• CrackHappy (unregistered) in reply to GCU Arbitrary
    GCU Arbitrary:
    Youch - sounds like the guys you worked for were real bastards. The call centre I supported not only encouraged the callers to give their (first) names upon request, but also pointed out to them that the call management system we used meant that anyone calling back to complain could easily be linked back to the caller they wanted to complain about, as long as they could supply the date and approximate time of the call. Calls were also routinely monitored by the management team and the 'bad' callers were quite quickly weeded out.

    It might all sound a bit draconian, but the call centre worked predominantly on behalf of charities, who were very particular about maintaining a good relationship with their supporters. Of course, it seems that the majority of call centres don't seem to give a flying fuck about good customer relations, if the people that keep calling me up at dinner time and trying to sell me new mobile phone contracts in heavily-accented English are anything to go by...

    Would you be willing to tell us (or just me) which company that is? That sounds like someone I would like to give my business to.

  • Moon Monkey (unregistered)

    Hey Alex, just thought I'd let you know that the story about the server registered as being in the warehouse is not a WTF or funny or even very interesting.

    You might want to take that one out.

  • moz (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Mish:
    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?').
    Shit, I once decided not to ask the people at the light if they hit the button, and ended up waiting through a few cycles before I realized they hadn't. It's good to just assume nothing, because typically the worst outcome is "I already pressed the button".
    But, as with the abusive e-mail to the "helpful" user, the real problem lies elsewhere. If (for instance) a light came on as soon as someone pressed the button, only a blind person would need to talk to anyone to know whether or not it had been pressed.
  • (cs) in reply to eiwop
    ChrisE:
    The yahoo one isn't a WTF, it was a funny & sarcastic response to an arrogant know-it-all emailing them, and assuming he knows exactly what the problem is and how to solve it.

    I've read all the comments here on this and I'm still not sure where in the original email the caller says "what the problem is" or "how to solve it".

    There is a description of a symptom (can't ping). There is a suggestion of mitigating the problem (remove server from rotation) but no mention of the problem or of a solution.

    There is a problem here, but it is with the tech who sent the response. I don't know if firing is an appropriate response (depends on how often the tech has done this before) but something should be done. Tiredness and stress are never valid excuses for treating a customer badly.

    B

  • keiranhalcyon31 (unregistered)

    "I said no, and disconnected the call shortly thereafter."

    The correct response was "Yes, you can connect me to your manager."

  • Mike (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy

    What model was that laptop? I should be able to look it up and tell you what it means.

  • John Muller (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy

    [quote]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! [quote]

    Yeah, like the time I posted on the Everquest forums how to fix a bug that was killing players in their home 'safe' cities for months, and it was fixed in the next patch.

    When a previous player left an area, their faction standing would remain in memory, so the next player to enter the area breifly had a different players factions... often leading to death by 1-hit-kill town guards.

  • John Muller (unregistered) in reply to EvanED

    There is a good reason 32 bit windows is mostly limited to 4GB of address space.

    Crappy 3rd party drivers.

    Which is why Windows 64 bit requires signed drivers.

    It's nearly impossible at runtime to detect which device driver stomped all over ram, since driver A could overwrite driver B, causing B to crash.

    All the drivers might work perfectly well until you actually use more than 4GB of ram, and it tosses out the high bits of an address and murders your data.

  • Alex (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Alex, just for future reference, it would have been easier to tell that Jonathan's wife's account is '[email protected]' if you hadn't blacked out the word 'redacted'.
    Wow, Anonymous.

    Thanks for assessing a very complicated situation, and immediately coming up with a complete solution.

    In fact, we have so little idea of what's going on over here, perhaps you can come on over and single- handedly solve it for us...

  • Anone (unregistered) in reply to Don
    Don:
    Another company (we'll call the Mickeysoft) has a great habit of charging you when you call after a certain time. Since they cannot charge you for the call before that time, there is a tactic they employ to make sure you'll be calling afterwards. I've been cut off, put on hold, had the operator talking veeery softly; and worse. All in the hope that I get frustrated, hang up, and dial back. Last time it took 6 hours to speak to someone that could help. Funny how it was practically impossible before the "free" time lapsed, but the moment "for charge" time started it was easy.

