I bought my Palm Tungsten T second hand from eBay last year. I know the risks of buying second-hand but I was willing to take them. I got the Tungsten for a good price and the only thing missing was the CDs that come with it. No problem, I downloaded Palm Desktop 4.1 and was syncing my heart out.

Recently I bought a Bluetooth dongle for my iBook and started syncing via Bluetooth. This is really cool. In the last week I found that I can get my Tungsten on the internet via Bluetooth. This was cooler.

As I started reading up I found that my Tungsten originally came with e-mail and web browser software on those mystical missing CDs. Rats. No fear, I decided to contact Palm to see about getting a replacement. I send them an e-mail in which I was unfortunately not as specific as I should have been. They pointed me to Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac. Okay, I replied with more clarity. They pointed me to the Palmone Store and told me to look for the Tungsten T Installation CD. Sorry, none can be found at the fabled store. I replied to the e-mail explaining that problem and included the original dialogue. I’d learned my lesson the first time. They once more pointed me to the Palm Desktop 4.1 for the Mac software. Now I’m getting frustrated. I replied once again with a quote of my explanation from my second e-mail to them. They told me to call the store.

Now that phone call, or series of phone calls were just as much fun as the e-mail exchange. Typical voicemail menus, leading in the wrong direction. The one I really liked was when I called Customer Care (a misnomer). Press 1 for Technical Support, press 2 for Customer Care…I pressed 2. Press 1 for Customer Care, press pound to return to the previous menu. I laughed carelessly at the little joke and pressed 1. The guy I talked to was nice and professional. He took my information (except for that little bit about what I was actually looking for) and put me on hold. When he came back he said that my Tungsten was out of warranty and it would cost me $35 to get an answer!

I didn’t need technical help. My Tungsten is working perfectly fine. What I needed was to order a replacement CD. I wasn’t going to pay $35 for that privilege!

I e-mailed them with a pretty sardonic “thank you” for the runaround. If I get a reply that points me to Palm Desktop 4.1 I’m going to very carefully consider switching to Pocket PC.