• Mr Chaumbly (unregistered) in reply to GCU Arbitrary

    As far as I can tell this tends to happen because call centers tend to overvalue calls per minute and not so much quality of support.

    Often this happens because of the way the call center's contract with Dill or whoever is set up. And since really aggravatingly terrible service combined with a lack of patience on the part of callers usually results in quick calls, it's often in the centers' employees' best interests to provide really aggravatingly terrible service.

    Since it helps make the center money, this may even be condoned or indirectly encouraged by supervisors, depending on how often reports of poor service actually get pushed up the chain of command to the point where Dill feels that client loyalty and their reputation is being adversely affected.

    So the Dell employee may very well be an expert on all things technical but is, in fact, keeping that aptitude hidden for the sake of doing the job properly. Which in itself is a bit wtf, but really it's just the minor revelation that the actual goal of any call center, or business for that matter, is to make money, not to provide a service that meets any particular qualitative standard. Some attempt to make money by providing quality service; others attempt to do so by providing poor service quickly. In either case a bit of persistence and escalation to supervisors usually helps.

    I bought a laptop from HP a while ago, with an extended warranty. After a couple of years, it broke. I sent it in 4 times over the course of a few months to have them repair major and minor issues. After 4 times they still hadn't gotten it working. They gave me a range of excuses. I escalated until I ended up speaking with somebody in the national head office, who gave me a replacement.

    Perhaps someone has already made these points; I didn't want to take the time to read all 4 pages of comments, but I did want to (hopefully) add this to the discussion before moving on. At this point I feel like the real WTF is the fact that this website doesn't have a way to view comments by reply thread, like you would when reading a newsgroup or mailing list.

  • Grandpa's Long Drawers (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Not making assumptions is okay except for when somebody has rigged up the button to a whoopie cushion.

  • unlucky (unregistered) in reply to GCU Arbitrary

    I have no success asking for a supervisor on the same call as I experience the original abuse. I have taken to calling back and asking immediately for a supervisor.

    It's probably made much worse by my desire to actually solve the problem with the original person. The situation degenerates to a point where they know they've done something seriously wrong.

  • (cs)

    The only way I've found to deal with Dell support is to use their chat system from a Mac! (I had a Dell Studio lose a hard drive and RAM crap out after a move.) Part of the work had to be done over the phone and it was torture but the chat wasn't bad. I did have to keep my brain on and, with a reloaded "Vissa" that nuked their support partition, had to realize that a failure to load the missing partition was a good thing (The BIOS tests failed one of the HDs which was enough for me.)

  • Jaffa McNeill (unregistered) in reply to Mr Chaumbly
    Perhaps someone has already made these points; I didn't want to take the time to read all 4 pages of comments, but I did want to (hopefully) add this to the discussion before moving on. At this point I feel like the real WTF is the fact that this website doesn't have a way to view comments by reply thread, like you would when reading a newsgroup or mailing list.

    Actually I think that,perversely, that's one of the strengths of thedailywtf. We already spend way too much time efficiently rattling through newsgroups and mailing lists; thedailywtf forces us to slow down and read through jumbled responses. It's funnier, better for goofing off and promotes lateral thinking.

  • Jan Scott (unregistered) in reply to An angry customer support victim

    Support work is the most stressful thankless crappy job you can have (I should know I have it). You are never thanked, you are always shouted at, and the stupid questions the majority of people ask beggar belief. And then there's the "expert" who will break their kit in whole new ways.

    I love the Yahoo man's reply. And it is exactly what makes BOFH our hero - he does what we can't. Fired? No - promoted.

  • (cs) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    I once called dell to try and figure out what an LED code meant...My laptop had 3 LEDs, and the one that indicated whether it was plugged in or not would sometimes go yellow and blink (instead of green). I wanted to know what that meant.

    I talked to one guy, who passed me to a girl, who passed me to her manager who told me "You don't need to know" which pissed me off so much that I demanded to talk to his manager, at which point he hung up on me. An hour of my life down the tubes and, to this day, I still don't know what it means when that fricking led turns yellow (ungrounded outlet? No idea).

