Disaster of the Year

It seems that I always have one electronic disaster a year. In 2003 it was my PowerBook display hinge broke and required an expensive repair. Last year, it was Leah spilling water on her iBook so she ended up saving for the whole summer and got a 12″ PowerBook.

And today I dropped my Treo when I took it out of my jean pocket. It landed on the hard kitchen floor and the result was a cracked LCD screen. No dents, no scratches, everything works, just a broken screen! I am so ready to trade either of those two for a broken screen. The touchscreen is working fine though. Here is a picture of the damage.

Unfortunately I didn’t have any phone insurance for the Treo, since Cingular does not provide insurance for a fair large number of their phones including the Treo. Possibly due to their high cost? Anyhow, I was on PalmOne’s website filling out a out-of-warranty repair form (which will cost me $175 to repair the cracked screen) when I remembered that my AMEX card has purchase protection. I called them up and low and behold, AMEX covers accidental damage for 90 days after purchase! It would take them around 2 weeks to come to a decision on how to compensate me but it will be either of these three options: 1) replace my phone, 2) repair the screen, or 3) reimburse the original cost of the phone so I can get a new (perhaps better) one. I am hoping for #1 but #2 is fine with me.

In the mean time I’ll have to put up with a half working screen. Not so bad for most normal use but text messaging is a bit, shall we say, challenging since I have to guess what I type for about half of the time!

Hopefully with this out of the way, there won’t be any more electronic disaster for the reminding year. I am off to play some Halo 2 to vent my frustration…