Slashdot Mirror
Worst Explanation From Tech Support?
Disgruntled-with-Tech-Support asks: "Let's face it: At some point or another, we've had to deal with some form of tech support. Quite often, it's a hit-or-miss experience depending on the level of support required. Occasionally, strange, bizarre, or nonsensical explanations result from the problems reported, such as this one: I had just had DSL installed, only to find it much slower than the 56K line I was looking to get rid of. On calling the provider, I was told (by someone who likely reading off cue cards) to visit one of their internal websites for measuring bandwidth. While there, I observed that they had both bytes per second and bits per second listed, and that the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14. I pointed this out as a possible problem, and the guy's reasoning: 'Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?"
The one they won't give you unless you cough up $25.95+tax.
--
E_NOSIG
Computer Stupidities Their stupid tech support section probably fits this article best.
What if this signature were clever?
I had a shipment of bad IDE hard drives. I was instructed by the Dell support dude that Dell recommends SCSI for "servers". Upon asking why, I was informed that it "had something to do with data harmonics".
I have experience a fair share of Tech-Support mishaps. Most of the problems stem from the fact that the people who are diagnosing your problem are reading through a "cue-card" type program. They ask you questions, and their little program is "supposed" to find the problem. That is probably why you get some idiotic responses. Just remember "reboot", the ultimate solution for tech-support.
"The problem must be on your end... everything here is working."
Yeah... sure.
That ranks right up there with their classic first question "do you have a firewall?" Answer "yes," and that IMMEDIATELY becomes the problem (despite the fact that it's been running for months with no change in configuration).
Just FYI: I find that confronting them with a few ethereal packet dumps usually gets you to the second tier at least.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Awhile back the SBC/Yahoo/Prodigy/whatever-they-call-it-now outbound smtp server was breaking every rule in the book. It was immediatly terminating the connection after the "." was received to end transmission, without acknoledging anything or waiting for the client to gracefully quit. Thus, the client, by SMTP protocol, assumes the message failed and should try again. But this is not so - the message was actually sent, despite the cutoff. This resulted in me sending a message in an infinite loop before I cought the problem. I explained what exactly the problem was, and how they might go about fixing it. Then, they told ME to go try with Outlook Express or Outlook and tell me them the "error message". So I did - and to my surprise - got NO ERROR MESSAGE! It's obviously these guys test it with outlook, see it works, and accept the configuration.. I called multiple times, and got the same response. (FYI: all other non-MS mail clients returned an error message, as they were supposed to - delivery was never acknoleged. If the connection is terminated before a graceful quit, the messages are supposed to be discarded) Now, finally, after about 5 months, the problem seems to be fixed.
That's because sometimes it isn't.
I've seen this happen when people called saying they couldn't access their email. And, oh yeah, they haven't changed anything recently. Except they're now using a new computer, because their son took the old one to college.
This may not fully work, but recently a student at my high school wrote an opinion column in the local paper. This column outlined many of the problems with our school's computers and tech support. The article can be found here. It is entitled, "How my school spends your money." The response by the school's tech lady was that the article was "All Lies" when I asked her about it. (Please read the reader comments)
Dell tech support has been going downhill for years. I think the best/worst story I got was when I got a machine from them about 4 years.
... a virus.
Came pre-installed with a bunch of crap, so I formatted and was reinstalling... then I noticed a grinding sound when the HD was reading... so I call them up to get a replacement.
What was the tech's opinion on the problem?
Yeah. Needless to say, I was rather speechless.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
Wow. One of the advantages of my mom working in administration at CompUSA is knowing that such an employee would be under fire really quickly.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
Sounds like your modem got swapped with someone else by the installer monkey. I've seen that happen quite a few times. When I was working support, I don't know how many times I'd pulled up a customer's account up and see a different MAC, then pull up by MAC and see a different customer. The really funny thing is, all the other phone tech's missed it. I guess that is why I made it to mentor status so quick.
You'd be suprised how many times I had this one tech call me and go into a long story about some email issue. My response was "Have you done a modem check to see if their online?", having already pulled up the customer and checked the modem while the tech was yapping. That guy never learned to see if their online first. lol
*It's not what you can do for the Dark Side but what the Dark Side can do for you!*
A new Dell inspiron laptop with its built in DVD/CDR combo drive would not read CDR media.
on calling Dell support, they told me that "No DVD ROM Drive will ever read CDR Media without a UDF reader driver"
--
then comes the real classic, also from Dell
Same laptop, started to overheat after about an hour of use, so thinking it was something to do with the Linux install, I restored it back to its windoze, which made no difference
calling Dell, they told me that it will run cooler with windoze than Linux, and just totally ignored the "Its Got WINDOZE" from me.
several calls later they sent a "tech" out to replace the CPU
----
The worse yet, and this time its not from a help desk in India (Yet!)
This time from my ISP (Telstra), who when called about yet more email pain, told me when I mentioned I could not even ping the server let alone connect to it.
At the time I was running pine on a UNIX box
the "tech" told me "If I was running outlook I would be able to ping the server"
----
same help (hell) desk also told me:-
to install windoze on my Powerbook, after I called them about drop outs.
to install the OSX version of IE6, when I could not use their web site from Safari
Had a 28.8 back in the day, and was coding web pages for NS2.x (tables -- woohoo) and was getting less than 1k per second throughput. Called the ISP, and they identified the modem as being a "problem part." So I went to the store where I bought the modem the previous week, and got a wonderful bit of nonsense:
sales tech-"It can't be your modem, it runs at 28.8 and the internet isn't even that fast."
me-"excuse me?"
sales tech-"Yessir, the internet only runs at 300 baud, which is a measurement of how fast the bits can go through the pins in the cable connector. You see, the wires are actually faster, they run at 9600 baud, but the pins can only go 300 because they are hollow and electrons, which is what electricity is made of, won't go through hollow pins, so they have to go around the edges. Since there are hundreds of these pins hooking up the internet the internet is limited to 300 baud, and I apologize for whoever sold you the 28.8 modem."
me-*looks dazed*
sales tech-"as an apology, let me give you $5 off on a soundcard upgrade, and I'll throw in a cable connector with solid pins for your modem so that you will know the speed issues are not at your end." (remember this was in the serial port days)
The guy had little kernels of almost truth in there, but I think it was luck:)
-[joke removed for your safety]-
I've had a few fun experiences as well at CompUSA...
My favorite, I'm in the networking aisle picking up a couple switches for a small test cluster I was building... and I overhear the store rep talking to a guy about sharing his broadband internet between 2 computers....
First off, he's got 2 firewalls, a wireless access point, an 8 port switch, and 2 network cards in the guys hands already... and he's explaining to him that he needs to plug one of the firewalls into the cable modem, and then plug that cable into one of the network cards in one of the computer, then from the second nic to the second firewall, from there to the access point, and then to the wireless card in the second computer... ROFL....
I stepped in and said "No, thats a load of crap" picked up a wireless AP/switch/firewall handed it to him and said ok, from cable modem to here, from here to your computer thats close to the cable modem, and keep that wireless nic, from the wireless AP to your computer upstairs. Saved the guy about $250 in crap hardware he didn't need...
Then he asked the store rep what the difference between a hub and a switch was. The store rep said that a 10/100 hub will find the slowest connecting device on the network and then put everything at that speed, while a 10/100 switch will let everyone talk at the maximum speed they support. That was the kicker, I actually called him an idiot right there, explained the actual difference put down the 2 switches I was going to buy and left.
If you've ever worked technical support for a consumer electronics manufacturer, you would realise that the person on the phone is required to follow certain guidelines in troubleshooting.
:-)
... I did forget to plug it in!".
:-)
:-) I didn't give them anything for free, I did't give out 'confidential' information, I just skipped 'Basic' troubleshooting steps.
When I worked tech support I attempted to reduce the required number of steps by removing redundant troubleshooting. Upon hearing that the customer is relatively competent in what they're doing I would skip the bullshit. I always sat at the borderline of getting fired for just not following policy. It was fun knowing that within 1 year the job would not matter.
Even if I tried to follow the guidelines I would change simple questions like:
"Do you have it plugged in?"
to a
"I assume you have it plugged in...." with the customer, when realizing their dumbassedness would reply "Well whatcha' know
It makes them happy when they figure things out on their own without telling them to do anything.
