Do You Have Tech Support Rage? - Comments Page 1

I have a down on GoDaddy - I was on the phone for more than an hour trying to get Outlook 2010 set up on Windows 10. speaking to a person called Kim, who had a heavy foreign accent, I repeatedly asked him to escalate the call to someone higher up, being assured that all my concerns were being addressed (they were not)I finally gave up and installed Thunderbird!

As I was reading this my wife reported that she has been on hold for 45 minutes waiting to talk to a Spectrum representative about a mistake on our bill.

This is the first time I have to take the opposing view. I have been in tech support of various types for decades, since the 1970s. I have always done the best I could with my customers, some by phone where the customer was my eyes and hands, some by remote sessions. I was the US Expertise Center in one position where I supported government, both US municipal as well as Federal for both the US and foreign countries. I became the go to guy for the companies largest accounts. In many of the frustrating situations the customer was the biggest problem, by not being forthcoming about what they had done prior to contacting us, or explaining the problem clearly, if at all, it's broke.

Consumer Cellular gets a thumbs up from me. Recently switched to them (using my old phone and porting the number). Had a few bumps and had to talk to tech support. Did have to sit on hold about 10 minutes before getting a human. After that good, knowledgeable support. The other company (that I switched from) was just the opposite. The main reason I switched was their total "don't care" attitude.

The only tech support I have dealt with recently are for the cable company and for my land line. While the phone menus can be frustrating at times, I have found tech support to be helpful more often than not.

I will admit that the hold time can be long, but if I'm determined to get the problem solve, I put the phone on speaker and play some computer solitaire until a person answers. I always ask for the person's name early in the call, and thank them for being helpful at the end.

If a technician is required at the house, I usually only wait one or two days for service, and so far my problems have been taken care of.

Some years back I had a problem getting my new router and modem to talk to each other even though they were made by the same company. I spent a lot of time talking to the cable company and to tech support for the modem and router. They were all knowledgeable people and very helpful. It took a couple of days, but they worked with me until the problem was solved.

I bought a thermostat that said on the box..call a 800 number for tech support..as it was rather complicated to set up i called that number..they advised to have my cradit card hnady as the service fee was 79.95--

I've experienced all of the above, but my biggest gripe is trying to understand support persons who think they speak English, and maybe they do, but not in a way that I can understand. Sometimes I have just hung up in frustration and then called back. I often get someone else who can actually make themselves understood!

I was in tech support at Microsoft for 10-years (1993-2003). Depending on who was in charge and how well (or poor) customer satisfaction survey scores had been during the past quarter, we were either given time "limits" to aim for or told to do everything humanly possible to satisfy the customer. There were calls that lasted nearly my entire shift when I was supporting Exchange Server, and because the customer paid for enterprise support, that was okay. However when supporting Word and Outlook, anything over 20-minutes was usually frowned upon. In other words, free support = keep it short. Paid support = keep the customer happy.

And then outsourcing became a thing! There were definite time limits for those people and oftentimes the customers' issues were not resolved. Sometimes an issue got "escalated" to somebody in the US. Sometimes not. In my opinion, outsourcing did more harm than good.

Sometimes the person on the phone is so overworked because companies have reduced support personnel to make more money. Where I used to work, they kept letting people go so they could open a new location in New York.

On Monday, my Kindle would not longer accept new books. I called Amazon. I spoke to a gentleman. I called again on Tuesday because what had been suggested did not work. I spoke to another gentleman on Wednesday because again, the suggestions were not helping.

On Thursday, I was blessed to find a young lady. By this time I was not a happy camper. She was patient and she knew what she was doing. The first call lasted about one hour. I had to leave, so she called me back later in the day. We went step by step and things got better. Finally, she had helped me fix the Kindle and I was extremely grateful.

This woman was kind when I whined. She was considerate when I was anxious. Most of all, she was smart.

I am not sure why, but I found a tech person who was a blessing.

To answer "which companies have offered you the best and worst tech support experiences" I will immediately name Apple, from whom I've gotten excellent tech support for over 20 years (much of which was outside of AppleCare). In my view, among the large tech suppliers, there is none better than Apple.

I have almost as much praise for T-Mobile, another of my favorites for over 15 years. ALWAYS immediate and excellent support.

On the other hand, just 2 days ago, I had a horrible experience with Home Depot (is that really "tech"? I guess so). Ignorant personnel on chat and phone.

