Tech Support Blues
In honour of the appallingly frustrating afternoon that I had dealing with telecommunications customer service, I am posting a couple of rants I wrote in 2003, when I was having a difficult time with some IT tech support people. I’m still too mad to write about today’s insanity. Maybe tomorrow.
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28 May 2003: Stop Assuming I’m a Nincompoop!
I called tech support today. I hate calling tech support, because I always get some cretin on the line who thinks that because I am a woman I have no clue how computers work.
Note to all IT, tech support, and help desk people out there: It’s very likely that I was programming in BASIC, Pascal, and Fortran before you were out of kindergarten. I was the first person in the history of my college to simultaneously take and tutor computer programming classes—I really didn’t need the classes, because I was already a competent programmer, but they were core and, therefore, required. There were no computer-related AP or CLEP exams back then. I was on the front lines of the war between CLI-users and GUI-users; I started out using CLI and thought GUI users were, indeed, WIMPs. I remember how exciting it was when you could get a monitor with a green text display instead of amber—when colour monitors were undreamt of, or so expensive only the government could afford them. That’s also when monitors were the size a of Yugo and took up the entire desktop. I used programs like Smart-WP and Volkswriter, and I remember the advent of Windows 1.01. I remember when the World Wide Web graduated from military school and hit the mainstream.
So stop treating me like a mindless imbecile and listen to my question before you start trying to answer what you thought I was going to ask.
My problem today stemmed from the fact that no one in the place where I am working really understands computers and how they work; no one has written lists of passwords, providers, or contact points for help; and no one knows how to get in and jiggle the computer’s guts around. In fact, no one knew what a “license agreement” was until I explained it, and then they took me to this old file cabinet in the back 40 where they were storing all of the old software boxes, disks, manuals, LAs, etc.
So when I wanted to switch over from Outlook Express to Outlook, so that I could actually use this program that someone sometime paid good money to Bill Gates for, no one knew what to do.
So I called my IT-guru brother, who helped me dot all the Is and cross all the Ts. Everything worked fine, until I went to send some email yesterday. All of a sudden, my account refuses to send or receive email. Which means that one of the STMP addresses or DNS server numbers is wrong. But does anyone here know what they should be? Don’t be silly. The computer guy set it all up and it worked, so why do we need to know all that stuff?
I finally tracked down our account info; only, it seems, we have two different accounts. So I called the first place, call it Wosp. The people at Wosp were really nice. After receiving confirmation that I was really authorized to be working on this problem, they reset my passwords, since no one here knew what they were. Suddenly, I could receive email again. But still no send. We tried a bunch of things, and finally the Wosp people asked who our internet service was through. That would be company number two, call them Bess.
So I called Bess, and I knew I was in trouble from the get-go. First of all, I could barely hear the rep, who sounded like he was talking through a tin can fifty feet away from the phone. Second, he had this horrible, grating voice quality that I can only describe as someone from Jersey with rocks in his mouth, trying to drawl like a Mississippi boy. Third, he was patronizing and rude: before I even got my problem explained, he started trying to tell me what the problem was. He started walking me through New Account setup in Outlook, which, of course, was not my problem at all.
When I finally got Mr. SmartyPants to shut up and listen, I had to “bear with” him for forever while he pulled up the right set of help instructions on his computer. Naturally, my problem was outside of what his help screen covered. Either that or he pulled up the wrong screen. After an hour on the phone, trying hard to stay polite, I was relieved when the latest set of unhelpful instructions refused to load into his computer, and he asked me to call back another time.
I really don’t want to call Bess again. What if I get that same guy? I swear, just the timbre of his voice was making me want to chew nails; having to put up with his objectionable attitude made me want to put my fist through the wall. So I am going to wait until tomorrow, when one of our “in-the-know” employees is back in and can tell me what relationship we have with Wosp and with Bess, so I know who to really sock it to when I muster the gumption to start another round of talks with “tech support.”
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30 May 2003: Tech Support….Second Verse
Today I needed to leave early so that I could go and set up my booth at the local homeschool fair. I’ve gotten all of my work done, and all I have left to do is fax a 20-page report to Israel, and then update our website—a task that usually takes all of 10 minutes.
Three hours later, I’m sprinting out the door, having stumped five techies into finally begging me to go away and let them think for a while. 🙂 Revenge is sweet. Not that it’s true revenge, which would only happen if I could fix this newest problem myself. But still…
See, when I opened Front Page (I know, but I don’t have a choice…yet) to update the webpages, instead of the “enter your password” screen that I usually get, I got an error message. So I rebooted the computer and tried again. Same message. For half an hour, I tried to get into the program, and got only this error message.
So I called our web hosting service, the one previously introduced as Wosp. They were very nice. We all had coffee and doughnuts and tried to fix the problem for the next two hours. While on the phone with them, waiting for their little help screens to actually be of help, I figured out what was wrong with the e-mail program, and fixed it. (Our server requires authentication, and the auth. box wasn’t checked for the problem accounts. DUH! But why couldn’t Wosp or Mr. Know-It-All at Bess have told me to check that the other day?)
Anyway, after talking to four different techs, e-mailing screen-shots of the error messages, and rebooting twice more (which takes 10 minutes each time on my antique workplace machine), the last tech I talked to said he really needed to talk to some other folks and call me back…I told him I had to leave for the day, so he could have until Monday. 😀
I’m feeling pretty stoked right now. I stumped a techie and I fixed my own problem. That’s pretty cool. Okay, so I still can’t update the website, but I can send e-mail again. And I know the other problem isn’t anything I did, as I only open that program to update the site once a week, and it worked just fine last Friday. So Wosp or Bess has done something somewhere that wrecked my ability to post to the website at work. Hee hee hee. I didn’t like Bess at all, so I hope it turns out to be their fault. Maybe we can fire them and get a real ISP. One who won’t patronize me.