Tech Support
What a week in tech support, he says in exasperation!
First +Dish Network.
A few months ago, after trial after trial after trial (notice the lack of tribulations) of using +Century Link DSL service, my roommate changed the service provider for our internet to Dish Network who recently entered the ISP game by reselling or repackaging, the Century Link product. The good news, though, is customers who switched to Dish didn't have to deal with Century Link tech support anymore, just their shoddy service.
Over the course of the switch from service providers, there have been a few hiccups, but for the most part everything has seemed fine -- when there was an outage lasting long enough to warrant a call to tech support Dish Customer Service was friendly, courteous and efficient: the complete and utter opposite of Century Link's customer care.
And then Monday happened. Monday morning the internet connection at the house worked fine. I social networked, I job searched, I caught up on the news. Everything was hunky-dory. Then sometime between 2 and three o'clock the service died. Having been away from the computer at the time I can't be sure exactly when it died, but when I tried surfing the internet after 3PM I received a no internet signal notification.
Sure enough, the router had a red DSL light, indicating it wasn't receiving a signal from the wall outlet. It was then I recalled from my morning walk a couple of Century Link vans parked at the end of the street at the local junction box. I rebooted the modem a couple of times throughout the afternoon, but nothing changed.
Did the techs do something?
Since I had other things to do that day, I wasn't bothered too much but when my roommate came home from work she was instantly annoyed. And then angry, but that was after her call to Dish Network's customer service.
According to Dish, they showed no down service in the area and since they are a reseller of Century Link's product, they could perform no trouble shooting on the circuit at all. well, it was either couldn't or wouldn't. The worst part of it was, they couldn't even schedule a testing time (with technician) until Sunday. That was Monday through Sunday. Six days of no interwebz.
Gah!
It didn't help that +T-Mobile doesn't provide very good mobile service to my area, either, so mobile or tethering were impossible unless I traveled at least a couple of blocks away. And once a couple of blocks away, why not just use the wifi available just about anywhere?
So, Dish Network could provide no tech support to the issue without relying upon Century Link technicians who weren't available for nearly a week? Having worked in the industry for more than 10 years I can guarantee that as their customer, Dish Network should have been given preferential treatment or had their own techs assigned to them by the Local Exchange Carrier.
Second, +Sprint
Not me, but my roommate, is a long term Sprint customer. For nearly as long as Sprint's been offering mobile phone service my friend has been a customer of theirs. Not only that, but she, her mother and even her grandparents are all customers under the same account.
Due to our internet being FUBAR'd by Century Link (more on that later) she was looking to tether her mobile internet to her laptop as is allowed by her account and service plan. However, she's never been able to get it to work properly and since it's never been needed she let it fall to the wayside.
But now it was needed. I happened to be in Lone Tree when I spoke with her and she told me she was coming down to the Sprint store there. Apparently, this is currently the tech support guru bricks and mortar store for the area and when 611 support could no longer help her, they advised she take her handset down to this particular location.
Since I was already in the area I beat her there and was greeted by the sales girl on the floor. I explained that I was there just to meet a friend who needed to speak with their tech support specialists. She smiled and walked me over to the "back" of the store where the techs were working behind a counter, cellphones in various stages of repair strewn all about.
I addressed all three technicians at once (and they all looked at me while I was speaking, so I know they were listening), "My friend is coming down with a tethering issue on her Note II. If you guys want to go ahead and research solutions before she gets here, that would speed up things for both her and you guys."
Then they turned away: one guy back to pulling batteries and the other two back to whatever they were doing on the internet that I couldn't see. None of them asked me follow up questions, what version of Android was she running or anything that indicated they were even remotely interested in being proactive.
Okay. Whatever. Maybe they just didn't want to talk to me. Fine.
A few minutes later my friend came in and the same cheerful sales girl brought her over to the tech desk and introduced her to one of the technicians. She told the guy what her issue was and explained the steps she'd already taken with customer support who then recommended she come down to this store and work with the technicians.
I walked away. At this point, it was no longer my business.
A minute or two later my friend came up to me where I was man-handling display models. We talked about this model, that one and a tablet or two while we waited. A another couple of minutes pass by and the technician comes over and asks her to unlock her phone.
She does.
Then he turns around and walks away, not to the technician desk where he's visible but through a door in the wall which closes behind him.
