You just don't know where they might be at any given time.
You see, I'm having HVAC issues at the house, which is more than mildly disturbing, since I'm still paying on the new-since-98 unit. When I bought it I was told it had a ten-year warranty that is transferrable to new owners if I sell the house, which of course seemed like a great idea at them time (July in a hot, A/C-less house, with a very angry wife staying home with two babies), but we're not here to dig up very ancient history (i.e. pre-divorce), although, I guess as we'll see at the end of this I do want to find a little piece of history to resolve my issue...
Anyway, so this weekend my heater decides to not fulfill its purpose, much to my dismay as I found myself triple blanketing the kids and strategically placing space heaters near their rooms, meanwhile freezing my own butt off.
So Monday morning, using the very business card that is still on my fridge since 1998, I call the people from whom I purchased my equipment upon the failure of my apparently original and overburdened 1960s unit. I explain my situation and that I need a warranty visit (one of which, by the way, I had back in 1999 for the repair of a minor glitch), only to have the lady tell me I'm "not in the computer".
(a pause while you consider my internal, but very instantaeous and body-shaking and head-exploding frustration at that moment)
I give her my first and last name, my ex-wife's first and at-the-time last name, my address, phone number, everything, and she can find no record of me ever having been a customer. How great is that?
I won't get all into the rest of that crap-filled conversation as to not ruin your appetite for the crap to come, but the end result was one free visit to my house by a technician to assess the situation.
He found that a sensor of somekind was not functioning correctly and therefore preventing the gas from entering the furnace to be ignited and thereby generate the all important heat that I need. So he did some "technician stuff" and got the sensor responding again, but said that it should be replaced immediately as it could give way again at any time without warning. The crux of the issue of course being that he could have replaced it on the spot and for free had I been able to produce proof of my so-called 10-year warranty that they have yet to be convinced exists (they say they only have a one-year warranty at present).
Of course, before the technician got to my house I spent much much time scouring my paper records looking for said paperwork, during which time I found such items as my 1991 selective service registration card, receipts for various computer products throughout the early nineties while I was in college, and even those great little collection notices from the mid-nineties when I was newly married and slightly more broke than I am now. But... no HVAC paperwork. Also a great thing, eh?
So the dilema is to keep searching for paperwork and hope the sensor doesn't fail again during a cold spell, or pay $177 for them to fix it via a normal service call. At the moment I'm still looking for paperwork, but I have set a Friday deadline for myself since there is cold weather coming in next week.
And the third piece of great news completing our exciting great-news trilogy? The sales guy who's business card I have from 1998 no longer works there.
(cut to present)
I've spent the past two nights continuing my paper-trail hunt to no avail, all the while hoping that while I was getting rid of (shredding) a bunch of old "stuff" back at the time of my divorce I didn't stupidly mix the presently needed paperwork in with the shred-fodder. Though that would be very much like me.
Oh yes, and I almost forgot... the nice lady who answers the phone at the service place, you know, the one that can't find me in the computer, says that back in 1999 they had a computer "upgrade". Translation from a computer guy to all you non-computer people... that means their computers crashed in 1999, they lost all the data, had no backups or disaster recovery plan, and lost their records of my existence. We'll call that one the bonus greatness. Or better yet, the greatness prequel.
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