What is your worst Helpdesk/Tech Support Experience

I recently had the worst helpdesk/tech support experience ever...


A friend of mine bought an Area 51 laptop from Alienware.
(P4 3.2, 1GB DDR RAM, 60 GB 7200 RPM HDD, ATI 9600 - 128 MB, 16.5 Display, integrated 56k modem, integrated 1Gbps NIC)

Alienware are pretty costly, but they come hooked up. (When they work) Costs about $3500.00 ...that aint NO JOKE....

Anyway,
He came over to the house to play some Battlefield 1942 (Desert Combat Rocks!!) but he couldnt connect to my network. It wasnt anything on my end, I have 3 other computers running without a problem, including my laptop. I had to stop fragging people to help him out. I ran a few tests and sure enough...the integrated NIC didnt work... HA HA

He was ****ed! He was upset for having a $3500 piece of junk.

He got the warranty on it so I told him to call the tech support to get an RMA, I don't know why but we had the most ignorant tech I have ever talked to. I was 3 steps ahead of him. Everything he suggested I did he even had the balls to say that "this is not a game" and that he "didnt believe I rebooted the PC" . I was in shock! After 3 1/2 hours my buddy gave me the phone and I had to set things in place. It was horrible, I had to ask for a supervisor and let him have it. After another half hour with the supervisor.. they came to the same conclusion I did.. the NIC was not working... (DUH!)

It was the worst helpdesk experience I have ever had.

Anyway, they agreed to the RMA and now my friend is waiting for his brand new $3500 laptop.....

=================================

What weird/bad helpdesk experiences have you guys had?? Its always good for a laugh!

Hello @tt!tud3

who???

You know I have dealt with tech support for many years now...and they are just trying to decern the issue....

They have steps to follow...and I find if you treat them nicely...with respect......they will try and help you out

Now...yes...I have bad tech support...mostly because of my female voice.... :rolleyes:

To take 3.5 hours to resolve a bad nic....

Tell me ...what steps did you do to gleen this information ...before you called tech support???

Did you relate that to the tech???

MLF

MLF thank you! I am a tech guy... I put up with alot of BS! now to be fair some cx's have legitimate beefs ( someone closes their network ticket for no damn reason at all and i get blamed for it!) anyway just realize we are trying to do our jobs to help you out and no we aren the presidents of _____ company and no we cant connect you with the president of _____ company lol.

<monthly rant>

Im one of those field tech guys for onsite service. The worst is having to explain to the client that ******* sent the wrong part (what a surprise). Here is this poor guy who has been dicked around on the phone by some idiot that wants to send out a CPU because the LCD is dim. And most of the time it is just some home user that wants their machine to work like it should, they have no idea what an lcd backlight is. So they get on the phone with their vendor, ask what the problem is, and the idiot on the other side of the phone doesn't know the difference between a LCD or a CPU.

I would have serious doubts if you told me that most (mostly for a certain vendor who shall remain nameless) phone techs have the slightest clue about the most basic components of a computer.

</monthly rant>
phew... just need to blow off some steam every now and then.

The one that keeps calling me to ask for the correct subnetmask and gateway although they are working in this firm a lot longer then I do ...go figure ...Is it that difficult to remember a gateway and subnetmask ...they have the IP-address ... One time I had one of this dudes fill in the DNS server as gateway (I know this because I asked him to do a IPCONFIG /ALL)...then he calls me and asks me why this pc wont go on the network ... I told him I wouldn't know ...find it out ... After 2 hours he came by and said he had to replace the NIC ???

Thank Budha for the few good men/women in tech support :D

.C.

Game production companies are the worst. I had a problem with the game Quake 4 (stupid openGL wasn't being initialized or something like that) and I had gotten in contact with Activision Customer Service and the idiot that got my ticket seriosly read me "the book". I seriosly predicted all of his responses and fixed the problem myself, After I fixed the problem I updated my ticket one last time thanking him for reading me his book of support and not helping one bit.

Theer is also the time at work my supervisor requested a bigger KVM switch for this one server room and when it got in I pulled it out of the box and the word "DEAD" was written on it with a marker.

I'm like, "Pat, I don't think this is gonna work." he goes, "Why?" I show him the KVM and then he says, "WTF!" (well he didn't say the letters, I'm sure you get the picture)

The help desk at where I work is horrible.

Worst I heard of came to me after the chap had given up with the help desk. He had just bought a new D*ll (* insert vowel of choice) desktop and it was DOA. He'd spent a couple of hours on the phone to them. He was told to reformat etc etc but that would work blah blah. So he brought it in to me before he was going to sent it back.

I plug it in and see : HD not detected, pop the case, IDE cable unplugged. Plug it in, PC no longer dead. They don't seem to teach the KISS principles on the helldesk very often.

I've had various run ins with that particular company and very occationally very good service too.

I love warranty work. Actualy I love people who think thier factory warranty should cover virus and spyware infections and other stupid stuff. I actualy took a call where a customers house had exploded (dont ask, I didnt) and he thought we should give him a free laptop because his was under warranty. Do you have any idea how hard it was to not just put him on hold and piss myself laughing? I have also had to explain to one lady that a drive by shooting was not considered damage due to normal use and therfore not covered under her extended warranty

well for me it is hell when our customers asks to dictate and spell the linux commands over the phone.