To make things clear, management came down on me even over happy customers. Customers who even had written letters of appreciation!
If you got one of the 3 week program "trained" type of techs I feel sorry for you guys...
Every so often you might have gotten one of us real Geeks.
But even we had to deal with internal stupid issues.
I remember a few times through out the 3 years I worked for Netzero when certain accounts would become unavailable for no apparent reason.
The only similarity between the accounts would be what letter they started with.
We'd come into work, and on the white board we'd see something like: "Accounts beginning with A, G and K are not able to connect".
Oh you could ask why, but you'd never get an answer.
The release of Windows XP was no picnic either. I had to wing more then a few calls. I never saw some many people spend time on break for those first few weeks.
Try explaining to people that thier old hardware doesn't work on thier brand new computer because of XP? That made people happy.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
...I called a dialup ISP because I couldn't get a PPP connection. Authentication was fine, but PPP negotiation failed. I explained this to the tech support people, who naturally asked what version of windows I was running. I said that I found the information out in Linux, but it had the same problem in Windows. I explained the PPP negotiation issue, and was met with 'what's PPP?' as the response. I think I spent more time explaining basic networking to the support person than anything else. Turns out they just had a flakey server that was fixed 15 minutes later.
I had the exact same situation as the grandparent post: I was calling about my cable modem being out, and after being directed through all of the idiotic OS configuration steps (despite the little "link" light being out on the cable modem coincidentally occurring in concert with being unable to see the outside world), which I played along with, I could see where the conversation was going (headed towards "there's nothing on our end...we'll schedule a tech for a week but hope it clears up before then") so I disconnected the cable from the cable modem, and then listened as the telephone support narrated as they supposedly connected to my cable modem, and then supposedly pulled diagnostic codes and evaluated its health, etc.
I listened for about two minutes, and then said "Well that's odd as I disconnected the cable modem two minutes ago" she became flustered and was clearly caught in a lie -- it was a pretty awkward situation. In other words it's just as probable that they were just bullshitting to make you feel like they've done what they can do, when really they just want you to suck it for a while, or to call back for some other sucker to deal with.
Actually, it depends on what you are measuring. If you are measuring bits/sec of traffic vs. bytes/sec of data, the factor is probably around what you stated for smaller packets. Since this is typically how bps/Bps is measured, the numbers on the page of the site are quite possibly correct. Of course, the tech guy is still a moron, but the explanation is almost correct. Those extra bits get "stuck" when the packets are decoded, since the ethernet and TCP/IP headers will all be stripped off.
--That's the point of being root, you can do anything you want, even if it's stupid.
These posts and others like them should really be placed on www.techcomedy.com
Hate to be a grammer nazi, but I seem to recall that the CPU is actually the computer, and the white/black box surrounding it with little fan noises and drive bays coming out of it is the computer system. Amyone wanna confirm or deny this?
You have a point. In any event, the OP might not realise that in many European languages the box is called the "CPU" because it contains the basic necessities for the computer's functioning, even if the CPU strictly speaking is a barely-visible piece of silicon deep within.
I understand, I know plenty of people who have had to work in tech support and gotten some pretty crazy calls (like the "Internet doesn't work" when the customer doesn't have their modem or NIC plugged in, or even better, no modem or NIC in their computer). I just management then would let you find out if the customer was competent, then switch to a different set of troubleshooting. Like when a hard drive went bad in a Dell I had, and the email I sent sounded like I knew what I was talking about, they quickly just asked me to run this diagnostic software they have and then report the results, not the usual run around. Or for my HP TC1000, when I called about some speaker noises and that I had tried everything, they just took my address and had it picked up. Those are the tech support calls I like, the kind where they adapt to how well you know the product you're calling about. But I can understand if management doesn't like it, they don't have to actually deal with the customers, so of course they should know what they are talking about.
I had 1kbps upstream for about a week... (although download was fine...) and when I called they insisted they didn't guarantee any upstream speed and had me go to a speedtest site which said everything was fine.
/.
Great, that site DOESN'T test upstream.
Went to DSL reports and wow seems to be a problem.
Lone story short, I had a cable modem for 7 years, i know when something is flaky like most people who read
Took me an hour to convince them to send someone out, replaced the modem with same model and problem fixed.
>>>at the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14.
;)
>>Shouldn't it be bits/sec = bytes/sec * 8?
>no... it's eight bits to a byte.
Yes. Assuming he meant (bits/sec) = (bytes/(sec * 8)). I must assume he did. It's important to me.
1 byte / 1 sec => (8 * 1 bit) / 1 sec = (8 * 1 bit) / 1 sec => 1 byte / sec = 8 bits / sec
And I'd expect more like 9-11 bits to transmit a byte, on average, due to packet overhead and error correction. 8 is optimal, which doesn't happen much. 11-14 wouldn't be shocking if there's a lot of packet loss, as it sounds like there may be.
everything in moderation
"We don't support linux." I've heard that so many times from Road Runner. When I moved to AZ though the DSL guy saw my desktop (Afterstep) looked around a bit for the start menu, then I realized I should probably reset (the modem he gave me to start off with only worked in windows so I had to reset to install it) so I killed X and he saw the prompt "Wow linux, what distro is it?" I told him (debian) and he said "Wow, debian? We're converting all our servers over from Win 2000 to Debian real soon."
I've also had good experiences with tech support, especially on other peoples computers cause I'd be calling for warrenty work. I'd call up say "Hey this computer has a problem starting up, so I swapped out a few things like the PSU, RAM, CPU, and motherboard, the motherboard is probably fried since when I tried a different one it worked, so where could I get a new motherboard since the PC is still under warrenty?" The guy went from ultra depressed (thinking "Oh no, not another problem that will probably require 2 hours to finally get to the conclusion that someone has to look at the computer") to really happy and excited like "Wow thanks for testing out all that stuff, so it's deffinitely the motherboard? Just bring it to such and such store and they'll install a new one for you."
PC tech support seems so much easier to deal with since they seem to know more about how the computer works. I guess it's easier for them since the problem is always on the users end and they have to deal with a lot of different situations. With internet tech support all they know how to deal with is configuring e-mail and setting auto detect IP address in Windows 98 and above. They rarely have to deal with a customer calling up telling them there is a problem on their end and even if the customer described exactly what was wrong, they wouldn't be able to do anything.
The DSL routers SBC provides to business customers suck. And their tech support is worse. All 3 (different circuits) totally lock up anywhere from every few months to every few days - each one quite consistently. SBC refuses to replace them, saying the routers are ours the day they installed them, so it's our problem, not there's. They (and the manufacturer) said as long as I can keep unplugging them and plugging them in (the only way to restart them) ... then the routers are fine. However, they had no reply when I asked if the same "techical support policy" applies to airplanes. If your engines quit in mid-flight, but you are able to restart them before you crash and die, then there's nothing wrong with the plane ... (Thank goodness, we now have our first orders in for real T-1s -- not from SBC).
A buddy and I had an assignment back in college to write "a windows app". That was pretty much the long and short of the constraints and this being circa 93 or so, we were working with VS 1.0 (installed from 27 3.5" floppies, no less). This was the collegiant version with no optimizing compiler.
We decided it would be terribly cool to create a electronic version of Star Fleet Battles. So, off we went creating our SDI application.
After some blood, sweat and tears we had something which should have worked. It was correct in every way we could figure out but the damned thing kept crashing on us. (imagine that) I finally decided to take one for the team and open a support incident.
After spending hours on the phone on hold while talking to different clueless support weasels I was finally connected with a person with actuall programming experience. I don't know if he was a developer or not but he did try to help. Finally, he asked me if I could send him our source code so he could attempt to debug it because there didn't appear to be anything wrong with it. I emailed him the source package and waited.
And waited.
Waited...
Finally, I called the guy back 3 days later.
Me: "So, have you had a chance to look at our code yet?"
TS: "Yeah, neat little game you've got here - is it SFB?"
Me: "Yes, it's supposed to be - I've never seen it work."
TS: "What? It works fine. We've been playing it here in the office for the last couple of days."
Me: "But, my version doesn't work - what did you change?"
