NationStates Jolt Archive

The other day the internet died in my apartment. I found that not all of the lights were on on the router, so I tinkered with it and fixed that problem, then I did a couple of software things and eventually I gave up and called tech support. Right off the bat, I told him everything that I'd done so far and that everything claimed it was working, but nothing was actually working.
Instead of listening to me, he took me through everything that I'd already done step by step and when we got to the same point where I was before I called him, nothing worked. So he called his supervisor and found out that it was actually a problem on their end and that it would be fixed soon enough.

I know that a lot of the people who probably call up their isp to complain about the internet not working probably don't know a router from a hole in the ground, but when a customer calls and explains that they've already done a number of things, wouldn't it make sense to go with that? I mean, the man was even asking me which of the lights on the router were red after I'd told him that they were all solid green. It would have saved a lot of my time.

Does anyone else get annoyed at people assuming that you're a moron when you call for help?

I expect he has a script to follow for everyone who calls, in theory so he can get to the source of the problem and fix it ASAP. Thing it, that only really works when your caller has no idea what they're doing and hasn't tried anything.


Alternatively, he's an idiot.

The other day the internet died in my apartment. I found that not all of the lights were on on the router, so I tinkered with it and fixed that problem, then I did a couple of software things and eventually I gave up and called tech support. Right off the bat, I told him everything that I'd done so far and that everything claimed it was working, but nothing was actually working.
Instead of listening to me, he took me through everything that I'd already done step by step and when we got to the same point where I was before I called him, nothing worked. So he called his supervisor and found out that it was actually a problem on their end and that it would be fixed soon enough.

I know that a lot of the people who probably call up their isp to complain about the internet not working probably don't know a router from a hole in the ground, but when a customer calls and explains that they've already done a number of things, wouldn't it make sense to go with that? I mean, the man was even asking me which of the lights on the router were red after I'd told him that they were all solid green. It would have saved a lot of my time.

Does anyone else get annoyed at people assuming that you're a moron when you call for help?
Most folks ARE idiots, and therefore the tech support folks use a script. If you deviate from it, it throws them off -- I know, I've done it before.

Most of the people with the internet don't know how to solve the problem on their own and most people in Tech Support don't know what they are doing either. That's the conclusion I have come to.

The best way to fix the internet is to delete all the porn.

Oh, thats not what this thread is about. Carry on.

In seriousness, I have a moderate phobia of phone use, so I always get someone else to ring tech support for me if something goes wrong, or take my favoured approach of turning it off and leaving it, hoping it will start working again later.

I would like to add, most people in tech support period, no matter what they are tech supporting, never seem to have the first clue about whats going on.

Most of the people with the internet don't know how to solve the problem on their own and most people in Tech Support don't know what they are doing either. That's the conclusion I have come to.

Some day they'll invent some kind of advanced tech support, for people who know what they're doing staffed by people who know even better.

The best way to fix the internet is to delete all the porn.

Oh, thats not what this thread is about. Carry on.

In seriousness, I have a moderate phobia of phone use, so I always get someone else to ring tech support for me if something goes wrong, or take my favoured approach of turning it off and leaving it, hoping it will start working again later.

The tragedy is, this often works.

After literally hours of inconclusive fiddling around....

Some day they'll invent some kind of advanced tech support, for people who know what they're doing staffed by people who know even better.

And none of those tech support people will speak English, so they won't be of any use to most of us. Nobody would want to pay a fair wage even for advanced tech support.

I don't so much mind the script that makes us have to re-do everything we just did. (A) They have a script to follow to make sure their records show that all the necessary bases were tagged, and (B) they don't live inside my head, so I'm okay with them needing to see the fixes fail with their own eyes in order to understand it.

Here's what I do hate though: When I report a problem, and the tech support person cops this attitude like the only problem is that I'm a stupid user who doesn't know what she's looking at. I'm not a tech person, so I typically don't know how to fix real problems. But I'm a savvy enough user that I know okay function from malfunction, and I can tell a serious problem from a momentary fit. I also know most of the little tricks to get a glitching system to sort itself out. So I usually won't call tech support until something really serious or really odd is going on.

My usual experience with tech support involves me telling the guy what the problem is. The guy copping a condescending pooh-pooh attitude. The guy making me go through all the usual procedures with the same results as what I already reported. The guy copping his "Here I am to Save the Day" voice and getting into my system (on site or remote) to reveal his Big Fix. The Big Fix not working. And the tech guy saying, "Hm."

