We don't Support That
Just saw on slashdot,a link to a salon story about how tech call center handle calls, they are filled with people who know nothing about the things they are supposed to support. Their tactic, try to dispatch people in the smallest fraction of time (not caring with the problem in the first place). I don't know if this should make me laugh or cry.
How can it be that in a sane world, companies survive (and probably) thrive by providing disservices to their (paying) customer?
How can people complain about job offshoring when presented with stories like this one? Offshore companies can do a job (not saying they do, just stating they CAN) as good as this one, only cheaper and in the end both have the same effect on the customer.
In my (quite limited) experiences with technical support, i've got a bit of everything, before buying some linksys networking gear (pre Cisco buyout). I emailed their technical support in order to eliminate some doubts i was having about it. I sent an email to their tecnical support, their response was promptly and they answered all my questions in an impecable manner. I thought, nice support they deserve my money. I bought a WRT54G wirelesss router (now deceased !"#"#$"$#) and a WPC54G card. (mind you, they will never a get a single cent from me).
The card worked ONCE and then stopped working (their software said the card wasn't there, even tried beta drivers). Some emails, not a solution in sight, i saw in the their site they have a local support number (not very common for such a small country as Portugal) so i thought it's was worth a shot. I phoned, someone answered, hummm a guy with a funny accent. Not a biggie,we could comunicate, after a while i understood this guy wasn't going to help me. I was talking to someone in India (who could speak portuguese fluently), someone who was friendly and tactfull, but wasn't really going help me. He was just reading a stupid script. After the usual suggestions, remove/insert card, install/uninstall drivers, check the IP configurations routines he said my card was dead and i would need to RMA it.
This was too much trouble, send an email somewhere, get an RMA number, package it, go to the postal office and ship it (all it my expense). I decided i was going to try another route, the google one. A lot of googling time, i saw someone recommending to install Belkin software but use linksys drivers (they seem to share the same broadcom chipset). And voilá it worked. Nice, anyway this seemed like a hack and i emailed linksys support saying, i have this model, my computer full configurations, some screenshots, said it was working it belkin software but not their own which seemed shamefull. (no help there, dubious responses). The card now worked, but didn't seemed to be very good, sometimes it it failed to pick up the router signal, even though it was just a few meters from it (and with line of sight). I got tired of it, and bought an Asus card. Ah what a joy, it works flawless and works anywhere in the house with a strong signal (it even picks out of the box some AP's located a few KM's from my house). A few months after the episode the router started failing. Sometimes all the lights would start flashing (which didn't seemed very healthy to me) and stopped working. This time i tried to use the live chat support. The response was fast, and the people were helpfull. Taught me to reset the router and that seemed to solve the problem (at least for a day or so). After a while i got tired of resetting the router. Decided to buy a new one (RMA it, was too much trouble),i said no more money to linksys, bought a nice (and cheap) Asus router and never looked back (and have a nice paperheight on my already crowded desk)
And all this do say,that some tech support is not like the one described in the article and really try to help their customers,but from what i've seen on the web, support like the one describe in the article seems to be the norm. :-(
On an unrelated subject, while checking my spam folder looking for false positives i saw an email with the following subject "$160 Rolex Replica Watch %RANDOM_WORD". Seemed someone failed to write the correct macro while trying to fool anti spam filters. Ah the arms race continues. :-(