TS: "Where's it breaking again?"
Me: Tells him line number and error message.
TS: "Oh that - you're dealing with a known bug in the debug compiler. Just compile your code in release mode and you're good to go."
I 'politely' explained at this time that I was running the collegiant edition. "oh" he said. "You're screwed."
Eventually, he assisted me with determining a work around. I never did receive the free upgrade I was promised to VS 1.5 which was available at the time (though, I'll admit he started backtracking just as soon as he offered it - somebody probably slapped him).
IIRC, we got a B on the assignment. All the time we spent debugging and on the phone with MS tech support ate seriously into our plan to develop features. We were supposed to have a certain number of menu items and other metrics of functionality which we completely fell short of. Fortunately, I had email evidence of some of my communication with the TS guy so our prof was merciful.
That said, it was an excellent course in how software actually gets developed - spend huge quantities of time on the latest MS bug and fail to meet your feature requirements in the course of debugging and trying to make the stupid thing work.
The sad thing is that when I used to work at a large ISP, we really did have a lot more calls come in whenever there was a big solar flare. Modems are sensitive littls sons-a-bitches. Of course nobody would believe us if we told them "sunspots", but you had to try.
Download speed is measured in kByte/sec.
Line speed is measured in bits/second (and often real bits at that).
If ATM is used (often the case), then there is an overhead of 5 bytes per 48 bytes of ATM data.
Add to this a TCP/IP overhead of up to 42 bytes/packet, giving an efficiency of around 95%.
This gives you more than 15% overhead. So a factor 10 is a good bet.
Now, if it is cable, there are many other things actually in there, as many are sharing the same cable etc. So it might eat another 20% - just like 802.11 is only spending half the bandwidth in each direction - and have lots of overhead.
I've been on the other end of it, and they have no choice. As soon as the company-mandated trouble ticket system was installed, the company began using it to track IT personnel to see if they were doing enough. Trouble tickets were the only existing measure of an employee's performance. If you got direct-called and ran out to fix a dozen hardware problems at a time, you still weren't doing anything. So, submit the help desk ticket. Use the extra few minutes to relax on company time, due to their own policies, or swab down your filthy keyboard to make it all nice for the poor tech who's coming to fix your machine.
...
For instance, you don't say: "We are going to reset/restart your unix server" you say: "We are going to bump your server"
Back when my company was an ISP our mac tech support would do that. "My mac is acting funny" "hmm.. give it two bongs... no, make it three.. three bongs"
Suprisingly, most mac users understood what it was to give your machine a bong. (NVRAM fun)
From: ZED
...Share/Albumen.
u ser_id=LOUISE
To: ARMANDO
Date: Thursday - May 6, 2004 7:46 AM
Subject: Re: Request #90210 has been closed.
ARMANDO-
You acutally have 228MB available space you total space is 446MB ? Long live Google I'd be lost without it.
Zed
>>> ARMANDO 05/05/04 05:52PM >>>
Zed, is it true that 228MB is allocated to P:\Albumen and if we have about 210MB stored, there is about 18MB free space?
In other words,
What is the total capacity of P:\Albumen?
How much is stored on P:\Albumen? (that I think I know--currently about 213MB is stored on P:\Albumen)
How much free space do I have on P:\Albumen?
I apologize for being so dense. All this elite technical stuff is so baffling.
BTW: I've checked the Google calculator, and yes, I had my goggles on when I checked the Google calculator so I think I was able to see all the hidden thing is.
>>> HELP DESK 05/05/04 05:13PM >>>
220 799 167 bytes = 210.570495 megabytes
15 608 kilobytes = 15.2421875 megabytes
If you go to Goggle and enter in the search "xxx kb =" it will give you the answer. It's called Goggle Calculator, one of the many hidden thing is Goggle.
Right now you have 228 544 kilobits = 27.8984375 megabytes or almost 30MB's
>>> ARMANDO 05/05/04 03:16PM >>>
Currently, P:\Albumen properties shows 210MB (220,799,167 bytes), so I guess that means my current storage in Kilobytes is 215,624, right?
That means I have about 15,608 Kilobytes of free space, which is about 15.24MB, right?
I must not be figuring this right, because you just gave us 30MB more disk space and I just deleted a whole bunch of files, but by my reckoning we've ended up with only half as much free space as you just gave us.
Please tell me how much free space we have in Kilobytes.
Thank you.
>>> HELP DESK 05/05/04 02:19PM >>>
Right now it's at 231232KB's per Novell
>>> ARMANDO 05/05/04 10:16AM >>>
I've archived a bunch of old files and have gotten our file storage down to 209 MB in
Could you let me know how much disk space is currently allocated to this directory?
I'll try to keep the amount of files we have stored there under the allocated amount.
Thank you.
>>> <HELP DESK> 05/04/04 04:16PM >>>
Dear LOUISE,
Your request has been closed. The following is the resolution.
Added 30MB more space
For details or to reopen it, go to
http://helpdesk/hd/index.ssp?ticket_id=90210&
IT - Acme Carnival Help Desk
I'm time traveling, right now
When I moved into my house, the DSL wouldn't work, using the modem that I'd brought with me from my apartment. So, I took the modem out to the point where the phone line comes into the house and tested it there. Still didn't work. Neither did the other modem I had from a previous apartment. So, it seemed pretty obvious that the problem was outside my house.
Armed with this information, I called Verizon.
Call #1 I made the mistake of telling the guy that I had a Mac. So, I get transferred to their Macintosh help department, and get some guy in India who can barely speak English and assumes I have a bad modem. Of course, he can't solve the problem and has to give me a different number to call the next day (not that I'm going to, because I know it's not the modem -- I've tried it at my office and it worked fine).
Call #2 The first call didn't work, so I call back again. This time, though, I'm smart enough to forget to mention that I have a Mac. After a suitable period spent listening to soothing jazz (and the occasional assurance that my call is important), I get a nice enough women on the phone. I patiently explain to her what the problem is and what steps I've gone through to track the cause. After listening to me, she responds by asking which modem I have. I describe it, and she immediately tells me that I have the wrong modem. I need the other model of modem. Unlikely, but I'm no expert in DSL technologies, so I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt ... which means waiting half a week for a new modem to show up.
Call #3 The new modem shows up, and I try it. Much to my lack of surprise, it also fails to work. Back to the phones, I call Verizon for a third time. Finally, I get someone sounds like he has a clue. Still wary, though, I decide not to mention that I have a Mac. Only problem is that he wants me to run through some diagnostic steps, which means I have to pretend to follow what he's telling me, and then do the equivalent under OS X. Simple enough, until he asks me to read him some number with a weird title. I think he's talking about the MAC address, but I'm not positive. Busted? Thinking quickly, I acted like I'd been interrupted, and asked him to hold on for a second. Then, I sat there for a few seconds, and when I came back said something to the effect of, "ok, so you wanted the MAC address, right?" Bingo, got it right. I gave that to him, and within' a minute or two, he'd run his diagnostics and determined that the problem must in fact be outside my house (just as I'd suspected at first). He told me he'd send someone out to fix it, and bid me good day.
Epilogue Within a few days, someone apparently fixed the problem, and I got a call saying everything was good to go. I plugged the modem in, and SUCCESS it worked! Only took 2 1/2 weeks, and three phone calls to reach the solution that I'd already determined when I made the first call.
"If English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for everyone else."
I'm a major geek and am experienced in all forms of the art.. recently I let the ISP of the company I work for know that we were having major connection problems.. resulting in a total lack of usability. First they told me that I was wrong. Then they told me it was our companies fault because we were obviously infected with some horrible virus (they told me ICQ was to blame). They told me because we were swamping the broadband connection (running an ssh session and doing some minor web browsing). Then they told me it was because we were the target of someone trying a DoS attack. Finally they made some adjustments to the antenea (wireless is all we can get in our location) and instantly everything is fixed. I have to wonder if it's really good business to blame your customers for a problem especially when it's obvious that they know as much about the topic as you do. It really lowered my opinion of their company. Another example of such support and we'll be switching to a different ISP.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
To be honest, many compusa sales employees are not that knowledgeable. They're not paid well enough to be. If they knew the products they were selling, they can certainly get paid more else where (as consultants perhaps). The employees that knows what they're talking about usually are the repair technicians, which are not really responsible for making sales. If you stand by the tech department for about 15 minutes, you may notice that sales guys will visit that place a lot. That's bc they will go there for answers to questions from their customers.
