Why do IT/tech support people do this?

[Skyclad1uhm1]

About 4-5 years ago you would still have a reasonably good chance of immediately getting a technician when calling Dell support. Since then those moved to 3rd or 4th line support, if you don't know the direct number you will get first line to start with, which is nothing more than a callcenter with question lists.

I phoned them about a broken floppydrive once, and got the question whether I had run the diagnostics tool yet (supplied on floppy) . They replaced it without further questions though after I calmly explained why that might be hard

When they were just making the switch to several support levels there was a certain type of harddisk which made a very weird noise (high, whining noise, might be normal for a 15k rpm SCSI drive, but not an IDE drive for a desktop PC). It worked fine, no errors or anything, but it sounded like it was about to break down. I talked to a first level support lady first, ran the diagnostics on it when she had assured me they hadn't heard about any production errors in that type of harddisk, and it came up clean, no errors. Phoned again, this time got a technician, and I told him to hold on a moment, put the PC next to the phone and turned it on. He didn't trust the sound either, and arranged replacement. We checked the 4 other PCs we had just gotten from that series, and all had the same problem. The technician send to replace it didn't know the problem, didn't trust it either, and also presumed it was a production error. We got 5 new harddisks and never heard of it again. I still wonder if they shipped the disks to other clients or indeed send them back to the manufacturer, and if so if they recalled other harddisks of that type, or that a lot of people still ended up with harddisks with an annoying high whine.

 

[Shockwave]

I had a problem with Road Runner. I found the best thing to do is not let the tech talk.
When I signed up, I got my free cable modem. Plug it in, put in NIC. Everything starts out fine, lights on modem etc etc. But couldnt connect. WTF.I can ping local host. But simply cant connect. Dual booting. I tired 2 different NIC's and both those in 3 different PCI slots in 98 and 2K, as well as 2 different network cables. I KNEW it was a bad cable modem. i call support, and at first humor them doin everything. They open ticket. I had to call them again.
They answer
I ask for the senior tech
Whats the problem he asks?
Well...heres the deal I have a cable modom and cant connect.
He says, lets try to ping. OK, Go start run command
I say i cant
Why?
I'm usin 2K, its cmd. And I've tried 2 different Nics, from different vendors in 3 different PCI slots and 2 different network cables and on both 2K and 98 I can ping local host @ 127.0.0.1 proving my IP stack is installed properly but I have no connectivity to the outside in every scenario with the equipment.
Ummm....*pause*....Let me get our Senior Tech
Thank you!

 

[Skyclad1uhm1]

<< I had a problem with Road Runner. I found the best thing to do is not let the tech talk.
When I signed up, I got my free cable modem. Plug it in, put in NIC. Everything starts out fine, lights on modem etc etc. But couldnt connect. WTF.I can ping local host. But simply cant connect. Dual booting. I tired 2 different NIC's and both those in 3 different PCI slots in 98 and 2K, as well as 2 different network cables. I KNEW it was a bad cable modem. i call support, and at first humor them doin everything. They open ticket. I had to call them again.
They answer
I ask for the senior tech
Whats the problem he asks?
Well...heres the deal I have a cable modom and cant connect.
He says, lets try to ping. OK, Go start run command
I say i cant
Why?
I'm usin 2K, its cmd. And I've tried 2 different Nics, from different vendors in 3 different PCI slots and 2 different network cables and on both 2K and 98 I can ping local host @ 127.0.0.1 proving my IP stack is installed properly but I have no connectivity to the outside in every scenario with the equipment.
Ummm....*pause*....Let me get our Senior Tech
Thank you! >>



Get a REAL ISP. Mine even supports FreeBSD

 

[Fritzo]

<<

<< Like I said....let them drive first, if it's not working, THEN offer your suggestions. When you said your PC wouldn't POST, he's just making sure you know what you're talking about. They have to follow a certain procedure when you call in to make sure all the bases are covered, or they could end up being on the phone for two hours for a simple problem. >>



Sorry, but after the 8th person in a row (yes, it took even longer than that to resolve) asks me to do the same series of things, all of which I have done before, and then they say things like "it says here you must" I really cannot waste any more time. Especially when one of the steps they request each time is that I run a **3 hr plus*** diagnostic program and call them back. Of course, after waiting many hours to talk to someone the next day I am rerouted and have to start all over. If they had actually known what they were talking about, instead of reading from the stupid flowchart or whatever, then they would have agreed to let me send it in for service instead of sending me part after part after part.

If you are a business customer then they will be very nice to you. If you are a home user, good luck! Strangely, my husband and I both sent in requests via email for tech support on March 24. He heard back immediately -- I am still waiting for a response. His account is through small business, mine through home. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.... >>



They should not be repeating steps. If they are, then their database system for call tracking is very poor. A help desk database should track steps previous techs took so they are not repeated. Booooooooo!

 

[Fritzo]

<<

<< i consider myself pretty knowledgable, and had to recently call up dell tech support about a version of their restore cd that someone got whos computer i was formatting... the tech guy noticed i knew what i was talking about, but still made sure i knew what i was doing... like he would say all the steps to something, but if i was jump ahead he was gladly move to where i was

P.S. - it wasnt me that was the problem, the Dell cd had some files in the NT folder instead of the win98 folder... the only mess up on the whole cd i guess, and i ran into it

Josh >>


Yeah. I like tech support people like that.

Gosh.. ever dealt with tech support guys who insist that you hit Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Network? I'd rather right-click on Network Neighbourhood and go to Properties.

And when I call for my ADSL problems, I have to tell them that I have Windows 2000 Professional, even though I run Advanced Server. Apparently ipconfig /renew is soooo different in Advanced Server so they don't support it.

>>



Heheh....we do that because it's next to impossible to get a 75 year old grandma to figure out how to use a right mouse button. 5 seconds to get somewhere is better than 5 minutes to do a shortcut. And if you do it for one person, you have to do it for all in order to standardize.