tech support is f*@&% awesome...

tech support is f*@&% awesome...

[rant]

Okay, so I just got my computer up and running after almost 2 hours of insanity.

I get home, boot up, everything's peachy. I started surfing the net a little and d/ling some usenet headers. Everything's going okay. Maybe 1/2 hr into the session I can't retrieve message bodies anymore. Road Runner news servers suck, so I figured it was down again. But wait, I can't connect to any web pages. ...glances at modem... damned cable light is blinking. Great.

Now, this has happened before, sometimes it's a planned outage I don't know about. So I call the local tech line. They have a prompt, and I push 2 for "blinking cable light." I get an operator, tell her my problem (I thought I already did that when I hit "2") and she passes me off to someone to help me. Now I *KNOW* this is a problem on their end. The signal wasn't coming through and that's not my fault. So the guy starts walking me through the basic steps. Unplug my modem, reset, blah blah blah. I know it won't do any good, but I also know asking to be pushed to a higher level tech won't do any good either. They *have* to go through the steps... *sigh*

So we do all that nonsense, still a blinking light. Now he tells me to go into the network properties and oops, I have two network cards showing and two TCP/IP protocols. Why? I don't know, I only have the one card. There's only one card showing in the device manager. Not being particularly knowledgeable about networks, I follow these steps. He tells me one of them is bad, but there's no way to know. So guess and delete one (guess.. huh, I coulda done that). I delete one, still doesn't work. Delete the other... okay, done. (memory a little fuzzy here.. lost lots of blood from my brain.. ) Windows starts adding the new hardware, and it's time to reboot. Reboot. Load..load..load... dead. The monitor is no longer getting a signal. uh.. okay. Reboot, try again. Same thing. It dies before the desktop loads. Mother...

So now we go into Safe Mode to try and fix the problem. Nothing is showing up in the network manager. NIC isn't showing up in the device manager. Can't add new hardware in safe mode. Tech guy has to talk to supervisor. This isn't on his script. Comes back after a few minutes and says he's passing me up to a higher tech. I'm on hold for 5 or so minutes. Same tech guy comes on. WTF? He can't understand it either. Says I got bounced back because he didn't ask for permission to send me up when he already did. Jeezus, now I'm getting a little irritated.

Finally get to a higher tech after another 10 minutes of waiting. I explain the problem. He goes through some of the things we already tried. By now it's been about 1.5 hours since I called to report a god damn blinking light. And my computer still isn't working. Guy doesn't have a clue what to do, so he says he's gonna send out a tech in the area. Click.

15 minutes later the guy shows up. Comes in, doesn't even take off his coat, clicks a button (I'm still in safe mode). Reboot... Windows loads normally. Not even five minutes to fix the problem. He asks me how I got in this mess. I told him. He looks confused. "wait, they told you to do those things when all you had was a blinking light?" yep... "that's our fault, that has nothing to do with your computer. they shouldn't have sent you to the first tech guy." really? no shit...

Now, I'm sure this bored some of you to tears (so why'd you read it?) Both techs were really nice (even the guy who fucked up my computer in the first place), but god damn. That was moronic. If I knew more about networks and all that good stuff I could have saved myself damn near 2 hours of aggrivation. Or, if I had been passed to the right place they could have said it was their fault and that they'd look into it. Arrgh..

And so ends another tech support horror story. Thanks for indulging me.

[/rant]
 
tech support is f*@&% awesome...

hehe, well next time just tell the ppl to just shutup and send out a techy, will save both of your time....
 
tech support is f*@&% awesome...

hahaha gotta love corporate tech support
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this is why i have it easy my mom is fully certified...
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tech support is f*@&% awesome...

....when somthing ain't working right...i put a hammer to it, or the next best thing.......then i go to the pc store, and buy new parts! Problem solved!
 
tech support is f*@&% awesome...

Hhmm....This reminds me of the shit Comcast pulls....I had an RCA modem they were renting to me for about 8 months. I constantly had problems with it. The little blinking green light became my most familiar associate at the computer. So, I called and told them it was screwing up. We went through the "unplug your modem, jiggle the cord, spit on it, and wink your left eye while standing on one foot and shaking your butt at it" routine. Of course, it does nothing. So, they get confused and give up. I just hang up the phone. Lo and behold, the cable's working again a few hours later.

So, it does this about 12 more times in an 8 month period. One time, it went out for a week straight. The tekkies couldn't figure out how to fix it, and it was during Spring Break. So, I was screwed the entire time. They finally sent out a dude to fix it. He called Comcast, told them what to do, and had the problem fixed in 5 minutes WITH ONE FREAKIN' PHONE CALL! Yep....

Eventually, I decided that my modem must be crap. So, we insisted that they replace it. They schedule a meeting, say they'll exchange the modem. Of course, when they show up it's not giving me any problems. So, the modem must be good, right? They don't change it. It goes out again within a week.

We schedule another visit to exchange the modem again. The dude shows up, does the same crap the last guy did, tells me the signal is good, and I don't need a new modem. So, I antagonized the piss out of him until he got that "God, I want to rip your balls off" look in his eyes and finally got me a new RCA modem....I've had it for about 3 months....How many times has it gone out?....Uh....Zero....Yeah....It's a good thing the modem wasn't the problem or anything....::Rolls eyes::
 
tech support is f*@&% awesome...

this is why you should buy a game console and a few games

the minute that cable light starts blinking, go and play the console

then just call them when your feeling particually agaited or when youve been waiting too long

for the record i called my cable company reporting both cable tv and modem problems, their diagnosis was the cable was at fault

when the engineer turned up it turns out that there isnt anything wrong at my end on the modem side, and the cable tv decoder box/smartcard was toasted (the card was dark burnt brown at one end where the box was overheating)

apparantly they didnt know that there was any service problem in my area at that time

i was then looking for something else that week on my isps website and stumbled across a status page, which listed many many problems with my area

for the record my cable tv stil doesnt totally work properly, just a hell of a lot better than it was
 
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