We have Speakeasy DSL, which is the best service I've ever had. Unfortunately for some people in our building, they opted for the cheaper solution: Cable. Our friends moved in next door, so we decided to share our DSL with them -- totally within Speakeasy's TOS. My neighbor came over to tell my roommate, who had hardwired the two apartments' networks together in the phone room, that their network was down. He checks everything in our apartment and everything looks good. Then he remembers the cable guy was in the building... he goes and finds the guy had disconnected the two apartments and told my roommate "Sharing your connection is illegal." He kept saying this, even after my roommate explained that we had DSL, not cable, so even if it WERE true we weren't allowed to share, it wasn't their problem. Ten minutes later, the internet isn't working again. Turns out the cable guy took the power cord to the hub, since he felt that my roommate "didn't understand stealing was wrong." Words... escape me.
"PC Load Letter? What the $@#% does that mean?!"
They insisted that the smyrnacable.net mail servers did not belong to them, and told me to contact Smyrna Cable. I patiently explained that Smyrna Cable no longer existed because they had devoured it. Apparently it was escalated to somebody with a clue, because a few days later my account was closed.
Months passed and the matter was forgotten. Until one day, some company in Smyrna emailed me. They'd found my old resume on my old site and wanted to know if I was interested in a job. Sure enough, my old site was back! Maybe somebody restored a backup or something. I went through the whole process again, only this time Charter's tech support denied even more vehemently that smyrnacable.net does not belong to them (despite the fact that it's among the choices on their Webmail page!)
I finally gave up on the. I meditated until I remembered my old FTP password, and replaced my personal Web site with the above story (suitably embellished) and a challenge to Charter Cable to permanently remove it. I then emailed the URL to tech support. Needless to say, the page came down most ricky-tick.
I used to have a 433Mhz Celeron computer up untill a about 5 months ago when I got an EMachine T2341. It started up so fast, and I got all of my stuff installed and put in a extra Gig of ram. So, I was playing Warcraft III, and then the thing just shut off. I pressed the power button and nothing happened. I unplugged it and started it back up. Well, the memory had never shown the full gig. *runs free* It only shows 641840. I installed MBM and relized that my computer has an automatic temperature shutoff switch somewhere over 150 degrees that I was hitting. I got some clock cycle limiting stuff and managed to keep it from crashing or powering down. I opened up a tech support request, and they said that my ram was being used for the integrated graphics that I wasn't using. I E-Mailed back, and then they said how to turn it off. That didn't work.
Hold shift at the EMachines logo to see the ram.
This is an AthlonXP 2400+, it goes to fast to read.
Your ram is defective.
I don't think it is. What about my heat problem? Is that red light supposed to be on?
Your ram is defective.
What about my heat issue?!
Your ram is defective.
I took it back to Best Buy:
This computer has heat problems.
You opened the case. The warrenty is void.
It says right here in this E-Mail(waves paper) that I can do that.
The warrenty is void. All we can do is exchange it for a new one.
Well, the ram still doesn't work, but the inside of this one looks different. It hasn't overheated yet. Same model, different motherboard and cpu-fan...
Your laughing now, but that is not to far from what really happend to me once.
While they weren't shaking the line, squirls HAD managed to get into a local wiring box for the lines (last time a tech did anything they didn't close it up properly) and proceeded to strip alot of insulation off the wires and everytime it rained we'd get 60hz buzz and other noise on the phone and it just kept getting worse untill about the third time we called someone out.
It took them three tries because everytime we reported the problem a guy wouldn't show for a day or two, and of course by then the lines had dried and he didn't hear anything wrong and say we must have an issue with the phone itself.
Finally we called it in and since it rained on and off for the next four days someone showed up while it was drizzling ouside and the noise was REALLY bad.
Mycroft
https://signup.leagueoflegends.com/?ref=4c3ed6600b6ea
After I installed it, he asked how I did it... the previous IT person said his computer was too new. The best part was that the "program" was a shortcut to a web app!
I use Macs to up my productivity, so up yours Microsoft!
Back in the days when @Home was just starting up, my cable company actually sent two people out in a van to hook it up for you. One of them was the "cable guy" and the other one was the "tech."
The cable guy did his thing as the tech hooked the cable modem and plugged it into my brand new NT box with a network cable.
Tech hooks it up, sets the network settings, and reboots. No connection.
Tech begins looking at the hardware profile, and I notice a big "X" over my NIC, indicating it is disabled.
I told the tech that it appeared the machine shipped with the NIC disabled (I hadn't used the NIC before) and to try enabling it.
Instead the tech ignores me, dicks around with the TCP/IP settings some more and then makes some incoherant rambling about Windows NT not being a "plug and play" operating system. He tells me that he thinks that my NIC is not compatible with the cable modem and offers to sell me one from @Home for $70.
I told the tech that I would pass on his offer for the time being, and that I would call my OEM to see if perhaps they had an updated driver. The tech agrees and gives me the number to call for support.
As soon as the tech leaves, I go into my hardware profile and enable my NIC. Not surprisingly, I'm now online.
I actually called the number the tech gave me to let them know that either the guy was an idiot (or at best too arrogant to listen to the suggestion of a high schooler).
Contrast this with my most recent setup with Comcast. The guy basically dropped the cable modem off, took one look at all the machines I had sitting at the side of the room, and said, "I'm not touching anything. Here is the setup information." I'm not quite fond of Comcast (I actually preferred the Road Runner connection I had when I lived in San Diego), but at least their cable guy was smart enough not to prentend to know what he was doing.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
Those extra bits get "stuck" when the packets are decoded, since the ethernet and TCP/IP headers will all be stripped off.
Umm... Ethernet frames don't get send over dialup lines.
I had just moved into my current house, the guy that lived there before had some funky phone line schemes ran through the house and only half of the jacks worked correctly, so I had to rewire the house, but when I got done the outside phone line went dead, as the phone company was doing work down the street, but unfortunately they didnt report it at the time, here is my conversation with the support line on trying to get the phone line turned back on. Me: Yes Im calling about my phone line, its not on, its like it got disconnected. Support: Let me check, Im not showing any problems with your line. Me: Well, thats why Im calling, to let you know there is a problem. Support: Have you checked different phones in your house. Me: Well, Im at the box outside and Im not getting a signal, so none of the phones in the house will work right now. Support: You need to check all your phones in the house, one of them may be off the hook. Me: Hello, am I talking to myself? If the signal to the outside box is not on, then the lines inside the house will not work. I just need you to turn the line to my house back on. Support: Have you changed anything in your house? Me: I just rewired the house. Support: Im going to send out a tech. Me: I dont need a tech, I am a tech, I need you to turn my phone line on. Support: We cant support anything within your house without sending a tech out. Me: Dont worry about the house, just turn the line that runs from the pole to my house on! I called back about 30 minutes later to find out that the line techs were working down the street and accidentally disconnected the neighborhood. The phone lines were back on about an hour later and my rewiring worked fine.
Actually, the DVD format has a weird rule that there is supposed to be at least 1 gig of data on it, minimum, even if it's just padding. Almost all readers will still be able to anyhow.
As far as I know, though, CDs don't have this restriction.
This conversation took place three years ago when I accompanied a friend on a trip to Best Buy to help her purchase a new computer. I kept my mouth shut to see what the guy had to say.
Salesman: This HP model is really popular. It even comes with a cd burner.
Friend: That's one of the things I really wanted for my new computer.
Salesman: Great...but if you decide to purchase a model with a cd burner, you should also pick up this surge protector.
Salesman hands her a $99 APC surge protector.
Salesman: This surge protector is even on sale, so you lucked out.
Friend: That's ok, I already have a regular surge protector from my old computer.
Salesman: Ohhhh...that's not going to work if you get a model with a cd burner. You know they don't call them "burners" for nothing. These things reach over 500 degrees. If you don't have a high quality surge protector, there's a high chance that your computer will catch on fire and burn your house down.
