Anyone had this bad an experiance before?

[VonVulcan]

I have experienced similar difficulties with different aspects of computers and internet tech support, but nothing as bad as this... WOW.

http://www.granneman.com/personal/journ ... /index.htm

[JMEaT]

Damn. That is maddning.

And I have an HP laptop

[DarkFlameWolf]

customer service anywhere sucks, you learn to start smacking people physically to get stuff done nowadays. Lead pipes work better though when bringing discipline.

[catch22]

That is pretty extreme. I like his course of action to deal with it.

I think every experience now-a-days is similar to those people that know a bit about how computers operate.

I honestly lie and just tell whoever is on the other line that I already did whatever they're asking me to do. Speeds thing up greatly.

[Stryker]

I've had quite a bit of experience with Dell, and I must say they were very, very good about tech support.

First time, I was transferred to an Indian guy. \"Oh great,\" I thought, \"Here we go...\"

But it was not to be. The Indian guy on the other end of the line was actually very well-informed, knew enough to know that I knew EXACTLY what I was talking about, and quickly came to the same conclusion I had--that is, that the motherboard on the laptop in question was dead.

A few more minutes on the phone and I had a scheduled appointment with a technician the next day, who did an on-site replacement of the motherboard for free. Keep in mind, with these Dell laptops, you have to take almost the ENTIRE THING apart to replace the motherboard, and the motherboard is partially integrated into the structure of the laptop, composing approximately a third of the mass of the whole laptop.

Needless to say, I was amazed.

Another time, I had to replace a floppy drive on a desktop machine--they shipped us a new floppy drive after 15 minutes on the phone and simply requested that we stick the malfunctioning drive into the box we got the new one in and put it in the mail.

Granted, this was through a small business's support number, and we do buy quite a bit of equipment from Dell, but still!

[Foil]

I honestly lie and just tell whoever is on the other line that I already did whatever they're asking me to do. Speeds thing up greatly.

[Rant]
Agreed, but only if you know what you're talking about.

As part of my position at work, I occasionally have to address tech calls about the product I've built. One of the most frustrating things is supervisors who think they know what they're talking about, and try to BS me by claiming to have done things they never did, or exaggerating the issue to ridiculous proportions:

"Did you restart [company program] after the update?"
"Yes, multiple times!" (Of course, they clearly haven't, it's obvious from the error they're getting. When this is pointed out, they claim that I don't know what I'm doing. Huh? I built the program!)

"What is the error you're getting?"
"It's popping up all over the place! [So-and-so] can't get their work done at all! We've tried everything!" (Of course, when I talk with so-and-so, it turns out not to be an error at all, it's just a common misunderstanding. Plus, so-and-so was still able to manually do everything they needed to, and just needed a quick explanation about how to use the function.)

[/Rant]

That said, I like this guy's idea of keeping a diary of what happened, and writing it up as a web page.

[TIGERassault]

I've had quite a bit of experience with Dell, and I must say they were very, very good about tech support.

First time, I was transferred to an Indian guy. "Oh great," I thought, "Here we go..."

But it was not to be. The Indian guy on the other end of the line was actually very well-informed, knew enough to know that I knew EXACTLY what I was talking about, and quickly came to the same conclusion I had--that is, that the motherboard on the laptop in question was dead.

A few more minutes on the phone and I had a scheduled appointment with a technician the next day, who did an on-site replacement of the motherboard for free. Keep in mind, with these Dell laptops, you have to take almost the ENTIRE THING apart to replace the motherboard, and the motherboard is partially integrated into the structure of the laptop, composing approximately a third of the mass of the whole laptop.

Needless to say, I was amazed.

Another time, I had to replace a floppy drive on a desktop machine--they shipped us a new floppy drive after 15 minutes on the phone and simply requested that we stick the malfunctioning drive into the box we got the new one in and put it in the mail.

Granted, this was through a small business's support number, and we do buy quite a bit of equipment from Dell, but still!

Yes, Dell do have very good customer support!
Along with that, I think Lego, Cadburys and Nintendo also deserve a good mention for their customer support!

[MD-2389]

I have experienced similar difficulties with different aspects of computers and internet tech support, but nothing as bad as this... WOW.

http://www.granneman.com/personal/journ ... /index.htm

And this folks, is why I build them on my own. Then again, because of useless tools like that, people like me actually have business.

[Krom]

Yeah, the rest of us live off of the slack from incompetent tech support lines.