Consumer Cellular has excellant customer support in my experience over the past several years. Three times I've contacted them and the response was courteous and on target for resolving the problem.

ATT by far has the worst Tech Support and listening to that monotonous voice while on eternal hold does not do anything good for you. That is exactly why I no longer use ATT, They just can't get it right.
I just got off the line with Tech Support with a company in California and of course they only offer support 8am to 5 pm west coast time and I am on the east coast. Went around in circles for 2 hours and accomplished nothing. At least they spoke English.

Shaw Cable has always had helpful, knowledgeable, pleasant and efficient customer service whenever I have called them. When you've gone through the voice prompts as to what the call is about, they tell you that the wait is about ** minutes, do you want to remain on hold or have a call back? If you select call back they confirm the phone number. After the appropriate time they call back and off you go with the call. We get cable (Internet), TV and landline phone from them. We tried the new cell(mobile) phone service recently but didn't get a signal at home so we had to stick with our old service. Even then customer service was excellent - a complete refund very quickly. That's my experience anyway.

I had problems with two Rand McNally GPS units and their tech support was pitiful. All of this took place on forums, no live person, so I didn't have to wait on the phone. I found that the reps didn't know how their product worked and gave me false information (found this out by digging into options and trying various things). Having two out of two units get serious problems makes me doubt their overall quality. I will never buy another Rand McNally product!

Glad you've had good luck with Verizon.(how long ago was that?) I spent over a dozen hours with them on the phone in the past two weeks. One call was made to them at 3 PM, and was finally answered by a human at 9:30 PM.(thank god I have speakerphone, and didn't do it on a cellphone.) And he didn't have the authority to ship me the newer router, so told me to call back the next day to the precise same number I had called to reach him. I wish I still had Optimum!

Century Link is the Worst. Directv not much better. The only way I could talk to someone live was by online chat. It took forever to finally get the information I needed. I cringe every time I have to deal with them. They are the only company we have so we have no choice. Directv even hung up on me. Agent English was hard to understand. Good article on this subject.

....oh, I forgot this one: Many kudos for DISH Network. Been with them for 10 years or so. Customer Service and Tech Support always available and helpful. They speak English, too!!!

T-Mobile very good
ATT very poor

I have had one job as a Tech Support Agent. I worked for a company that (when I started) provided support for customers of ATT@Home, a now defunct cable Internet provider. After successfully completing training, I 'went out on the floor' to take calls and provide tech support. More experienced agents informed me that my real job was to get the customer off the phone - period. In response to the 'enlightenment' I developed a process to quickly determine if the problem was ours (was the issue related to Internet service?), if so, was it something I could help with (I was a tier 1 agent with limited authority), then if so, walk the customer through the process of correcting their issue. Using this process I was able to satisfactorily end calls within about 10 minutes.

When the @Home went out of business, and shut down their servers, AT&T switched to their own service named ATTBI (AT&T Broadband Internet). As a tier 1 agent, my authority was not increased, so I still had to 'escalate' most customers to tier 2 for help.

Finally, ATTBI was purchased by Comcast. My authority increased dramatically. A policy of 'One Call Resolution' was instituted, Ns I was a much happier agent.

Because I had a better than average understanding of TCP/IP, and Networking in general, I became a tier 2 agent.

As a tier 1 agent, I could only help the customer by recycling (restarting) their router or by removing and reinstalling their drivers - but only for Windows or Mac. Linux was not supported, even though I knew how to fix driver issues on Linux as well (I have been dual-booting between Windows and Linux since the late 1990s).

As a tier 2 agent, I had the power to reset their router, wipe and reinstall their router software, and schedule in person tech support calls.

As a tech support agent, I encountered customers who believed they knew more than I did because they were studying Computer Science in College, customers who wanted their introductory service plan extended for any number of (usually fictitious) reasons, customers who apologized for not being Computer savvy, and a few who worked in the industry. This last group was the one I preferred to work with for a number of reasons. They understood that I had to work through an organized set of information gathering procedures to ascertain the true root issue to arrive at an effective and lasting solution. I worked for that company for only four years, then they closed shop and moved to Canada to avoid the rising cost of medical insurance.

The most amusing call I remember (a classic) was from an irate lady who told me that after 'installing the Internet' her computer screen was black. I began troubleshooting by requesting that she check that her computer and monitor were both plugged into the wall outlet. After a few moments, she sheepishly reported that her computer had gotten unplugged. After plugging it back in and starting up her computer, all was well. :)

Ernie