    So what you're saying is that the support lines are more congested during the times they're free than during the times they're not? What a twist!

  • Anone (unregistered) in reply to Bim Job
    Bim Job:
    Customer is polite. ("You might want to ... Thankyou, Jonathan")

    No. "You might want to..." is just as easily used insultingly as it is polite, and I would not be surprised if it was used more often in the former manner than the latter. Without having access to the tone of voice it's difficult to tell.

  • An angry customer support victim (unregistered) in reply to Erzengel
    Erzengel:
    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.
    At what point does the right to be treated like a human being come into the pay grade, just for reference?

    P.S. I really like how your reply includes the whole "I was there too, we just had to deal with it" spiel. Wonderful logic that. It works especially well for justifying violence too, "I was beaten up and stabbed and I just took it so you should too".

  • (cs) in reply to Uhhh
    Uhhh:
    The Dell billing and inventory system is ridiculous. I once had them realize that they hadn't been paid for something after 3 years. It was for about $600 worth of stuff. I've also been told that I had to go and pick up replacement parts from the depot before the ONSITE TECH would come to repair a server that had 4 hour response time. Note: I've never had a problem with the techs themselves.

    It took them 6 months to notice we hadn't paid for a tape drive. Well actually we did, but they took so long in actually sending it out, that the authorization for the credit card transaction expired.

    Which resulted in them having a conversation with my manager along the lines of:

    Dell: You owe us for an order you placed in January. Manager: Right. I'm fairly sure we paid for that by credit card at the time. Dell: Erm, yeah, you did. Because of the delay in sending it out, the authorization for the transaction expired. Manager: I see. Did you ever raise an invoice for it? Dell: Erm, no. Manager: That might be why it never got paid then. Dell: Can I take the credit card details now? Manager: How about you send me an invoice and then I'll pay for it? Since I'm not in the habit of paying random requests for money without invoices to bill them against. Dell: Oh, OK.

    The delay in the sending the order out in the first place was also their cock-up, they were having an internal squabble about who should get credit for the sale.

    Then we seemed to get three new account managers in the space of as many weeks.

    Sometimes I wonder why Dell is still in business.

  • (cs) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    bored:
    Bleck... Two Dell stories before 9am, we all know Dell support is the worst on the face of the planet,
    Well, the WTF was rather more on the customer's side in the second one.

    Also, this is the first time I've heard about Dell support having a bad reputation; they consistently score highest in the customer surveys of the German computer mag c't. But then, those are mainly about actual hardware repairs, not the competence of call center drones.

    Dell's front line support people aren't actually that bad. The main problems are getting them to understand you and you being able to understand them; those problems are just the result of unfamiliar accents.

    I find e-mailing them works better than phoning them; their written English is perfect - better than most of the people I work with, which is what happens when you work in London with a bunch of barely literate monkeys.

  • (cs)

    Wise man says:

    Don't buy a Dell, and all will be well.

  • (cs) in reply to CrackHappy
    CrackHappy:
    Would you be willing to tell us (or just me) which company that is? That sounds like someone I would like to give my business to.
    To be honest, no, I'm afraid. I left because the CEO of that company (and its sister company, which was one of the pioneers in the UK of what's become known as "chugging") was one of the most unpleasant people it's been my profound misfortune to encounter during my career, and I have no desire to line her pockets further.

    However, it's just possible that you might be able to make an educated guess as to which UK-based call centre specialising in the charity sector it is, from the information I've posted so far ;)

  • Shinobu (unregistered)

    Never ague with tech support reps if you can at all avoid it. It's pointless. They don't want to help you and even if they wanted, they can't (unless it's got something to do with an unplugged power cord). If it's a problem with a new product you bought, return it to the store. Even if you didn't get any warranty on it, it's (in most jurisdictions) your legal right to return it and get your money back if it doesn't work as advertised. If it's a service, like an internet connection, get a different one, they're not going to fix anything (except if it's so bad their customers leave en masse). The only thing you can do is try to find the provider with the least issues. If it's an old item within warranty, send it in and let them figure it out. If it's an old item outside the warranty term, get a friend to fix it if you can't yourself or buy a new one. It'll probably be cheaper and save you a lot of frustration.

