Well, I’ll let you read it, but it felt like something the SDMB might appreciate. Perhaps less than people on technical help message boards.
Read the title-text.
Even worse than that is when they come back to a thread and say “Never mind! Fixed it!” and then don’t elaborate.
Argh!
Mrs. FtG keeps getting an error message when using her work’s webmail. Zero hits for the error message on Google. I’d actually be happier if I got one hit. 0 is a lonelier number than 1.
Basically, companies don’t do customer support and have switched to a BBS model. That works great for the basic, simple technical problems, but once you get to anything complex, they’re useless.
The situation described happens to me at least once a month.
What I hate is when there’s one reply saying, “Why don’t you just Google it?”
What I hate is when there is an answer–on the fifth page of the Google results. Yeah, I’ve found the answer, but no one else is going to. And with various policies on zombies, I never have any idea if I can update the post–nor whether I’d really want to sign up for a forum just for that purpose.
Or sorting through five pages of responses like “You shouldn’t want to do that” (actually, I do) or “Have you tried turning it on and off again?” (random guessing is not helping).
Oh, man, when I was taking a Linux class that focused on Ubuntu, that was the bane of my existence.
There oughta be a rule! /shakes fist
I would think that for a complex problem, a BBS model would be my best bet. But I guess the default support I expect is someone entering my symptoms and reading from a list.
Actually, usually, just the “reading from a list” part.
I’ve gotten really good at googling my issues and fast-scanning for reasonable answers. I can parse out a lot of bullshit answers in a big hurry due to my experience, but they really piss me off because they’re just screwing with people who really need help and don’t know that telling them to do X has fuck-all to do with Problem Y.
This last week I ran into a couple of issues that my Google Machine came up with nothing for, and a couple where people asked about it, but received no answers. In these cases, I can only rely on my experience and start doing the standard matrix of troubleshooting steps to narrow down the issue. Usually works, but occasionally you get some fucknugget who refuses to do the work and just tells you to “do more research” and get back to them. Sure thing, bub. If you don’t hear back, it’s because I didn’t find anything on it. Good Luck!
How true. Happened to me several times. It is haunting.
Especially if they also mention that it was a really simple solution.
I saw that strip earlier this morning and have certainly run into it a few times.
One time though, I did it to someone else. I had a problem that I had searched high and low for. The only thing I could find anywhere was a few other people asking the same question. I finally asked on one of my more technically oriented message boards and a few days later I got it fixed (and may have updated the thread to reflect that).
Now, this other message board I’ll frequent it for a month or two at a time, but then might not think about it again for 6 or 7 months. So a few months back I signed on to see that I had a PM waiting for me. It was several months old and from someone asking me what I ever did to resolved the problem.
I didn’t respond since I honestly didn’t remember and the person wasn’t a member of the board beyond sending me that message.
Ages ago I bought a Microsoft C compiler for my 286 dosshell computer and couldn’t figure out why my code would compile but give crazy results.
I called MS support several time and finally got one guy who knew what was wrong.
Apparently there was an option called 'incremental compile" that would only compile lines that had changed since the last compile to make it faster.
Only it didn’t work.
And it was hidden deep in the options.
And it was turned ON by default.
And the support people were not allowed to discuss it because it was a known flaw.
To this day I wonder how many people gave up programming in C because of this stupid flaw that was enough to bring you to tears.
I have discovered a truly marvelous solution to your problem that the margin of this web page is too narrow to contain.
(ETA: Ref.)
Senegoid, I think you can safely assume that anyone on this board, and in a thread about XKCD, doesn’t need the link.
Never mind, I figured it out.
Oooh. I like you. Welcome to the boards.