I always manage to get tech guys to say, "Hm."

I hate the "Hm." Because the "Hm" means that the whole rest of my day -- at least! -- is shot to hell because not only will the tech guy never take a break from this mystery until he fixes it, he won't let me take a break, either, especially if he's working remote because he'll want me there to unplug and replug-in hardware for him. One has to admire true dedication, but at the same time -- I once had three days of work disrupted by a tech mystery that three tech support guys were clamped onto like pitbulls in a death grip.

I've gotten to the point where, if I really don't have time for the "Hm", I'll fob the tech guy off and quietly withdraw the problem from his to-do list and find some other way around it. Like at my new job, when apparently (it turned out) the person before me had spilled soda into the CPU and it died right after I started working there, and they switched me to a temporary loaner CPU, and magically all the documents stored on the network showed up as Read Only. Only in Properties, it said Read Only was disabled. I had no way to unlock the docs so I could edit them. I ended up just making copies of everything to work on and deleting the locked versions. I mentioned it to the IT guy, and he said "Hm." I was like, "NO! Don't fix it! No!" So eventually I found something else to distract him with, and I am carrying on with my piecemeal replacement of old docs plan.

In seriousness, I have a moderate phobia of phone use, so I always get someone else to ring tech support for me if something goes wrong, or take my favoured approach of turning it off and leaving it, hoping it will start working again later.

Yeah, I have this problem too. But my roommate left me in charge of internet maintenance so this means that I get to deal with tech support when it isn't magically fixing itself/everything I do tells me that it should be working except the fact that it isn't.

My phone-phobia is why it takes me about three weeks of telling myself to make doctor/dentist/whatever appointments before I actually do.

I would like to add, most people in tech support period, no matter what they are tech supporting, never seem to have the first clue about whats going on.

Yeah. Though I think worse than tech support guys are guys who work at mac stores. When my hard drive died on me last year, the guy asked me after 5 minutes "are you a comp sci major?" 'cause I was telling him what I'd tried for diagnosing my problem and how I tried to fix it (I didn't go into the "oh yeah, and I popped the hard drive out and stuck it in a freezer overnight and then connected it to a linux pc in an attempt to retrieve data" since I wasn't sure if this was actually covered on my warranty... but still). So he didn't treat me like I was an idiot, but if I hadn't been under warranty he was willing to charge me like I was an idiot (i.e. it would have been something like $350 to replace the hard drive... considering that you can buy one for $80 and replace it yourself in two minutes this is a rip off).

I don't so much mind the script that makes us have to re-do everything we just did. (A) They have a script to follow to make sure their records show that all the necessary bases were tagged, and (B) they don't live inside my head, so I'm okay with them needing to see the fixes fail with their own eyes in order to understand it.

Here's what I do hate though: When I report a problem, and the tech support person cops this attitude like the only problem is that I'm a stupid user who doesn't know what she's looking at. I'm not a tech person, so I typically don't know how to fix real problems. But I'm a savvy enough user that I know okay function from malfunction, and I can tell a serious problem from a momentary fit. I also know most of the little tricks to get a glitching system to sort itself out. So I usually won't call tech support until something really serious or really odd is going on.

My usual experience with tech support involves me telling the guy what the problem is. The guy copping a condescending pooh-pooh attitude. The guy making me go through all the usual procedures with the same results as what I already reported. The guy copping his "Here I am to Save the Day" voice and getting into my system (on site or remote) to reveal his Big Fix. The Big Fix not working. And the tech guy saying, "Hm."

I always manage to get tech guys to say, "Hm."

I hate the "Hm." Because the "Hm" means that the whole rest of my day -- at least! -- is shot to hell because not only will the tech guy never take a break from this mystery until he fixes it, he won't let me take a break, either, especially if he's working remote because he'll want me there to unplug and replug-in hardware for him. One has to admire true dedication, but at the same time -- I once had three days of work disrupted by a tech mystery that three tech support guys were clamped onto like pitbulls in a death grip.

