with a screen with large black shards through the middle. Cute but crazy woman.

So for her birthday, which is also Christmas, I figure I’ll get her a new (read: used) laptop.

After exercising some google fu, I determine that what looks like the best deal for price, hardware, and reliable service is actually Amazon Marketplace. I’ve boughten tons of stuff there and never had a really bad experience.

So I order a laptop on 12/11. It is supposed to ship on 12/13. I have high hopes it will arrive before Christmas. It doesn’t. I don’t have a tracking number because, oddly, it was supposed to go through the US Mail.

On 12/24, after it hasn’t arrived, I e-mail carl@eastcoastlaptops.com asking if there is a tracking number, or an estimate on when it will arrive.

I get a response on 12/27 saying it will be shipped “no later than 12/27.” What?! It was supposed to be shipped 12/13. Not two weeks later! I am advised to e-mail back on 12/28 and ask for a tracking number. That’s my job to ask, you see.

While upset that it wasn’t shipped on time, things happen, it was the holidays. I politely reply on 12/28, in the morning, with “Please send me the tracking number.” No answer.

12/29 and 12/30 is the weekend. No answer. 12/31 is a workday. No answer. 1/1 is New Year’s Day. 1/2 is a workday. No answer. I resend my e-mail: “Please send me my tracking number. Second request. I am not happy with this transaction…”

No answer. Phone call. Voicemail. Please answer my e-mail.

On 1/3, I get a reply. On the seventh day. It says my item has been shipped and includes the UPS tracking number. Guess what? They only shipped it the day before!

In other words they ignored my e-mail for 7 days until they finally shipped it, nearly a full week after they promised, 3 weeks after it should have been shipped. Then they replied.

At this point I let them know I am not happy and request some kind of credit. Just something to show they messed up and aren’t trying to mess things up for me.

Because I had been played on the ship date twice. 12/13, then 12/27, finally 1/2. I was in the mood to forget the whole thing. Quite a bit too late for a Christmas present, you know? If they had told me on 1/2 it hadn’t shipped, I would have canceled. I suspect they suspected that and that’s why they didn’t reply. Maybe they figured once it was shipped I wouldn’t go through the hassle of canceling?

Well, they not only refused a credit, but tried to lay the blame on UPS for not picking the thing up until 1/2.

I let them know I’d refuse the package and wanted a refund. Amazingly enough, in 12 years of buying stuff online, this was the worst transaction I’ve had. I’ve had problems before, late shipments, wrong item, broken stuff, but the people I dealt with were decent enough that I was not just plain offended. Anyway, I let them know my displeasure.

You what they said back? “Although I definitely do not believe your statement about this being the most disappointing shopping experience since you have shopped online, you have had a negative attitude towards the situation your order has been in since the Holidays.”

Hah! I was nothing but polite and understanding until 1/2 when it had been days since I got a response. And after calling me a liar, they had the gall to spout some nonsense about how they hope I change my mind when I get the package.

Yeah, because I like to buy stuff from people that call me a liar and don’t care that they screwed me over!

By the way each e-mail response took a minimum of 1 full day to receive, except the last one. After I mouthed off at them back, I got a response within 2 hours, saying “since you will be returning our product I no longer have a need to speak with you since our real customers will need my assistance….”

So they can argue with me quickly, once the complaints and rudity begin, but they can’t ship stuff quickly, or at least e-mail me back quickly.

Idiots. If they had been smart enough to not wait six days to e-mail me, I might have put up with further delay. The delay is bad, but not communicating is unpardonable.

Anyway, the package came, and I refused it. My UPS driver is a pretty awesome guy. When heard my story, he was amazed. I’m pretty sure he’s too professional to intentionally kick the package around when returning it to the sender. But I can dream!

New order with Techno Intelligence, another Amazon Marketplace seller. Ordered 1/3, supposed to ship 1/9. Shipped 1/7 instead, tracking number sent via e-mail. Kudos.

Update: My replacement purchase from Techno Intelligence, instead of the dreadful eastcoastlaptops, arrived on 1/11, earlier than expected! 8 days from order to arrival! And it works fine, appears to be great condition. And my wife knows she is getting another present, knows of my struggles, but doesn’t know what it is. (Don’t worry, she doesn’t read this blog. Actually no one does.) So last she heard her mystery gift was arriving next week. Sweet!

