Not ALWAYS User Error (Sometimes it’s NOT your fault)
Have you ever noticed that… just after you’ve hooked up a new device, or moved your equipment, or changed a setting or even added software on a computer…a day or two later something breaks and you think you did something wrong. There’s an odd phenomenon that I don’t think has any real rhyme and reason, perhaps “Murphy’s Law.” It seems that it’s when you’ve made a change to your electronics, that a day or two later something breaks.
And inevitably you think it’s related. It doesn’t occur to you that something’s broken and that it’s unrelated to what you just changed. So you go through cycles of troubleshooting. Checking connections and settings again and again.
That happened with my boyfriend’s mother (yes, I wrote about her yesterday). Where I got her all set up with a DTV converter and gave her instructions, and alas! She called saying the TV wouldn’t turn on. I was a little suspicious because it was an older TV, but it had been working fine.
So I made another trip over to her house (the 3rd or 4th trip in trying to get her set up with DTV). And low and behold, the TV power switch wouldn’t work. Bless her heart, she felt like she’d messed up again. And you can ask many an electronics repair expert, most of the time there’s nothing wrong with the device, it’s just “user error” — which means that you just pushed a button and now the sound has stopped working or you aren’t getting picture or a plug came loose.
But sometimes it’s not user error. It’s a cosmic joke being played on you, and yes, there really IS something wrong with your equipment.
So, if you’ve gone through a couple of cycles of troubleshooting (see my blogs in the “troubleshooting” category), and maybe had someone else check to make sure you didn’t miss anything…then it may be time to check on the product’s warranty, store’s extended warranty or resign yourself to the reality that it may be time to go shopping for a new device.
Yesterday, I had mentioned that it might be easier for her if we bought a new, inexpensive DTV with built-in digital tuner. It just may be time.