Friend: Are you serious? I don't want that to happen.
Salesman: Hey...I'm just trying to look out for you and your family's safety.
Me: I think it's time to go.
Later that day.
Friend: That guy wasn't that bad.
Me: Too bad Best Buy doesn't sell fire extinguishers, he could have sold you one of those while he was at it.
Nothing against Best Buy or computer salesmen in general...I just thought it was a funny story.
You have me intrigued, how do you get the MAC address through the System Properties? The only way I know how to do it involves typing "netstat" on the command prompt (which would have been easier to explain, I think)..
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
More correctly, it should be bits/sec = bytes/sec * bits/byte since bits/byte is not canonically defined to be 8. In fact, there have been other computers that had other than 8 bits per byte.
For exmaple, the PDP-10 had 9 bits per byte and 4 bytes per word (36 bits).
I've also seen 7 bits per byte on some old 9-track tapes that came from, I think, a Honeywell computer.
well ill tell you what, i used to work for a company here in oregon called stream. basically its like this, the person who your talking to sits there hitting shortcuts with his keyboard, and beleive it or not, but there arent enough shortcuts so they sometimes have to use 2 shortcut combo's. and these guys will trouble shoot 6 people at one time, and all of them will get fustrated and call us eventually.
Earlier this year at work, I needed to run Visio 2003 to make some simple diagrams. (This is at work, not home, so I didn't have a choice of software.) Visio, installed on Win2k SP4, would not run. When I started it up, it would crash immediately, usually without even giving me a message.
Called Microsoft.
After a 45 minute call to setup an account, then a wait to get a callback, then another 45 minute conversation with a very nice Indian gentleman, we fixed the problem.
Microsoft Visio and Microsoft Windows are incompatible. This is a known issue. The fix is to drill down to some obscure registry key and add a 1 to it. Then everything works fine.
And somehow Linux is the OS with the reputation for obscure configuration and software conflicts. Go figure.
--GrouchoMarx
Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?
Believe it or not. Its up to you, but this is true... I was also trying to figure out why my DSL service didn't work. Called up tech-support. Idiot at the other end of the line spat out these words without a pause... "DSL is a high frequency radio wave". Couldn't hold it any longer. Hung up and then wondered whether to laugh or cry. Ended up ROFL-ing anyway...
This is correct for current hubs, but it is also correct that older hubs would in fact slow down to the lowest available link speed.
In early 2001, after building my mom a computer from scratch, I received her old Gateway 233Mhz system to do with as I pleased. The first thing I did was flash the BIOS. When the system failed to POST after that, the next thing I did was contact Gateway support.
Thus began an odyssey that I hope never to repeat with any company, and certainly will never repeat with Gateway. They're never getting another dime out of me or my family for as long as I'm alive.
Below is why. The first two logs detail a chat session between Gateway and myself, conducted using a particularly nasty piece of customer service software called eGain. You can see how it made the live person on the other end of the chat session sound like a robot.
After that follows a series of e-mail correspondence. This log has been edited both to cover my tracks a bit, and to get around the slashdot filters, as the characters per line ratio of the post is otherwise too low.
Chat Session 1
Question: I updated my BIOS and the system boots, displays gateway logo, but does not POST.
A Chat Agent will be with you shortly.
Wendell: Hello Fahr, welcome to the Gateway Chat Support Service. I am Wendell here to help you with your issue.
Fahr Vergnugen: Hi. Have a system here that's not terribly happy.
Wendell: Can you please tell me the exact problem you are facing with your Computer?
Fahr Vergnugen: Need S/N?
Wendell: Fahr, please provide me your Serial number.
Fahr Vergnugen: Okay, older PII-233Mhz / LX chipset board. tried to slap in a newer celeron, it didn't take, decided to update the bios.
Wendell: Okay , Fahr.
Fahr Vergnugen: sure 0009589521
Wendell: Thanks , Fahr.
Wendell: Can you please tell me the problem you are facing with your System?
Fahr Vergnugen: grabbed BIOS 4A4LL0X0.15A.0023.P18 from the gateway support site (was running P11) and flashed the board.
Wendell: When this issue happens is there an error message? If so, could you please tell me the exact error message?
Fahr Vergnugen: now, the system fires up, displays a gateway logo, and a small progress bar in the top left fills from grey to white, and the system acts like it's going to POST normally, but it never happens.
Fahr Vergnugen: the bar takes between 3 and 4 minutes to reach 100%.
Wendell: When this issue happens is there an error message? If so, could you please tell me the exact error message?
Fahr Vergnugen: and from there it just sits. If I hit TAB to view system messages, it acts normally, but again, no POST. Nothing happens.
Fahr Vergnugen: no error message. Just doesn't beep and post.
Fahr Vergnugen: I think it's probably pretty shafted, but I thought I'd check with you guys.
Wendell: Fahr, please hold on while I search for your resolution.
Fahr Vergnugen: np, holdin' on.
Wendell: Thank you for waiting. Please review the following information, which I think will help you.
Wendell: [Item sent - Astro and Profile 2 - Computer stops responding after power-on self-test (POST)] http://www.gateway.com/support/techdocs/astro/trsh oot/1106.shtml
Wendell: Did you get the page , Fahr?
Fahr Vergnugen: yep, but no help I can tell already, since it assumes I can get to Windows, which is not the case.
Wendell: I realize your time is valuable, please wait one minute while I research this further.
Fahr Vergnugen: np
Wendell: Fahr, I apologize for the delay
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
This one is from one of my coworkers..
Apparently, one of their production sun server reset itself suddenly one day (this is in the late 80's/early 90's). They got some people from Sun in to have a look at it and they spent days looking over the machine and checkig logs. In the end, the explaination given was "A gamma particle from space". I shit you not. According to them, one flew through space, straight though the processor and caused the machine to reboot.
I'd sue him, and his employer in small claims. I'd make a mini-vacation of it if it went to court. Get my ducks in a row in my free time while watching the tube. File a police report on the theft. Write a letter detailing the situation to the Better Bussiness Bureau. Maybe write a letter to newspaper or TV stations, see if I could get anything about it covered. Reckless Cable Companies Steals From Honest DSL Customers.
:)
Now this all seems like a pain in the ass. And it is. But in the end, you'll have a badass story about how you battled a multi billion dollar telecommunications giant, and made them kiss your ass. That's right, I'd file for a new hub and to have them write formal letters of apology. Now *that's* being a dick. I would bet at least a memo would go out to not touch other people's things.
STOLEN!
That anecdote was on http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_stuptech.shtml
Bah. Stealing anecdotes to get Slashdot "karma". It doesn't get much lamer than that.
--- My dad's political betting
that is not true for a hub. a hub will make all devices run at the slowest speed. what you are thinking of is a s.c. dual-speed hub / switched hub 10/100 hub . these devices are not hubs. they consist of : one 10mbit/s hub one 100mbit/s hub inside the same enclosure connected together internally by a 2 port switch. a hub is a layer-1 device it creates a broadcast domain and a collission domain that is the set of all physical ports on the device. a switch is a layer-2 device it creates/emulates the same broadcast domain as a hub would but creates one independent collisison domain (physical link) on each port. Since only one nic is attached to one port/one physical domain collissions can not happen and thus the collission detection circuitry is disabled hence full duplex.
If your cable installer is using staples I suggest you go with another ISP.
I worked in the field forever and I saw so many funny things that the thing to do after work was sit around and crack up about the days events, the stupid customers, and the morons in the dispatching office.
"...ok then I think the problem is between the keyboard and the chair."
Working for the cable company and having service with their competitor was a laugh. They sent out a tech to troubleshoot the aerial line because my cable modem was losing synch more and more every day since the install, which I was unavailable for. Tech support continued to try to get me to clear my browser cache and reboot my computer and right click on my computer and all that crap. After a few rounds of supressed laughter I finally admitted that I wasnt using windows, I wasnt on a Mac... anyway
I could have replaced the line myself, but why do that when I'm paying for the service? Besides, theres a few beers left over from last night, and I could sure use some entertainment...
Now its clear that the person who originally installed this line had no idea what he was doing. Its going through trees, crossing power, and is zip-tied to a telephone pole hook, rather than properly secured. Near a large tree branch the line is worn down through the shielding to the stinger, and is very visible as the bare spot is next to the house.
