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Admin
You see, the right to piss off customers is WAY outside your pay grade. Those who have that right (the managers) generally don't like it when someone tries to usurp that power. For one, it takes some level of experience to correctly determine which customers it is OK to piss off, and a degree of responsibility in the consequences that just doesn't come with being a wage-slave. Here's a hint: This wasn't an acceptable reason to piss off a customer. An acceptable reason is when you determine you don't want the customer to be a customer anymore.
I've also worked in customer service. To get through those days, it was "smile" and try to help where I could. If they have a complaint, "YO! SUPE!", and let them deal with it. That's part of their job and why they make more money.
As a manager, I don't care what the circumstances are, whoever wrote that snarky message would be on the receiving end of disciplinary action. If there was a repeat of the incident, the discipline may escalate to firing, but for the first transgression it would be verbal counseling.
Seriously, calm down.
Admin
Sadly, I doubt this is an exaggeration. This is exactly the type of call you have when you talk to some of the tech-support outsourcing firms. They are generally staffed with phone drones who have as little or less technical knowledge than the average caller & are set in front of a computer with an "expert system" that has "everything they need to know". I worked in a call center which transitioned from having techs who knew their shit & run by a tech to one staffed with drones and run by an MBA. Worst 18 months in my life - listening to techs rebooting customers PC's for known UBR issues - because the first solution on the "expert system" is reboot the PC - & knowing in 15 minutes they would be on my phone screaming.
Admin
Ahh yes, the Richard Noggin queue
Admin
Oh wait, no I didn't.
All Yooha employee email addresses end in @yooha-inc.com, EXCEPT for ones that are actually lists (i.e. [email protected]).
Admin
No, it just comes across as smug and arrogant. The technicians probably know what they are doing, and it's enough to just report the problem then let them get on with their jobs. They know far more about it than some random trying to guess at the problem.
Admin
Exactly. So, you've gotten 300 requests saying it's broken and you're already trying to fix it. Put up a goddamn page that says 'we know there is an issue with server X and we are trying to fix it'. For the guy who was in his open office and got told 300 times the web page is down? Put up a sign saying 'i am working on the web page being down'. This won't stop 100% of repeated requests, but some of them will stop.
You have no right to be an asshole to someone who is trying to be helpful. What if the guy who sent the email in this WTF was really the first one to report the problem?
Admin
Hint: Highlight the blacked out part, then the joke is revealed
Admin
QFT. This is what happens when jobs get documented to the point of being rote process: the people who fill the job collapse in the face of even slight deviation from the process.
That said, issues like the one you described (pointless, time-wasting "solutions" that have no bearing on the actual problem) sometimes are caused by idiotic policies rather than idiotic people. Story time:
Company X has a big internal data processing system that many other systems interact with. Because so many other systems have to interact with it in the course of a day, it sometimes gets backed up with lots of processing requests. To make things more interesting, any error messages received are cryptic and pretty much useless.
So one day I was looking at the web interface to a small part of The System, and noticed a peculiar error, the likes of which none of my team has ever seen (yeah, I'm short on details, this was a while ago. Point is, it suggested a problem on The System's end, not ours). Ok, no problem, I'll report it to the people who administer The System.
Now I find the problem: the only way to submit a trouble ticket for The System is through the service desk, which handles all the tech support, and at the first tier, doesn't make any distinction between "I'm having problems with The System and need to open a ticket" and "My mouse is behaving funny." So when I'm talking to the first-tier guy, I mention that I'm looking at the error message through the web interface.
Naturally, since it's a "web-related issue," he makes me clear browser history and cookies and try again before he'll submit the ticket. Great job guys.
Admin
The inability to access more than (I think) 3GB of RAM from Vista is nothing whatsoever to do with 32-bit vs 64-bit architectures. It doesn't even have to do with 31-bit vs 32-bit, which is slightly more credible.
AFAIK, for purposes of marketroidery, Vista ships in several versions, all of which are the same code base with various cripple-bits attached. In order to squeeze "consumer surplus," some versions of Vista cripple-bit the amount of RAM accessible.
My guess is that Dell shipped some versions of the line with the cripple-bit set to zero, and some with the cripple-bit set to one.
There are all sorts of reasons why this might have happened. Knowing Dell's propensity for buying the cheapest component du jour, it might even have been the BIOS.