  • Josephine (unregistered)

    I haven't read through every comment, so i don't know if someone has stated this already:

    They need the incompetent first level of call centre is to weed out the riff-raff mums and dads who haven't tried rebooting before calling. It's frustrating but it makes economical sense.

    And they don't always take you seriously when you immediately ask to be elevated because you're techy - because numbskulls sometimes say this, too.

    Just check out sites like http://notalwaysright.com/tag/call-center http://notalwaysright.com/tag/computer-repair for some examples.

    But I had a dell notebook five years ago, and I'll never buy from them again. The support is simply awful, unless you are on an enterprise/government/education plan. I have to say I'm enjoying the dell-bashing..!

    My last interaction with them was good though. I'd had troubles with my dvd drive, and the guy was running me through the checklist. He started quoting a Registry key (HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet...) and when I recited the remainder of the key before he could, he knew I wasn't wasting his time. And he didn't waste mine - he simply asked: Which parts would you like replaced under warranty??

    I now have a compaq computer, and they are only marginally better - but I spent less than A$600 on it a year ago (dell was ~A$3000) so i don't care too much..

  • John Winters (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:

    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.

    Have you actually read the original e-mail which got the rude response? All the guy did was to report his observations and make a perfectly sensible suggestion. He didn't make any guesses about other people's stuff. He didn't attempt to diagnose the problem. It's silly to give him a hard time for offences which he simply didn't commit.

    One can only assume that the support guy was already in a lather because he had a problem and didn't know how to solve it (although one has to wonder why the same guy was responding to first level support requests) and took it out on the next person who spoke to him. Whatever the reason his response was utterly unreasonable.

  • John Winters (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    (For the record, my manager just begs me not to talk to people.)
    It's painfully obvious why.
  • MikeD (unregistered) in reply to Daniel Grace
    Daniel Grace:
    AndyL:
    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.

    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.

    Gee, you think? Thanks for pointing that out, we honestly had no idea <sigh>.

  • Jonny (unregistered) in reply to MikeD
    MikeD:
    Daniel Grace:
    AndyL:
    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.

    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.

    Gee, you think? Thanks for pointing that out, we honestly had no idea <sigh>.
    Next you'll be telling us that dust in the connector is not a genuine cause of network failure!

  • (cs) in reply to eiwop
    eiwop:
    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....

    Of course, the really fun thing to do is open a bunch of windows, take a screendump, then set it as someone else's desktop background. :D

    Ah, the fun we used to have at high school...

  • Federico (unregistered) in reply to Ceiswyn
    TS: OK. At the bottom left of your screen there's a button labelled Start. Can you see it? Me: Yes, yes. I'm clicking Start.

    Similar stuff here, talking to the technical support of one of the biggest French internet providers:

    TS: OK. At the bottom left of your screen there's a button labelled Start. Can you see it? Me: I've got no Start button: I'm using Linux. TS: Ah, ok! ...pause... At the bottom left of your screen there's a button labelled Start. Can you see it?

  • Doctor (unregistered) in reply to whatever

    Sounds like Car-- Bar-- has taken over Y----. Totally her arrogant style.

  • (cs)

    A couple of years ago, I ordered a laptop for my stepdaughter from the Dell website.

    About a week after my order, I get a note from the courier who tried to deliver the laptop, but nobody was home.

    So I call them to arrange a new delivery (when I would be home). They tell me to contact Dell. (Grr: Dell handed the laptop over to them, why would they insist on doing the customer support for the delivery?)

    So I call Dell, and I give them my order number. Their reply: the laptop hasn't been built yet. I tried to explain that the laptop was inside a delivery truck the day before, so it had to be shipped out of the factory. Eventually, I gave up arguing and hung up.