    On mine it means it's fully charged.

  • (cs) in reply to ChrisE
    ChrisE:
    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.

    It's "smug and arrogant" to provide more information than "my email doesn't work!!!1! Getting more information out of me like the username of the account is going to be like pulling teeth and you can just forget about finding out what error I'm getting or the server name"?

  • MeBerserk (unregistered)

    Ahhh give me an 'A'

    Ya---

    ehmmmmmmmm,, nnnnn, oooo,, oo!! 'O'

    Ya-oo

    ehhhhh,, H!!

    Yahoo!

    Yay do I get the broken server now?

  • guy (unregistered) in reply to bored

    Well that's not as bad as Sysmantec's customer support was.

    I had let my subscription run out and went to resubscribe but the area to click in sysmantec was grayed out. After a minute of clicking I jsut reinstalled, which still had it grayed out. Then I had a great idea, I will try their customer support. I input my issue in complete detail stating I can not click the button to renew my subscription after I purchased a subscription. So I get in line on the messenger waiting thingy.

    "rick" writes me with a formal greeting and then I have to rexplain the entire issue, wondering why I bothered to write it in the description for now. "Rick" asked to run scripts on my PC to remote assist to help resolve this issue. I agree. "Rick" then moves my mouse around hovering over the "Subscription End yesterday date" couple more clicks through, and then the best thing ever happens. "Rick" tells my subscription must be renewed.

    I couldn't stop laughing.

  • dan (unregistered)

    dell support is crappy. i had a lot of WTF moments with them. i once started to explain the difference between a NIC and a DRAC to one "technical expert" i was forwarded to.

    yes, they both have a RJ45 plug, but that doesnt mean they do the same...

  • Annoyed (unregistered) in reply to dan

    I had a similar tech support prob with MS support. All the outsourced call centers are totally useless - India, Indonesia, etc.... Fist line of support is like talking to my dog - except my dog actually listens..

    In the end, google is the way to go - saves you a headache.

  • Jimbo (unregistered) in reply to Wizard Stan

    Web definitions for Redacted

    Redacted is a film written and directed by Brian De Palma that is a fictional drama loosely based on the Mahmudiyah killings in Iraq. ...

  • Tom (unregistered) in reply to Satanicpuppy

    Re: your battery ... can i suggest it could be when it's green it is plugged into mains, when not plugged in, it blinks or it could be on standby...hmmm...or it could be a dodgy battery...hmmm I s'pose that's a wtf in itself!!! :) and no, I aint a dell techie...hate them with a vengeance...pcworld are worse!

  • M. (unregistered)

    back in the day a friend of mine used to have to deal with computers called Alphas made by some Damned Electric Company or somesuch. Everytime he had a major problem he'd wind up with the most amazing people on the phone. He'd constantly have to repeat that yes, the machines were running $OS. It was a kind of Unix. Yes, they did support $OS and Unix. No, he didn't want to reinstall "back to" that other Old Iron operating system (a Very Manly System). Yes, he'd always run $OS. Yes, $company did support $OS. No, this wasn't a problem with X-Windows. Etc. etc. etc.

  • Sauron (unregistered) in reply to freibooter
    freibooter:
    Unlike "Geeglo", "Yooha¡" doesn't have separate e-mail- domains for customers and employees ([email protected] vs [email protected] / [email protected]), which might add to the confusion.

    Utter rubbish, yooha has [email protected] for employees.

  • Timmy (unregistered) in reply to BOFH-in-exile

    It would help if it was an actual email for Yahoo! support.

    Those are always yahoo-inc.com email accounts.

    10 to 1, [email protected] is a free email account held by a dink.

  • Resa (unregistered) in reply to brazzy
    brazzy:
    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.

    Are you kidding me? What planet do you live on?

  • Resa (unregistered) in reply to Mason Wheeler
    Mason Wheeler:
    TRWTF here is that the first guy actually preferred Vista on his computer and didn't want the offered upgrade to XP.

    It doesn't sound like he was being offered an UPGRADE disk.

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