Wasting Portage big time or: What the customer REALLY wanted…

Probably everyone who has been trough some semi-serious kind of programming 101 course has probably been presented with this:

Your lecturer probably told you that this is a common problem amongst software developers. However, as I just learned, it seems to be a diseaseproblem with the entire IT industry.

So what happened? I was visited by a Dell technician because my laptop backlight was broken. He replaced the spare part pretty quickly which made me pretty happy. However, we noticed that some screws needed replacements and some (small) bumpers were missing. My Laptop has two kinds of bumpers, two big, longish ones and several smaller, roundish one. So he was kind enough to order new screws and (small) bumpers with the Dell hotline who promised to send the parts promptly. And when I pulled the envelope from my post box the other day I was a happy camper… until I realized there were six(!) more left in the box. So I took them all and if you lay them out, it looks pretty impressive:

But the technician ordered just 1 set of screws and 6 small bumpers. So how could that add up to 7 air-damped envelopes?? Right, as you probably just guessed (out of your mathematically trained gut), each bumper came in its own envelope. So if you lay out the contents, it doesn’t look soo impressive anymore:

And did you realize something else? I am now sitting here with seven large bumpers, of which I can make use of none (well, I will probably replace the old ones that are still there, but that wasn’t the actual problem at all, and I still would have five spare…)

Closing remarks

• I am still very satisfied with Dell, but I found this just too remarkable not to blog.
• Yes, I am aware of the fact that it’s cheaper to pay for portage multiple times instead of paying someone to make one delivery of all parts belonging to a shipment. But this is really an extreme. Plus it’s extremely funny that those expenses basically were payed unnecessary.

Update: I just talked to the hotline and they will send me a complete service kit (in one shipment) by the day after tomorrow. Yay!