Freethought & Rationalism Archive

FoE · 05-02-2003, 11:11 PM

Do any computer companies have decent techsupport?

Catseye · 05-03-2003, 06:57 AM

Quote:

anyone on ii a mac user??

Yep. Which makes conversations with tech support even more interesting. AOL, as far as I can tell, make the least popular person in the office be the designated Mac support guy for the week.

---

Me: (after getting put through to alleged Mac guy) I'm getting an error message that says 'cannot locate modem' when AOL tries to dial.

Him: Okay. What operating system are you using?

Me: OSX. But AOL is running in Classic mode, so that's 9.2.1.

Him: AOL doesn't run in OSX, so that would be why it's not working.

Me: I know, but it's running in Classic mode, and I'm sure it should be working in OS 9.

Him: (frantically leafing through bits of paper) What's Classic mode?

Me: It's, um, like an emulator that runs OS 9 within OSX. So, AOL is really running in OS 9.

Him: (still frantically leafing through bits of paper) Oh. Well, that's interesting.

Me: Er... yes.

Him: Well, it says here that AOL can only run in Mac OS 8.1 or 8.2. So that's the problem.

Me: Are you sure? OS 8.1 was a while ago.

Him: Yes.

Me: Sure it doesn't say 9.1?

Him: (leafing through bits of paper again) Oh. Yeah. 9.1, sorry. Or 9.2.

Me: Well, AOL's running in 9.2 right now, and it says 'cannot find modem'.

Him: Oh. Yeah, that classic thing. Um, I dunno.

Me: Shall I restart the computer in OS 9.2 and see if that fixes it?

Him: You can do that? Oh, yeah, good idea. Try that.

---

The only other tech support people I've had to talk to were the Apple ones, who were helpful, expressed 'Oooh, and you only got your computer two months ago? That must be really annoying' concern, didn't tell me it was my fault for getting version 10.0.0 of the OS in the first place, and actually phoned me back with the fix, 'so you don't have to stay on the line for hours while I look for one of the Level 2 engineers'. Much better!

Amen-Moses · 05-03-2003, 08:04 AM

I'm on a Mac now, just bought it two weeks ago so I'm still on the honeymoon phase.

I've never had to call tech support for any machine but I do tend to BE tech support for many people, if the level of idiocy I see from those asking for my help is representative of what tech support have to deal with it wouldn't surprise me if they only stick the job for a few weeks before going into rehab.

The last time my father phoned it took me almost an hour to solve his modem problem when he moved his home office to another room. After making him go through all his settings and checking that everything was connected correctly ("yes son, of course the modem is connected up") and powerd up I eventually found out that he had connected the modem to his fax machine instead of the wall phone socket and of course the fax machine was not connected to the wall socket as I had previously told him only to connect the fax machine OR the modem because they clashed (in fact the all-in-one fax machine/scanner/printer that he bought tries to answer the computer dial out if they are connected at the same time). The best bit was when I asked him if he got a dial tone when he tried to connect and the phone went dead, he had hung up on me to check he had a dial tone!

Well my father has a Dell contract now so they can deal with him in future.

Amen-Moses

dunadan · 05-03-2003, 08:46 AM

Boy have I lived this myself!

First, talk to your contract people, I guaruntee there is a 'response time' clause with financial penalties if they don't meet it. Best place to hit back is to use the contract to pull money back out of their wallet.

Also, for kicks, have you ever seen:

http://www.compaqsucks.com/

?

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05-02-2003, 11:11 PM	#11
FoE Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2001 Location: Ottawa, Canada Posts: 1,168	Do any computer companies have decent techsupport?

05-03-2003, 08:04 AM	#13
Amen-Moses Veteran Member Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Portsmouth, England Posts: 4,652	I'm on a Mac now, just bought it two weeks ago so I'm still on the honeymoon phase. I've never had to call tech support for any machine but I do tend to BE tech support for many people, if the level of idiocy I see from those asking for my help is representative of what tech support have to deal with it wouldn't surprise me if they only stick the job for a few weeks before going into rehab. The last time my father phoned it took me almost an hour to solve his modem problem when he moved his home office to another room. After making him go through all his settings and checking that everything was connected correctly ("yes son, of course the modem is connected up") and powerd up I eventually found out that he had connected the modem to his fax machine instead of the wall phone socket and of course the fax machine was not connected to the wall socket as I had previously told him only to connect the fax machine OR the modem because they clashed (in fact the all-in-one fax machine/scanner/printer that he bought tries to answer the computer dial out if they are connected at the same time). The best bit was when I asked him if he got a dial tone when he tried to connect and the phone went dead, he had hung up on me to check he had a dial tone! Well my father has a Dell contract now so they can deal with him in future. Amen-Moses

05-03-2003, 08:46 AM	#14
dunadan Regular Member Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: St Louis, MO Posts: 499	Boy have I lived this myself! First, talk to your contract people, I guaruntee there is a 'response time' clause with financial penalties if they don't meet it. Best place to hit back is to use the contract to pull money back out of their wallet. Also, for kicks, have you ever seen: http://www.compaqsucks.com/ ?

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