But it's a bit rich to expect some poor guy in a sweaty cage in Bangalore with intermittent air-conditioning to deal with this crap.
In reality, Microsoft should never have created the problem in the first place. There should only ever be two versions of a given Windows release: server, and home edition. (And, are you listening, Ballmer? Both should be fully network-capable: stack, applications, diagnostics and all. Weren't you listening to that turning-on-a-dime speech back in 1995?)
Admin
I don't understand why this comment is not working. I entered the exact same captcha that I was using for the other website I visited yet you refuse to post this comment!!!
~FE~
Admin
On no account will I include details such as my IP address, my router config, my broadband contract details, or anything else that might be relevant to the problem. That would be Smug and Arrogant.
I'll try to avoid making qualified suggestions ("You might...") as to my best guess at a solution. At least not without checking them first with the Smug and Arrogant Police. I'm sure a more finely-crafted and obsequious approach would work wonders.
I have seen the light: Smug and Arrogant is out, and hanging on the end of a phone listening to morons flipping through a set of inappropriate Wizard screens is in. I don't need courtesy, I don't need technical assistance, and I certainly have no need of a solution.
Next time, I'll just go round and Uzi the lot of them.
Admin
Wow. It's pricks like you who make tech support people want to send rude emails.
You can send YOUR information, but making guesses about other people's stuff is absurd. You don't know how they're set up. You have no idea. Why do you think you can diagnose their problem over the mail, given what tiny amount of information you have access to? Talk about smug and arrogant.
Admin
If it's like my Dell, the power LED turns yellow and blinks three times, pause, three times, pause...repeat. It means the control circuits in the battery have failed or are not responding and the battery needs to be replaces.
Yay! I'm a part of things too!
Admin
I've got one for him.
Admin
Right. In my world the automated "Thank you for calling, now piss off" email would have taken care of that customer. That there was actually a live tech who gave a crap on the other end of that email address is entertaining.
Helpful. Right. Nothing like having someone who knows absolutely nothing coming in and telling you how to fix the problem. Wonderful. How useful! Oh look, he knows how to ping a server! Give that bastard a job!
The way to report an error is to send a ticket saying, "I'm having an error doing X." Nobody needs your diagnostic advice.
Chances are, the tech already knows about it. My personal favorite is when I am the first person to see the error, fix it, and then have to deal with idiots for the next 4 hours who've just that moment seen that there was an error, and are now blaming every problem (no matter how unrelated) on that incident.
Alternately, when I am in the middle of some critical systems meltdown, and I have to still deal with schmucks who are telling me to do things that I tried first thing? Seriously? Little bit condescending? "Hi Mr. Systems Administrator, I'm in Marketing, and I think, despite my tendency to lock myself out of my system three times a day, that I have the sort of expertise that you CLEARLY lack, and I will now deign to give you my worthless advice."
What is it about systems administration that everyone in the world thinks they have the right to tell you how to do your job? You never have an idiot come up to you and say, "Wow, you should be using a hash table, that stack is eating up cycles!" If someone is doing that, they may deserve a little professional courtesy.
(For the record, my manager just begs me not to talk to people. See, that's because I'm good at what I do, and what I do is not dealing with idiots.)
Admin
"The following issues have been reported and are being addressed:
Admin
TRWTF here is that the first guy actually preferred Vista on his computer and didn't want the offered upgrade to XP.
Admin
Telling the customer that 32-bit Vista doesn't support more than 3 GB of memory doesn't tell him why only 2GB of memory shows up. 3 is not equal to 2. The Dell tech apparently didn't grasp that (along with not grasping several other things).
Admin
How the hell did he type the email then.
don't you just love the error page , it says if you have a problem, contact alex with the address of "alexp-at-WorseThanFailure.com."
Admin
Customer specifies important detail ("her username is...").
Customer explains that he has done some -- admittedly worthless -- diagnostics ("Pinging it doesn't work").
Customer makes an -- admittedly worthless -- suggestion as to solution.
Customer is polite. ("You might want to ... Thankyou, Jonathan")
Now, I've been at the end of countless problem reports. I'm sure you have, too.
This isn't gold-dust, in terms of tracking the problem down in ten seconds or less, but it beats 99% of the crap you get, and it's as detailed as the man can manage and it's polite.