They have a rule about testing the lines imepedance first. He gets out the little Ohm-meter and terminates one end, goes to the pole and tests it, and returns with a puzzled look on his face. He has to explain that he can't replace the line because its impedence is within bounds and the line must be fine.
Channel 3, also a local station, is coming in loud and clear with the local news due to the exposed wire, and this guy is arguing with me about policy?
We had the policy too, but it was because our techs, as contractors, were lighting up every corner of the house with a cable jack for the money. When this policy hit us, our re-wiring hit rock bottom and we lost alot of good technicians. It didnt take much more than a few phone calls to scratch this obviously moronic policy from their books. If picture=crappy then replace(wires);
You are about to give someone a piece of your mind, something which you can ill afford...
> a byte is 8 bits, a nibble (no, I'm not making that up) is four
;-)
Nitpick: nybble is spelled with a y. It was originally defined as half a
byte, IIRC, but these days we usually call a nybble a "hex digit", because
it holds the same amount of information as one digit in a hexadecimal number.
Also, you forgot to mention doublewords and quadwords
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
How about a *good* tech support example -- a few years back my Mac's SCSI drive blew up, taking the partition table with it and leaving me with a piece of junk. I persuaded the company to buy me two SCSI drives as a replacement (so that I could do disk-to-disk backups) and set about installing them...
No luck. Everything I tried left me with an unbootable system.
So I called Seagate, not expecting much. But the guy on the phone (first time luck, perhaps), after ascertaining that I had *some* clue took me through his debugging steps and we eventually isolated the problem in some very slight damage to the SCSI cable. Disks to one side of the connector were perfectly usable, disks on the other side of a miniscule crack just wouldn't work but the debugging attempts would suggest some type of system conflict.
How, from somewhere on the other side of the US, this guy managed to figure out that it was a tiny break in the cable is still beyond me. But I wrote to his employer to say that he should be getting awards for his service level. No doubt, his call times were poor so he was fired shortly thereafter.
A few months ago my housemates and I moved to a new house, taking our cable service with us. We just took the cable modem we had from before to the new house, where cable was already installed, and advised the cable company that we had done this.
This was apparently all fine and we should have service within an hour. A few hours later, I became frustrated and called back and got transferred to the tech support people. The first wall of support folks seems to have the function of asking what OS you use and transferring you to a "real" tech. We have a box running linux doing routing/NAT for our network, but I figured saying that would just cause me grief so I said "Windows 2000".
This turned out to be a big mistake. It turns out that the previous tennents of the house had been disconnected for having some stupid worm, so they wanted me to prove I'd patched my Windows 2000 box with Windows Update before they'd help me further. I just insisted I had, thinking it'd be easy, but they wanted the patch identification numbers from the Windows Update installation!
With no way to find these out, I just decided to be honest with the man. I explained that there was not a Windows machine connected to the cable modem and that I had just said that thinking they'd balk at the idea of a linux system. He seemed to ignore what I was saying and demanded I read out five numbers starting with Q from some dialog box in Windows 2000.
Becoming more than a little frustrated, I said that I had no way to do that and that there was no way the worms could be on my system. He was having none of it, so remembering that the worm he was trying to patch me for was Windows 2000 only I asked him what would happen if I phoned back and told them I was using Windows 98. He offered to transfer me to the "Windows 98" tech, and I agreed figuring that I wouldn't get any further here.
After waiting in the queue for 20 minutes, I got a connection to the Windows 98 tech who was the same guy I was talking to before! Both he and I knew he'd just put me back in the pool to try to get rid of me but by chance I'd ended up back on his line again. I very politely explained that my Windows 98 system would not connect to the Internet and he, with an appropriate amount of smarm, started going through the Windows 98 procedure he had laid out, which did not include patch installations.
I just played along with the little game, answering the questions correctly and pretending I was going through the motions. He knew I wasn't as well as I wasn't even trying to make it sound like I was.
Once we got through all that, he finally helped me. Apparently they have a special version of their online signup page which you must go through before Internet service is enabled at a new address. I wish they could have just told me that in the first place, as the first thing I said was "I have moved to a new address and transferred my cable service".
If you are a C or C++ programmer however, you will/should be using the definition in the ISO standard (1996 for C++, 1999 for C) in which a byte is the unit returned by sizeof and used by memcpy, memset etc.
On the hardware I am programming today, which sells millions of units, a byte is 16 bits. A char is 16 bits. A short is 16 bits. An int is 16 bits. A pointer is 16 bits but that ain't enough so we have to using segment registers from inline assembler (argh). If they could get away with it they would have probably have made a float 16 bits.
Believe it or not, there are processors that are not Intel 8086 compatible!
People who are not pedantic generate buggy code when arriving on wierdo systems, since computers tend to be pedantic themselves. But I admit that the association of byte with octet is very common, and in my opinion it was a mistake for the C and C++ committees to use the word byte for that unit of storage.
I had an opposite issue in a sense...
We had a lot of Digital DECstation workstations. One of them stopped working, so I called Field Service, and our usual guy comes out. Although it is a straight-up motherboard swap, he needs to do some diagnosis to put on the tag to engineering.
As is, the system wouldn't POST. He took the cover off, tested it again, and it POSTed fine. Figuring something was loose, he tightened all the connections. Put the cover on, system wouldn't POST. Took the cover off, system would POST. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We decide NOT to put hte cover completely on, but just lay it down on top, upside down so the internals were covered, but nothing scresed in or possibly shorting. Won't work. Take it off, works fine.
New theory - took a piece of cardboard laying nearby, and covered the case. Wouldn't work. Took it off, and it worked. Took a piece of paper, covered parts of the motherboard at a time, and slowly narrowed down the location.
The DECstation 5000s had a pair of large EPROMS with labels on them. The labels covered small round windows which I assume was for "flashing" the EPROM to wipe it out and reprogram. Apparently, they had somehow developed a sensitivity to light. A single sheet of paper was enough to block the light to prevent them from working.
I'm no electrical engineer, but this was bizarre.
The field service engineer put "afraid of the dark" on the tag, and left it at that.
Try and debug that one on a help desk phone...
rm
Sci-Fi Storm
Develop a strong ancillary relationship with the people you work with, bond with them out of the office (that's the multiplayer arena with the blue and white part on top, green part on the bottom, and has vehicles) and after you have known them for a while you would be surprised at how well they react to all of those statements.
... particularly when dealing with oilfield field hands, I am all ears.
Why do I have to hold my mouse button down and move it to highlight a block of text, and why do I have to hold down the CTRL key before I hit the C key to copy the text to the buffer, and why do I have to click the Start button when I want to shut down?
If you know a more effective answer than 'Because you fucking have to.'
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
I assume by subtitles you mean closed captions, in which case what Sky did is a violation of Federal law. It's illegal to strip captions from media that has it, or to sell A/V equipment without a caption decoder, except in a few very specific cases.
Unfortunately, there's no codified enforcement, and there's no quality requirements - in theory, they could send a "." every five minutes and be completely legal. Smacktards.
I'm hard of hearing, so I need captions in order to be able to follow a TV show without straining to hear. Still, though, the best part is probably when you're watching a cartoon, and the captions have one joke, and the audio has another.
Yeah. Well, you won't believe it, but I have one of those really cheap sites. We get customers who come to the site and about 50% of them buy about 300 bucks of service at a time. You can laugh and say... haha... he gets 50 hits a day...BFD... what a loser... but that is 7500 bucks in revenues a day. Not bad for a shop with like 3 employees. Do the math... My service provider tried to give me a ration of crap because HE couldn't satisfy MY "pitiful" bandwidth requirements. Sorry. Vendor gets no pity from me. If service is down, it is down. I deserve at least a rebate on my downtime.... and an apology.
I won't use US based hosts anymore. Too damn cavalier in dealing with LOSER customers like me.
It probably makes sense to the people running the airport. Just like to the unknowledgeable, trains in Britain and Ireland being slowed / stopped due to "leaves on the line" sounds incredible!
