Few things put a sobering sense of impending doom in one’s gut like seeing the kind of message reproduced above blinking on your screen first thing in the morning.

That’s what I woke up to yesterday. Caught in a loop, unable to boot. For too long a while, it looked like my hard drive would be better used as a coaster. Fortunately, the folks at the Hewlett-Packard help desk, both on the phone and via email, talked me off the ledge (though at one point, the guy on the phone was recommending I find a good local data recovery service). I was so deep into the weeds, I was even considering calling the Geek Squad, and I despise anything having to do with Best Buy (but that’s a story for another time).

Fortunately, with assistance from the folks at HP, I navigated out of the weeds after six or seven hours, and everything seems back to abnormal.

Jeff Jarvis has been having a grand old time in his blog roasting Dell over an open flame, and I’ve had my own visit to Dell Hell, which is why I’m writing this on an HP machine. But we should point the finger when the service is good, too. So I gotta hand it to the folks at HP customer service, with whom I’m now 2-for2 (they did right with a printer issue I had last year).

Thanks for getting it right. I’ll remember when it comes time to buy again.

Takeaway for marketers (and everyone else): Back up your data! Your products, too!

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 27th, 2005 at 12:01 am and is filed under Marketing Stuff, Marketing Takeaways, This 'n' That.