On Bristol Road

Neshaminy Warwick Presbyterian Church is one of those old pre-Revolutionary ones in Bucks County, Pa. It’s located at a curve on the Neshaminy Creek. Bristol Road, the one that goes by the church, takes a sharp turning as it goes over the bridge which crosses the creek. Various attempts have been made over the years to straighten and widen things a little bit, but although the bridge has been re-built for safety reasons its location hasn’t been changed, in part for historic reasons, but mostly because of the odd turning of the creek.

As the story goes, once upon a time, a long time ago, a young woman in a white dress was killed at night on the bridge. There may or may not have been a mist rising from the creek at the time, depending on the teller. She was either riding in a carriage which tried to take the turn too quickly and flipped, crushing her between the carriage and the bridge, or she was waiting on the bridge for a rendezvous with her lover and was hit by a carriage which didn’t see her. After a couple of hundred years, the story has gotten a little blurry. In any event, on certain dark nights, it is said that she can be seen on the bridge and her appearance has been blamed for more than a few close encounters between sides of the bridge and vehicles, even during my early lifetime.

Personally, I always figured it was a matter of careless driving or speeding and didn’t give much credence to it. That was before the time I was up there visiting my parents and had occasion to travel by the church one dark night–and damned near hit the bridge when I saw her.

Feeling the HP Love

Back in April, when I bought my Mac mini, I got a printer with it. There was no choice in the matter. Me being me, I failed to send in the rebate in a timely manner, but I got more than 25% of it back this evening anyway.

Our dear Shiba Inu, Charlie, has a habit of investigating new things by chewing on them. Although he’s almost seven years old, he only came to live with us last spring, so there are many household things which are still new to him. You see where this is going, right?

I suppose it’s just as well that he didn’t chew through the part of the power cord between the wall and the transformer because fried Shiba would have been a very sad thing. However, if he had done that without frying himself, I could have replaced that part with a power cord out of the spare parts box. But no, not our Charlie. He had to get the part between the transformer and the printer. That would be the part that insists on being unique to each printer because the plug doesn’t match or the wattage doesn’t match or some such variable.

Yes, it could have been spliced, but first I decided to go to the HP site and see how much it would cost for a replacement power supply (that’s what they call the part which is the transformer block and the cord to the printer). Naturally, I couldn’t find it.

Not being one to be defeated quite so easily these days, I availed myself of their live chat feature. Not only did my support person (“Dan”) identify the correct part and show me a picture, he really wanted to know when I’d gotten the printer. It took a little digging, while he waited quite patiently (probably helping several other customers), but I was able to determine the date. It turns out that the reason he wanted to know was to determine whether the printer was still under warranty. Please pay attention to this next bit, because it’s the whole point of the entry.

HP replaced the power supply under the warranty even though the dog chewed the cord. Didn’t even ask me to pay for the shipping.

In these days when customer service often seems to be a thing of the past, I not only got some, but I got some which I feel was above and beyond. I know the part itself didn’t cost them zip, but the packing and the shipping and the cost of the live chat service all did and I like to give credit where credit is due. Besides, it’s what gives me the right to complain when things don’t go so well.