The service department

[tdn]

erislover, I agree with most of your OP. But I fondly remember the last time I called tech support, about a year ago. Let’s go over your list again, with that call in mind. Just for fun, of course.

1. Don’t tell me what’s wrong. If you knew what the fuck was wrong, you’d not be calling me.

I knew exactly what was wrong. What I needed was a step-by-step of how to fix it. You, instead, have me reversing polarities, rebooting, unplugging stuff, and checking my system resources.

2. Don’t tell me your theories about what’s wrong unless you’re going to test them and fix the thing yourself. Your half-assed, uninformed theory (or worse, basket of theories) colors your description of events to the point that I don’t understand the problem and can’t easily help you. Simple description is concise and hard to misunderstand.

It wasn’t difficult to confuse you using a simple description in your native tongue.

3. Giving me your interpretation of events doesn’t make you look smart.

Granted. OTOH, your “solutions” didn’t exactly color you as a supergenius.

4. If you think you have a theory and you want to test it, see (1).

I finally did, during the sixth time you put me on hold to “check your resources.”

5. Check the goddamn power.

Get some training.

6. Just because I ask you to check the power or the switch or whatever doesn’t mean I think you’re an idiot.

No, but it means you are.

7. But you are an idiot.

An idiot who eventually solved his own problem, one that you should have solved in five minutes.

I understand that most tech support people are awesome, and I know that some customers are dumber than a bag of spatulas. Hey, I used to do tech support. But this guy was a real case, and he seemed only slighly below average at Comcast. It was incredibly frustrating for him to put me on hold to check his resources every two minutes, when I already told him what the problem was.

The problem, by the way, was that I needed to install a driver. The CD autorun just crashed. What you had to do was stop the autorun, go in through Control Panel, and look for the right file through there. You’d think they’d cover that in day 1 of training.

[erislover]

I deal with research instrumentation, not cable modems. While I am sure the average computer user is an expert in all things right up to the moment where it doesn’t work and have to call tech support, I have nothing to say for or against your typical tech support person as I am largely unfamiliar with that work.

Wait. There was this time with a CD player which was supposed to play MP3s but I couldn’t get it to work, and the support person didn’t even know what an MP3 was. That was embarassing for the human race as a whole. Though I did have a theory why it didn’t work…

[tdn]

@erislover

the support person didn’t even know what an MP3 was.

Ouch.

I once talked to a MS support person who’d never heard of The Sims. Maybe that’s something they don’t play much in India.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

Each time I call my ISP because I cannot connect to the internet, one of the first things they want me to do is to disconnect my router. Because my husband set up my system, and generally maintains it, almost all of the connections that I need to get to are in places that I can’t get to (see She Woman Man Haters thread, also in the Pit). Now, if I say that I don’t want to do it, the CSR says that we can’t continue. But if I elaborate, and say that I’m mobility impaired and cannot do this, then suddenly the CSR knows of another way to get my computer talking to the internet again. Will miracles never cease? Why does the CSR, or rather my ISP, want me to disconnect and reconnect my router?

And I wish to take this opportunity to say that yes, I HAVE turned my computer off and on, and my modem as well, before I call tech support. I do this because they ask me to do it every time. Now, the boilerplate greeting tells me to do this (and it’s probably a good idea to remind the user, as I’ve found that doing these two things often clear my problem right up). I also check all the connections that I can reach, to see if any have come loose. Unless the CSR is gonna do something absolutely miraculous at his end, I think that he should TAKE MY WORD FOR IT when I tell him that I’ve already shut down and rebooted the computer, and fiddled with the modem.

[Lord_Ashtar]

@Lynn_Bodoni

Unless the CSR is gonna do something absolutely miraculous at his end, I think that he should TAKE MY WORD FOR IT when I tell him that I’ve already shut down and rebooted the computer, and fiddled with the modem.

Of course you did. But not everyone is honest about that. Like I said, people lie.

[Roland_Orzabal]

Back when I did phone tech support – online banking support, really, but same difference; it involved a lot of walking clueless people through getting online so they could get to our website (technically out of my scope of service, but what the hell) – I had a trick for this sort of situation.

If I had reason to suspect the customer was lying when they claimed to have done the initial checklist (the miraculous ten-second reboot, the completed cord-check followed by having to walk a good distance to get to the computer to open IE, etc.), I would have them change some innocuous setting, then tell them to complete that step again. You’d be utterly amazed how often the following conversation actually worked:

Me: Now, Mr. Johnson, I’d like you to restart your computer please.

Him: Okay…[eight second pause] done. Still doesn’t work.

Me: All right, great, that tells me what I need to know. Now, do you see the Internet Explorer icon on your desktop?

Him: Yes.

Me: I’d like you to right-click that icon, and select “Rename”. Then, change the name to “Internet Explorer - IE”, and press Enter.

Him: Okay.

Me: Now, restart your computer.

Him: All right…[90 second pause]…hey, it works! Wow, that’s all it took to fix it?!"

Me: Yessir, I find that usually does the trick in situations like yours. [MUTE] Dumbass. [/MUTE] Thanks for calling Craptacular Bank, and have a great day!

[Quartz]

@erislover

Derleth, that’s funny, because when I have communication faults one of my suggestions is “swap COM1 and COM2.” Not because there’s a difference, but because it does sometimes resolve the issue because their connection is loose.

Try suggesting ‘thermal expansion’ instead as why they should pull the cable out and plug it back in.