So, so tired of knowing more than tech support...

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Hari_Seldon

The last time I called tech support at Bell Canada (before I changed ISPs) to tell them their name server wasn’t working, there was a long pause, followed by “Uh, what’s a name server?” (I had a couple actual numerical addresses, but they were the only sites I could get to, so it had to be the name server.) After I explained, he denied there could be a problem.

The actual reason I switched suppliers was that they took a week to fix a broken outside phone line. But they never tried to find out why I left and the regular calls I get to try to entice me back are from poor slobs who don’t know and don’t care.

In 2002 or thereabouts, I worked for a humane society, and we got our broadband from BellSouth. It went down regularly, and every time it did they told me there was a local service outage, and wait for a few hours. Grr…but often they were right.

Until they weren’t. We went through a period of about three weeks of total lack of Internet access at the shelter, and every single time I called, they said to wait a few hours. It was like pulling teeth to get someone to come out and discover that the ancient phone lines were faulty. At one point when I told them I needed to talk to a supervisor, they put me on hold for ten minutes, then put me on speakerphone with the World’s Sullenest Asshole who answered every question in monosyllables until I gave up. Eventually I somehow got escalated to their serious support department, and they sent someone out who discovered that, lo and behold, their shitty old phone lines had frayed.

We switched to a new company soon thereafter, and when they called asking why we’d switched, I gave them a calm-as-I-could-be explanation of how we used our Internet connection to post pictures of our animals online, and how that was a major way we were able to adopt our animals out, and that if we weren’t able to adopt animals out, they had to be euthanized, and that I couldn’t quantify how many puppies we’d had to kill during those three weeks in which they refused to come out and look at our lines. By the end of the call, the company rep was sobbing.

Felt good.

[dnooman]

@Stoid

I wish there was a way to just start off with: Hi. You aren’t going to be able to help me, because I’m not Joe Technophobe who actually looks at my furniture when you tell me to check my desktop. Before you ask, yes, I repaired permissions. Yes, I rebooted the computer. No, I haven’t added any third party software today. Yes, the problem persists in a new account, etc. Tried all the stuff your book tells you to tell me to try first. So can you please just start by escalating this call to second tier support right off the bat? Please??

There is. The few times I’ve had to call the cable company about my connection, I’ve always started with what steps I had already taken (powering off all equipment, powering on from the wall in, clearing cache, disabling firewall, pinging the router, DNS, and known good IPs etc.).

There’s was either a pause, or an ooookaaaaayyy… followed by them asking tier 2 what the issue might be. The issue was always on their side, and was usually fixed by them resetting something.

I used to do premium tech support for Verizon ISP, you had to pay a monthly fee to even talk to our department (I know, it’s not fair). We were allowed to, and required to, fix anything and everything a caller asked about. Got a new MP3 player for Christmas and don’t know how to use it? Yeah, we had to give it our best effort, not that it would have been that tricky. The bling guy that called at least three times a day was tough, because how many sighted people are familiar with software that reads out web page data? The rest of the geeks gave me some sympathy after he was literally my first call in that department.

We could walk a user through everything except a complete OS re-install, and anything that required opening the case of the computer. We found and removed more malware than I can describe. One guy had to be woken up after his shift ended because he was babysitting some guy’s full system scan and had fallen asleep.

The department was dissolved, and those that didn’t quit were put back on the front lines of tier 1 support. The catch was, they were trying a new approach where you had to follow a flow chart or else you would fail a monitored call. It was not fun because even if you knew the ultimate solution, you had to go through all the tedious steps. OTOH, if you were feeling lazy, you could just go through the chart and escalate if it didn’t fix the issue.

If you think tech support for Macs and PCs is frustrating, try getting support for other types of machines that have computers in them like credit card machines. I do tech support for and program them all day long, but when a weird issue comes up I can only call one level of support, and if they don’t know what to do (often not) then I’m fucked. The manufacturers don’t provide support and refer you to a dealer or other entity that doesn’t know shit.

[yellowjacketcoder]

Ah tech support.

My favorite was calling up AT&T when trying to get DSL in an apartment a few years back. The conversation went like this:

Me: Hi, I’m not getting a signal for my router through your DSL line.
Him: Have you tried running the update CD?
Me: I have a linux machine, so no. I did run the usual network discovery through the terminal.
Him: Oh, so you have a Mac?
Me: :smack: No, I have a linux machine.
Him: Sir, I need to know whether you have a Windows computer or a Mac computer.
Me: Neither, I’m running Ubuntu Linux.
Him: Hmm, let me write that down.
Me:

Turns out the installer hadn’t hooked up the phone line correctly. What a surprise.

