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.