(written on April 2nd from notes taken previously)
I think I forgot to explain why I was driving back across Arthur’s Pass instead of just going north toward Paines Ford.
Or maybe I did?
If I didn’t, starting somewhere around my jumping in Hokitika, I was debating whether or not to drive all the way back to Christchurch to fight the cell phone repair people.
That small imperfection in the screen that I noticed that last day has continually increased in size to the point that it’s actually bigger now than black spot where the front-facing camera is.
Not to mention that it’s perfectly placed to be covering most of the display that shows me what my charge percentage is for my phone.
So I’ve been debating.
Should I drive all the way to Christchurch and risk having them finalize their apparent reneging on their promise to replace my screen with a fully functional one? (Which would not only waste time but also a fair bit of the current $7.50ish/American I’m paying per gallon. 😶)
Or do I just call it a loss?
My justice bone wants to fight, to show up and get my repair or refund, and if they’re not willing to give it to me, to hang out for an entire day dissuading any customers who come up from actually spending their money with a business that would treat its customers the way that I’ve been treated.
Well, I guess you can where tell which option I chose based on the fact that I drove all the way across the pass and camped myself a relatively short drive away from Christchurch. 🙃
Wanting to arrive at the opening of the store, I set my alarm to get up early enough to make that happen (finding it odd that the other three vehicles that were parked in the grass last night were all absent when I woke up this morning 🤔), and I would have been completely successful, except My reception wasn’t very good this morning, so I couldn’t fully load the map, so when I found a DualTech that was next to a Woolworths, I figured that was the correct location (they have three locations).
Buuuuut… it wasn’t. 😒
I wasn’t late by much, and quickly began the uncomfortable confrontation.
The worker who was behind the counter this morning was the same one who had promised to order another screen that was supposed to arrive in 2 to 3 weeks.
When I showed up this morning, I was met with a determination from the higher ups that no refund of any kind was going to be given, that they’d already done enough to try to help me and weren’t going to do any more.
😶
Right… so let’s recap, shall we?
- First visit:
- Tells me it’s going to cost $150 to replace the screen.
- Tells me it’s going to cost $100 to figure out and fix the power button issue, because it might take three to four hours.
- Finds the power button issue and fixes it in maybe 20 minutes.
- Replaces the screen.
- Tries to charge me $350.
- 😶
- They dropped the price to $300 after I gently push back, and I don’t push back any more, because I don’t want to deal with the confrontation, and I’m just happy to be able to get all of my pictures and have a functional phone again.
- After driving maybe an hour away, heading to my next destination, I realize the technician had significantly dirtied the back glass while cleaning the inside of the phone and hadn’t cleaned the back glass after he was done with the repair, thus sealing dirty spots all over the back glass that couldn’t be cleaned without once again removing the freshly sealed brand new screen.
- I also notice that the selfie camera is non-functional because the technician apparently either broke the assembly when putting it back together or just misaligned it, such that the selfie camera is partially blocked by the screen and can’t focus.
- I drive back to Christchurch and find a place to stay for the night
- Second Visit:
- I show up again, show them the dirty screen and damaged or misaligned selfie camera, both issues making it next to impossible to take pictures, which is the whole reason for buying an expensive phone in the first place.
- They take the phone and tell me it’ll be a few hours.
- I come back, and it’s not fixed, and they tell me to come back right before closing.
- I show up again right before closing, and not only is the back glass not cleaned, nor selfie camera properly aligned, but now the brand new screen is broken with a significant number of damaged pixels, discolored in a straight line.
- 😶
- They tell me to leave the phone, and they’ll get it fixed the next day.
- Third visit
- I show up I think early afternoon, and the phone isn’t fixed yet.
- Still not fixed later in the day.
- Finally, it’s done, and I go to pick it up, and I find that the selfie camera is slightly misaligned but functional this time
- Second new screen is bad out of the box. By the looks of it, during the manufacturing process, a piece of grit or something got between the screen laminate and the screen itself, causing a small dead spot on the phone that looks like what happens when you get a piece of dust underneath a screen protector. 😶
- Aaaaaaaand the cleaning of the back glass was done, but not done carefully enough to avoid leaving streaks. 😶
- There are no more screens available in the country, they say, so it’s going to take 2 to 3 weeks to get a replacement screen in. I’m promised they will do that, so I leave with my functional, but blemished phone that can take pictures without glare when set to the regular 1X zoom, but if needing to zoom in or out, pictures have glare or blurry spots from the streaks on the back glass.
- Phone Communication:
- After not hearing from anybody for 3 weeks, I message the worker who had been working with me, and he gives me the phone number of the owner who can make the decisions.
- The owner ignores me despite my respectful communication and reasonable requests for a replacement screen from the one that was bad out of the box and a properly cleaned back glass.
So now, here I stand, in front of the worker again, relaying the message from the boss that they are not going to keep their promise, that they’ve done enough and are unwilling to do any more.
