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December 06, 2002

Tech Support From Idiots

Being a highly technical and informed user (such as I am) means that obtaining any sort of technical support implies entering a special level of Hell.

Chances are excellent that you know the product better than first or even second tier tech support. Before you call, you've: referred to the online help, referred to the manual, checked the online support forum, managed to reproduce the problem and determined exactly the set of circumstances which creates the undesired behavior.

So when you contact tech support, you're ready to say:

"I'm having a problem with Flubistor 3.2 running on a default installation of Windows XP. When I have two and only two files open and I select the Flubify item from the Edit menu, the program deletes my 2nd file and flips me the bird. Do you have a fix for this?"

You think you're being a helpful user. You've done your research. Foolish mortal. Now the hell begins. The tech-support drone on the other end is going to force you to walk through every trouble-shooting step that you just did, because that's their script, and The Script Is Law. And when none of that works, they'll tell you to re-install your operating system rather than bump you up to an engineer. Because the goal, as a tech drone, is a) to have to think as little as possible and b) to log as many completed calls as possible. And the Engineers frighten them.

After several rounds of this (and several hours of your wasted time and increased frustration), you may finally get to someone who knows something besides their ingrown knee-jerk responses and pre-written scripts. Mostly because the tech-drone's fear of you has, over the past several hours, come to exceed their fear of the Engineers.

So you get to someone who actually knows their orifices from random holes in the ground:

"Oh, that? Yeah, that's a bug. We fixed that in version 4.0, which we're releasing next month. You can pre-order the upgrade now for $399."

"There's no patch for Flubistor 3.2? I have to buy the upgrade to fix this?"

"I'm afraid so. Would you like to pre-order Flubistor 4.0 now?"

"..."

"Sir?"

"..."

"Sir?"

"Shhhh, I'm trying to kill you with my mind."

Yes. Hell.

Posted by jim at 09:47 AM | Comments (0)