I hate "tech support"

[Grendel]

Anyone else hate the shitheads that work as "tech support" (no offense if you work this job and know what you are doing)

I have called my cable company 3 times now and each time the tech gets stumped. The modem lights up all the lights except the send light, no matter how many times I reset the modem or try different cables, it won't come on.

The call always ends with them saying "Well your NIC must have gone bad" Their fucking troubleshooting book must just be a flow chart with each branch leading to this answer.

So this "tech" is telling me that in one 8 hour work shift all the lan cables in my house went bad, and the NICs in my laptop, desktop (2 NICs), and my 360 went bad?

God dammit.

Sorry for the rant, but this shit pissed me off. Hopefully whatever is fucked gets fixed by tomorrow, I gotta blast some people on GTA! :)

*edit* oh yea... I'm posting this on my laptop jacking someones wireless... so much for the techs first claim of an outage in my area...

[gabe30]

i hated the tech support at ATI.
all they told me was that i didnt install my video card correctly.

i then told them that i followed their instructions

and they told me to recheck it because they dont make errors

i then told them to shove it up their ass because i know what im doing

[apex]

dsl tech licks [email protected] i cant understand them so i hang up on them
i wanna reach in the phone and punch them

[StaticX27]

Prove them wrong by just hooking up your laptop directly to the modem. Once you do that, you remove all possibility of network errors. From there, see if they're able to ping the modem, and then your laptop on the network.

Computers are like little kids. You throw everything on there at once, it can get confused and break. So I tend to remove everything except the bare minimum, then build up one device at a time until I find what the problem is.

[Grendel]

Prove them wrong by just hooking up your laptop directly to the modem. Once you do that, you remove all possibility of network errors. From there, see if they're able to ping the modem, and then your laptop on the network.

Computers are like little kids. You throw everything on there at once, it can get confused and break. So I tend to remove everything except the bare minimum, then build up one device at a time until I find what the problem is.

Yea I tried that too, hooked both my laptop and desktop straight to the modem. Tried with a few different cords too.

Each time it kept pulling a 169.254 address...

The tech said he could ping my modem so according to him I should be online.

Where do they get these guys? Do they have any technical background at all?

[HyperTek]

its probably a bad modem mine went out before.... luckily i leased a modem from my cable company so they covered it..

Yah i hate tech support , they usually give u the obvious "what you need to do is .." procedure even if you tell them you already did that.

I HATE TECH SUPPORT when your speaking to people in India.. no offense but ive had orders screwed up etc because i couldnt understand their accent or etc.

[Grendel]

its probably a bad modem mine went out before.... luckily i leased a modem from my cable company so they covered it..

Yah i hate tech support , they usually give u the obvious "what you need to do is .." procedure even if you tell them you already did that.

I HATE TECH SUPPORT when your speaking to people in India.. no offense but ive had orders screwed up etc because i couldnt understand their accent or etc.

I'm pissed that I had to put minutes back on my cell to call these assholes. Spent at least $6 just waiting on hold and going through their "troubleshooting"

I can just leech this guys internet till tomorrow and swap my modem out tomorrow I guess... if that is even the problem.

[Pank]

I work a REAL tech support job, supporting something like 80,000 students and like 2,000 or so employees.

most of the tech support people you talk to, especially if they're "Level 1"/"Tier 1" are (and repeat after me)
fucking
useless

quick suggestions for anyone dealing with tech support:

1. ask for an issue number/ticket number/request number/service request number They are required to input these for EVERY CALL, otherwise their metrics get fucked up and they get fired

2. placate them when they ask you to reset your router, etc etc. once they're done with their script and cant fix shit, they will send you to level 2, tier 2, who can actually fix shit. these are the people you want to talk to

3. be polite. support techs/analysts will bend over backward (usually) if you are patient and polite. this can save you shitloads of time and money.

4. if shit isn't fixed, call back every single day untill it is, or they have dispatched someone to your house/replaced your faulty hardware. This is where tip #1 comes into play. You can give them that number and they can pull your issue right back up inside their ticketing system (probably footprints/magic/ and another one i forgot that TW reps use).


I have worked as an "Information Systems Analyst III" for 5 years, if you want any more help, just ask me or Inertiaticism, as we have this shit down to a SCIENCE. Talking to IT tech support for other companies is easy peasy now

[Grendel]

Yea I'm always polite when I call... no reason to be a dick to them...

My job is comm, in the desert all I did was fix stuff like this, so I know it's not a problem on my end. I also know when someone is trying to blow me off because I know the excuses we used :p

The whole "NIC is dead/your settings are wrong/cable died" are total bullshit :(

[Andrew Bohan]

on january 1st my interenet went down, so i called comcast

went through the whole thing, this and that.

and i have a degree in computer science, specialization in networking, but they still treat me like i just showed up from 1874.

so they sent a guy out. he decided it was a bad tap on the pole and he scheduled a crew to come fix it.

saw some guys working a pole a few days later that was not the same pole the "bad tap" was on.

but the internet worked

just for that day though.

so i called back, said it worked for a bit but now it doesn't. they said they fixed it already so they're not gonna send another guy out.

what? but it doesn't work. it's....not....fixed!

so they sent another guy out and he confirmed it doesn't work! amazing! he said it's a network issue out in the maze of cables running all over town. great.

then a few days later i saw some guys working on a pole so i asked them what's up. THIS GUY knew what the fuck was going on. apparently there was a bad amplifier down the line. the houses close to it were getting slow interenet, further up were getting slow and intermittent internet, and where i was we were not getting enough signal to do anything with. so why wouldn't the person on the phone tell me that? who knows. maybe they're not supposed to tell customers about big problems they're having. maybe they just no idea what's going on. this whole thing took about two weeks, and i got two months of free service out of the deal :)

i was going to switch to AT&T dsl, but i can only get 3mb download where i am, vs 6mb for comcast. shitty. i really hate comcast.

