THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Hey you. Yes you Fantom External Hard Drives. At one point I had lots (400GB) of music that was great and that I stored in you. However because of your shittiness my hard drive crashed back in January 2007 and I termed the loss of four years worth of music “The Holocaust”, which caused one of my Jewish friends to take offense. I’m really piss at you dude.

Then I purchased another more expensive Fantom external hard drive. One week ago, though, before I went to bed, I heard a ghastly sound of mechanical components grinding against each other. It was coming from my shiny Fantom hard drive. I checked and, indeed, despite the fact that I never dropped it or molested it in any way aside from asking it to store music and picture files, it had crashed and destroyed its entire contents.

I was furious but decided to take the high road and email your service technician. I calmly explained the situation and then politely asked that Fantom “replace my external hard drive and all of the pictures I’ve taken since October and 80GB of music. Thank you.” You responded with haughty apathy: “We understand your frustration but you need to understand that these are mechanical devices and mechanical devices fail.” That’s like if I pay you to babysit my dog, you lose my dog, and then say, “Dogs get lost.” I’m a lawyer. If I commit malpractice, I could certainty say, “Malpractice happens”, but I wouldn’t expect it would make my client feel any better about my services. Do you expect that this will somehow make people think that your product is NOT crap?

That’s why I’m writing you, Fantom Hard Drive. To tell you that YOU need to understand that you suck, and your service people are assholes. Because what exactly is the point of an external hard drive if you assume that a mechanical failure will, within a year of your purchase, destroy the information on it? If you are somehow content with peddling such a product, then I have a few suggestion for advertising slogans:

Have fun storing tons of important and irreplaceable stuff for anywhere from two to 12 months!

Fantom hard drives are perfect for that information that you wouldn’t mind losing at any time.

If you actually care about it, don’t use Fantom.

Fantom: the perfect hard-drive for worthless porn.

Fantom. When you need a piece of shit external hard-drive for a few months until you can afford one that doesn’t turbo-blow.

Maybe the worst part is your offer to “service” my Fantom external hard drive. Again: “Hey. I know I just committed malpractice, but– you know what?– I’ll handle your malpractice case against me. For free.” Great! I’ll spend shipping and handling bones to have you “service” a piece of hardware amounts that little more than an electronic data trap. “Come on in, data! It’s warm and safe in hear. Good, good. How about some fresh cookies! Aren’t you glad you saved that 70 dollars by getting me instead of that silly LaCie hard drive! Oh, how about some milk. Yes, yes. So tasty. So delicious. And how about”– the door shuts, locks, the lights go out, there are strange clicking sounds and somewhere 2000MB of Brian Eno ambient music and priceless party photos are dying forever.

I don’t blame you, though, Fantom External Hard Drives. Especially for this second disaster. I should have been more realistic than to think that the first crash was just a fluke instead of the direct result of the systematically unfit design and manufacture of your harddrives. My bad.

My bad, Fantom External Hard Drives. I hope you die for real.

Sincerely,
Shark