Meanwhile eastcoastlaptops got another 1 out of 5 on Amazon, besides the one I gave them. I hope they change their way of doing business before they aren’t in business any more.

There’s a video over at youtube.com about pieceless jigsaw puzzles. Seems pretty interesting, although I wonder how challenging it is if the pieces are all connected?

There’s theoretically a way to get a free one to try. You post about it on your blog and then e-mail gamewright.com about it, and they supposedly send one within 4 weeks.

We’ll see. Someone at slickdeals.net said they got it and it was real neat.

If I get one, I’ll definitely post a review. I’m all for getting bribed to review stuff, I got no problem with it. Only thing is, one, I’ll always say if I’m getting something out of it, and two, my opinions can’t be bought. If I say a thing is neat, by jorge, it’s neat. And if it’s a sorta meh, I’ll say that too.

I really liked Heroes when it first aired, but it really went downhill. If there is one thing that annoys me, it is when the protagonists win despite behaving really stupidly or only because the villain is stupid.

Peter is disappointing. He went to Texas to save the cheerleader, when as far as he knew, he had no powers when he wasn’t around someone that did. And, he saw a future painting of his own death. But he went anyway.

Now he has the most powers of anyone, but he needs his big brother to help because he’s such a wuss.

When he faces Sylar, does he turn invisible? Does he use his own power of telekinesis? Does he stop time? Nope, he stands there.

When Niki finally is useful for the first time in the whole season, what happens? She wallops Sylar good, and all she has to do is hit him one more time, just one time and he’s dead. But Micah yells that DL needs her, and Peter, the dope, says “go ahead, I’ve got this.” What?!

In the time it took to say that, it could have been over. So then Peter still doesn’t use any powers, even the super-strength he should now have from Niki.

Hiro is finally useful, despite having the most powerful single power of all. He still doesn’t stop time (because then there would be no show) but at least he stabs Sylar. Does he then cut his head off? Nope.

Nathan flies in and takes Peter away before he goes Nova. Too bad nobody tried just knocking him out. Where is Niki? She had to leave the fight with Sylar so she could hold her husband’s neck!

I don’t know why anyone thinks Nathan is dead. He could easily have flown high, let go of Peter and flown to safety. Peter won’t die either from the nuclear thing, or from the fall.

The crowning stupidity of all: Bennett doesn’t make sure Sylar is dead. He’s attacked Bennett’s wife, said he planned on killing Claire, and Bennett’s prime motivation at this point is protecting his family. He killed his former boss and severed all ties with the company, so why wouldn’t he go pump some bullets into Sylar’s head?

So naturally, Sylar is still alive, although perhaps instead of crawling away under his own power, he could have been dragged into the manhole by the “even worse” person Molly is scared of. DUN DUN DUN!

Oh, and when Candace got knocked out and her illusions vanished, why did she still look like she always has? Previously she indicated that she was really huge. Bad continuity.

I guess I’ll watch next season, if I have any free time which I probably won’t, what with the baby on the way. But I lost real interest a long time ago.

It’s the same problem on Star Trek: they give the heroes all these abilities, but they are so powerful that there couldn’t be any conflict, so they have to nullify their abilities. But that’s very hard to do, and so they don’t do it well. If Hiro now has such fine teleportation control that he can pop in, pop across the room, grab Ando, pop to their office, etc, then he should be able to stop time and execute Sylar without any problem.

Ando is the real hero here, anyway. He has no powers, no chance of success, but he tries to stop Sylar anyway, to save millions of people.

Claire is just a teenager so I cut her some slack for not acting sensibly, but where is everyone else’s excuse?

Why didn’t Mohinder hit the guy with the gun instead of Parkman?

Boy, New York sure is empty at night, isn’t it?

Remember Claire’s friend? We sure never saw him again.

Peter seems to have forgotten all about Simone until now. Remember when she was an important part of the show?

Sylar isn’t the smartest guy. Why didn’t he kill Bennett? You’d think he would have.

At least they did give the show an ending of sorts. But it did seem pretty low-budget to me.