Service (22/11/2006 01:28)

In todays busy world, we are often met by personel with equally busy lives and lack of service. Customers today are apprenty meant to be in, paying and out, with as little hassle as possible. Often people try to sell us things we really do not need, and they usually recommend whatever is more expensive rather than listening to what we really need.

But now and then, we come across people who seem to care.

The last month has been me going from hassle to hassle, most of them health-related. I'm better, and dealing with it, but the other day, my laptop died on me. To a guy like me, who works a lot during evenings from home, this is of course, not good. I had 2 days of work I hadn't moved to the servers on it, along with all my photos. My last backup of my photos was dated August 30th.
And of course, it was the hard-drive that had to go.

If I had sent the laptop in for repairs as it was, it is fairly certain they would replace my drive, hence losing all data, which was not acceptable. So I needed to try to get some data off it. And to make a long story much shorter, I had reasons to believe that if I could mount the tiny 2.5" HD to another computer, I might be able to get to it.
What I needed was an adapter: From 2.5" IDE to USB.

It turns out, these exist, and are not even very expensive (although the prices seem to vary from about 25$ to 90$ for the same thing!).

Great stuff, they exist, now lets find one and buy one. These aren't common enough to be sold in any standard electrical appliances store (at least not here in Oslo) but I was able to find a couple of online stores who sold them. Good, lets find one where we can pick it up right away, not wait 2 days for delivery!
This was more difficult.

In my search, I had uncovered an online shop I had never heard about before, called DataHandelen.no.
Yes, I linked to it, you'll see why if you keep on reading.

I called them, and reached a very nice young man on the other end of the line. The conversation went more or less like this:
Me: "Hi, I need to buy the 2.5" to USB adapter and get it straight away. Any chance I can pay it online or cash and just drive over and get it right now?"
Him: "Hm, as far as I know, if we process it online, you will have to wait for us to process the order, package it, and the quickest possible way we can get it to you is by delivery tonight"

So far, not so bad, one day faster than the shop I had checked previously.
But then, I was surprised.

Him: "I might be able to help you out if it is an emergency though."
Me: "Mhmm? I have a dead laptop and need the data off the disk NOW, so, yeah, it's an emergency."
Him: "Ok, where are you seated?"
Me: "Oslo, on the east-side."
Him: "Ok, then you are close to our technical support center. They are bound to have that adapter due to what they do there. Then you can just drive there and borrow one of theirs for the day."
Me: "That'd be great!"
Him: "Just a second, sir."

20 seconds passes

Him: "There, I just verified it with one of the tech-guys over there. Feel free to drop by and pick it up, and deliver it back when you are done with it."
Me: "Wow, thats really great! Thank you so much!"
Him: "No problem, and good luck with the data-retrieval!"
Click.

I drove over, picked it up, got back home and was able to get the data off the drive. Then dropped the adapter off again. Problem solved.

So, they let me borrow, free of charge, a device that was crucial to me at that moment, even though I am not a customer there, and helped me solve a problem where others would simply have said "Sorry sir, you'll have to wait."

They saved me money, and more importantly, a lot of time and hassle, with this very friendly gesture.
It is only fair that the world should hear about such excellent service!

Thank you Datahandelen.no, you have secured a loyal customer here!