I've gotten to the point where, if I really don't have time for the "Hm", I'll fob the tech guy off and quietly withdraw the problem from his to-do list and find some other way around it. Like at my new job, when apparently (it turned out) the person before me had spilled soda into the CPU and it died right after I started working there, and they switched me to a temporary loaner CPU, and magically all the documents stored on the network showed up as Read Only. Only in Properties, it said Read Only was disabled. I had no way to unlock the docs so I could edit them. I ended up just making copies of everything to work on and deleting the locked versions. I mentioned it to the IT guy, and he said "Hm." I was like, "NO! Don't fix it! No!" So eventually I found something else to distract him with, and I am carrying on with my piecemeal replacement of old docs plan.

Fortunately this guy just said "Hm... I'll have to call my superior." and then got back to me being like "uh yeah, our bad". And I guess this guy didn't have me unplugging things and holding restart like the last guy when our internet crapped out.

Oh, also, you could have tried sticking your documents on an external hard drive or something and then putting them back. It worked with this one folder I couldn't open. It was magical and stupid all at the same time. Or you could have chmod-ed them and all.

Really, it's quite understandable that he asked you to try things again. I do tech support for the College of Agriculture at my university, and I can't tell you how many times this has happened:

Phone rings.
Me: "OIT Helpdesk, Nick speaking. How may I help you?"
User: "[Problem]"
Me: "Have you tried X?" (Where X can be any relevant fix action)
User: "Yes..."

Now, from here, sometimes I'll take their word for it and move on. But you see, a few times, after hours of trobleshooting, I've tried X, just for the hell of it, and, wow, it worked.
When that happens a few times, trusting the user becomes rather difficult, so now I'll only accept "Yes, I've tried that" from certain users who I know from experience to be good enough with computers that I can trust them to do things.

Really, it's quite understandable that he asked you to try things again. I do tech support for the College of Agriculture at my university, and I can't tell you how many times this has happened:

Phone rings.
Me: "OIT Helpdesk, Nick speaking. How may I help you?"
User: "[Problem]"
Me: "Have you tried X?" (Where X can be any relevant fix action)
User: "Yes..."

Now, from here, sometimes I'll take their word for it and move on. But you see, a few times, after hours of trobleshooting, I've tried X, just for the hell of it, and, wow, it worked.
When that happens a few times, trusting the user becomes rather difficult, so now I'll only accept "Yes, I've tried that" from certain users who I know from experience to be good enough with computers that I can trust them to do things.

Yeah, it is understandable somewhat, but the fact that I'm like "I played with the setup and now all the lights on the modem are solid green. I pulled up the Home Network page and it said that there was a problem with the DNS communication, but when I ran a test, nothing happened. Then I pulled up Network Connections and tried connecting and it gave me the following error messages..." it's not like I was being vague or anything like this and taking me through some stuff is ok... but it took like an hour and a half to go through everything between being put on hold and taken off hold and blah blah blah.

Oh, plus he told me to do things that I already had access to (i.e. pull up Network connections by going "press 'start'. then go to 'control panel'...") when I had already mentioned that I was tinkering with Network Connections.

Fortunately this guy just said "Hm... I'll have to call my superior." and then got back to me being like "uh yeah, our bad". And I guess this guy didn't have me unplugging things and holding restart like the last guy when our internet crapped out.

Oh, also, you could have tried sticking your documents on an external hard drive or something and then putting them back. It worked with this one folder I couldn't open. It was magical and stupid all at the same time. Or you could have chmod-ed them and all.
They aren't "my" docs anyway. They were created and variously edited by three different secretaries before me. They are all formatted badly and saved in stupid places. I would have redone them all anyway, so it was no hardship for me to hit "save as" instead of "save" and thus build up a collection of properly formatted docs saved in a logical location.

They aren't "my" docs anyway. They were created and variously edited by three different secretaries before me. They are all formatted badly and saved in stupid places. I would have redone them all anyway, so it was no hardship for me to hit "save as" instead of "save" and thus build up a collection of properly formatted docs saved in a logical location.

Fair enough.

The best way to fix the internet is to delete all the porn.


That's why the internet became so popular. It surely wasn't for the fact you could buy a pair of socks online.

My internet connection became intermittently crook a few days ago. It might actually have been getting worse for a few weeks, but I didn't notice until the router started giving me the message "Is the phone line connected?" At about the same time, the analog phone on the same line stopped working completely.

While there are numerous ISP's offering the service I have (ADSL) the actual wires are owned by Telstra, so I didn't even bother ringing my ISP. I rang Telstra. They said they'd come out and check it over, but warned me it would cost $100 if the problem was in my own equipment. Fine I said.

