When you call tech support, do you argue with the tech?

[Viper GTS]

Stupid bitch calls up complaining that she "hasn't had e-mail or internet access all day." She said she was on a network, so while I was looking up stuff I asked if any of the other computers were working. She went off about how "Me & my husband have been doing computers for 15 years, we're pretty astute about doing this stuff, I can guarantee it's not our computers, it's not our modem, yada, yada, yada..." So while I'm listening to her bitch, I notice something glaringly obvious - her modem isn't even connected. So I ask her to power cycle it. Big mistake. "Let me tell you something. I'm coming from one direction, you're coming from another. Everytime something has gone wrong it's been your system, it's not my modem! I don't give a tinkers damn, yada, yada, yada..." Ma'am, your router is not connected to us. There are any number of possibilities as to WHY that is, but the only way to find out is to make it reconnect. The only way to do that is to power cycle it. Now will you PLEASE power cycle your router?

:|:|:|:|:|

Viper GTS

 

[Locutus of Board]

If you were on the other end, I would.....

 

[bonkers325]

viper gts i feel for u

we get them here too

 

[Optimus]

Yes, and the bigger the customer, the bigger the complaining!

Right now I have Viacom and Disney both pulling at my time, while the NFL are yelling for attention at the same time...

 

[virtuamike]

Woohoo, I got the most awesome call the other day! Some lady called up our data center saying that there was something wrong with our servers. She couldn't type anything into her online banking webpages. She could open up any other webpage she wanted but when it came to her banking should couldn't type in her info. Started checking up some switches and routers, see if anything was down or being misdirected. Have her check to see if her browser is hung, the usual. Then I get the brilliant idea of telling her to use the numbers along the top row of the keyboard to type in her info. Bamm! She can type in her info. So I tell her to press numlock and try with the number pad. Bamm! Everything works again!! Servers down? Baa!

 

HAHAHAAHH
oh man I feel for ya totally.
People throw away their brains when they call people for help.

 

[Dameon]

I do server support.... paper-MCSE's are a friggin nightmare on this. All of 'em have this holier than thou attitude as though their certification makes it so they don't need to talk to me. News flash dipwap, hardware raid is a whole different story than software RAID. You CAN have a RAID 5 volume on the system volume. It will NOT see all the hard disks in Disk Administrator, only the logical drives configured on the RAID card. And finally.... I am hardware support... not software. I troubleshoot drivers.. not your network configuration. If it pings any friggin system out there, it works, end of my job.
I am not your network consultant.

 

[geno]

LOL, I know how it is man. There's always a slew of people who refuse to hear "help me help you"

 

[geno]

<< I troubleshoot drivers.. not your network configuration. If it pings any friggin system out there, it works, end of my job. >>


HAH, gotta love that one. I just love it when a customer calls up asking to make their software/hardware jump through loops. And I have the biggest $hiteating grin on my face when I say, &quot;Sorry, but that's not my responsability - you'll have to call Microsoft, bye.&quot;

 

[Windogg]

Hey Viper, I betcha your dream car would be a reality if you had a nickel each time someone called to ask when you will be putting &quot;Hotmail&quot; back up.

Windogg

 

[Viper GTS]

Windogg...

Fortunately, I made my exit from the ISP side of things. I'm strictly network support now, which makes life so much sweeter.

Viper GTS

 

[UnixFreak]

<< If you were on the other end, I would... >>


mount soapbox

you would understand if you were on our end. We seem basically the same problems everyday. We make an attempt to find those basic problems before we waste a bunch of your time. Customers get all offended when we ask if you have a splitter or a surge protector on the DSL line, and think we are talking down to them, but dont realize how many people buy a surge protector, install it, and then call us when the DSL doesnt work. Maybe you didnt, but we would rather ask, we lose 2 seconds, if that is not the problem, if it is, have you remove something you didnt know was affecting it, taking 5 minutes, than to have you on the phone for two hours, and sending a technician out, just to find that splitter you installed was the problem. I swear, some people call us just to try and show us up with their technical muscle. Guess what...we dont care if you know more or less than us.. we just want to help.
Maybe you do know more than me. But you called me. And being rude to us gets you nowhere, I am way more willing to help when someone isnt screaming at me. I am done now, I guess.
</soapbox>

BTW, Viper, is it just me, or are people way ruder than usual today?? I am blown away, I have had like 1 nice customer, all the rest have been way out of line. Interesting time to bring this up.

