Mobile Magazine's Notebook Tech Support Reviews

antdude writes "Mobile Magazine tested companies' technical support for their notebooks/laptops. Each test had three calls to each of ten major notebook manufacturers (added three additional vendors since last year). Also, called three third-party providers of PC help. On the whole, what they found was a sea of ignorance -- and annoying fixation with pinning down our name, address, and serial numbers. Things haven't gotten any better since our 2004 test -- and most of the vendors we tested have actually gotten worse..."

Comments

Re:Three samples isn't statistically kosher.

[Anonymous Coward]

Consumer Reports has a somewhat up to date chart of their most recent survey for tech support for Laptops and Desktops.

http://www.consumerreports.org/main/detailv4.jsp?C ONTENT%3C%3Ecnt_id=596745&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=16 2693

Former Dell Rep

[Kesh]

As a former tech-support rep for Dell, I can at least understand what's going on there.

First off, Dell doesn't do the work themselves. They outsource their tech-support to another company (whom I worked for). They've got call centers across the US and in other countries. The trouble is, if one call center is being overwhelmed, you call will get bumped to another. When that happens, you might get put into the wrong queue (home users ending up on the business lines), which means you'll have to hang up and call again. Each queue is only allowed to handle their particular service area. So, if you have an Inspiron laptop at home, you can't get any help from the desktop techs or the business laptop techs. And they can't transfer calls to another queue.

Further, the call centers close up shop at midnight local time. All remaining calls in queue then get bumped west. After midnight in California, that means you're getting a foreign call center until 8 am Eastern.

The serial numbers, however, are a good thing. When you call in, you're asked to read off the Service Tag for your machine, which allows the tech to not only pull up technical specs on your individual Dell, but to see your prior call history. That way, they know that the last time you called in you were having X problem, and the tech recommended Y solution, or that they sent out a replacement hard drive, etc.

In all, it wasn't a bad job (aside from rude or hysterical callers). Just tedious, and you had little chance to interact with your co-workers, or even your supervisors. Hell, I never did find out what my supervisor's name was, because I never met her in person.

Most of you don't get it

[thunderbee]

At all.
Most calls to support have little to do with actual problems.
Most calls to support are from the 95% of the population that calls because 'the internet is broken, please fix it, I bought my computer from you'.

So, they have procedures to deal with these 95%.
No, "I know my stuff, just trust me" won"t work - everyone says that.

Your best bet is to play along, nicely.
Spontaneously providing precise and to the point information gets you out of the dummy filters faster. Of course, the question is then, can you get to someone who can actually fix the poroblem.
This is the real problem.
Bashing the dummy-filtering procedure is pointless. Focusing on the eventual availability of someone with the knowledge/power to fix things is what matters.