Under the circumstances, Jonathan's email hardly merits the hostile response. Jeez. I've had less hostile responses from police in California, while they're still eating the donuts I just gave them and making me fill in some officious form about disturbing the peace ...
If you really, really think that Jonathan is a smug and arrogant prick, or that (based on YOUR information, and making absurd guesses about other people's stuff) I am, then I'm gonna have to be insufferably smug and intolerably arrogant:
Do not ever, under any circumstances, take a customer-facing job. Your brain will implode. And even a few dozen brain cells can cause a nasty mess on cubicle walls.
Admin
Sorry, but you missed his point.
Admin
That doesn't explain why only 2-gigs out of 4 were showing, though.
Admin
Here are the memory-related Vista-related cripple-bits as far as I can tell:
However, with the exception of the starter edition (obviously not in play here as it was able to see 2 GB), all the 32-bit editions of Vista can address the full 4 GB of physical address space.
Admin
How does repeated questions is the hallmark of expert systems make you feel?
Admin
There are problems when you buy Windows Server 2008 Standard Edition ... but they only occur when you install more than 32GB of RAM. I'm sorry, but it's no business of the OS supplier to charge you for extra addressable space.
In this case, I'll fall back on my alternative suggestion that the BIOS is a nasty cheap piece of crap ... which happens occasionally, given Dell's business model.
Anyway, my point was that it's unfair to expect a first-level helpdesk person to have much of a clue about this stuff. It's not a language difficulty, and it's not a recruitment problem, and it's not a training difficulty.
The fault lies higher up the food chain, where people who are actually paid good money to get things right make these lunatic decisions. Fire those bastards. Don't complain about the poor schmuck on the end of the phone.
Admin
Admin
That's where you then pretend to do it and then tell them it still happens.
Tell them you rebooted, too, for good measure!
Admin
Which would you complainers rather receive?
"There's a problem with server #1812-Y. It is not serving pages or responding to pings. Perhaps you should rotate that one out of service."
or
"Uh, There's a problem with my Microsoft. It's not working. It's giving me a message. You need to fix this right away."
Admin
I hereby apologise unreservedly to Ballmer (God, that hurts), but wish to reiterate that this is not the sort of stuff that you'd expect a phone-drone to be able to deal with ... unless he has extremely high-quality support.
Admin
Most people who cry racism are racists
Admin
My favorite tech support script is when they want you to "reverse" your network cable so that the end currently in your router is in your computer and vice versa.
What makes it my favorite tech support script is that at least 50% of the time they don't back down when you explain that the cable is running through a wall.
Me : ... and to make a long story short, my cable-modem isn't even getting a signal. Them : Ok what I want you to do is reverse your network cable, so that the end currently going into your router is plugged into your PC and the end currently going into your PC is plugged into your router. Me : Reverse the cable? Them : Yes, so that the end currently going into your router is - Me : Yes! I understand, but my network cable is over a hundred feet long and runs through two walls from my basement to my top floor. Them : I'll wait. Let me know when you've reversed it. Me : I can't do that! Them : Sir, I don't know what I can do for you if you're not going to go through the troubleshooting process with me. Me : (After no delay at all) Ok it's done. It doesn't help. It's still broken. Them : Ok, next I want you to unplug your router from the wall and count to thirty ...
Admin
On my laptop, the green means the battery is full, the yellow/orange means that it's charging, but plugged in, and off means that it's running on battery power. I think most laptops are like that.
Admin
Admin
Just because the customer is an arrogant know-it-all does not mean that you, as the tech support lackey, get to tell said customer to their face what you usually say about them in the break room (if you have one). Hence, the WTF.
Admin
RE: the mute button...
Probably a union shop. If you've never worked in a union shop, here's how the scenario would go down:
Instead of submitting the support ticket, the AA (or whomever) presses the Mute button for themselves. Electricians Local 843 gets wind of this and files a grievance with the company. While the AA is fitted for a pair of cement shoes, her boss has to fill out a form, in triplicate, as to how this gross breach of regulations occurred and the steps being taken to ensure that the Mute button will be wired to 1.21GW of electricity to ensure that the next person who attempts to bypass protocol is summarily fried.