 

[ArkAoss]

listening to windogg, viper gts and UnixFreak makes me want to become a rodeo clown, Angry bulls seem so much more appealing.


and no one can quote that, if it seems good, I'll throw it in MY sig.

 

[Sluggo]

<< When you call tech support, do you argue with the tech? >>



Only if i think it is Viper GTS



<< Stupid bitch calls up complaining... >>



You actually might be surprised at how much of your attitude is picked up on by the customer, whether you think it does or not.

 

[Viper GTS]

Most of my people today have been pretty decent. Just not her. I was SO close to hanging up on her, &amp; I've never hung up on a customer yet. She just pushed all the wrong buttons, I guess.

And for the rest of you...

UnixFreak is right. By the time she'd finished railing me for my first question, I'd already discovered the source of the problem. I moved immediately to it, &amp; she flipped. Maybe she'd rather I just fold &amp; send a tech, but you wanna know what it was? Authentication. She'd failed it over 50 times today, her router had been sitting there trying over &amp; over again. But I had no way of knowing that immediately, I had to have her power cycle it to find out exactly what it did. Half the time they'll train right back up, &amp; there won't be a problem.

Sluggo...

I had no problem with her whatsoever until she started railing me for asking for info that I needed. People never give you information, you have to drag it out of them. I can deal with customers that don't know anything, that's what I'm here for. But if a customer isn't willing to work with me, &amp; yells at me for TRYING to work with her, she's not going to accomplish much other than piss me off. We're human too. I'm sure she did pick up a fair amount of attitude from me, that's what finally shut her up. I didn't say it, but my voice explicitly said &quot;Ma'am, if you try that sh!t again, you're going to get your ass hung up on.&quot;

Viper GTS

 

[Gatsby]

I try to be as nice as I can to tech support people. I hate customer service. its so much of a pain.

But if you get me pissed.. it ain't a pretty site. I think my record for complaints is 3 BBB in 3 different areas and emails to corporate and so forth. It wasn't pretty.

Gatsby - 795

 

[Pacfanweb]

Not the same line of work, but I had a customer call me the other day and tell me &quot;my 1997 Ekscort&quot;,(yes, Ekscort; Escort to those who can actually speak English), anyway, &quot;my 97 Ekscort won't start this morning, what's wrong with it, and is it covered up under my warranty?&quot;
(I've never understood how you can be &quot;up under&quot; something.)
I say, &quot;I don't know without looking at it, I can give you the # of a tow service so you can get it in here to be diagnosed.&quot;
&quot;But I need to know if it's covered up under my warranty!&quot;

&quot;Ma'am, I can't tell you that until I know what's wrong with it.&quot;

&quot;Well, I don't want it fixed if my warranty doesn't cover it.&quot;

&quot;Not a problem, you can simply pay the diagnostic charge and have it towed to the shop of your choice.&quot;

&quot;You mean I got to pay you just to tell me what's wrong with it even though you didn't fix it?&quot;

After about 5 minutes of going in circles with this woman, I finally told her thisremember, she's on the phone and has never seen me) &quot;Ma'am, I'll make you a deal, you tell me how you like the shirt I'm wearing today, and I'll tell you exactly what's wrong with your car.&quot;

Click.

Believe me, I feel your pain, daily.

 

[Windogg]

Gotcha Viper,

I'm suppose to handle networking, server, and managerial related tasks but I take on some of the help desk calls when the people there get overloaded. Some classic lines:

&quot;Are you upgrading my router to faster one soon?&quot;

&quot;I can't connect to Novell. I think you should give me a new IP address&quot;

&quot;Will AOL be upgrading us to version 6.0 of the internet?&quot;

&quot;Why are we wasting money on T1 lines when cable modem is so cheap?&quot;

&quot;Yea, us techs always play around with nic, vics, sics, and fics&quot; (?!?!?!?!?!?!) I figured the idiot meant video card when he said &quot;vic&quot;, sound card when he said &quot;sic&quot; but &quot;fic&quot; baffled me for the longest time. Then fellow members suggested &quot;fic&quot; was really &quot;phic&quot; as in &quot;phone interface card&quot; which the rest of the tech world would call a modem.