My friend becomes antsy and I ask why (having not paid a lot of attention). She explains that she doesn't feel comfortable, after having unlocked her phone, watching the technician leave her line of sight. He now has access to her entire contacts list, apps, cloud storage, social networks ... everything.
I asked her if she wanted me to say something since I'm much more willing to be confrontational than she is. She said not yet.
After another couple of minutes I finally walked back over to the technician desk and asked, loud enough to be heard by both technicians still sitting there, "Um, where did the other guy go with my friend's phone? She unlocked it and he disappeared. He now has access to her entire mobile life and she doesn't like that one bit."
The technician, the only female of the trio of technicians, told me he just took it into the back to ask another tech a question. I responded by telling her that it was completely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked device outside of the field of view of the customer, especially without informing her first.
Before she could answer, the little guy came back out from wherever he disappeared to. His flimsy excuse was that he wanted to confer with another tech who's personal phone was also the Note II and therefore an "expert" on the device.
I cut him off, explaining again how it was extremely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked phone away from the owner. As though he really didn't understand the problem with taking a an open device outside of the purview of the owner he tried explaining again that he needed to confer with another technician.
It. Doesn't. Matter. I explained again. If anything, he could have asked the other technician to come out to the showroom floor and discuss it there.
He still didn't seem to understand what the problem was and instead tried explaining to my friend she needed to take the phone back to factory settings and re-install all updates. My friend was furious! Why did she need to drive 20 miles out of her way to get the same information from him a technician over the phone could have instructed her to do? Not only that, but he tried treating both of us like we were idiots:
A loss of everything with no guarantee of success? Are you kidding?
If he couldn't explain it properly he shouldn't be working in "tech support." Who was it, Einstein, who said if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it?
Whew!
Needless to say we didn't want anything more to do with this tech or this store. Before we walked out, though, I addressed the technician and the other two behind the counter explaining to them this is exactly why I advised them to research the issue before she arrived for support. The little tech guy tried explaining again that the tech on break in the back has the same phone and should be the expert. He still didn't seem to understand that he should have brought the tech out or looked up solutions on an in-house tech support wiki (or whatever).
Needless to say, I almost switched from +T-Mobile to +Sprint on recommendation from my friend and while +T-Mobile doesn't always get the best service, they're at least competent.
Yes, yes, this is a terribly long post but what's the point? Oh yeah, customer service is a lost commodity these days. People are so used to terrible service it's become expected and the norm.
Fast forward a few more days and the Century Link technician arrives a day early. He says he was in the area and saw our ticket on the call sheet for the following day and decided to knock it out while he was already here. After a couple of minutes he excuses himself saying he will check the end of the block.
About a half hour later he comes back and admits someone disconnected the lines to our place while they were out there on Monday. So, Century Link technicians disconnected a customer for nearly a week and who gets the suffer? Oh yeah, the customer. Why? Because there are really only two names in broadband internet in the area: Century Link and Comcast. Anyone else is just reselling those two services. And as it turns out, +T-Mobile nor +Sprint were viable alternatives to loss of wired service.
Google Fiber, where are you when we need you?
First +Dish Network.
A few months ago, after trial after trial after trial (notice the lack of tribulations) of using +Century Link DSL service, my roommate changed the service provider for our internet to Dish Network who recently entered the ISP game by reselling or repackaging, the Century Link product. The good news, though, is customers who switched to Dish didn't have to deal with Century Link tech support anymore, just their shoddy service.
Over the course of the switch from service providers, there have been a few hiccups, but for the most part everything has seemed fine -- when there was an outage lasting long enough to warrant a call to tech support Dish Customer Service was friendly, courteous and efficient: the complete and utter opposite of Century Link's customer care.
And then Monday happened. Monday morning the internet connection at the house worked fine. I social networked, I job searched, I caught up on the news. Everything was hunky-dory. Then sometime between 2 and three o'clock the service died. Having been away from the computer at the time I can't be sure exactly when it died, but when I tried surfing the internet after 3PM I received a no internet signal notification.
Sure enough, the router had a red DSL light, indicating it wasn't receiving a signal from the wall outlet. It was then I recalled from my morning walk a couple of Century Link vans parked at the end of the street at the local junction box. I rebooted the modem a couple of times throughout the afternoon, but nothing changed.
Did the techs do something?
