Idiots with Technology (the end user strikes back)

The BBQ Pit
21

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
? He’s getting http 404 errors. Are you suggesting that he’s using his browser to directly execute SQL stored procedures or packages against the database? Chances are what he sees is actually not written in SQL at all, but in ASP or Java. Most non-programmers or DBAs never see the SQL or its direct results. The results are passed through to an interface language (ASP, C#, Java, Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, or whatever) for display.
[/QUOTE]
No, i’m not saying that. But neither did he.

He observed that their database is written in SQL.

He said that it lived on the server.

He said that he sometimes gets 404 error messages when he tries to get from one section to another.

I assumed that he meant that he uses the browser to access the database via one of the interface languages that you mention.

His post could have been written more clearly, but the gist of it is reasonably clear, i think.

22

[QUOTE=Hampshire]
An IT person that knows how to communicate with non-IT folk. Priceless.
[/QUOTE]

Priceless, or extinct? Maybe not extinct. Extinct implies that the critters existed at one time or another.

And gee, since it’s their job to communicate you’d think there would be at least a few around. The supply/demand thing must not apply to tekkies.

23

[QUOTE=Like Fry]
A minor hijack. I have a friend who works at fry’s, I get all the horror stories, he hates it there.

Also, I have a toshiba tablet, and it was getting hotter and hotter(fan running at full speed more and more often). I cracked that puppy open, cleaned the dust bunnies out, threw it back together, and now its happy again.

Fry (no relation to fry’s)
[/QUOTE]

The reports on the web of people who tried that were not promising. My plan is that the next time this happens, the laptop will be obsolete and I’ll get a new one. But I think I’ll try cleaning it (after backing everything up) and see what happens.

24

[QUOTE=mhendo]
His post could have been written more clearly, but the gist of it is reasonably clear, i think.
[/QUOTE]
Well I’d kind of like to hear back from him.

Where I was headed was that his post is indicative of the problems that tech-savvy people have in communicating with the less-informed. He has a couple of pieces of information, none of which is necessarily invalid, but certainly aren’t formed into a coherent whole. In other words, he thinks he speaks the language, but doesn’t. Tech support/helpdesk gets these people a lot. Therefore, they often must spend time reviewing the basics or covering information the person thinks they’ve already given, just to make sure that helpdesk truly understands what’s going on.

Now, with all that said, if his programmer is indeed unit testing his code in PROD (and there is a TEST or DEV environment available) then the programmer’s an idiot and should be fired.

25

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
Where I was headed was that his post is indicative of the problems that tech-savvy people have in communicating with the less-informed. He has a couple of pieces of information, none of which is necessarily invalid, but certainly aren’t formed into a coherent whole. In other words, he thinks he speaks the language, but doesn’t. Tech support/helpdesk gets these people a lot. Therefore, they often must spend time reviewing the basics or covering information the person thinks they’ve already given, just to make sure that helpdesk truly understands what’s going on.
[/QUOTE]
Al of that is certainly possible, and i’m sure help desk folks encounter similar problems on a regular basis.

26

[QUOTE=mhendo]
I’m not sure my problem is a matter of incompetence of ignorance on the part of the tech. I think it’s more a case of a tech who is following a prepared script, and is not allowed to deviate from it. It sometimes seems to me that these prepared scripts are **designed specifically ** to take as long as possible, and to convince the customer that whatever the problem is, it’s not the company’s fault.
[/QUOTE]

Bolding mine.

Yes, you get the booby prize. The point of scripts is not to do anything useful. It lets managers measure things easily (kept to the script 8 of 10 times, etc.), lets them hire cheaper labor that knows nothing, and generally make time whiel postphoning the issue in the hope that it resolves itself or the customer goes away. The goal of most commercial tech support (that is, not in-house support) is to screw the customer over just enough that they hate you and never use the tech support again but not enough to drop your product.

27

So, I was just in Worst Buy. Lemme tell ya. The quality of those salespeople is ASTOUNDING!

All I needed was a PSU with a separate P4 connector. Bought the absolute cheapest thing there, didn’t have the connector. Walked back in, got a refund, then found the nearest sales guy, who assured me the $89 one had “the exact same thing, just bundled to the main motherboard plug with a piece of tape you can cut off.” Guess what? No tape. Returned it, walked into Staples, of all places, and got real, competent help that actually OPENED the box, just to make sure. Got my Staples rewards card there too.