(What happens is that in the Autumn, the leaves pile up on the line, getting ground onto the rails by passing trains. They form a slippery laquer, causing the trains to loose traction - on slopes this can result in inability to make the climb without a run at it or extra locomotion. It's like ice for railways!)
But it still sounds hilarious. "We apologise for the delay, this was due to leaves on the line".
-- *~()____) This message will self-destruct in 5 seconds...
The PC tech support "guru" insisted that it was a f@*#ing software problem. Smoke comes out of my computer and this imbecile comes up with the lamest excuse on Earth. Software !?!?!?!?!?! I was so pissed, I was fuming and talked to his immediate supervisor and bitched her out. I then threatened the regional sales manager not to buy any more machines, which is an effective threat when you end up buying Onyx 2000 and Origin 3000 from them.
In all fairness the workstation and server SGI tech support is really good. Its the best I've seen compared to Apple, Dell, HP ....you name it. You do pay a pretty price for their tech support, but when SGI entered the PC market they had to subcontract the
manufacturing and support out to other American companies. Which resulted in a significant problem with the quality of their tech support (which I may add was all done in the U.S.) My experience with tech support from Bangalore has been pretty
good so far. Which goes to show its not which country you subcontract or outsource to, but to whom.
First thing the tech support said when those win file server had a problem:
"It's Linux's fault".
Well, what a convincing explanation, a nice big cloudy fog, sorry, FUD.... :-)
I went on a service call to a home user. They proceeded to tell me that they bought a Dell 8 months ago, and hadn't opened it all that time. When they did open it and set it up, it wouldn't boot. They contacted Dell, and Dell tech support informed them that "hard drives need to be used frequently or they stop working."
I for one welcome our new [insert main topic] overlords.
Back in '96 my connection to my cable-modem went out. Not uncommon, so I gave it the next day while I was at work to resolve itself. Still out when I got home, so I called TechSupport.
The answer I was given was that Mr. Smith (who?) called to report that he was moving into my apartment in a week, and therefore they took upon themselves to turn off my service. No notice to me whatsoever. I was dumbfounded at this policy.
So when I bought a house 3 years ago, I called all the utilities a week or so before possession, and was again amazed that I was able to turn off the seller's service...with just a phone call; no proof or id required.
Nice way to mess someone up, eh?
Once I was working as a system administrator at a local TV station, also managing users, mostly specialized people. One day I'm going for lunch and I meet this stage-building guy (I don't really know what he did there) and he told me his e-mail was broken. I asked what happened, and he told me he just pressed "Get Mail" and a big error message came up with a tilted red cross on it. I said I'd check it out, and did before lunch, in fact, so the guy wasn't there when I checked the problem.
I press "Get Mail". Up comes the error message and the tilted red cross, with the message "You have no new mail."
To be perfectly honest, I couldn't even laugh. I was just blown away. I just switched a client and went back to my office, he never called again. I'm sort of glad because I like to be nice to my idiot users, but I couldn't figure out how to tell him what was wrong without letting him know he's a retard as well.
i had issues with my cable connection when i first got it (found out i couldn't just release and renew the ip address to get it reconnected, i had to actually restart the computer). i told the guy on the phone that i do tech support when he started treating me like the average dumb computer user and we got into a little conversation. basically it came down to him saying "so you actually fix real problems". thought that was funny. he admitted to me that he wasn't taht bright, just followed the book.
please me, have no regrets.
You don't read a lot about that, nowadays.
I had the misfortune to buy an HP Vectra from them for my brother , and the Windows install was in one huge monolithic blob on a CD: you had to install all the crap at once, even if you only wanted Windows or a certain driver. That would have been fine if they had shipped a stable build that actually worked. But the config for the Zip drive was both wrong and out-of-date, and downloading latest Zip drivers from Iomega didn't seem to help the persistent crashes and freezes.
So I rang up their "Tech support", to ask about their recommended fix. She walked me through the script, starting with "is the computer switched on Mr. (my surname)?", and suffixing every single question in the script with "Mr. (my surname)". This was clearly their attempt at personalizing "Customer Care", and make me feel like a Valued Individual(tm), but all it did was make me want to smack the "Customer Care" out of her with a blunt axe.
Eventually we came to the end of the script, and no closer to a solution. She now advised me to re-install from the massive blob CD, which would fdisk all my data to oblivion. I explained that I'd done that already, and it hadn't worked.
"It looks like the installation CD as shipped has a problem."
"No that's not possible Mr. (my surname). They're thoroughly tested."
"Well sure it is. Maybe it worked before, but doesn't work on the latest hardware."
"No that's not possible Mr. (my surname)"
"Why not?
"What do you think could be wrong with it Mr. (my surname)?"
"How about the out-of-date drivers?"
"How would that crash the machine Mr. (my surname)?"
"If there's a bug that didn't show up before, but shows up under a new revision of BIOS, or a new ethernet card, or new firmware in the Zip drive, and so on."
"I don't see how that's possible Mr. (my surname)."
"Well it says on the Iomega site that there's a known memory leak issue with the version of drivers that you've shipped, for a start."
"I'm sorry, what was that you said Mr. (my surname)? A memory LEAK?"
"Memory leak, yes. I can give you the address of the bug report on the Iomega site."
(muffled laughter) "There's no thing as a 'memory LEAK', Mr. (my surname)." (more muffled laughter, now joined by her colleagues, phone covered up and uncovered as she talks)
At this point I was starting to get irritated. Paying for incompetence and ignorance is one thing, but getting laughed at for politely explaining to someone what I paid them to already know is quite another.
So I told her to put her supervisor on the phone, right now. She sighed, and said "OK, Mr. (my surname), I'll put him on right away!" (more muffled laughter).
The supervisor was no better informed than his idiot underlings, but at least he was willing to listen and learn when I explained to him how poor allocation and deallocation management can cause a failure to reclaim discarded memory, and he accepted that there really was something called a memory leak, and that the computing world outside of CompUSA had known about it for years, and that Iomega had reported the bug exactly as I'd described it.
But CompUSA never did fix my problem. So I backed up my brother's data, and rebuilt his PC from scratch with a borrowed Windows CD, figuring it was worth losing out on the "free" Norton AV etc. that came on HP's monolithic blob-CD, if that's what it took to get a PC that didn't freeze randomly a dozen times a day.
Now, whenever one of us runs into a "professional" who wouldn't know his own job if it jumped up and bit his dick off, we usually look at each other and say in unison "there's no such thing as a 'memory LEAK', Mr. (my surname)".
The cable guy came to hook up my future mother-in-law's computer. I had recommended an eMac, since I know I'll be the one maintaining it and I know Macs better.
He rings the doorbell. At 8:30 in the morning. My mother-in-law opened the door (in her bedclothes) and asked him to wait a minute while she woke me up. He sighed and tapped his foot. I dragged myself out of bed and threw a shirt on.
Immediately upon entering the house, he says he's having a bad morning. Oh great. Then he asks what operating system the computer's running. "Mac OS X 10.2," I say.
"It won't work," he says. At this point, I'm feeling two things. First, I feel like I screwed over my future mother-in-law for recommending a computer that wouldn't work, and second, I want to know why this guy thinks an eMac won't work. So I ask.
"Well, uh, our software, uh, hasn't been upgraded, so, uh, I can, uh, get your name and number and we can, uh, call you when it gets upgraded. It works in OS 9, though."
"This computer has OS 9, too. Will it work if I boot into OS 9?"
"Uh, no," he says, "it's something about being upgrade to OS 10. It doesn't work anymore. It also doesn't work in Windows 95, or on computers that were upgraded from Windows 95 to 98, and people have problems using the service on HPs that have Windows XP installed"
At this point I knew he was lying out of his ass, because there's no difference in booting into OS 9 from an eMac and running OS 9 on a computer where it's the default OS. At least to the applications. And my parents have an HP with Windows XP installed, and haven't had a problem. This got me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. So I tell him to install the line, and I will set it up myself.
He walks out in a huff because (I think) he was hoping to get out of this job and get a doughnut or something. At this point, he's woken everyone in the house up by talking too loudly, and he returns with a HUGE drill bit. (Like an inch in diameter. Way bigger than you'll ever need to run a cable wire. I know, I helped my dad run cable in my house and we did it with a 3/8" bit and a coat hanger.) My future mother-in-law asks him what he's going to do with it.