    The next day, the laptop arrived at my home and luckily someone was there to accept it.

  • eric76 (unregistered)

    I'm not real impressed with yxxxxx's support.

    A couple of weeks ago, one of our users gave over her e-mail username and password to a phisher. We caught the phisher's spam run in less than two hours after it started.

    One of the curious things was that the phisher had changed her e-mail .forward file to forward everything to [email protected].

    I figured there were three possibilities:

    1. The phisher was just being mean.
    2. The phisher was trying to make sure that the user didn't receive any e-mails warning her about a problem.
    3. The phisher and his partners had managed to compromise the [email protected] account and was using it to receive e-mails from their victims in hopes that some e-mails might contain such things as other usernames and passwords, credit card numbers, or bank account numbers.

    So I sent an e-mail to [email protected] and [email protected] to give them a heads-up on it just in case the account was compromised.

    A few days later I got a response. Whatever twerp at yxxxxx read the heads-up e-mail came to the conclusion that I was complaining about spam from one of their users and sent out a standard "send us the full headers or we won't do anything" e-mail.

    The funny thing is that much of the time if you send them the full headers for a spam, they still send you the e-mail requesting full headers.

    I think yxxxx must have all their smart people doing something else besides dealing with abuse problems.

  • John Winters (unregistered) in reply to eric76
    eric76:
    I'm not real impressed with yxxxxx's support.

    snip...

    The funny thing is that much of the time if you send them the full headers for a spam, they still send you the e-mail requesting full headers.

    It's worse than that. I've been round the same cycle with Yooha! and when I sent them all the requested details (again!) it turned out that the e-mail address which they'd given to send them to was false - it didn't exist.

    The best thing to do when you find someone using Yooha! for mail is to advise, plead and cajole them to move.

    John

  • (cs)

    I develop a game mod. My presence on the forum to answer questions about it gives people the idea that they can offer suggestions.

    In my experience, virtually all of the suggestions with 'why can't you' or 'just' in them are impossible to implement in the game engine. The people who are actually humble enough to realise this are the ones who offer useful feedback.

  • Jasper (unregistered)

    The Real WTF(tm):

    ... so I called up the Dell Computers.
  • (cs) in reply to Daniel Grace
    Daniel Grace:
    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.
    Well of course, We all know that.

    The main thrust of my post was that a lot of time the tech support people themselves don't know that! They seem to honestly think that reversing the cable is a real honest to goodness way of solving network problems, and insist that I have to do it even after I explain that it would take hours to do.

  • (cs) in reply to An angry customer support victim
    An angry customer support victim:
    Erzengel:
    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.
    At what point does the right to be treated like a human being come into the pay grade, just for reference?

    P.S. I really like how your reply includes the whole "I was there too, we just had to deal with it" spiel. Wonderful logic that. It works especially well for justifying violence too, "I was beaten up and stabbed and I just took it so you should too".

    Did you even read my post? I said if someone was getting abusive, I would call down the supervisor. It's not in your pay grade to be abused. You are there as a catch-all for the 85% to 90% of people who just want to get their stuff done and move on. When you encounter the 10% to 15% who are angry or psychotic, you forward them to the better trained, better paid, more experienced people who can decide how to calm the customer down or have the power to refuse service.

    Calm down. Read. Stop making assumptions. I'm not saying turn the other cheek, I'm saying go get a cop.

    I've been physically assaulted by a customer. You know what happened? Security beat the shit out of him, the cops came, and I pressed charges. He went to jail for a year, was fired from our client, and banned from doing business with us. It's not in my job description to take physical abuse, but that's what security and the police signed on for. It's not in the job descriptions of customer service (at any job I've worked at) to take abuse, but the supervisors and managers are there to take care of it.

