Slashdot Mirror
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..."
The absolute worst is the fake picked up phone click followed by "Thank you for continuing to hold..."
Back when I did tech support, I'd say 90% of the problems I encountered were software configuration issues, not hardware. When you're calling tech support, it only stands to reason that you actually buy hardware from the manufacturer, which is why people want to know your serial # and address information: Is this our shit? As a lot of software issues can be solved regardless of vendor, it's important they don't waste time/money on someone else's stuff. Surprisingly enough, I had people with Gateways trying to get support from Dell. :/
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
The biggest problem I run into with tech support is the huge amount of rules and regulations the call center people have to follow. Instead of me calling up Gateway and saying "Hey my modem is fried, I know what I'm doing with computers, send me a new one" I have to go through an hour of pointless troubleshooting. For a $5 part with $3 shipping they should just send me the part.
Also the call center person has his/her hands tied when fixing the problem. Recently my cable internet service did not discontinue my service when I told them to. Even though it was obvious they needed to credit my account for the extra month they charged me for, the representative could not due to some rule. If he was trusted to just make the decision things would go much smoother.
...(in fact, I'm at work right now) in addition to being a full-time student. I can tell you that most people I work with here have a fraction of the knowledge the need to do their job correctly. They fancy themselves "geeks" when, in reality, most are nothing more than ordinary misfits of one sort or another. They try to get by on attitude and ego but, where the rubber meets the road, they have no credibility whatsoever. Phrases like emtionally stunted, dull-witted, and psychologically regressive come to mind...
I chaulk it up to the wage paid. It's actually not bad but, for most here, this job is a career move. That fact alone says a lot about the quality of the person you're likely to get on the phone. I can assure anyone that, no matter what your competence level, this job is NO career move. It's too bad they don't understand that, in a year, this office likely won't be around, and they'll be back on welfare, washing dishes, distributing flyers/newspapers, or who knows what.
Yes, and what's with the "grading" system? I couldn't make any sense of it whatsoever.
At least one of the problems they induced would never, ever happen to a normal person, either.
Here's an idea for their next article: "How Far Can You Drop a Demo Laptop, And What Damage Ensues?" I'm sure it will be equally well-thought-out.
In one company I worked, one call wiped out the profit of 5 units sold. Laptops likely make more money per unit, but same concept...
There is -no- incentive for having warm bodies intelligently support a product. An employee like that would:
1. cost too much money/hour and be hard to replace.
2. Take too long with each customer
3. Inspire more phone calls. (support is great right?)
4. Raise the price of the laptop.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Acer deserve the bottom place in this experiment. My father's Aspire failed six months after he bought it, and he sent it back. It took almost three months, a gang of lawyers, and an Internet campaign to get it back from them fully repaired.
We rapidly found out that other people had had even worse problems, and that Acer's support system is not to be relied upon to get the job done quickly. As such, I've been put off a manufacturer that had previously seemed decent. Avoid at all costs.
I have had nothing but problems with their Tech Support. The laptop I have works excellently...well, when it works. I've sent it back to them no less than 3 times for issues. First time, my HDD died. I was on the phone for about 2 hours while we discussed ways to test whether it was really dead or just sorta dead and therefore not covered by the warranty...after sending it in, I called for a status update. Response? "We have no record of your laptop." They said they would look around and call back. After three hours of waiting, I called them back and they once again said they didn't know where it was, but to call back the next day. Calling back the next day met with a better response of "We found the laptop, but now the Support request has expired, so we have to file a new one, which may take a while." Are you serious? The support request is supposed to last 10 business days. I sent it in 2 days after getting the RMA (I got it on the weekend) and it arrived on Friday, that was 4 days. That's not 10...Not surprisingly, subsequent calls were met with "We've sent the laptop to the repair depot, so you need to talk to them, we'll connect you." The repair depot didn't know what was going on, but they were able to give me a number I could use to reference my case. At least they knew about my laptop. They apparently got it in and worked on it...for a while... All in all, the first call was not a success, it took exactly 30 days from the date they received the laptop to get it back to me, despite having purchased their special quick repair service that guarantees a turnaround of 3 days (business days) even with shipping. Call 2? My motherboard had just flat up died. The computer refused to boot, it just sorta turned on a lit up. This call went a little better as the tech was convinced that it was the motherboard that was dead within 15 minutes and provided me with a case number and shipping materials (part of the special service) which arrived the next day. Sending it in and getting it back took no time at all, less than 3 days as promised, and my problems were fixed (except my touchpad didn't function correctly, but I didn't use it anyways so it could have been a problem previous to this.) Third time was due to my laptop failing to charge. This was resolved in about 2 hours again, as we went through "we don't support batteries out of warranty" for about an hour while I tried to convince them that it wasn't a battery issue, it was the receptor on the laptop had broken loose (which is apparently a common problem among Toshiba laptops according to the "support" forums.) Overall? Toshiba gets a C-. Their Tech Support people are terrible at diagnosing hardware issues as they definitely read from a sheet of questions and they take forever to get anywhere with. Their repair services are very good though, every time I sent in my laptop it came back as good as new (as far as I could tell). Their hardware (when it doesn't fail on me) works incredibly well, and as a bonus, most of the hardware is fully Linux compatible!