[Grrr...] Is Tech Support Designed to Enrage You? - Comments Page 1

Verizon used to be superb. I knew I wad paying more, but their support made it worth it. This year, they were amongst the worst. I left them after 12 years.

I work for a company and have had to use tech support occasionally. The worst I have come across is Yahoo. We used to have our email through them but after years of difficulty we have moved to Office 365.

This explained a LOT! Thanks, Bob!

Wouldn't you think if these companies offered good customer support that their overall sales would improve? Just saying.

I worked as a tech support person for "the evil empire" for 10-years. During that time, our directions from above changed whenever a new top-level manager was hired, and often when it became apparent that whatever that directive was had proven itself to be bad for the company. There was a period when we were told to do whatever was necessary to make the customer happy, even if it meant sending our free books or software. We had a lot of very satisfied customers, but it was costing too much, so that didn't last long. Another time there was a cross site competition to see which unit had the highest customer satisfaction rating, and the winner would get a private party hosted by the top level executives. I was in the winning unit. Whoopie! A free steak dinner. :(

That was a long time ago, though. My job was outsourced to India to save money.

This reminds me of the classic Dilbert cartoons where Dogbert has his own tech support business. Whenever he answered the phone, his opening line was: "Dogbert Tech Support...How may I abuse you!"

We have received excellent support from Amazon Customer Service.

I was actually getting irritated just reading this article, because it was reminding me how steamed I get dealing with tech support. Thanks for an excellent article... again !

Worst? Absolute worst? FedEx, the company that made its first zillion by addressing the failures of the post office. Now, it's impossible to reach anyone who can make a decision and drivers "opt out" of delivering on a busy day or whenever they want. And when drivers don't feel like delivering, do you really think they're going to drive by and leave a notice?
When it absolutely, positively doesn't need to get anywhere during any time peiod.

Fry's Electronics is HORRIBLE! & we're talking *face-to-face* CS here. Every single time I have attempted to resolve issues with their products (which has been nearly ALL of them), they pass the buck, make excuses, & if I actually get them to *do* something, the mess up the product worse than it already was! THEN tell me steps A-Z to (MAYBE) fix it myself!!! Such utter BS. 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡

I have received stellar support from both Dell and HP. As you mentioned Verizon has always been on the ball for me. The best support I have ever gotten was Suddenlink Cable/Internet. It's a smaller company so maybe that's why. They put people on the helpdesk who actually know things about the equipment they're dealing with. Refreshing.

For my experience - and I have friends who agree - the worst company is TracFone. Not because they don't want to give good service. I suspect they do. But they are all from some foreign land like, maybe, Mars? I have never yet had one that I could understand. When I need something done with my TracFone, I take it to a local store that sells phones. They are good to help because they also get my business. TracFone gets no more business from me than I am forced to give - buying minutes annually. I like their little phone - simple to use and understand. But, for tech support - they obviously do not care to look into the issue of "can customers understand them?" Maybe that is also deliberate?

Grandpa Chet is correct. We've moved to an EU country, recently sold our house in the US. FedEx jeopardized the sale with their incompetence and inability to provide accurate information to get the documents back and forth on time. Never again. I wouldn't send a dog turd via FedEx at this point.

This is simply a confirmation of what I have long suspected. I have found it easy to get no help if I can guess what is next on their script. But, even when they provide no help, they always close with the phrase, "Is there anything else I can do to help you?" I am trying to think of what Alice said.

As I became a new customer of Cox Cable several decades ago, my email never worked. I spent hours on the phone with tech support. The local guy knew me by name. Nothing worked. It got bounced to regional. The regional guy wasn't supposed to tell me but he did. They configured my email account on a new server that didn't work. As their policy indicated that nothing was fixed until a certain number of complaints from different customers occurred they weren't fixing it because only I was complaining! He moved my email.

Just last week a fire on an adjacent street knocked out Verizon service. Various customers phoned Verizon to report landlines out. However they only had their cellphones to call on as their landline was now melted .... and cellphones didn't work. One called 911 to get it to call Verizon. Others phoned relatives and friends looking for one that had a landline and could get through to Verizon for them. Not me. I ditched Verizon LONG ago. However they all turned up at my door hoping I had a working landline.

Yes my friends, Dell is in the same bag.

A few years back when having trouble with my laptop, I called Tech support, being that I had a two yr. contract with them. I told the agent that my screen would ghost out a little at various time. He wanted to do remote and I said go for it. I have never experienced foul-play by them in the past, so it was nothing new to let them remote on my laptop.

After he was into my laptop, he checked a few thing out, then said that all he was seeing on his screen now was all white. what he was doing was trying to see if I was going to say the same thing. My screen was okay at the time. He thought I was making the incident up.

I said to him, just send me the "box," which is Dell's Fed X service. I didn't feel like playing that day, so I got right to the point, I paid for the two year service, just send the "box," and while your at it, since your having the same trouble, you might as well have Dell send a box to you.

I do follow the contract agreement, they get to try "remote" first, thats a no problem for me, because I'm there to watch. But when their remote work is finished and nothing is done, I cut their dilly-dally short on the phone and tell them to send me the box. They sent the box.

In the number of long years with Dell, I only had to send my computer in twice to get a repair under the warranty. I still use Dell because of their decent service. Just don't let the foreigners handle you. When you pay for a contract, you expect them to abide by it.

Just tell them, "send the box." They hate those words.

Thanks for your time.

HP actually hung up on me, after chastising me for my language ... for saying, "darn it all!"

Witopia VPN (Virtual Private Network). Their 24/7 Chat Support is A1. Clearly not outsourced (unless it's a bunch of USA hippies sitting in Asian sun) the language and humour efficiency and effectiveness, has been near impeccable. Last year one of them did me a sneaky free upgrade to overcome a problem. So impressed, I opted for paid upgrade this new year. Don't even need to chat with them now, no further problems.

Chase Bank's mortgage service number does not have an option to get to a human. You can get into the system with your loan number and the original person's social security number but not using an authorized person's social security number.
Getting a human used to be an option and has disappeared.
I ended up calling a different group at Chase that transferred me and the person from the mortgage group told me to type 0# to each of three voice menu options to get in the queue for a person

Believe it or not, I have had fantastic tech support from Microsoft. Yup! Microsoft! Though each time, my tech rep was not from the US, they did an excellent job of solving my sticky problems, and even called back the next day to make sure everything was working as it should. I was amazed at the HOURS they spent working on a problem that brought in no revenue for them. Microsoft tech support has done a great deal to restore my faith in tech support as a whole.