  • FTFY (unregistered) in reply to Shinobu
    Shinobu:
    Never ague with tech support reps if you can at all avoid it. It's pointless. They don't want to help you and even if they wanted, they can't (unless it's got something to do with an unplugged power cord). If it's a problem with a new product you bought, return it to the store. Even if you didn't get any warranty on it, it's (in most jurisdictions) your legal right to return it and get your money back if it doesn't work as advertised. If it's a service, like an internet connection, get a different one, they're not going to fix anything (except if it's so bad their customers leave en masse). The only thing you can do is try to find the provider with the least issues. If it's an old item within warranty, send it in and let them figure it out. If it's an old item outside the warranty term, get a friend to fix it if you can't yourself or buy a new one. It'll probably be cheaper and save you a lot of frustration.

    If you can't find a working product at a store near you, move. If you run out of service providers in your new whistlestop hometown, start a new one and/or learn how to write using pen and ink. If your friend can't fix it, get new friends. If my advice isn't helpful, you may return it for a full refund!

  • Jeff (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    You know I would imagine that the response from yahoo was fake... So did anyone contact Jonathan's wife on yahoo yet? What dope would post text with something blocked(not in image form)...the first thing I did was highlight it so I could read it.

    Second question....is she hot?..lol

  • (cs) in reply to Erzengel
    Erzengel:
    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.

    That was a VERY good explanation. If you don't mind, I'm going to copy it and maybe use it someday.

  • Donkey Hotay (unregistered) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    You'd both get fired instantly (and with good reason) if a manager ever saw you display this kind of attitude towards a customer.

    Someone who doesn't give you any money is not a customer. Yahoo!'s customers are the people who buy advertising from them. Jonathan's wife merely uses their free e-mail service, and as such is part of the product that they sell to advertisers.

  • Not redacted (unregistered) in reply to Jeff
    Jeff:
    You know I would imagine that the response from yahoo was fake... So did anyone contact Jonathan's wife on yahoo yet? What dope would post text with something blocked(not in image form)...the first thing I did was highlight it so I could read it.

    Second question....is she hot?..lol

    Yeah, I think you should try contacting [email protected] and asking her for some pix.

  • ITGuy174281 (unregistered)

    Personally, in the last couple of years, I've found Dell's tech support to be truly stellar, both for business and home customers. It was really bad, but not long after Michael took the reins back, things started really improving.

    The one thing that I cannot stress enough, though, is that you must use the chat support from their site, not phone support.

  • AP (unregistered) in reply to ChrisE

    It was an extremely terrible and unprofessional response. Such Jackasses should not be allowed into customer support. Save the sarcasm for someone else, not your freaking customer.

  • (cs) in reply to DWalker59
    DWalker59:
    Erzengel:
    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.

    That was a VERY good explanation. If you don't mind, I'm going to copy it and maybe use it someday.

    Go for it.

    All I ask is that you copy the attribution as well. Misattribution (including plagiarism, but also including attributing something to someone who didn't write or say it) is one of my biggest peeves.

  • wingcommander (unregistered)

    The technician seemed a little confused, "okay, but I can send you a copy of XP Pro?"

    is that he was offered a free upgrade from Vista to XP Pro, and didn't jump on it!

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to brazzy
    The response was inexcusably arrogant and snarky.

    The customer was fine up until his last sentence.

    The response was arrogant and snarky, but not inexcusably so. As somebody who makes a living reporting problems, I've learned one simple rule.

    You never tell them what to do.

    Report all the information you have, but never ever tell them what to do. They know the systems better than you do. Assuming that you know the solution and that they don't is always a bad idea.

  • Scott (unregistered) in reply to shadowman

    Mostly likely shared video memory, this is usually pretty obvious and can be set in BIOS for the cheapo video chipsets with non-discreet memory.

    For that matter too, I noticed some older Dell laptops also couldn't make use of over 3 GB of memory, period. The BIOS was hard-coded to only let the OS see 3 GB, the remainder, no matter how much was installed. So take 3 GB and take off upwards of a gig if someone is trying to be really generous (to the point of foolishness) with shared video memory, and there you go. It made no sense to me at the time I saw this particular issue as to why video memory couldn't be pulled out of that "reserved" area. Or why you couldn't disable that. Perhaps it was a hardware limitation in that case, but if it was, I wouldn't think the laptop would've seen more than 3 GB for starters. Could've been the same deal, where a 32-bit processor simply couldn't address the full amount of memory even if the laptop "knew" it had more memory than that installed. It was a couple years back, I don't remember all the details of the case.

