Tech Support

[Gator]

So, Anyone have any tricks/suggestions for quickly getting past the first level of tech support without wasting half a day and getting pissed enough to throw a computer monitor (crt, not lcd)?

This morning, I get on the phone with tech support. The lady spends two hours going back and forth trying fruitless troubleshooting paths. Right at the beginning, I ask her if the problem could be such and such, and she says "oh no, it's definitely not that"

Anyway, I'm back on with them again tonight to see if I can clear it up and the tech says, "hey, I think I figured it out - looks like 'such and such'"

I say, "would you believe me if I told you that I suggested that to the first-level-tech at 8am this morning?"

He says, "I apologize."

That first-level-tech needs to know when she's in over her head. I think her sole job is to answer the silly questions "I can't get my email" -- "did you hit the send/receive button" ... "I can't see that web page" -- "did you turn on your computer yet?"

Arghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, frustration over.

-B

[KODIAK]

I don't think it's any better over here. Jeez, the military doctors are pretty much the same:
"So, doc, I got this problem and I think it might be such and such cos I got this feeling in my stomach and it felt like that and I used to have this problem. Do you think we should do a CT scan?"
Yes, that's a great idea. Let me make the arrangements!"
. . . . duh!! :shock: :roll:

[Hammer]

well, you get first level techs that think they are all that... that is the issue. happens often enough, and i see it in my company as well with our own techs. they quickly get fixed though... ;)

the best way is to just tell them straight up that you do not think what they are telling you is correct and you want to escalate now. if they do not want to do so, ask for their supervisor.

[Tach Deneva]

I was getting what I considered too many port scans last week. So I called Bellsouth tech support about it. The first tech said I needed to call Dell and have them update my Norton Anti-Virus because it was trying to update itself and that was what was causing the port scans. He said he had the same problem two weeks earlier and calling Dell fixed it. I thanked him and hung up.

Then I called back and got a different tech - a female, this time. She did something, I'm not sure what, but afterwards there were no more port scans.

Shortly after that I discovered I coud not log onto my usual City of Heroes server (they have 12 servers: 6 'east coast' servers in Virginia, 6 'west coast' servers in California - the one I play on is in California). I soon determined that while I could log on to all the east coast servers, the west coast servers were inaccessible; they kept giving me DBserver errors. The west coast servers were up and running just fine, however - my friends were playing there, as usual, with no problems. I just couldn't log on and join them. Then I discovered that I was not alone: several people posted on the COH forums to say that they could not log on to the west coast servers - and they were all from Kentucky, all using Bellsouth DSL...

No port scans, tho!

Next day the situation had not changed. So I called Bellsouth tech support again. The first tech was female. I tried to get her to understand that there seemed to be a statewide problem with Bellsouth. She insisted on resetting my modem. After two hours of going around and around and around, she'd managed to screw up my internet connection so that it was 'always on' instead of letting me connect/disconnect at will (it had been a bridged ethernet connection before she got ahold of it). Two hours and a supervisor tech later, my internet connection was still not restored to its original state, but it was close enough that I could once again disconnect from the internet without shutting the PC down. After all that I still couldn't log on to the COH west coast servers - but the supervisor (who was also a gamer and interested in COH) said he'd pass that along to the 'advanced' techs.

A couple of hours later, the west coast servers became available again to Bellsouth DSL users in Kentucky. And the port scans resumed, although not as many as before and the ones I'm getting now all come from some Halliburton Company (oil) in Texas.

TD

ps: these guys and gals were in the Phillipines, btw.

[KODIAK]

That's another crazy idea going on over here too. 'Tech' support is located in some faraway country (some of us have never heard of!). Saves the company millions of pounds, and the savings are paid back to the customers! (yeah right!) Only one snag, you can't understand a word they're bloody saying!