Those who work tech support by phone, have a rough job at times. Our daughter, has worked top tier phone support, for Best Buy and Apple in the past. So I always try to be compassionate and cooperative when working with phone support persons.
My Internet connection has been sporadic the last few days. I decided to call the cable company Tech support to see if they could help me find the problem. The young gentleman on the phone, was very polite and patient. Sadly, I don’t think he was as experienced as he tried to portray. I gave him the various steps that I had tried, which should have tipped him off that I was a fairly experienced user. However, he was mostly reading from his troubleshooting script.
He tried, and was courteous, and to me that goes a long way. Right at the start, he took a wrong turn, and I couldn’t get him back on track. So I played along as best I could, and listened to his instructions and applied them to my situation. This is how the first part went, which set me to chuckling to myself.
Linux, is just another brand of Computer
Support: Yes, sir. I need to send a signal to your equipment to see if it will reset and clear the problem. We are not showing any problems in your area at this time.
Me: Okay, thanks. (The modem resets but still no sites will load, error says unable to lookup address.
Me: It acts like a DNS issue not resolving the addresses, so that would be out more on your end I think.
Support: No sir, it wouldn’t be a DNS issue.
Me: Okay
Support: Let’s troubleshoot your network settings. Do you see the Windows key on your keyboard.
Me: Yes, but it doesn’t work on Linux, I’m using Linux OS.
Support: No, just look for the windows key, it has 4 small squares on it and press it, then type CMD.
Me: I’m sorry, that key won’t work, I’m using Linux.
Support: Yes, it will work. Linux, is just another brand of computer.
Me: Tell me what we are trying to do or see, and I will get there. (So as he calls off the instructions for windows, I play along and just do the same thing in Linux, it’s obvious that it is not registering what I am telling him, I don’t have Windows. From his instructions, I ping NBC, Yahoo, and a couple others. He then had me check my IP settings, and tell him what IP address is listed. I read back to him the address he said to look for.)
Support: Right, that is the address assigned to you from us.
Me: It looks like my computer address on my network, that I set as a static IP for my network computer.
Support: No sir. That is the assigned IP address from us.
We did a little more trouble shooting of all sorts, and he determined I needed a service call tomorrow. That was fine by me, as we started to end our call I asked if he had a higher tier of support that I could chat with, to bounce some ideas off of.
Support: No sir. I have been doing this for 5 years, I don’t think they could help you more than I have.
We ended our call shortly thereafter.
I don’t mean to laugh, but 5 years, and he can’t tell my internal IP “that I assigned my computer” from the cable company issued IP. He thinks Linux is another brand of computer, and the Windows key will work on it.
Too much energy?
What to do when you have extra energy? Take your keyboard apart and clean it. I wouldn’t recommend this activity to burn extra energy. It came apart easy enough, and cleaned well, but getting 100+ keys back where they belong, is more of a challenge than you think.
Have a super day, Comments always welcome.
Does trouble-shooting mean you were tempted to shoot the troubled tech support fellow?
I agree about being kind to people working on the phone. My wife worked as a telephone banking support worker for years, (before online banking became popular) and spent most days being verbally abused, or argued with. But him not knowing about Linux was unforgivable, and I suspect he has been doing that job for weeks, rather than years.
And if I ever had ‘too much energy’, the very last thing that would enter my head was to take the keyboard apart! That’s hilarious, Ron. 🙂 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
I suspect he’s only been there a few weeks or month as well.
The keyboard? I had to get a picture of it from online, so I could follow it. It was crazy to say the least.
Here in the UK, we had to change our service provider recently. we live out in the middle of fields, our phone (and, previously, internet) comes via telegraph poles, and only one provider has been subsidised to develop FTTP broadband (eventually). A different company provides the infrastructure from the one that provides the service. there was a fault somewhere along the line which took a while to find. It’s resolution didn’t seem to get reported. Individual teams who arrived did their best, but none of them seemed to talk to each other and nobody could do anything unless it was approved from on high. Trying to talk to anyone on the phone was a nightmare – nobody seemed to have authority to do anything – even when I handed the phone over to the guy outside who knew what he was talking about.
Sadly, it’s our only option where we are: it isn’t a company i would go with by choice. (UK readers probably recognise who I’m talking about).
I know your pain Cathy. I lived out in the country a few years ago. All we had was dial-up, and it was sketchy at best. Then we tried a cellular USB modem, it was better, but only marginally. We then went to satellite connection which was about the same, but cheaper. We ran that for about 3 years.
Later we moved to town after selling our place. We’ve always had great service from our ISP, just once in a while we have these hiccups, but fortunately it will run for months fine after they fix it.
I hope they get better connection to you one day. Thanks for the comment.
The last time I called tech support I talked to someone with a thick accent who didn’t understand colloquial English. It took a long time to work through. I’ve been advised that I can ask to speak to someone in the US. That would improve the communication but you have to hope that the person knows what they are doing. Good luck to you.
It seems to be fixed now Kate. I have gotten those that could not speak English well enough to understand. Sometimes I just hang up and try again.
Well at my husband’s job they just put in new computers. When he called the IT guy to ask him how to change the font color of his text, the guy told him to Google it!
That’s an IT person too comfortable with their job. I hope he got it straight. I like the way IT tells you to do it yourself, then screams when they don’t like it.
Your quite right, Anne. It is tempting at times. I just found your reply in my spam folder along with another. I will have to watch it closer.