Will my laptop finally be fixed?

Back in September my Toshiba laptop mysteriously decided it no longer thought its shift keys were useful and they promptly stopped working. I recorded my misadventures here and here and finally after all these months I’ve decided it needs to be fixed. Carrying around an external keyboard is not my definition of cool.

My original plan was to go back to the store where I purchased my laptop. I arrived at the store only to find that they were going out of business! I walked in and they recommended I call 1-800-CompUSA, well I wasn’t about to be bothered with that so I called up India, I mean the Toshiba Helpline, to see if they could give me the closest authorized dealer to fix my problem. Apparently the closest place is in Brooklyn and even though I certainly love my laptop, I am not about to drive to Brooklyn to get it repaired. So being the globalization savvy consumer I remembered that Toshiba has a program where you can go to a UPS store and drop off your laptop and they will take care of the rest. I asked the tech person about this and he transferred me to another department. On a side note, before I had called Toshiba I remembered the option of taking it to a UPS store, but I couldn’t remember if I had to call Toshiba first or just walk into the store so I did a google search and what do you know my own blog posts popped up (and yes I did have to call beforehand). I was given a service order and an address for the closest UPS store.

So with my service order number in hand I drove dutifully to the local UPS store, located right in my town. Apparently they don’t get a lot of Toshibas going out so it took them a few minutes to figure out the proper procedure, but we all took it in stride and we had it set to be shipped. It should take about 7 business days to get it repaired, but knowing my luck I’ll probably get a call saying that my laptop was swept away in a spontaneous flood, but they’ll send me two new shift keys free of charge!

For now I am stuck using the slower than molasses family computer. Thank goodness for online tracking of shipments, that way I can know when my baby laptop is coming home. I think I am already showing signs of withdrawal.