[yojimbo]

Yep. I feel your pain. I’m a sys admin and do 2nd/3rd level support of several systems for a large financial services company. Our 1st level support is very good as we don’t have a script and the staff are well trained and allowed think and learn for themselves. We do have users that know a lot and do all the correct trouble shooting procedures before they ring. There are some that just lie however. I’ve been remoted into someones machine and asked them to do something and they say they’ve done it without realizing that I’m watching their screen and see that they didn’t do a thing. They just didn’t want to admit they didn’t understand the instruction or think that the instruction was stupid. It’s very annoying.

When I’m on the other end I try to be patient with people who are obviously going through a script because I know a lot of them have no choice. The script has to be followed and the steps ticked off or the support staff could face disciplinary action. It can be very annoying but that’s the world we live in. It would be very expensive to staff helpdesks with certified staff. Easier and cheaper for a lot of places to just train a cheap new hire to follow the script and weed out the low level problems before the expensive staff’s time get taken up with support calls.

I do feel your pain though. Users like you are the ones I like getting calls from.

[Joey_P]

I have a backdoor at Time Warner. A while ago I was having a problem with my Tuning Adapter. It needed to be reset on their end, I knew this based on the way it was blinking. I called their tech support number. They asked me what it was doing, they had me reset it (you know that’s going to take like 3 minutes right?) they had me reset my Tivo (you know that’s going to take like 10 minutes right, and I told you I already tried). Anyways, after about 20 minutes he tells me it needs to be reset at their end and he needs to kick me up to Tier 2 (duh). We start the process over again and he eventually kicks me to Tier 3, the only people that can reset it. Finally.

A few weeks later, I have to go through the whole process again.

A few weeks later I have to to through it again. This time, while talking to the Tier 3 guy he mentioned that he remembers talking to me last time and I told him what a PITA it is to spend 45 minutes getting through Tier 1 and 2 just to get to him. So, he put a note in my file and now, when I have this problem, I skip Tech Support, hit the number for billing so I can talk to someone that isn’t working from a script, explain my problem quickly and tell them there’s a note in my file and that I need to be booted right up to Tier 3. Now I can get there in 5 minutes instead of 45.

That little note also gives me that much more leverage when I have an issue with my service and need to complain.

[Chimera]

T1 people usually get ‘coached’ (not a good thing) if their T2 consultation rate is too high. However, at many places, if you’ve already dealt with T2 on your issue, you can (and should) be automatically booted up to them. Some T1s don’t want to do that or think they’ll get yelled at for doing it (and some T2s are complete assholes to T1s*). Sometimes all it really takes is asking to be escalated.

These jobs usually pay crap, involve taking a lot of shit, and are extremely stressful. Turnover is well over 100% per year. So yeah, you’re usually stuck talking to someone who knows little more than their basic several-weeks of training taught them.

• I’ve seen an awful lot of T2s have to be ‘coached’ about how mean they are to T1s, or even disciplined for refusing to take calls because they thought the issue was easy and the T1 should be able to do it (where you were NOT allowed to refuse calls at the last place I was).

[Drunky_Smurf]

It really does suck being smarter than 99.99% of the pleebs. I feel ya.

[TimeWinder]

1. The market places a very high value on people with good technical skills, perhaps higher than any other skill you can get with similar amounts of training.

2. The market places a very low value on people for phone technical support, in-store “sales consultants” and catalog sales, often in the “part time, minimum wage” range.

Homework: Determine why the people in group (1) have very low overlap with the jobs in group (2).

Extra credit: How much influence should you give to group (3):

3. People are not willing to pay enough for consumer electronics to cover paying for people from group (1) to do the jobs from group (2).

[dnooman]

@Chimera

These jobs usually pay crap, involve taking a lot of shit, and are extremely stressful. Turnover is well over 100% per year. So yeah, you’re usually stuck talking to someone who knows little more than their basic several-weeks of training taught them.

The place I worked at had a HUGE turnover rate, In fact, they never, ever, ever stop hiring. That says a lot. The fact that the employees were at the same time incentivized to a ridiculous degree, and were almost treated as the enemy by management also says a lot.