To which I reply and let him know that’s fine, but I’m going to sit here all day and let every single customer who comes up thinking about doing business with you and let them know what I had to deal with and how I was treated.
With that as my reply, and with one customer who was listening to what was going on already having left, the worker called his boss and was given authorization to give me a 50% refund, the supposed cost of the screen.
But in order to get the refund, I was going to have to give him my bank account information. 😶
Ummm… no. Not a chance.
The worker looked in the drawer and found $70 cash, but that wasn’t $150. The worker told me that it might be hours before he was paid enough cash to be able to give me the $150, so I told him I would just sit there and wait.
I wasn’t happy with the $150, as in order to fix the issue, the entire job needed to be done all over again, a replacement screen, and the labor time to remove the screen, disassemble the phone, clean the back glass, and put everything back together.
But it was better than nothing.
The worker left for a bit, and came back with the full $150 in cash, took pictures of the cash next to my phone, and sent me on my way.
Gratefully, though his boss had apparently told him to take the screen off my phone, he didn’t, because he knew that would leave me without the ability to use the phone at all.
So that was something, at least.
The $150 covered the gas cost of driving out of my way to go to Christchurch, plus a little bit on top of that, so I guess in one sense it was worth it monetarily, and it was at least a little bit worth it to get some justice.
They’ll still be getting a less than stellar review from me because it shouldn’t take what I had to go through to get even what I got. Yes, they attempted to resolve the situation and were really good about it the first two times, but you can’t say that you’ve done well by your customer if the job they paid for and the product they receive was done poorly enough to render the device not fully functional, and to have a broken device out of the box.
Had the first technician cleaned the glass as he should have before putting the phone back together, there would have been zero problems whatsoever.
But he didn’t.
Had the second technician removed the screen without damaging it and properly cleaned the glass, there would have been no problems whatsoever.
But that technician messed up as well.
Had the third screen been good out of the box and the back glass cleaned such that no streaks, there would have been no problems whatsoever.
First two times, it was carelessness in the repair process.
The last time, it was both bad product out of the box and carelessness.
Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that what looks like a greasy finger streak on the middle camera lens that I forgot to mention in the recap here but did mention to the repair people was never taken care of during any of the three visits.
Anyway, that’s a long-winded story, 😅 but now it at least has a resolution.
While waiting for the resolution, I had been communicating a little bit with some local people on Facebook marketplace who were selling memory foam mattresses.
I was thinking that my van might be easier to sell if it had a solid mattress in it instead of the jumble of cushions that I’ve got.
Wanting to be able to negotiate but only having larger bills, after leaving the cell phone repair place (just a large booth in the shopping mall), I wandered over to The Warehouse, thinking that maybe I’d find something small to buy in cash to break the large bills.
I spent probably 30 minutes inside, wandering around looking for stuff, thinking that maybe I’d buy some clothes which were on sale for super cheap, but in the end, I decided not to.
Speaking of super cheap, my next stop was to Super Cheap Auto, where I’d heard that they would take used oil for free like the automotive places in the United States do. I also needed an oil filter, so I was happy to both get rid of the used oil that I’ve been carrying around with me for a good long time, and pick up an oil filter in preparation for the oil change that I need to do.
From Super Cheap Auto, I headed over to Mitre 10, looking at buying a tape measure. One of the mattress sellers replied back and questioned whether or not the mattress would actually fit in my van, and I’m glad she did. Yes, I could have made the mattress work, by trimming it to size, much like I did for the little bed I made for my mom in the back of Rover, but I decided that it wasn’t worth the time and energy and effort, as whoever bought it might not even want that kind of a mattress in there anyway.
Oh! Did I mention the tape measure was something like $2 American? 🥳
In a country where most everything seems to be significantly more expensive than back home, it was nice to have such a cheap tool that was seemingly good enough quality to actually be a useful tool.
So I gave up on the mattress idea, finally putting that idea to bed for good, having already dealt with uncomfortable sleeping for the last five months, and headed on over to Pak ‘N Save to top off my grocery reserves before heading back into the bush.
I bought what I thought were kind of real fruit juice watermelon popsicle as a little dessert, only to find they were more like super short and really fat Otter Pops that required scissors or a knife to open on one end. 😆
Gas was crazy expensive, so I chose the least expensive in the nearby area and had a heartwarming experience when an older gentleman, probably in his ’60s, two people in front of me realized he’d forgotten his wallet and was, I think trying to give his ID as collateral, while he went home to get his wallet to be able to pay for the petrol.
It might literally have been only a single second that transpired between the moment it was clear the gentleman didn’t have the money with him to pay for his fuel and the moment the lady behind him offered to pay his bill. 😊
Yay!!!
The older gentleman didn’t want to accept, but the lady was persistent, and eventually, he let her pay for it.
Heartwarming. 😊
Especially with gas being so blasted expensive right now.
I chose the scenic route toward Lewis Pass, and enjoyed the scenery through the pass.
Despite all the warnings that it was permanently closed because of a landslide, I did stop to check if Sylvia Flat Hot Springs could be resurrected.
