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Horrible Tech Support Stories
Wezoin
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I think this belongs here, since its pretty tech related...
Anyway, one of the buttons on my tv fell inside the set about 2 months ago. I called Akai, faxed my receipts on January 31st, and they assured me that within 15 days someone would call from a repair center to set up an appointment. Today I finally get the time to call them and inquire as to why I hadn't been called yet. They tell me that the last agent was supposed to have told me to call the number of the repair center (which he then proceeded to provide me with.) So I call the repair center, and am greeted with a "Whadda you want", I say something along the lines of "My Akai set has a problem and they told me to call you." Or at least, thats what I tried to say, I got interrupted as soon as I said Akai and told that they dont deal with Akai sets and that I had to call Akai back. I call Akai back and am greeted by a friendly and polite agent (who actually sounds human, ie, not reading a script, and says a couple jokes while we're waiting for his computer to find info) he proceeds to tell me that according to his computer that other company had accepted the deal to repair my set and organized an appointment. He tells me he'll call them and find out whats going on, and then call me back. He calls back and says "My gosh their rude over there" and tells me that they're gonna look for a new service company to fix my tv, and that because of this incident they're no longer going to use that company.
Basically, the Akai guy himself was awesome and friendly, the PWWService company was horribly rude and tried to scam them outta some cash. I'd still buy from Akai again regardless of this, because it really wasn't their fault but rather the retarded service company not telling them that they'll no longer support them.
Add your stories below! (Good stories allowed to, but I figure most people would like to vent)
Anyway, one of the buttons on my tv fell inside the set about 2 months ago. I called Akai, faxed my receipts on January 31st, and they assured me that within 15 days someone would call from a repair center to set up an appointment. Today I finally get the time to call them and inquire as to why I hadn't been called yet. They tell me that the last agent was supposed to have told me to call the number of the repair center (which he then proceeded to provide me with.) So I call the repair center, and am greeted with a "Whadda you want", I say something along the lines of "My Akai set has a problem and they told me to call you." Or at least, thats what I tried to say, I got interrupted as soon as I said Akai and told that they dont deal with Akai sets and that I had to call Akai back. I call Akai back and am greeted by a friendly and polite agent (who actually sounds human, ie, not reading a script, and says a couple jokes while we're waiting for his computer to find info) he proceeds to tell me that according to his computer that other company had accepted the deal to repair my set and organized an appointment. He tells me he'll call them and find out whats going on, and then call me back. He calls back and says "My gosh their rude over there" and tells me that they're gonna look for a new service company to fix my tv, and that because of this incident they're no longer going to use that company.
Basically, the Akai guy himself was awesome and friendly, the PWWService company was horribly rude and tried to scam them outta some cash. I'd still buy from Akai again regardless of this, because it really wasn't their fault but rather the retarded service company not telling them that they'll no longer support them.
Add your stories below! (Good stories allowed to, but I figure most people would like to vent)
Wezoin on
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Amazing stuff.
Oh, I thought I should mention, I broke my Gears of War disc in my 360 by moving it (I freaked out cause it was on something hot) while it was turned on. Microsoft replaced it and it arrived within 3 days of them receiving my broken copy. Again, kudos to the big M.
That ati experience seems pretty much the best possible in any tech support incident ever!
Also, to add to my first story, I spent a total of about an hour and a half doing these calls and waiting on hold (each call was only about 2 minutes) and then Akai called me back about 10minutes later.
For Christmas I ordered a framed print of an island off the coast of Australia where my wife and I spent our honeymoon. When the picture arrived it had a crack in the glass, and the wire supporting the frame was strung across the wrong axis (it is supposed to lay horizontally; it was set up to lay vertically).
I called the company in question and was somewhat shocked when a human picked up the phone inside of two minutes. He apologized for the problem and had a replacement sent ASAP (it took a couple of days; I called on the 23rd or 24th and he said volume meant it would probably get there after Xmas, so no problems). The only thing he screwed up was not sending me the return label so I could send the old picture back. Anyway, given the time of year and the time I called (around 8:00pm) I was extremely impressed with their customer service. The company was allposters.com if anyone cares; I am completely unaffiliated but if you're looking for a poster and expect it to break en route to you, they seem like a good company to go with.
The worst customer service I've ever received was from my current property management company, Cordova Realty (in Long Beach, CA). If I won the lottery I would consider buying that company just so I could fire everyone employed by them.
If they don't solve the problem quickly enough, they actually hang up on you, after telling you to call them back.
It's...Amazing. My router's still broken.
Firms that handle accounts for companies that outsource their tech support are paid by the call. Shorter calls = more revenue with lower costs. So a "technician" (you may as well ask a telemarketer how to fix your router) gets fired if his average call length is too high. It doesn't take the average phone jockey in Bangalore long to realize that hanging up on people is the only way to keep his job.
Lol, I had this too. Luckily Futureshop put Trendnet routers on sale, and I picked up a replacement for $2.95 (CAD) I think it was the buy of the century, seeing as none of the SMCs I've ever had worked properly (First with my wired, then with my wireless) They'd all cut out to the point where only one machine could runa t a time.
Anyway, again, thanks to microsoft's great tech support the 360 problem wasn't nearly as bad
I was once told by a man, in a very calm sounding and casual voice, that if I did not get his DSL service back up and running, then he would summon satan to wreak chaos upon the world.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
The second time was when I bought a Circle boxed set, and it was missing an arm. Once again, they sent me a replacement almost immediately, along with a little hand-written note. Probably two of my best support stories ever.
Really? Did you get as many assholes as most people say? Because whenever I call regardless of how terrible the agent is I'm always calm and polite. I understand that they deal with enough pissed off people on a daily basis that the only way to get them to want to help you is to be nice.
