A scary thing happened to me last week. My laptop wasn’t doing so well. I would log in, managed to make it to my desktop and I couldn’t click on anything. Sometimes I would get an error that said Microsoft was shut down because it wasn’t working properly…then I got the horrid neon blue screen that said I should get professional help. It’s always scary when you hear that…
Like many people, I do everything on my laptop. Sometimes I wonder if I rely on it too much. I use it to look up phone numbers and addresses for local restaurants and LinkedIn has become my Rolodex. For a split second, I thought all was lost because my go-to gadget for everything was down. That’s when I remembered:
Business Cards. I’ve been chided for holding on to things, but I’m glad I held on to these puppies. I knew I had met a few freelance IT troubleshooters this past year, so I thought I’d call them for some support. Left messages with three of them…who else could I call?
Enter The Yellow Pages. I’ve thought about throwing out recycling this huge book several times, but I just couldn’t do it. And I’m glad I didn’t. After not being able to reach my IT buddies, I called Best Buy as a last resort.
Me: How long with it take for you to fix it?
Geek Squad Member: I don’t know; we’ll need to take a look at it.
Me: Well, how much is it going to cost?
Geek Squad Member: I don’t know, we’ll need to take a look at it.
In the middle of this electrifying conversation, my cell phone rings, so I wrap it up with the Geek Squad and take the call. It was one of my IT buddies. He asked what was wrong, explained what was happening (Microsoft added an update, but it wasn’t playing well with my anti-virus. My words, not his…) and he offered a solution. We ended the conversation, I implemented his solution and I got my precious laptop back!
While dancing merrily (it was the day before Christmas Eve, after all) around the kitchen my office in celebration, I received a second call from my other IT buddy. I told him I got the issue resolved and thanked him for his call. He also told me about this Microsoft update situation he was seeing among his clients and confirmed that that was probably all that was was wrong.
Free, fast and over the phone. Couldn’t ask for better service. It’s all about who you know…if you hang on to their business card!
Do you immediately take your computer to Best Buy when it’s not working properly? Have you ever used/considered using a freelance professional? What’s your latest horror story and how did you get the problem fixed?
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