I think the answer is probably yes, but not without a lot of shovel work. 🙃 And with the sand flies being as thick as I’ve experienced them perhaps just about anywhere, on the level with fiordland, I wasn’t Keen on spending much time in the effort. 🙃
Not to mention, I don’t have a shovel. 😅
While at the hot springs place, I found myself in immediate need of a toilet, so I headed on down the road to the nearest campsite that also had a toilet before continuing on my journey through the pass.
Grateful for a relatively nearby toilet. 🙏
I headed north at Springs Junction up the Shenandoah Highway.
I was debating whether to stop off for the night at Maruia Falls or to continue all the way to the Uruwhenua Reserve just south of Tākaka.
Chase and I had stopped at Maruia Falls, and I spent the night there again a couple months ago. Since I was at least driving by, I pulled into the parking lot of the Falls, and then wandered down to the falls again, taking pictures and texting my sister Heather a little bit.
Eventually, I decided to head north instead of staying there for the night, but just a handful of kilometers down the road I passed by O’Sullivan’s Bridge. Two months ago, the day I bid farewell to Nick the Viking in Tākaka, I had been on my way to the West Coast but had pulled over and parked on the side of the road, so I could walk back and take pictures from the bridge.
I had wondered at the time whether it was a jumpable bridge, whether the water was deep enough. At the time, I didn’t have paracord with me, so I couldn’t measure the height of the bridge nor the depth of the water.
This time, I did. 🙃
So I parked my van in a dirt turnaround spot that had a couple of picnic tables. That’s one thing I love about New Zealand, you can be in the middle of absolute nowhere, and there might be some picnic tables along the side of the road. 😊
Anyway, I stopped and walked over to the bridge, taking pictures and evaluating.
From above, it didn’t look as high as Hokitika Gorge. It was getting on toward dusk at this point, so the sun wasn’t shining directly down on the river, but looking at the floating leaves and other debris on the surface, I didn’t really feel any nerves at the thought of jumping from the bridge.
But it was late, and I was alone, and I hadn’t yet measured height or depth. So I went over to my van to grab my stuff.
Shortly after I arrived at the bridge, another gentleman had pulled up and was eating at one of the picnic tables, so I chatted with him for a little bit while I grabbed my stuff.
With paracord and a tape measure in hand (and after untangling my paracord), I tied a rock to the end of it, dangled the paracord below until it touched the water, hauled it back up, strung it out taut along the bridge, and used my tape measure to measure the length of paracord that it took to reach the water.
65 feet.
😶
But… wait… really?!
That’s more than 20 ft higher than the bridge at Hokitika Gorge.
😶
But it… didn’t… seem that tall at all. I could have sworn that it wasn’t even as high as Hokitika.
😶
Hmmm… Did I get my measurements wrong at Hokitika Gorge?
I don’t think so. 🤔 Chase and I measured it when we were there the first time back in ’22, and I measured it again with nearly the same results the other day. No, I didn’t have a tape measure, but it was basically seven of me (measured by stringing paracord from my toes to the top of my head, and then doubling the cord over and over and over again until I ran out of cord that had been dangled down to the water’s surface). Seven of me was pretty much the same as last time as well.
Could my depth perception be that far off, that a bridge that’s 50% higher could actually seem lower, so much lower as to remove the nerves that I would feel jumping from it when I’m nervous every. single. time. I make the jump at Hokitika Gorge?
😶
🤷
With a healthy back, I would probably jump at the chance to make the leap from 65 ft above the water. With the back I have, landing just a little wrong from even 25 ft will leave my back hurting a bit more than normal.
Concerned about my back, and also being alone, I wasn’t going to make the jump. Safety over adrenaline. 🙃
I was going to measure the depth of the water, however.
Wish I’d done that at Hokitika Gorge!
So I wandered around until I found myself a rock that was big enough to not get dragged super far down river by the current as I was sinking it to the bottom. Then I tied the rock to my paracord, let it down, and tried to swing it out a little bit, so that by the time it reached the bottom, it would be hopefully as close to directly below me as I could get it.
Unfortunately, I apparently hadn’t secured the rock to the rope well enough, as when it splashed down after trying to swing it out a little ways, detached from the rope.
Gratefully, my second effort with a different rock was successful, and similar to the process of going from end to end with the District Council workers Hokitika Gorge, I tested the depth in multiple places from one side of the river to the other.
I hadn’t used anything to mark the Paracord at the 65-ft length, so it took me a little while to get all the measurements after pulling the paracord and rock back up.
In the end, however, I found that the depth of the river at that portion of the gorge was between 27 and 29 ft.
Perfect for a cliff jumping bridge. 😎
[sigh]
Would have been fun with a better back. 🙃
By the time I finished all my measuring, it was pretty dark outside, so instead of making the multi-hour drive north all the way to Uruwhenua Reserve, I simply drove back to the nearby falls freedom-camping spot, veged out for a while, and called it a night.
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 