I was actually considering taking a job at a calling center, as I figured it'd essentially involve "Pick up phone, read from script, let the person yell a little bit, thank them for calling, repeat"
Also, I used to work tech support for directv with my friend. And I ALWAYS tried to get the problem fixed, where as my friend put people on hold and hung up with them. I got fired, he still has a job(my calls sometimes took in excess of 10 minutes). Oh well, I felt good about myself, so I guess that's all that mattered.
I worked for a company that several Internet Service Providers contracted. I don't know if the percent of asshole callers differs between industries, but I would say that about 80 percent of callers were pretty calm and just wanted to get their internet connection working, 10 percent were irritated, and 9 percent were angry callers, and probably 1 percent were the ultra-pissed-off-totally-unreasonable-crazy people.
But those are where the most interesting stories come from
Well, for ISP support, and probably other tech support jobs, you don't really read from a script. You have a huge computerized database of solutions to problems, but you yourself have to sort of diagnose the user's issue so you can locate the solution from the database. For ISP support, most of this was easy enough for me that I could do it off the top of my head; most of the problems were the same recurring thing that you remembered what to do, or they were simple matters of resetting a modem or looking up a person's login info for them. The tougher issues will have you clicking through 'virtual computers,' or little websites that emulate working on a computer so you can see what you're doing and describe it to them, and that helps you pinpoint the problems. But you still have to have a little personal knowledge to narrow down the problems. At least, if you plan on being a good tech. Most of my coworkers didn't know shit about computers, and were almost as helpless with the issues as the callers themselves, despite the knowledge base.
But probably your average GnT poster here would have no problem at all performing well at a call center. At least for ISPs.
I will say this, though -- you have to have a lot of patience and the ability to consistently figure out and resolve problems repeatedly. It seems to me that most call centers hire just enough people so that you're basically on the phone the whole time you're working. You'll get 'breaks,' but you'll be on the phone most of the time. It's not hard work, and you'll be browsing Penny Arcade while talking through issues a lot of the time, or some other website, since a lot of it gets committed to wrote memory just due to repetition.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Meh, not really. My eVGA 7900GT went bad over summer. They sent me a new video card priority with the shipping label to reuse that box and send my busted card back. THAT is service.
Disclaimer: Actual Google banner ad captured at www.serebii.net
So the problem persisted and I called up again. I got some lady who was clearly reading from a script. Nevertheless, I'm following along with her until we're at a DOS prompt and she says "OK, now type format c:"
"WHOA WHOA WHOA, wait a second, I am not going to format my hard drive." Seriously, she didn't say anything about how I might want to back up my stuff or anything like that. Lots of people probably would've done that without knowing what they were doing. I don't remember how the rest of that call went, or if my problem was resolved.
My Backloggery
EDIT: This was Rogers, back when they were Rogers @Home, for anyone interested.
Eventually things came to a head when the computer literally shorted out in a rather large puff of smoke and what could have almost been a fire thanks to the ten pound battery that was included with it. Obviously I was not pleased. I ended up demanding that they fix the laptop or give my relative a refund, as it wasn't much use as scrap metal. I got it back about a month later and lo and behold, the damned thing was still broken. It took it three months to break down again, but it did ultimately happen. When I called them back I basically got a response from their manager saying "Haha, the warranty ran out, we'll "fix" it again, but it's going to cost you". Yeah, fuck that. The damned thing is still sitting on a table in my room, taking up space.
A much worse story involves GameStop. I went in there and bought a few games and a keyboard for my Gamecube. I go home, and open up a game to play it. The case is empty. So I bring it back and they give me the game, and apologize.
I go home to hook up my keyboard for some PSO. It's missing the adaptor. So I call up there this time (this was all in the same day, ugh). I get the same idiot that checked me out and apologized. He has no clue what adaptor I'm talking about (it was just a $5 keyboard with a little plug that went from old keyboard to GC controller port). So I tell him I'm just going to bring it back to return it for another one.
I get up there, give him the box, and get another off the shelf. I open it up (it wasn't taped) and show him the adaptor. "Oh, that?" He then reaches over and picks up one off the shelf next to him. "I found this on the floor after you left the first time. I had no clue what it was."
Fucking GameStop.
So I bought the Adobe CS package through my univ. in September, and in December I get an email to the effect of "since you bought it in the month before they announced the new version, you can upgrade for free + shipping costs". Ok, so I apparently have to call up Adobe and get some customer service number to put on the form that I have to fax to them to get the upgrade sent.
So first, I call... and wait... and wait... 45 minutes later (thank god I did this on a long family car trip, or I'd have been bored out of my mind) the guy finally answers, spends like 3 minutes, then tells me I need to be at a different number, and forwards me... another 15 minutes later, another person picks up, and guides me through the process (which is fine, though he's one of those totally silent CS people, which is especially bad on a cell phone, and especially especially bad when he apparently needed to type up the constitution or some such thing to get me this stupid $6 upgrade; I don't know why you'd be annoyed that a person asks "are you still there" when you've spent 5 minutes totally silent typing whatever junk he's typing)
So after all of this, I get the number for the form, and as I'm about to hang up I double-check the fax number on the form, and he's like "no, you can't use that number, use number XXX". I'm like OK, whatever, so I go home and try the new number... and it's not a vaild fax number. Ok, I'll use the first number... nope, not a valid fax number either. Finally I just emailed the stupid form to their CS email, and they accepted it and shipped out the upgrade (which was basically like acrobat 8).
It just amazes me that to save whatever the cost of just putting the stupid thing on an ftp site somewhere, they're willing to spend at least $50 on personell costs to make me spent an hour on the phone with people to get a free upgrade