RANT TIME!

[gbaughma]

So, my boss is trying to make his reservations for his annual trip to Asia.
But, his email (which has always gone through to his travel agent before) is being rejected as spam by the email host myregisteredsite.com

So, I hunt up a support number, tell them that I'm an IT Manager, and I need to know why email from my boss is getting rejected.

They ask me what my customer number is.

I repeat the issue; that I'm not a customer of theirs, that my boss is trying to send an email to a customer of theirs, and their system is rejecting it, even though it has always gone through before.

She says she can't help me.

I ask to speak to the mail admin.

She says "You're already speaking to support."

So now, I've had to get a hold of the travel agent myself, and tell him that HE has to call them to get this straightened out.

You know, being a system admin / manager / etc. *used* to mean something. I hate crappy customer service.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com

 

[SantaMufasa]

She says she can't help me.

Whenever I hear this (lame) reply, I use (to great success) the "DAM" Principle. (Here's how such a conversation might proceed:

Miss, inasmuch as I, too, am in the Information Management business, I know, for a fact that you can help me. But before you can help me, you must have:
[ul][li]The Desire to help me,[/li][li]The Authority to help me, and[/li][li]The Means to help me.[/li][/ul]

Could you please transfer me to someone who has the Desire, the Authority, and theMeans to help me?

One time, when trying to get an AT&T fraud call reversed from my phone bill (AT&T is not my provider), and following conversations with several AT&T "customer service" reps/managers/regional managers, et cetera, I made it all the way to AT&T's VP of Customer Relations at AT&T's corporate headquarters. My conversation with him went like this:

VP: Hello, this is <VP name>.

I: Yes, this is <my name>. I'm calling to get a $35.85 fraudulent charge from AT&T reversed from my phone bill. I have spoken with 8 AT&T Customer Service representatives, CS managers, district managers, and regional managers who lack either the Desire, the Authority, or theMeans to help me? Do you have the Desire, the Authority, and theMeans to help me resolve this issue?

(After his stunned silence for a few seconds...)
VP: Why, yes, I can help you.
(Then following his obtaining details of the call and having someone on he other telephone line remove the charge...)
VP: Is there anything else I can help you with today?

I: Yes. By my calculations, I have spent about 2 hours of my consulting time, and AT&T has probably the same amount of time, by your customer-service team's inability to resolve an issue that took you a few seconds to resolve. What you can do for me is empower your people to resolve such issues quickly and efficiently to avoid such a silly waste of time in the future.

VP: I believe that that is an excellent idea!

I personally enjoyed the "thrill of the chase" in that experience, but in other cases, using the "DAM" principle has typically resulted in very satisfactory outcomes.

Mufasa
(aka Dave of Sandy, Utah, USA)
“People may forget what you say, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

 

[assets]

That happen when you have support off shore and not by the company. When a the IT company pay peanuts you get what you pay for monkeys!!!!!!!!!!

Never give up never give in.

There are no short cuts to anything worth doing

 

[MakeItSo]

I'm calling to get a $35.85 fraudulent charge from AT&T reversed from my phone bill. [...]
I have spent about 2 hours of my consulting time

That is one of the most aggravating things about lame support: you spend two hours (usually even more) @ €/$/£ xyz per hour to solve a $36 issue.


We are working among other software with a very complex, database driven software. It was darned expensive to buy and support costs us plenty per year. Encounters with their support are almost always unpleasant. To be fair, they seem to have at least the Desire and Authority to help, but they very often lack the MEANS. Those who can really grasp an overall picture of a problem AND have the knowledge to solve it are usually already beyond support and are sitting in development now. In their support contract, they promise to respond within five (yes, that's 5) days(!!!)
You can imagine what that means if there is any critical problem. It means tough talk - the same day the ticket is logged. Sometimes it also means escalation to my our company management.
It means loss of time, loss of productivity, delivery delays - in short: loss of MONEY.


If we had any choice, we would not have bought this software in the first place (we knew some of the problems beforehand). Alas, we are a service provider ourselves and are forced to use this product due to some of our customers using it.


“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” (Kofi Annan)
Oppose SOPA, PIPA, ACTA; measures to curb freedom of information under whatever name whatsoever.

 

[djj55]

Years ago when Excel leaked memory baddly, I had a problem that if I started Microsoft FoxPro I could then start Execl, however, if I started Excel I could not start FoxPro, even if I exited Excel.

I called Microsoft customer "support" (notice the quotes). Excel people said it was a FoxPro problem, FoxPro people said it was an Excel problem. After several switches between groups, it was determined that it was an Excel problem of memory not being cleaned up.

Thus my love of Microsoft has went down hill from there.

djj
The Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 23) - I need someone to lead me!

 

[edfair]

In troubleshooting a connection problem between CBeyond and Bellsouth I found that BS would not let me talk to the president, he had someone in the office next to his whose sole purpose was to keep people away from the big boss.
After 2 weeks of dealing with first and second level support and being told that everything was working right it took the high level support people about 15 minutes to find a software glitch in the BS switch.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[flapeyre]

As an aside, if you have AT&T DSL service and home phone service with them, you'd better save that repair service number somewhere. I learned that the hard way after Gustav. Dead phone line means no DSL and no Internet. Navigating AT&T's website sucks even on a regular full-sized monitor; on an iPhone, it's much worse. And try as I might, I couldn't find the repair service number. I don't get the paper directories anymore (Who needs a five-pound monster book in 6-point type when you can look up anything online on your smartphone?) Anything, except AT&T's repair service number, apparently.

I have therefore saved that toll-free number in my contacts, and I hope they don't change it before the next outage.

I think I ended up reporting the outage online when I got back into work; in retrospect, I could have taken my laptop to McD's or *$$ instead to do that.


-- Francis
There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
--Mark Twain

 

[djj55]

I have a similar problem with CenturyLink, if the phone goes out, no DSL. Now my cell does not get good reception at my house, so calls are spotty at best. Now when the phone is out how do I contact the phone company who wants an email?

Also i need to keep the number to the electric company for the reasons you stated. But I do not have a lap top or smart phone.

djj
The Lord is my shepherd (Psalm 23) - I need someone to lead me!

 

[flapeyre]

I suspected (and was correct) that my outage was an AT&T system-wide issue, mainly because the phone cables in my neighborhood are buried (since Katrina, it's been their policy to bury the drop wires around here whenever possible). I also had a flaky DSL modem, and had to replace that with a new combination DSL modem/router/WiFi access point.

-- Francis
There are laws to protect the freedom of the press's speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press.
--Mark Twain

 

[nodrog77]

I find that Ranting on the companies Facebook page is effective. At the moment that is. Posting this on their page is also good for a laugh:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/customer_service

 

[strongm]

I remember going very public on Microsoft's Compuserve pages about 20 years, after they refused to accept that a substantial shortcoming of one of their products was a bug. Got my own personal knowledgebase article as a result ...