Aloha

I got a tonne of those.
Like this guy was a real jerk. :D

INSTALLATION OF PC

JERK :- "Where's the modem?"
Me :- "You told me that you wanted this computer broadband ready. That is you have network card"
JERK :- "But I thought all computers came with a modem."
Me :- "You gave me a list with all the brands and model number for all the parts that you wanted. A modem was not one of them."
JERK :- "But don't all computers come with a modem as standard?"
Me :- "No. I don't have a modem on my computer at home. And why would you need a 56K modem if you are going to get CABLE instead"
JERK :- "But how am I going to get onto the internet?"
Me :- "Why not use your old external 56K modem?"
JERK :- "But I don't want to use my external modem"
Me :- "Fine, another $45 dollars please, I will install a modem for you"
JERK :- "But I have all ready paid you $3000. I don't feel that i need to pay you another $45. Can you just throw on in?"
Me :- "No, not with the way you went shopping around with 3 other shops so you can price match me. Plus I am giving you free installation only because you know my family and that is it. $45 or no modem at all"

WEEK END
Like here I am on my own time collectioning the remaining $45 from him.
JERK :- "BTW, could you tell me how to record MP3?"
Me :- (thinking :- "This is my week end here")
Me :- "I don't have the software for that here"
JERK :- "WHAT!!! You don't have the software with you? But you are into computers, I thought you knew everything about computers and that you would have the software with you all the time"
Me :- "I do have a life away from the computer. You might notice that all I have is my skate board and few comic books with me. You want some thing from me, you call me before hand."

NEXT WEEK END.
JERK :- "I am trying to find this soccor web site, it's on this google list, but i have this ERROR 404. Why is that happening?"
Me :- "Because the webpage is not there."
JERK :- "Can you fix it?"
Me :- "No. It's out side my control."
JERK :- "But you are a computer expert, I thought you would know who fix these things?"

DURING THE WEEK (phone call)
JERK :- "How do you connect your dvd player up to your computer?"
Me :- (thinking :- "Please god tell me that he does not want to do video editing. He only just mastered Media Player.")
Me :- "Why do you want to do that for?"
JERK :- "I don't know. I thought you were the computer expert on these things"
Me :- (HANGS UP PHONE)

This happened when i was living with my mother. She has SBC Yahoo dsl. The modem they provided to use stopped working about a month after installation, and i knew it was the modem because it wouldn't even power up at all. Well i go ahead and call the help desk for her expecting an easy "hey my modem is broke" "ok we will send a new one" conversation. Well i told em my modem was broke and get asked what makes me think that. I explain the whole no power thing, and even told them that i had swapped in a spare pwoer supply/cord i hade to make sure it wasn't just that. Well after about 45 minutes of the techy trying to talk tio the modem, having me try and talk to the modem, and a slew of other bs i get asked how old the house is. I'm like wtf does that have to do with anything and get a 5 minute explination on how older houses have older wireing that is not always condusive to good connectivity, and thats when i lost it. after about 2~3 minutes of me yelling and swearing at the guy i get 30 seconds of silence and then hear "Ok well it looks like you have a faulty modem. We will send out a tech to install a new one. When is the best time for you?". Sometimes i honestly think these people have no idea what business they are in.

I chatted online with a rep from HP to ask questions about my lapper and ram and the compatibility with other manufacturers cards and such. Well, long story short, they gave me WRONG info and I bought the wrong card (from eBay). So I call back (and of course it's the help desk associated with a country that does not speak my language, and while i do exercise a small amt of bias, it has nothing to do with anything but I CAN'T understand someone if their 1st language is not english), and am told that they have no proof I was lied to, so I emailed the transcripts from my chat session and they told me: "Sir, sometimes, you just have to help yourself" Man, I flew way off the handle and hit the roof!!!! So after consulting with the Better Business Bureau, HP corporate called back and bought me a brand spanking new ram card from Best Buy. I was deliriously happy, so the moral of my story is: the BBB is your friend!!! There is a lot more detail to this story than I can go into on a message board, but suffice to say that if you walk outside and bang your head on the pavement a few times, you might understand how FRUSTRATED I was. There's a couple good stories up there, but how can some of you guys defend Tech Support.....I mean you work with some of these idiots, and while some of you guys are good, some of you are just as BAD!!!.....eric

Zombie~ amused me:

Quote:

---

I actualy took a call where a customers house had exploded (dont ask, I didnt) and he thought we should give him a free laptop because his was under warranty. Do you have any idea how hard it was to not just put him on hold and piss myself laughing? I have also had to explain to one lady that a drive by shooting was not considered damage due to normal use and therfore not covered under her extended warranty

---

I worked in the extended warranty sector for a while (systems development, not the customer side) and actually we would have paid both those claims.....................unless the customer had managed to get themselves killed in the process.............then we would have paid the retail cost of the item into the estate of the deceased (more expensive, as that contains the profit element as well).

:D