28

[QUOTE=jacquilynne]
Earlier in the call, we’d established that I’d been using the website successfully for a year or so, and the problem that cropped up was recent. I’m not sure how someone who has been using the web for a year could possibly be presumed to need an explanation on what the dot in an address is.
[/QUOTE]

Routine mode. He says that to everybody.

Sadly, justified. Every company-created username I’ve ever had started with a letter. My lastname begins with O, so the first letter in my username is normally an O. Can I have a buck for every time someone has asked me to spell my name or username and wrotten… a 0? “Sorry, not zero, O. The letter O.” They look :confused: at me. “The vowel O? A E I O U? O like in Oregon? Oklahoma? Which is OK by the way? The letter O.” ‘Ooooooooh!’ “Yes, that letter!”

29

[QUOTE=smiling bandit]
Yes, you get the booby prize. The point of scripts is not to do anything useful. It lets managers measure things easily (kept to the script 8 of 10 times, etc.), lets them hire cheaper labor that knows nothing, and generally make time whiel postphoning the issue in the hope that it resolves itself or the customer goes away. The goal of most commercial tech support (that is, not in-house support) is to screw the customer over just enough that they hate you and never use the tech support again but not enough to drop your product.
[/QUOTE]
Actually, no. The industry really believes that scripting works. Believe me, I’ve been in management in a huge corporate call center. “First call resolution” is a HUGE deal because otherwise, people tend to call back over and over, which costs money.

The problem with scripting is it creates the notion that that’s all there is to the job. My old company (an outsourcer) would basically tell clients that we could take in any literate person off the street with no computer experience and turn them into a tech. This is a very, very attractive notion. Not true, but attractive.

The problem is that scripts don’t always work and technology tends to change faster than the scripts. Plus, you end up with problems like the person calling up on a less common operating system, or what have you.

Most people don’t try the easy stuff (like restarting the computer) so there’s a place for scripts. Places that make it required simply don’t trust their employees. I can’t totally disagree with that. You hire anybody to be a tech, you can’t really trust their judgement.

In the end though you get a lot of frustration when a situation is slightly different. The technical person will go “hmm, that sounds a lot like X. Let’s try this” whereas a non-technical person will freeze up and either give a wrong answer or need to go get help, taking a long time.

Believe me, those companies WANT to resolve your problems. The problem is they want to do it for absolute bottom dollar and if they manage to resolve 60-80% of cases on the first try - not unreasonable with scripting and given that most people don’t do any type of troubleshooting on their own - they count it as a success. Granted 20-40% of customers will be really frustrated and may not be able to get help, but does that mean they want to pay for a real tech, 2-3 times as much money and you have to treat them better?

This is how we end up at the ‘tier’ structure. The schlubs making barely over minimum wage are the ones helping people restart their computers and baby-stepping them through opening the Control Panel. The real techs get the real problems.

What I find really frustrating are companies that don’t have tiers - you just end up with the lowest level and can’t get a higher level tech even if they can’t fix it. Or, their second tier won’t talk to customers directly, so you end up having to use this non-technical person as an intermediary to rattle off information in a bizarre game of “Telephone”.

30

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The reports on the web of people who tried that were not promising. My plan is that the next time this happens, the laptop will be obsolete and I’ll get a new one. But I think I’ll try cleaning it (after backing everything up) and see what happens.
[/QUOTE]

O.o I’ve got a Toshiba (have for about 3 years now), and with that problem. I regularly clean out the dust with a can of air like the tech guy at school showed me and it works fine. Worst problem is my power connection is buggering up lately so I have to take it in now, another known problem.

It’s always a bit of sticker shock to me when I have to take something in though, and I’m expecting this one to be quite a bit of one as I have a good idea of what needs fixing. I might end up just buying a new computer, been looking around anyway at something better.

31

[QUOTE=Flutterby]
O.o I’ve got a Toshiba (have for about 3 years now), and with that problem. I regularly clean out the dust with a can of air like the tech guy at school showed me and it works fine. Worst problem is my power connection is buggering up lately so I have to take it in now, another known problem.

