So went the conversation between me and the sales guy at a small computer shop in Constantia Village called IT Dot Com Computers.  It wasn’t a good moment. And even if, in recollection, I haven’t gotten the words exactly right, I got the sentiment spot on.

Look, I’m a geek. There are four computers in my house. They work, mostly, and when they don’t I can usually fix them. But this time round I just couldn’t. So I did the geek equivalent of a male stopping to ask for directions – I took it into a shop for another geek to fix.

Having dropped it off on a Monday it was now Friday afternoon and we were no further forward. And, to boot, I’d phoned them four times during the week and, each time, extracted a promise that someone would phone me back. It never happened. Eventually I said I would just go and collect it and take it somewhere else. When I got there, I was told it had been fixed, so I parted with the cash while they were unplugging it and it was returned to me with the graphics card which had previously been inside the computer, now perched on top like a wart on a witches hand. The salesman and I looked at it.
“What’s that?” I asked
“Your graphics card,” he said.
“Yes I can see that, but why is it sitting on top of my computer?”
“Because it was faulty.”
[Salesman looks pleadingly at sulky woman behind the counter who was fiercely focused on the screen in front of, not wanting to get involved.]

And then the conversation above took place.

It’s all quite desperate – and that wasn’t the worst of it. We’ll come to the worst bit in a second – but let me just try and contextualise my disappointment. I like supporting the little guys – the small independent shops that rely on a personal relationship with their customer. If I’m going to part with cash, I’d rather it went to them than to some glossy, crisp corporate computer vendor who relies on high turnover and commission-earning staff at the expense of some goodwill.

But I suspect “goodwill” and even “customer” are not words frequently thrown around the offices of IT Dot Com Computers. They clearly don’t give a flying toss about either.

Now usually I would have  taken it back to the place I bought it (Computer Mania) or the place with the shiniest new toys (Incredible Connection) but my love for the little guy got the better of me, and I thought supporting the small, independent computer shop close to my home would be The Right Thing To Do. I’d been in there once or twice and bought a couple of things, and they seemed like nice enough people. And one can only take so much of the commission-earning leeches at Incredible Connection who pounce on you as you step through the door, shadow your every step and whip anything you’re vaguely interested in buying out of your hands to scrawl their employee number across the pricetag. (Monthly targets and commissions are to a happy and trustworthy shopping experience what Britney Spears is to thrash metal.) And that’s why I was at IT Dot Com Computers in the first place. Big mistake.

And so what was the worst bit?

I left the store under a dark cloud and decided to vote with my wallet. I swallowed my prejudice and went to Incredible Connection, where I dropped R1000 on a brand new graphics card. I get home, install it, boot up the PC and it all seems fine. First thing I do is go to windowsupdate.com to get SP3 installed. Halfway through that process, the computer reboots itself.

It reboots itself.

In other words, it does the very thing it was doing before. The thing I had paid R250 and waited a week to have fixed. The thing I was assured by the guy at IT Dot Com Computers would be rectified now that the evil old graphics card had been eliminated. The reason I had spent not just R250, but R1 250. Not fixed. Still broken.

And the final insult? Windows decides that my ntfs.sys file is corrupted. No sweat – I’ll just do what Google tells me and copy it over from my XP installation disk…you know, the one I left in the drive when I took my computer in to IT Dot Com Computers? THE DISC THAT IS NO LONGER IN MY COMPUTER.

Sigh. So much for supporting the little guy. Christmas is around the corner. I intend spending lots of money on technology this year – upgrades all round. Now what are the chances of me spending a cent at IT Dot Com Computers? I doubt the guy I spoke to was the owner and, in fairness, he was really just cleaning up other peoples’ mess. But, as they say in Moscow, Toughsky Shitsky. It never fails to amaze me when companies work so hard to get customers across their threshold and then proceed to screw it up so badly. I was there. I had an open wallet. I wanted to spend. I wanted my computer to be fixed, whatever the price. I just wanted someone, anyone, to phone me back. Just once. But they didn’t.

Remember the .COM crash from a few years back? Well generally I wish no-one ill, but in this case I wouldn’t lose a second’s sleep if this Dot Com went the same way. As long as they give me back my XP disc first.

There. Thanks for listening. I feel better now. My computer still doesn’t work, but I do feel better, and that’s the main thing.