I was fairly certain the problem was outside the house, because only a few days before my neighbour had had the exact same problem. Voice phone stopped working, then a bit later the internet staggered to a stop.

Later the same day, a guy came around and tested the connection where the wires come into the house. (Considering that he was built like a beach-ball, he was surprisingly agile.) "Ugh. Crackly!" was his diagnosis. Then he got back in his van and went off to the local exchange and traced the wire back. He fixed it in about ten minutes, and came back around to check that it worked. Said he'd found a short to earth on the wire, didn't charge anything. Yay Telstra.

For some reason I can't get the suspicion out of my mind that whoever "fixed" my neighbours line just swapped their line for mine. I wonder if someone else on the street now has the crackly line ...

The best way to fix the internet is to delete all the porn.


Fix. not remove all purpose.

My internet connection became intermittently crook a few days ago. It might actually have been getting worse for a few weeks, but I didn't notice until the router started giving me the message "Is the phone line connected?" At about the same time, the analog phone on the same line stopped working completely.

While there are numerous ISP's offering the service I have (ADSL) the actual wires are owned by Telstra, so I didn't even bother ringing my ISP. I rang Telstra. They said they'd come out and check it over, but warned me it would cost $100 if the problem was in my own equipment. Fine I said.

I was fairly certain the problem was outside the house, because only a few days before my neighbour had had the exact same problem. Voice phone stopped working, then a bit later the internet staggered to a stop.

Later the same day, a guy came around and tested the connection where the wires come into the house. (Considering that he was built like a beach-ball, he was surprisingly agile.) "Ugh. Crackly!" was his diagnosis. Then he got back in his van and went off to the local exchange and traced the wire back. He fixed it in about ten minutes, and came back around to check that it worked. Said he'd found a short to earth on the wire, didn't charge anything. Yay Telstra.

For some reason I can't get the suspicion out of my mind that whoever "fixed" my neighbours line just swapped their line for mine. I wonder if someone else on the street now has the crackly line ...

Wait, wait, wait... did... did TELSTRA do something GOOD?

I'm confused, I feel cold...

The best way to fix the internet is to delete all the porn.

*draws blade*

You'll have to get through me first.

That's why the internet became so popular. It surely wasn't for the fact you could buy a pair of socks online.

Speak for yourself :p

That's why the internet became so popular. It surely wasn't for the fact you could buy a pair of socks online.

Holy shit I can buy socks online?

Does anyone else get annoyed at people assuming that you're a moron when you call for help?
Sorry but your story reminded me of this classic:

Tech: "Ridge Hall computer assistant; may I help you?"

Caller: "Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."

Tech: "What sort of trouble?"

Caller: "Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."

Tech: "Went away?"

Caller: "They disappeared."

Tech: "Hmm. So what does your screen look like now?"

Caller: "Nothing."

Tech: "Nothing?"

Caller: "It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."

Tech: "Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"

Caller: "How do I tell?"

Tech: "Can you see the "C" prompt on the screen?"

Caller: "What's a sea-prompt?"

Tech: "Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?"

Caller: "There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."

Tech: "Does your monitor have a power indicator?"

Caller: "What's a monitor?"

Tech: "It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have a little light that tells you when it's on?"

Caller: "I don't know."

Tech: "Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?"

Caller: "...Yes, I think so."

Tech: "Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."

Caller: "...Yes, it is."

Tech: "When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"

Caller: "No."

Tech: "Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable."

Caller: "...Okay, here it is."

Tech: "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."

Caller: "I can't reach."

Tech: "Uh huh. Well, can you see if it is?"

Caller: "No."

Tech: "Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?"

Caller: "Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle-it's because it's dark."

Tech: "Dark?"

Caller: "Yes-the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window."

Tech: "Well, turn on the office light then."

Caller: "I can't."

Tech: "No? Why not?"

Caller: "Because there's a power outage."

Tech: "A power... a power outage? Aha! Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"

CUST: "Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."

Tech: "Good! Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."

Caller: "Really? Is it that bad?"

Tech: "Yes, I'm afraid it is."

Caller: "Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"

Tech: "Tell them you're too stupid to own a computer."
:D

Holy shit I can buy socks online?

Damn you SaintB.

Damn you SaintB.

Riegns victorious with his shiny new gold medal for posting speed.