[TheWolf]

Tell them what you want them to do. Like. Instead of "I plug my modem in and it's send light doesen't work since I've tried 3 nics on it." tell them "I plug it in and nothing happens. Which buttons do you want me to press". I pretend to be dumb as rocks once I've figured out its their problem but I make sure I always make them flow chart it to the answer I want. Answering questions like "Does the power light come on and the cable light go solid?" "I don't know man I don't have my glasses to read the tiny print but I don't see any blinky light. I told you before the lights quit blinkin a day ago so it's bad right".

[98s14inaz]

...
Where do they get these guys? Do they have any technical background at all?

India. If by technical background you mean "works for less than an American" then yes.

[Gnnr]

Go here and use their Comcast forum. Usually they know whats really going on and they can help you diagonose a problem. There are some Comcast techs that hang around sometimes too.

http://www.broadbandreports.com/forums/all

[StaticX27]

While it may not be useful, I've had alot of computers that I've had to fix (best buy tech..... hurrah)... A lot of the computers that are just getting 169 numbers are getting owned by a software firewall like norton and such. Try connecting when you're booted into Safe Mode with Network support. If he's able to ping you, then technically your modem is capable of transmitting two way traffic, and does lend credibility that the problem isn't the modem.

[jspaeth]

The only people that are any good at Tech Support are foreigners. Most of the people doing "tech support" that are from the US are fucking retarded.

[StaticX27]

The only people that are any good at Tech Support are foreigners. Most of the people doing "tech support" that are from the US are fucking retarded.

I think you have that backwards...

I've sat on the phone with Dell tech support trying to get them to warranty their product... I'm a certified technician. That doesn't make me a genius by any means, but that does mean I'm smart enough to know that the power cable is plugged into the wall. I sat on the phone with them for 3 hours only to have this jackass from India say "You have deviated from the script, we must start over."

I'm not rude to them by any means, I simply ask questions and answer theirs. They were idiots. Any time I need tech support from a manufacturer for some reason, I call the retailer inside numbers (I have the numbers for sony and hp). They're awesome, and they're Americans. They sit there and help you diagnose your problem, no matter what it is. Easy, hard, whatever. Any problem I brought to him, he could handle without going to tier 2 tech support, and since they were American, they were easy to understand!

[Andrew Bohan]

my dad had a dell inspiron, and he eventually sold it just so he wouldn't have to talk to indians whenever he had a problem (which was a lot)

i have a dell latitude, which is considered a small business laptop, instead of a home laptop like the inspirons. my tech support is all americans

i heard they did that cuz the business customers threatened to cancel their huge million dollar accounts because they didn't want to talk to indians, but home customers don't have as much sway

[HyperTek]

that reminds me, my last job as a customer service rep for a newspaper, i heard the company tried to outsource us to india for like an hour or so and the old people customers didnt like their accents *alot of old people, believe it or not, are racist, usually because of whatever generation/background they may be from*.

[jspaeth]

From my experience...


You can understand Americans better, but they tend to be dumb.

You can't understand the foreigners, but they tend to be much smarter.


maybe everyone else has had different experiences.

[HyperTek]

yah they are smart, i think the language barrier is what seperates us. They only act how they where trained so i can understand. They seem to be able to keep their cool, probably delt with tons of assholes prior to your call, and when you speak to em, they dont seem to reflect their day on you.. lol

[Farzam]

Tech support is annoying

Even I can figure shit out before them usually

I'm pretty good with people that have accents, but it's a lot more relieving to have someone you can comprehend fully without having to think twice. And I think i'm one of the few that doesn't take shit out on tech support people. They didn't break my shit, so why would I take it out on them? I mean, if they're pricks and i'm on the phone with them for hours, Hell yeah i'll rip em apart, but I think i've only done that once or twice.

[MrD]

I bet the original diagnostic is right.
It is the NIC. The one on the modem facing the internal network.

[jackjack]

tell you the truth, i've never had a problem.......... so far. guess i've just been lucky.

[ByeByeSti]

dsl tech licks [email protected] i cant understand them so i hang up on them
i wanna reach in the phone and punch them


thank you !! i second this. my dial up at home is faster then my direcway dsl ..not a clue why but its so slow now and wont do shit when ever i try to load stuff or anything

[Grendel]

I bet the original diagnostic is right.
It is the NIC. The one on the modem facing the internal network.

Last night, without changing anything the modem just suddenly started working. I didn't change any settings or cables this time, it just worked.

Sounds like it was a problem on my end for sure... lol

God I hate them, hope I can get some kind of credit when I go to pay my bill.