The Horror Of Tech Support

[Death By Jell-O]

Why does tech support suck so bad? I hate having to wait on some person to look up the answers to my questions on their computers........Are they slackers or do they really get that many stupid questions that they can't answer my relevant one in a decent amount of time?

[Vodstok]

I have been on both sides of this. one thing i will grant them, when you have been asked the same stupid question 10 times a day every day, you start not caring what ANYONES problem is.

[Angelakillsluts]

I hate how they transfer me to someone else and then when I ask the person they tranferred me they act as if I'm dumb for asking them and they tranfer me back to the first guy. AAARrrrRg! *blood vessel pops*

[urgeok]

just like every other walk of life ,,, there are good and bad in both sides of the issue.

I was tech support .. there were a lot of dumb ass people who constantly needed their bums wiped and their shoelaces tied that develope a dependancy on teck suppoty akin to a crack cocaine addiction. and there are a lot of moronic misfits in the job of tech support. where nerds go to die.

when a good person gets a bad techie .. its not pleasant.
its fun to watch when a bad person gets a bad techie though :)

[Death By Jell-O]

It's just irritating because I only use Tech if I ABSOLUTELY need to......They just need a more comprehensive FAQ if they get a lot of redundant questions.......My inquiry is very easy to answer, I just cannot answer it myself......GRRRRR......I just want my website back up dammit!

[ShankS]

only annoying n00bs who've messed up the work network, phone tech support :D

[Angelakillsluts]

I always call with good questions, and I walways get assholes. Actually I've stopped calling tech support, it never gets me anywhere.

[Vodstok]

eek. Vermont? eek.... no wonder your service sucks....

Just kidding. When imet my wife, she went to school in vermont, and the time spent there wasnt great....

im glad i rarely handle any support calls these days. after 3 years, i dont care about their plight. i am a programmer and shouldnt be resetting passwords anyway.

i do understand, though. there is nothing worse than a tech support person who doesnt know their shit: IE, the dumb fuck that sits across from me. This is a guy who wants to start his own computer repair business, and does pc tech work here, and told me "Terminology isnt important"

[MichaelMyers]

Bastards.

[ShankS]

the only time I've ever had to ring, not through my choice was when my netgear router went belly up. I first phoned the site where I bought the hardware and they wouldnt RMA it and said it was a back to manufacturer policy.

I'd had this thing running for a few months with 5 systems with no trouble and it decided to stop working. did the usual reset stuff etc, even tryed it on another lan, but no joy.

rang netgear and the guy the other end was really trying to get out of replacing it to save the company money I guess. He wasnt convinced it was knackered lol. In the end, I managed to get return details and sent it to them and had it tested, they emailed me a few days later and said a replacement was on its way. lol

[urgeok]

here's one from the other side .. when i used to do desktop/helpdesk support type stuff i got a call from this manager that said his
PC had a power problem - kept switching off and on.

I went to see him and he had this 'stupid computers and support guys' attitude.

I turned it on and watched it go off ... and in 5 seconds i figured out the problem ..

this masterbating membrane was swinging his feet back and forth under his desk like a 3 year old kid at a park .. he was occasionally kicking the power switch on his power bar ... off ,,, then on ...

i just looked at him and shook my head .. and walked away.

normally a career limiting move but no one liked or respected the ass so it wasnt a big deal.

[Centaur]

My luck has varied.

I had a year of McAfee Hell with tech support on Virusscan, then I changed to Norton and didn't realize how nice McAfee's support was.

Nobody at Norton could speak understandable English I don't know where in the hell they outsource to but the native language is not English or Spanish.

Everything worked out fine, though--I returned the McAfee to Fry's Electronics for a refund, and Norton sent a refund by mail.

Now I have free Avast!, and it hasn't needed tech support.

[I_Still_Know!]

Originally posted by Death By Jell-O
Why does tech support suck so bad? I hate having to wait on some person to look up the answers to my questions on their computers........Are they slackers or do they really get that many stupid questions that they can't answer my relevant one in a decent amount of time?

In our defence there is a hell of a lot to remember for a tech suppor person. And not to mention the fact that you are usually working ALL DAY with someone (the users) looking over your shoulder. Trust me, that gets to you... and that is why the support person goes back to their desk, their 'space' to work out what the problem may be and then come back with a few ideas.

At my last place of employment (which was a charity, so we did not have a lot of cash to throw around) we did not have a SOE. So we had every Microsoft Operating System to support - 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP. Various makes and models of computers, different peripherals attached to those machines. There was no way we were ever going to know it all off the top of our heads. We would have loved to, but it just aint gonna happen.

Then there is the fact the pretty much anything with a power cable falls under the IT departments umbrella (well it did for us). So you find yourself being a printer mechanic, audio visual expert, etc etc etc :rolleyes:

I think that support is a small part knowledge, a larger part knowing where to go to get answers, and an even larger part customer service.

[Steve_Hutchison]

Tech support offices dont have an interesting environment to work in. A lot of technicians get call after call, and most of the time, the people who call in are either lazy or arrogant. It gets them irritated.

[Vodstok]

Originally posted by Steve_Hutchison
Tech support offices dont have an interesting environment to work in. A lot of technicians get call after call, and most of the time, the people who call in are either lazy or arrogant. It gets them irritated. Absolutely. you can onlu get so many "My computer doesnt work, FIX it..." calls before you become apathetic about human suffering in general.

go here for some hilarious reading:
http://rinkworks.com/stupid/

[urgeok]

its one of the jobs (like the doctor) where people only come to you when something broke - so they are already agitated and demanding when they get to you.
Not everyone is like that but enough of a number to make a name.

its hard to even make them happy once you fix their problem because you only got things to where they should have been all along - not something extra to brighten up their day.

value added service (can i wash your car for you too ?) is great if you have the time.
or you arent bitter as hell by then yourself..

[I_Still_Know!]

Originally posted by Steve_Hutchison
Tech support offices dont have an interesting environment to work in. A lot of technicians get call after call, and most of the time, the people who call in are either lazy or arrogant. It gets them irritated.

I work on a Service Desk now for a global company and the main difference between my last job and this job is that we can not go to users machines, we get calls and emails from AOA zone (Africa-Oceania-Asia) people and our job is to act as a filter to resolution groups. Resolve what we can, and escalate what we can't.

100% phone support is the support you don't want to be doing. It is FUCKED!
As Steve mentioned above sometimes people call that are lazy and\or arrogant... or silly.

I had a call the other day and the user told me what was or was not happening I asked him to try something, and he said "ok" and then there was silence for around 30 seconds... I said "have you done that?"

He said "I will as soon as my computer reboots - I shut it down just before I called you to see if it resolves the problem. I am just restarting it"

I said pretty sarcastically "ok, great... did you want to call back when you have your machine up and running and we can take it from there?"

A full reboot of our machines takes around 12 minutes and I was not waiting on the phone for that amount of time. he did not call back so again the mighty reboot resolved the problem.

Its calls like that (from one of our resolution group people) that leave you scratching your head and wondering how can we be ESCALATING tickets to these people??

[Death By Jell-O]

Man, this tech guy is a retard....All he needs to do is sync up my domain name with the server. It's been 5 days and the retard keeps emailing me back with stupid questions. I'm getting tired of e-mail tag.