Sometimes it pays to call when your gadgets stop working

I am a big fan of the Logitech Harmony One remote. It is the one remote control I can truly call "babysitter proof". Or to relate more to my audience, "noobie proof".

A few weeks ago my Harmony One remote started acting up. Buttons would work, then they wouldn't. Then they would. This went on for a few day until pressing one button would "stick" and cause the button to repeat its behavior over and over and over again.

Finally, the remote completely died. Being a techie, I went through my usual arsenal of troubleshooting only to declare a few days later that the remote was dead.

Rather than spend any more time trying to fix it, I jumped on to Amazon.com and found the best price on a new Harmony One remote, right around $180.

What, no technical support?

I told my wife (Mrs. Noobie) I was going to order a replacement and she asked me why I hadn't called Logitech to ask them what was wrong with the remote.

I didn't have the heart to tell her it was my ego.

Luckily I didn't need to. She already knew it and called for me. After a few minutes of debugging Logitech declared the remote as dead as I had earlier. Whew, ego still intact.

But here's what I didn't see coming. My wife asked the Logitech support person if there was anything they could do to help us out. After a few minutes of putting my wife on hold, the support person came back and said she would give us a 50% discount on a replacement remote.

A deal even at list price

The only caveat was that the discount applied to the list price of the remote which is $250. But the math still worked heavily in my favor. 50% of $250 = $125 vs. the $180 I would have paid on Amazon.

So I guess sometimes it does pay to call, even when your ego is telling you not to.