Stupid is as stupid does.

Not the best tech support

[Marshall]

So I submit a support ticket to my hosting company about an issue involving a site not loading. I finish the sentence with the web address and, like normal, put a period at the end of the sentence. The hosting company responds with "I have noticed that you are using a '.' at the end of the website name (website_name. ). So please make sure that you use the correct website name while accessing the website."

SERIOUSLY!?

Marshall

[rocker]

Marshall, Tech support is like a box of chocolates, you don't know what answer you will get when you submit a question.

[not2easy]

Oh no!
Maybe the same support guy:
I had a problem the other day setting up a new domain. The normal canonical redirects I use with that host were not working and I used their chat to ask if there was some setting for this server that was different from their other setups. The guy told me that I couldn't redirect it because the domain name. The domain name starts out with "wwweb...". I went back to picking it apart and fixed the problem, but what kind of answer was that? Servers are not spellcheckers.

[g1smd]

That's one of the reasons why I always end a root web address with a trailing slash and usually add another word after that.

[SevenCubed]

Ha, you've got to make it fool-proof. For the exact reason you are pointing out I never put a period at the end of a sentence if it's terminated with a URI.

But seriously couldn't the person opening the ticket just paste it into a browser, remove the period, and see what you are seeing. Or in this case what you aren't seeing, a loading page.

I had a few memorable encounters with tier 1 support over the last few weeks myself.

There really are a lot of unqualified people filling too many of those positions these days. In most instances the finger can be pointed at the corporations that ship support duties offshore to squeeze every last penny out of operations to satisfy their hungry greed. What you are experiencing is often times a result of this.

And there is a greater long-term dilemma growing as a result of this. As support call centres shut down in regions where there are highly qualified workers those workers end up out of a job of course. But they obviously are not going to sit around so they enroll in continuing education courses to get retrained to do something else.

As a result when corporations eventually realize they are loosing customers because of poor customer service they might realize they need to bring it back in-house. Too late, qualified locals have moved on to other careers.

I've worked in tier 1 and tier 2 support in a call centre here but the only reason I still had a job was because of being fluently bilingual. If not for that I would have been out of a job too.

But I even got sick of being exploited as a contractor so I left it behind. That's why I do this for myself now. The corporate BS caused me to not want to get up in the morning anymore to go to work. Now I'm happy.

After I left the industry, for a while, past employers would continue to call me and ask me to go back (because they couldn't find qualified candidates). In all cases they wouldn't agree to my terms on condition of return. Eventually they gave up and here I am, sitting in my own space with no regrets.

[SevenCubed]

Oh here's a tip of the day!

If you ever find yourself struggling with an issue that you think is going to be complicated and you want some advanced support consider this:

If you call into a centre that offers bilingual support, and you speak English, do not choose help in English. Press the other language option, more times than not the tech person is fully qualified in English and sitting in North America. If you select English as your choice you get transferred offshore. From there just apologize and fake your way through it saying you must have pressed the wrong button. More often than not the person will help you in English. It was always the directive we received on how to handle "wrong routing". (Ha, I'm sticking it back to the man, I never had to sign any non-disclosure concerning this so now you know).

But I want to quantify something here. I'm not saying that offshore help is less qualified even though in many cases that's true.

What the real problem is, based on what was explained to me by management in various places I've been in is rather funny.

When these jobs arrive and employ individuals in less fortunate regions the money paid to those people is rather large by their standards of living whereas we would consider it less than acceptable. What happens (I'm told) is that the workers enjoying this new found wealth tend to not show up for work a lot as they go out and enjoy spending it. They live by a different culture where work is secondary.

So they end up with under-staffed call centres. Often times the bilingual centre I was in would have to handle the English queue overflow. Or they fill the empty seats offshore with talking heads that are very unqualified.

[SevenCubed]

Period

[thecoalman]

My favorite is when they decide to do something other than what you asked. I was hitting the limit on numiptent for the firewall and I asked them to raise the limit. The response was I've flushed your firewall rules and now you're way under the limit...... Uh what?

Firstly they get flushed and reloaded every night so this will work for exactly the next 8 hours and secondly it isn't what I asked them to do.

[Marshall]

Their response when I explained basic punctuation to them:
"We are happy to know that you are knowledgeable enough not to include a "." (dot) after an URL. But, in our previous reply, we just made sure that this is not reason for your issue."

Again, seriously!?

Marshall

[g1smd]

One must assume that it has been the issue at some time in the past.

Don't over-estimate the intelligence of the average user. I know people who have their own business website, that when asked "what web browswer do you use?" their answer is "Google".

[lucy24]

I know people who have their own business website, that when asked "what web browswer do you use?" their answer is "Google".

... and they don't mean Chrome, do they?

Wonder how many people out there think Chrome is simply a fancier version of Google Search?

In the category of advice that may be useful to somebody, somewhere: If you ever run into those voice-recognition menus where you are asked to say your problem in a few words* keep hitting 0 ("O for Operator") after each prompt. Eventually you will get a human.


* After thinking long and hard I have figured out why these exist. It is to make the previous type of voice menu-- the one where you listen to a bunch of options and press a number-- look good by comparison, so you are happy when the site goes "back" to using it.

[g1smd]

No. They used the Infernal Exploiter, the Internet Exploder.

[lucy24]

Ah. The browser you use if you don't know what a browser is ;)

[not2easy]

Wait a minute there. IE is not a Browser, it is a Browser Downloader.

[g1smd]

Good point!

[RhinoFish]

You might have felt bad with the answer he gave you, but I feel bad for him...
Often that answer he gave, is actually helpful to people contacting him.

[SevenCubed]

One must assume that it has been the issue at some time in the past.

You might have felt bad with the answer he gave you, but I feel bad for him...
Often that answer he gave, is actually helpful to people contacting him.

Yes but troubleshooting 101 says before replying copy and paste what the customer sent you into a browser, remove the period, try navigating to that URI. If I can access it without problem then the potential of it being a typo on the customer's part is probable. Whereas if removing the period produces the same result as indicated in the ticket then I would begin looking into it in other ways before just assuming the customer is clueless and responding to them as such.

[engine]

LOL
It is funny, yet infuriating, too.
Marshall, that kind of response only gives the support industry a bad reputation.

[Marshall]

Marshall, that kind of response only gives the support industry a bad reputation.

How true.

Marshall

[lucy24]

gives the support industry a bad reputation

"Thanks, but I've already got one."