  • Scott (unregistered) in reply to Bim Job
    Bim Job:
    Scott:
    It's not the least bit surprising that an entry-level rep don't understand the limitations of 32-bit software versus 64-bit, when a good many geeks don't either.
    This was actually a poignant part of the story. In fact, it was the only bit where I could put myself in the head of the "tech support" guy and feel something quite close to sympathy.

    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?)

    This is exactly my point. There are limitations to software that relatively few folks understand. I don't fully understand the theory, myself. I know stuff about 32-bit compatibility libraries for running legacy code on a 64-bit OS, but cant' say I know exactly what they do!

    As a field tech at times, others a freelance consultant, and currently a jack-of-all-trades site support technician, my job for the past decade is mostly to identify common problems like this and simply be able to explain briefly to customers or EUs how limitations are just that, and that their hardware is not defective. A confident answer will usually turn away a customer's wrath. Stumbling around and being clueless just pours gasoline on the fire of that wrath, though. It'd also be VERY helpful if Dell, IBM/Lenovo, and other manufacturers would've refrained from selling more than 3GB of memory with 32-bit Vista and XP, or published cautions regarding limitations. The technical details don't matter so much as the customer's understanding that the product is not failing catastrophically.

    The combination of Dell's willingness to sell an ignorant customer a computer with 4 GB of memory and a 32-bit OS, and having a call center person who seemed to be even MORE ignorant was a perfect storm of stupidity.

  • rtfm (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy

    It's in the (service) manual that you can download from the Dell website. Read it!

  • Nomen Nescio (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    You never tell them what to do.

    Report all the information you have, but never ever tell them what to do. They know the systems better than you do. Assuming that you know the solution and that they don't is always a bad idea.

    Someone else said that "if the user knows more than the tech, something's wrong". This isn't necessarily true either. Like any other input, if the user's comment isn't helpful, then don't act on it. There's no reason to respond rudely. It's not like the user said, "Can you find the Start button, Run, IPCONFIG /RENEW on the server".. He just noted which external address wasn't responding (as opposed to others which were), and suggested that they not direct users there.

  • Soft Drink Empire (unregistered) in reply to itFinallyWorks
    itFinallyWorks:
    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.

    Who'da thunk it?

  • Stefan W. (unregistered)

    I dont understand: Why didnt you install the XP Pro that came with your computer?

  • John Winters (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    The response was inexcusably arrogant and snarky.
    They know the systems better than you do. Assuming that you know the solution and that they don't is always a bad idea.

    And had the customer done that, then there might have been some excuse for the response. But (for the umpteenth time) he didn't. He merely reported a useful observation and made a suggestion. He made absolutely no attempt at diagnosis or finding a solution.

    I suspect some of those getting so cross with the customer do it precisely because they don't read what's in front of them.

  • Falcon (unregistered) in reply to Nomen Nescio
    Nomen Nescio:
    Anonymous:
    You never tell them what to do.

    Report all the information you have, but never ever tell them what to do. They know the systems better than you do. Assuming that you know the solution and that they don't is always a bad idea.

    Someone else said that "if the user knows more than the tech, something's wrong". This isn't necessarily true either. Like any other input, if the user's comment isn't helpful, then don't act on it. There's no reason to respond rudely. It's not like the user said, "Can you find the Start button, Run, IPCONFIG /RENEW on the server".. He just noted which external address wasn't responding (as opposed to others which were), and suggested that they not direct users there.

    I agree - if the person reporting the problem was polite enough, there'd be nothing wrong with responding with the same courtesy and informing them that their assessment and/or suggestion was incorrect, if that was the case. Further details about the system(s) should probably not be given due to security risks.

    Jonathan's suggestion could have been better phrased as: "Perhaps the server should be taken out of rotation." However, the one that was posted still wasn't too bad, as he wasn't calling them idiots (even if he thought that himself!)

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