It’s always a bit of sticker shock to me when I have to take something in though, and I’m expecting this one to be quite a bit of one as I have a good idea of what needs fixing. I might end up just buying a new computer, been looking around anyway at something better.
[/QUOTE]

After my summer of building and debugging 150 MHz boards (in 1973, when that was fast) I stick to simulations of hardware. Laptops are about the only thing for which extended warranties make sense. I think I paid about $150 for mine, and with two repair visits and about 12 weeks of loaners, I’ve come out way ahead.

That Fry’s had to send the computer to Toshiba, which they weren’t all that willing to do (I expect it costs them money) makes me think the problem was worse than dust in the case. The fans look pretty clean, and the computer is in a relatively clean environment. I’ll see in about a year what the story really is.

32

I picked up mine from school (it was loaned to us as part of the program with the option to buy at the end of the program… since that would only cost me $200, though there was no option to buy a warranty, and I hadn’t found a job just yet but still wanted a computer it was my best option).

Some of the most common problems involved with them are the heatsink (need to be kept clean), the speakers (lean on them by accident, something shorts out… got that fixed asap), the power connection to the motherboard (solder fails, this is my current problem and I’ve been alternately told it’ll need a new solder or replace the motherboard…).

I can actually rant about the last one. I spent a few hours calling places around town just trying to get through and ask a few questions… like what their hours were, how much a looksie at my laptop would cost etc.

One was kind enough to tell me, after informing me that their hours were Mon-Fri 8-4:30 only (uhhh, hello… working!) that I could courier them the laptop, with a note inside on what was wrong and my information and they’d take a look at it, fix it and bill me.

Excuse me? I’d rather meet face to face someone from the company who will (hopefully) look at it while I stand there and let me know the problem and potential solutions, as well as cost. THEN I can decide if it’s worth it to me to fix or just buy a new computer like I’ve been pondering for a month or two and keep the laptop for when I want to roam. I’m not sending to you my most expensive property, sight unseen.

Thankfully, I found a place reasonably close to where I work that is both open later (till 7) AND on Saturday’s. And I’ve gotten reccomendations from people I know, not just the names from the phone book.

33

[QUOTE=Voyager]
The reports on the web of people who tried that were not promising. My plan is that the next time this happens, the laptop will be obsolete and I’ll get a new one. But I think I’ll try cleaning it (after backing everything up) and see what happens.
[/QUOTE]

I hadnt heard this, though to be honest I didnt check either before opening the case. This certainly wasnt the first laptop I have opened to clean. What was the problem that was not promising?

I just have a tecra m4, it was certainly one of the easiest and most well constructed laptop/tablet I have ever had the pleasure to open. I found out the case itself is an alloy, not plastic.

BTW, I used a small paint brush to gather the dust bunny off of the radiators.

Fry

34

[QUOTE=Like Fry]
I hadnt heard this, though to be honest I didnt check either before opening the case. This certainly wasnt the first laptop I have opened to clean. What was the problem that was not promising?
Fry
[/QUOTE]

It wasn’t getting the case open, it was getting to the heatsink in order to get it clean. None of the heatsinks I’ve ever seen have had this problem, and I’ve never seen a bug report about it - and I monitor them for my company, which makes processors, so it must be either an odd motherboard or heatsink design. My daughter has had a somewhat newer Toshiba laptop for two years, and hasn’t had a problem. I guess I’ll find out when I open it up.

35

The heatsinks in my tecra is a radiator attached via a tube to the chips (cpu and video?). I didnt bother removing them, which is why I used the small brush.
Fry

36

[QUOTE=Zakalwe]
I’m not saying that your tech isn’t an idiot, but what you’ve written here doesn’t make sense and certainly doesn’t further the impression that you’re a guru of some sort.
[/QUOTE]

I’m not a guru for this database, just a user of it with three years of daily experience. I use it more than anyone else in our whole company. He’s supposed to be the guru, someone hired by the company I work for to upgrade and maintain this program so that we can use it every single day.

And he’s an idiot not becuase of the “This shouldn’t do that…” response (that’s more on the annoying side instead of a knowledge deficit on his part), it’s when he makes beta-level testing to the version of the database that we’re using, instead of the back-up copy he keeps for just that purpose (testing upgrades and changes).

Sorry if that wasn’t clear for you. mhendo got what I was trying to say, and said it better.