&quot;Why don't we get Linux?&quot; Always comes from someone that has yet to master turning on a monitor.

&quot;Switches? I thing you should upgrade to hubs like the rest of the world since they can share the line without have to switch to anything.&quot;

&quot;How come we're not allowed to download pr0n?&quot;

There are many more but those are the ones off the top of my head.

Windogg

 

[kranky]

I'm not a tech, but here's another two cents in support of them...

Having used hardware and software tech support for over 10 years, I can say I get much more help with a cooperative attitude. Too bad the crappy callers won't be reading this! Trying to impress the tech with uber-jargon doesn't work either. What works best for me is to state the problem plainly and simply, and just try to go along with the tech's playbook. (Up to the &quot;reformat and reinstall&quot; page, I ain't doing that just because the tech ran out of ideas - we have to both agree that's the logical step)

And when you get some extraordinary help, find out the name of the tech's supervisor and write the boss a nice letter about the tech. I've done that a few times, and if I get that same tech again down the road I'm treated like royalty. I'm usually dealing with non-Microsoft sized companies, so it's not too rare I get a person I've talked with before.

Dameon, we just got our PE2400 you advised me about a while ago. It's sweet. It has HW RAID so you never know, if we have a problem you might be the man.

 

[Nutcase99]

I never argue, hell I make friends with the guy! Last time I called my ISP I started talking about overclocking and what not

 

[Viper GTS]

kranky...

You'd be amazed the things you can get out of tech support if you're nice about it. I spent two hours today hanging on the line with an ISP tech trying to figure out why the heck this guy couldn't browse. I didn't have to do that. The guy wasn't the brightest customer I've ever talked to, but he was a pleasure to work with. That's all I ask. I'll gladly spend two hours or more with a single customer if they're decent, but I'll ditch the pushy, arrogant, asshole types the first chance I get.

Viper GTS

 

[Windogg]

Actually I talked with someone at CrapUSA that actually knew his stuff. Some moron was going off on the guy because he wanted a replacement power supply and they onyl had 250w ones. He accused the tech of intentionally trying to destroy his system with a &quot;over powered power supply&quot; blah blah blah... I interjected on his behalf and help straighten things out. The guy actually knew his stuff and has several home built systems.

Windogg

 

[Viper GTS]

An overpowered P/S?

LMAO! That's CLASSIC!



Viper GTS

 

[Soybomb]

Actually sometimes you guys can be dumbasses viper (I do tech support too hehe). IE: a few days ago we had to call our computer supplier (it was either kingdom or tangent...i dont remember today) to get an rma for a failed hd controller on the motherboard. The tech was insiting that it was an email virus and wasn't due to the hardware...usually the hardware techs are cool though and just give an rma number, especially the gateway guys for ev700 monitors, I swear we loose one every day. Our T1 provider varies, although we have our dumbass days too like when we called in a trouble ticket before we reset our TSU. Whoops

 

[vi edit]

Coming from a tech support position, one of the worse things that has EVER happened to me was getting stuck in &quot;case turnover&quot;.

Basically it involved this:

- Earlier in the morning the HP box goes down....HARD
- Throughout the day the client gets dragged along, wined, and dined
- I come in at 7:00 PM, the board is going off, and there's a call in the que. There's a note on my desk saying &quot;client is on hold...and they're pissed&quot;

I take the phone call, it ends up being the top executive of a very large hospital down in Atlanta. He wants to know what the hell is going on.

My inital reaction is &quot;who are you, and why are you calling me?&quot;

It sucks BIG TIME to get forced into a call where you have no idea of what's going on It's times like that when the client is more informed than the tech support