[Immortal Lobster]

I blame fedex for that persons shipping problems

but in all honesty, I have a Compaq laptop, IVe called in under tech support a few times, they are the most helpful techs ive ever spoken with, english, clear, when I explained my experience the mood changes a little, and she spoke with me like a person, not an idiot, when all was said and done, problem was fixed, a new CD-Drive was in the mail \"just in case it breaks again\" and she sent me a full schematic part-by-part of my laptop, I will definetly buy from HP again just becuase of that. Dell, unless you call in under the business support line, your screwed, i have never once spoken with a dell tech that made me feel like the problem was solved in the end, and they treat everybody like a complete moron. sorry, Ill pass on a dell.

[catch22]

Agreed, but only if you know what you're talking about.

I can understand your frustration when someone is just demanding attention and lying for the sake of getting it. But as you said, if I know what I'm talking about and the individual on the other end knows what their talking about, chances are our conversation will be very productive, as well as honest.

Unfortunatly, its seemingly (for me) becoming more common for the tech support end to have no idea what the words mean that they are speaking. In many cases (and many tech support people will openly admitt this) they are following a step-by-step guide on how to properly relay the problem through the beauracracy, which can have very negative effects,as is the case with this gentleman.

I suppose your right, it's not a very moral thing to do. However, I trust my judgement and it has so far yeilded good results.

[Admiral Thrawn]

Man guys!!! The stories I could tell you!!! I actually used to work for Gateway. Came in at a level called TSP, which basically meant I had considerable hardware and software experience before coming into the company. Unfortunately, I could not say the same for the majority of the other employees.

I worked in the Kansas City callcenter where we handled corporate and business. Let me tell you about the typical customer support worker that works for these companies.

Most are complete NEWBIES when it comes to hardware and software. They are trained to look at some knowledge base for their answer rather than getting in depth knowledge about how the pc works. Some haven't even seen the inside of a pc.

These hardware companies INSIST that customers be reformatted and reloaded before a machine comes back for repair. Basically because they don't want to spend the time fixing or resolving a software issue, especially if their might be 3rd party software on the machine, AND they don't know how to properly troubleshoot hardware issues.

I actually got in trouble for replacing hardware on client's machines without reformatting them first. If a business client calls me up, tells me that not even the friggin BIOS is coming up, and I'm getting POST beeps on the system, I know for a fuggin fact it's a hardware issue. But management forces you to \"Try the reload cd anyway!\".

Most of the techs swing calls due to the call center call requirements. When I first started at Gateway, we had to meet an average time of 25 minutes per issue. By the time I was quitting, that had been down to 14. Because of this, most tech's started using the \"Try this and call us back\" technique.

I finally decided to quit after a customer recieved a pc with no cpu in it. Sometimes UPS can be a bit rough on machines and cause components to become unseated, so I actually had her open it up and describe what she saw. I realized from what she was seeing that there was an empty cpu socket. I created an order to replace the pc and got reprimanded for doing so.

I still have nightmares. And yes, I can tell you some interesting stories about clients as well. I won't go into detail, but there was a guy who broke his laptop cd-rom drive on accident after getting his genitalia stuck in it when closing the tray.

And then the ★■◆● from New York who demanded an on site tech to install a scanner. A replacement scanner (so that means drivers are already installed), and it was also USB!!!!! Screamed at me for 30+ minutes because she felt it was \"beneath\" her to set up the replacement scanner.

And I could go on and on

[Ferno]

I'd get about halfway through that experience, cut my losses and turn that HP box inside out with a sledgehammer.


\"I won't go into detail, but there was a guy who broke his laptop cd-rom drive on accident after getting his genitalia stuck in it when closing the tray.\"

FOR the WIN! LMAO!

btw, hey kor.

[Foil]

Most of the techs swing calls due to the call center call requirements. When I first started at Gateway, we had to meet an average time of 25 minutes per issue. By the time I was quitting, that had been down to 14. Because of this, most tech's started using the "Try this and call us back" technique.

My department supports a huge call center, so I know *exactly* what you're talking about. Often, management is only looking at "per call" numbers, and they push the requirements so far that the poor service folk end up either way behind, or they start taking shortcuts, which just makes it frustrating for the customers. (So then of course, management sees dwindling customer service scores, and things just get worse.)

[Lobber]

Has anyone had an experience as bad as this before?