Ok, I am not a mathematician (Better Half is, but that is not the point), and I occasionally have somewhat substantial difficulties with higher-order number-crunching. I had to take Statics and Dynamics twice in college, narrowly passed Thermodynamics, and only succeeded in passing all of my Probability and Statistics classes because I was already dating Better Half at the time. Conceptually, I get all of it, and have absolutely no problems with it… but the second you start attaching concrete numbers to the equations, my brain starts throwing exceptions like a poorly written C program.
That said, I am fairly decent at basic addition and subtraction. Granted, once we get over twenty and I run out of digits, it all starts getting a little fuzzy, but I still somehow manage to muddle through. There are times, however, that I just have to wonder what other people are smoking when they try and do mathetmatical functions and equations, and it is even worse when I have to wonder what computers are on when I see their various outputs.
This would be one of those times. My mathematical acumen is nothing special, granted, but it surely blows the hell out of the math engine powering the Dell online store. Be forewarned: Dell is already in my family’s doghouse, and the situation I am about to describe to you was supposed to be part of their appeasement process to myself and Better Half… Needless to say, they failed miserably. Details concerning why, exactly, Dell is in such a dire predicament will be forthcoming eventually, but the problem is that their idiocy has not yet ceased, over a month after purchasing a laptop from them. The post documenting this unending stupidity will certainly be long, there is no doubt about that.
But about the current situation… As an attempt to keep our business, and keep us happy, Dell provided us with a couple of online gift certificates / coupons, due to multiple errors on their parts. Better Half attempted to use a couple of those coupons (a $100 one and a $75 one) on a couple of items from their site – specifically, a notebook sleeve valued at $20.58 and a notebook expansion dock valued at $149.95. Now, just to keep a running tab, that is a current charge of $170.53. Subtract out the $75 coupon, and then the $100 coupon, you get a current "charge" of -$4.47. Unfortunately, Dell will not refund you any "unused" portion of your coupons, so that is lost to us. It is annoyingly difficult to find low-value items on the Dell website in general (they are horridly overpriced on almost all items), and even moreso ones that we need, so we were willing to lose that small amount of money to go ahead and use the certificates. Basically, it would boil down to a net charge of 0 for us. Well, that is what I thought, at least. Behold the following image:
It is a link, so feel free to click on it if you need a larger view of it. And then pay attention to the numbers. Add it up. Do the math. Make it work.
Were you successful in making the numbers add up properly? Well, congratulations, you have somehow managed to see into the clouded, confused, and generally stupid mind of Dell. If you were unsuccessful, fear not – you were set up to fail. The numbers simply do not add up. The "Subtotal" of $29.63 came out of… well… nowhere, and no combination, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, integration, or derivation of the numbers I perform can get anything to yield that mysterious $29.63.
So… what the hell? I confess that I no longer feel terribly comfortable ordering… well… much of anything from this company if they cannot even figure out how to bill me properly. And, believe you me, this is just the tip of an ever-increasing iceberg at this point. I honestly do not know how they could have fraked up the math that badly… or even why. But, needless to say, Better Half is going to have them on the phone tomorrow morning, and will be explaining to them exactly how they will be making this situation right, and exactly who she will be contacting if they do not… little people, like the Better Business Bureau and her state Attorney General. Good fun.
recent comments