The solution is not to start yelling at the guy on the phone, but to remind them that you’ve had several other tickets for the same issue recently and ask if there’s anything you can do.
I had to take my cable box back to Cox Communications a few weeks ago because some channels just mysteriously stopped working at random intervals. While I was there, I upgraded to a DVR box because I could. When I brought it home and plugged it in, a big error message showed up on my screen. They sent someone out the next day to fix it. The day after that my On Demand stopped working. When I called in and they recommended they send a tech come out, I mentioned that this would be the third problem in less than a week that I’ve had with their cable service and that sooner would be be better than later. I had a tech at my door two hours later.
Actually, with my ISP, there is no solution. I could offer them a dreamy backrub or threaten to hunt down their family and kill me, and they’d cheerly give me a brand new ticket number titled “Customer claims backrub family kill when modem submersed in orange juice”
And I just got an update on my original cranky customer - he’s now screaming at the front-line again, saying that he NEVER gave us an availability window for Saturday, and anyways he meant last Saturday, not the one just passed.
I wonder if he realises what an idiot he sounds like?
Cosmic Relief, that sounds like Qwest. I went through those same hoops, only the ultimate resolution was that every time they fixed my connection, they broke someone elses. When the someone else had their’s fixed, mine was broken again. They were truly clueless. As a corporation, they laid off experienced techs to save money.
Anytime I ever have a problem with my cable, phone an whatnot, I always talk to the Tech people (male or female) like they’re laying next to me in bed and we’ve just had the greatest sex ever. It gets so much more accomplished than yelling and acting like a douchwaffle. I actually have people calling me by my first name and laughing and smiling when I’m done with them.
In fact, just last week, I sweet talked this one lady so much that she lowered my damn bill from $243.00 a month to $165.00 a month for a year ! haha
To conclude this customer’s saga, after threatening legal action and screaming and frothing at the mouth and generally making an ass of himself, our tech got out to the guy’s house, hooked up his test modem and laptop, and . . . connected. The customer’s computer is fucked. Karma works.
Back in 1984 when Los Angeles was cranking up for the Olympics, one of the guys at work mentioned that his aunt, who was the ticket-maven for Stanford, was volunteering to go down to L.A. and wrangle tickets for one of the big venues there. Our boss, who was Palo Alto born and bred and (naturally) a Stanford alumnus did a take and said, “Oh, is <name> your aunt? She’s a sweet lady.” then told how a few years before after getting tired of getting 20-yard line tickets he had bumped his donation to Stanford by quite a bit. A few months later the tix for the upcoming season arrived, and they were on the 15-yard line. He called, got a hold of cow-orker’s aunt, and complained, “That’s not how it’s supposed to work is it?” She said she’d look into it and promised to call back.
Fifteen minutes later she did. “I’m sorry, but we screwed up. Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it for this year; all of the tickets have been sent. But I promise to make it up next year.”
“Oh . . . Okay, I guess.”
" . . . You’re not going to yell at me?"
“Would it do any good?”
“Not really.”
“Why then would I waste my time and risk a stroke for no good reason?”
After exchanging some pleasantries, they rung off. Then a couple hours later she called back. “One of our big supporters has turned back his tickets. Would you like them in exchange for the ones you have now?”
“Are they better than the 15-yard line?”
“Oh, yes.”
They were on the 50-yard line. Boss said he really bumped his contribution the next year.
At least it seems OP’s tier one is in the US. I still have vivid memories of AT&T’s Indian tier-one support not being able to explain for me how DNS functions work. My account is flagged for automatic transfers to tier-two any time I ask for it as a result of the FCC complaint that ensued.
FCC complaint? Seriously? On what grounds? I ask for future ammunition, as I have had people explain to me that it was DHCP causing my problem, and I should turn it off and let my computer get the address from the router.
(My computer was getting the address from the router via DHCP, not another source)
Well, it is indeed good advice to disable any other DHCP server on your network, which could be some other router, server, device other than the router intended to serve as your DHCP source. An unknown DHCP server can play absolute hell with network configuration troubleshooting.
But most likely, the script-reading call-center monkey was repeating this information third-hand, which in final interpretation comes out as “DHCP is being a very bad”. This is the agonizing thing about dealing with these people… it’s obvious that they’re working from a flow chart that they absolutely do not understand in the slightest, yet have absolute faith that if they stick to it rigidly, good things will happen. If you try to engage in any actual troubleshooting with them, they’ll put you on hold for 5 minutes while they call to another tier, and then come back with a slightly different script that they don’t understand.
Right, exactly my point. The NAT router (‘modem’) is my DHCP source. Or was at the time. It changes occasionally depending on what I’ve built this week.
But what FCC complaint? I’m seriously curious here, cause I want to strangle AT&T.
Despite having two indian guys in my office (my boss being one), I still couldn’t get through to the guy on occasion.
Well, my point was that it’s possible there could be other DHCP sources on your network, perhaps a forgotten router, DHCP server, or whatever else you’re tinkering around with in your basement. Though it’s all but certain this valid case isn’t what the call center had in mind, most likely they were just repeating some thirdhand version of “DHCP bad” that was incorrect the first time they heard it.
At our last house, we had 27 – yes, we counted 'em, 27 – visits from Cox before they finally resolved our TV cable issues. The same ticket remained open the entire time. They ended up completely rewiring the house from the pole in; the last guy who’d had the house had done such brilliant things as building the porch roof over the cable connector at the house, rendering it permanently inaccessible. It seemed like each time they’d resolve one problem, another would crop up. We finally found the last bad cable hidden in a previously-thought-inaccessible section of the attic. But they kept sending people without complaint, and we never had to open a second ticket. That will probably remain my personal record.
I’m lucky that I have my own in-house computer geek, my husband, who can get miracles worked with call centers. He calls them up, tells them what the problem is, but lets them go through their required steps before they finally discover that yes, indeed, the problem is what he said it is. This last time, he ended up with a tech who actually admitted he didn’t know what the problem was but was happy to work with Papa Tiger to resolve it; they spent about two hours fiddling around with this and that, very happily, and eventually got it fixed, to everyone’s satisfaction. But he stays calm and respectful the whole time – unless he gets someone totally clueless, at which point he thanks them, hangs up, and promptly calls back and tries again with the next person to answer. It’s surprising how often that works. Getting a knowledgeable person seems to be about a 50/50 proposition.
It also doesn’t hurt that we got FIOS the moment it was available in our area, and their tech support is all within the US. So there’s not the language problems, for a welcome change!
Of course, Papa Tiger also has the advantage of running the help desk for his hospital, so when people skip the process and come straight to him, he’s happy to tell them to call the help desk and open a ticket. So he gets to do it from both ends of the process. And I just sit back and wait for the geeks to get the problem fixed.
So he gets to do it from both ends of the process. And I just sit back and wait for the geeks to get the problem fixed.