Admin
Having worked customer support, that's one of the subtle almost-lies. They don't really care that the cable is reversed, they want you to check that it's securely connected on both ends. The problem is that if you ask people to check if it's plugged in on both ends, they just say "yes" without looking. Most users ARE that stupid, but none of them think that they are. Making them think that there's something magical that might happen if they "reverse" the wires make them unplug it and plug it back in -- fixing the problem if the wire was loose.
Another favorite is to ask what color the metal plugs are on your power cord. They don't care, they want you to unplug and plug in your device without rolling your eyes and saying that you did it without actually doing so.
Admin
Admin
Yeah, good luck getting just about any tech support person (even the best) to understand how all this works. Actually, its very similar to the 16-32 bit transition, with its limited conventional memory and then extended memory.
The memory issue is quite interesting. The best resource I have found for how all this works under the hood and what can and cannot be done is: http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm
Its interesting that apparently win 2k through XP sp1 actually COULD access more than 4 GB. XP sp2 downgraded that.
Admin
As stunningly bad as Dell's foreign consumer-level tech support is/was, Dell has super support for servers with current tech contracts. They will, in my experience, start to bug you for unreturned parts after 3 months. :)
Admin
Thin-skinned, perhaps.
Unprofessional, certainly.
BUT...the poor bloke (or gal, or team, or whatever) is possible flat out (maybe already working on something related to this problem). In all likelihood, 100 or more 'helpful' people have already suggested a solution to the problem - always nice to get advice from people who hypothesise as to the actual problem. Frankly I could imagine myself sending a similar response. Of course, this is why techo's shouldn't be the ones sending feedback to the customer... I would have thought the best response is an automated one. Sure, people don't like it because it's informal, but it lets a user know that the problem is being looked into (as, I think, does the response given).
Why do people feel an urge to be helpful? Years ago when I drove buses, I would often have lights on at the slightest hint of inclement weather. Many helpful passengers would ask whether I knew I had my lights switched on. Similarly, if the electronic destinations chose to freeze, passengers would feel they need to alert me to this. I can (sort of) understand people who get on at the 1st five stops asking, but beyond that do people seriously think they are the first person in the world to notice something bleedingly obvious?
I suppose it's like people who walk up to an elevator (or traffic lights) and ask 'Has anyone pressed the button?' (Quote Tony Hancock: 'Do you know I never thought of that?'). The wider world seems (on an individual level) to assume that they are the smartest (or, at least, most observant) person in the world (I guess I do too). In most cases, I shudder to think what the world would be like if that were indeed the case.
Admin
Admin
Severe perhaps anyone?
Admin
Guilty as charged!! I have often (well, occasionally) taken a screen shot and pasted it into a graphics program - then tried to close it using the wrong X in the top corner....
Admin
I think the point is that there may be an underlying reason why someone is so stressed as to answer like this. Suyre, they shouldn't have done it, but finding a reason (and applying a fix) can be more effective than simply firing. Dealing with 1 helpful user is easy. Dealing with millions of them can become stressful - especially when there helpful comments are often made without knowing anything about the system (let alone the problem)
Admin
Increasingly, it seems, these 'drones' are putting there Call Centre experience in their resume and managing to get other IT positions based on it. Some of them are competent enough to turn the computer on, and I once met one who could even open Internet Explorer all by himself. Simplistic troubleshooting is fine (ie a monkey with cue cards) provided the call gets moved on to the next level (people who can actually spell Computer) the second the first level is unsure what the user is talking about (or have exhausted all their queue cards). I suspect that a hang-up is considered 'solved at first level' and may be a bonus for the helpdesk operator. Escalating to 2nd level helpdesk probably loses this bonus. Meanwhile 3rd level helpdesk (if it hasn't already been made redundant because 1st level is solving everything) sit around and play cards with their mates from Yooha.
Admin
Certain areas of Defense need every step spelled out. "Click the start Button" will inevitably result in calls to the helpdesk if it is not preceded with "Make sure the computer is on". I suppose we need these sort of drones to simply accept instructions as given and not to try to think too much ('Run through the Machine Gun fire? sure think Boss!')
Admin
i know help desk tickets like that one all too well.. when i was on one we sometimes got tickets from the exec assistants for the day's corporate lunch order.
Admin
Admin
Admin