"I have to drill a hole in the floor."
"Wait a minute, I'm paying $89 to have in installed in an outlet on the wall."
"Well, that's a different team, you'll have to get someone else to come out, and that computer's not internet ready, so it might not work anyway."
At this point, she's starting to cry because she just bought this house and he wants to put a 1" hole in the floor, and she thinks she just wasted $800 on a computer that won't work.
"Why isn't it Internet ready?" I ask.
"It doesn't have ethernet" the idiot says.
"Yes it does"
"But it's not the same on a Macintosh." (Yes, he's that dumb.)
"My friend's got four Macs running OS X hooked up to Comcast hi-speed in the same township."
"Well, maybe he figured it out how to do it," he says. "I don't know how."
Not knowing how is a lot different than "it won't work."
Under my breath I say "Maybe I should call Comcast and get a friggin' job."
"FINE!" says he. "YOU DO MY F*%ING JOB." Then he grabs his stuff and slams the door as my future mother-in-law is holding me back from rushing the asshole.
So now we have my future mother-in-law and fiancée in hysterics, kids scared in the other room, and my future brother-in-law and myself ready to hunt this guy down. All in the space of fifteen minutes of this guy ringing the doorbell.
We all calm down, and my mother-in-law calls Comcast and asks what computers aren't supported. As it turns out, there shouldn't be any problems using Comcast broadband, and they "don't know why any of their repairmen would say that." Then she got transferred to this guy's supervisor.
"Well, I'm getting a different story from him," he says. No shite sherlock, he wants to keep his job.
So th
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
i think e-machines is not the culprit here. its most probably best buy.
we'd tell people to return dead on arrival products to best buy, and 4 weeks later that same product is sold to somebody else, as new, not working. since we track serial numbers and retailers - we KNOW best buy sometimes puts returned merchandise back on the shelf without testing it first.
i never buy anything there.
Actually, they didn't have the IP blocked. It was the customer. He had some freaky filtering turned on in his Earthlink account settings.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Not only was it within Apple's one year warranty, I had also forked over $350 for the AppleCare extension, so I could have the privilege of calling and telling them about the defect. The Phone Technician I spoke with was slightly infuriating. It eventually got fixed, but I had to deal with a local tech instead of direclty through Apple.
Tech: Under what conditions do you use your PowerBook?
Me: Mostly, it's on my desk at work. At home, I sit down with it for a few hours.
Tech: Do you use it on your lap at home?
Me: *blink* Um, yes...
Tech: Using it on your lap probably caused overheating, and that won't be covered under Apple's warranty.
Me: *fuming* But it's a laptop...
Tech: Actually, sir, it's a portable...
Apple never calls it a "laptop" on the site; I guess most computer manufacturers have moved away from that term because the systems just keep getting faster and hotter.
There are, however, many promotional pictures of people using iBooks and PowerBooks on their lap. *shakes fist*
Trying to get support as to why xbox live won't connect to in network customers... the reply from a level 2 technician was " UDP packets are not supported on our network "
Unbeknownst to me, my printer port had broken from the mother board. I got my printer about 6 months after I got the computer, so I imagine, the printer port was just always broken.
I spent an entire day on the phone calling back and forth between the computer company and printer company. Finally, the printer company swore that their printer was fine, and told me to force the computer company to accept the blame.
I stuck to my guns and told the computer company the printer was absolutely fine, and that something had to be wrong with the computer itself. I was then told to go through a whole bunch of steps, a few of which included DOS prompts. Since my very first computer was run completely through DOS, I had no problem with these steps. This mystified the tech support guy.
The mysticism then turned into cynicism. He asks me:
"Are you a competitor?"
*laugh* "No."
"I don't believe you. I think you are a competitor testing our tech support."
"What? No, I'm not a competitor!"
"By law you are required to tell me if you are a competitor if I ask you. So I'm asking you, are you a competitor?"
"No! I am not a competitor!"
"Then how do you know DOS?"
"My first computer ran off of DOS!"
"Right.."
"Look, I just want my friggen printer to work, ok?"
After many more tests, his superior came to the conclusion that my printer port just must be broken. A few days later, a repairman showed up and swapped in a new motherboard, and voila! It worked.
I don't know why, but this reminds me of an experience I had at a Home Depot once. I'm walking through the store minding my own business and this guy comes up to me and asks me where some part is located. I'm dressed in my khaki slacks, nice belt, polo shirt - it never occured to me that he could possibly have mistook me for a Home Depot employee. I just figured he was lost and was asking a stranger for help.
Unfortunately I had no idea where his widget was located and so I responded, "I have no idea." He actually flinched. Then he made a horrible looking face and began to berate me, telling me I should know this stuff. It finally occured to me that he thought I was a store employee. How, I have no damn idea. I said, "You know, I don't actually work here." He rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, right." I just walked away. What a moron. I can imagine the conversation he had with the store manager about the terrible attitude of "his employees."
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
About a month later, we were experiencing a problem that prevented us from having a connection.
I called GTE and spoke to someone about the problem. They kept giving me a bunch of BS. When they asked which operating system I was using, I said Linux, and they said that wasn't supported. So on the third or fourth phone call, I said Windows, and when they told me which networking window to go into, I typed the commands into the CLI that would yield the same result. But all of this was to no avail.
Finally, after spending some time checking my settings and the network, I came to the conclusion that our side of the connection was fine and that GTE's DHCP server was down or otherwise not responding to us. We weren't being assigned an IP address, and therefore our connection appeared to be down. I called their number again and told their tech support people that they need to check the status of their server. Of course, they were all some minimum wage folks reading off some screen, so I begged and pleaded to be put through to someone technical, which was finally, after countless arguments, granted. I told their tech guy what I thought about their DHCP server. He checked, and sure enough, I was right. He punched something in, and we were back in business. Oh, and I got their direct phone number, in case of future bullshit.
The clueless tech support people are just there to help equally clueless users set up simple stuff in Windows. From that moment forth, I always figured out and solved my own problems. (Increasingly, it's this way with my cars and other equipment... Most people just don't know what they're doing.)
My horror story of tech support is from APC, from whom I solemnly vow *never*
to buy or recommend *anything*. We had an ongoing issue for *months* with the
software for one of their UPS units. I'm home ATM and don't recall the exact
model number. The issue was an annoying intermittent one, wherein from time
to time the software would decide for no particular reason that the UPS was
operating on battery power (when in fact it was not) and activate five-minute
automatic shutdown sequence. This was happening at night, causing many of
our overnight backups to fail, and it was happening first thing in the morning
when I (the only IT person on staff) am not normally there, causing a lot of
panic among the staff (this system is *the* computer, the *one* that matters,
the single mission-critical point of failure that CANNOT be down during the
day), and I was told in no uncertain terms this had to be fixed *NOW*, but
APC was totally unhelpful. I must have spent a hundred hours on the phone
with them. Every *single* time I called, I had to wait while the tech
support rep did a web search to find out what VMS was. On more than one
occasion I was told that the product we were using (PowerChute for OpenVMS)
did not exist, and that VMS was not supported. Also, despite that the
trouble ticket CLEARLY stated the problem was with PowerChute for OpenVMS,
were were told that we would have to purchase PowerChute for OpenVMS, since
the problem we were having was due to having the Windows version of
PowerChute installed on VMS, which was not supported. I was given Windows
instructions and on one occasion Unix commands to follow. I was told that
the problem was with the city's power grid. I was told that the problem
was with our application software. Various people told me that they would
research the issue and get back to me, but the only one who ever did told
me that the problem must be the PC's serial port, despite that I had already
explained numerous times to numerous people that the cable from the UPS plugs
into LTA16, an RJ45 port on a DECServer terminal server. I called and I
called and I called and I got *nowhere* every single time. I asked on one
occasion to please speak to someone who knows VMS, but it never happened.
We ran for weeks at a time on several occasions with the PowerChute software
disabled, meaning that if the power went out at night we'd have an unclean
shutdown -- unacceptable, but far less likely than the problems we were
having with PowerChute enabled. The problem was never properly resolved.
Needless to say, I will never buy an APC product again, and neither will
the library as long as I work there.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.