IT Ain't Helping

My office does not have IT personnel onsite. Instead, we have an IT "Help Desk" which seems to be nothing more than an email box monitored (or not) by a guy in Atlanta named Juan. When I started working here, my coworkers gave me the names of a couple of reliable support guys who work with Juan. Since then, one of them left the company. Juan hired a replacement after a couple of months.

At my last company, IT support was so frustrating and useless, we called it the helpless desk. I'm not sure what to call this help desk but It Ain't Helping. Last month, I needed help with installing a new application. No response. I followed up and Juan said, I'll work on it shortly. Then nothing. So I called the new guy and he got on it right away.

A couple of weeks ago, I sent an email about an issue with my laptop. I will be taking it on a trip in a couple of weeks. I can't power it up with the battery and my control panel said that no battery was detected. Before contacting the help desk, I tried removing the battery and putting it back in but that didn't help. There was no response to my email. I gave it more than a week, then sent another request. This time I copied the new guy.

Juan responded. After asking for my laptop model, Juan said: Go to your IT room and look for another laptop like yours. Remove the battery and put a note on your old battery that says "do not use."

Our "IT room" is a storage closet with a few old laptops that aren't like mine and few spare monitors. Interestingly enough, one of the laptops was already missing its battery. So I emailed Juan to tell him there were no laptops like mine.

In the meantime, while I waited for Juan to respond, I googled to find out how much replacement batteries cost. Then I checked to see if there were any articles about Dell laptops and the "no battery is detected" message. Sure enough, this is a common issue and I easily found a fix online.

Completely power down the laptop and remove the cord from the computer. Power on the computer without the battery. Once the computer is fully booted, completely power it back down and remove the cord again. Slide the laptop battery back into place, plug in the power adapter and re-boot the computer.

I am the Self-Help Desk. My laptop detects that it has a battery but it does not charge when the adapter is plugged in.

Juan emailed to say he is sending me a replacement. He gave me the shipping tracking number. It was addressed to the California office.

I'm not in California!