Since I had other things to do that day, I wasn't bothered too much but when my roommate came home from work she was instantly annoyed. And then angry, but that was after her call to Dish Network's customer service.
According to Dish, they showed no down service in the area and since they are a reseller of Century Link's product, they could perform no trouble shooting on the circuit at all. well, it was either couldn't or wouldn't. The worst part of it was, they couldn't even schedule a testing time (with technician) until Sunday. That was Monday through Sunday. Six days of no interwebz.Gah!
It didn't help that +T-Mobile doesn't provide very good mobile service to my area, either, so mobile or tethering were impossible unless I traveled at least a couple of blocks away. And once a couple of blocks away, why not just use the wifi available just about anywhere?
So, Dish Network could provide no tech support to the issue without relying upon Century Link technicians who weren't available for nearly a week? Having worked in the industry for more than 10 years I can guarantee that as their customer, Dish Network should have been given preferential treatment or had their own techs assigned to them by the Local Exchange Carrier.
Second, +Sprint
Not me, but my roommate, is a long term Sprint customer. For nearly as long as Sprint's been offering mobile phone service my friend has been a customer of theirs. Not only that, but she, her mother and even her grandparents are all customers under the same account.
Due to our internet being FUBAR'd by Century Link (more on that later) she was looking to tether her mobile internet to her laptop as is allowed by her account and service plan. However, she's never been able to get it to work properly and since it's never been needed she let it fall to the wayside.
But now it was needed. I happened to be in Lone Tree when I spoke with her and she told me she was coming down to the Sprint store there. Apparently, this is currently the tech support guru bricks and mortar store for the area and when 611 support could no longer help her, they advised she take her handset down to this particular location.
Since I was already in the area I beat her there and was greeted by the sales girl on the floor. I explained that I was there just to meet a friend who needed to speak with their tech support specialists. She smiled and walked me over to the "back" of the store where the techs were working behind a counter, cellphones in various stages of repair strewn all about.
I addressed all three technicians at once (and they all looked at me while I was speaking, so I know they were listening), "My friend is coming down with a tethering issue on her Note II. If you guys want to go ahead and research solutions before she gets here, that would speed up things for both her and you guys."
Then they turned away: one guy back to pulling batteries and the other two back to whatever they were doing on the internet that I couldn't see. None of them asked me follow up questions, what version of Android was she running or anything that indicated they were even remotely interested in being proactive.
Okay. Whatever. Maybe they just didn't want to talk to me. Fine.
A few minutes later my friend came in and the same cheerful sales girl brought her over to the tech desk and introduced her to one of the technicians. She told the guy what her issue was and explained the steps she'd already taken with customer support who then recommended she come down to this store and work with the technicians.I walked away. At this point, it was no longer my business.
A minute or two later my friend came up to me where I was man-handling display models. We talked about this model, that one and a tablet or two while we waited. A another couple of minutes pass by and the technician comes over and asks her to unlock her phone.
She does.
Then he turns around and walks away, not to the technician desk where he's visible but through a door in the wall which closes behind him.
My friend becomes antsy and I ask why (having not paid a lot of attention). She explains that she doesn't feel comfortable, after having unlocked her phone, watching the technician leave her line of sight. He now has access to her entire contacts list, apps, cloud storage, social networks ... everything.
I asked her if she wanted me to say something since I'm much more willing to be confrontational than she is. She said not yet.
After another couple of minutes I finally walked back over to the technician desk and asked, loud enough to be heard by both technicians still sitting there, "Um, where did the other guy go with my friend's phone? She unlocked it and he disappeared. He now has access to her entire mobile life and she doesn't like that one bit."
The technician, the only female of the trio of technicians, told me he just took it into the back to ask another tech a question. I responded by telling her that it was completely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked device outside of the field of view of the customer, especially without informing her first.
Before she could answer, the little guy came back out from wherever he disappeared to. His flimsy excuse was that he wanted to confer with another tech who's personal phone was also the Note II and therefore an "expert" on the device.
I cut him off, explaining again how it was extremely unprofessional of him to take an unlocked phone away from the owner. As though he really didn't understand the problem with taking a an open device outside of the purview of the owner he tried explaining again that he needed to confer with another technician.
It. Doesn't. Matter. I explained again. If anything, he could have asked the other technician to come out to the showroom floor and discuss it there.
He still didn't seem to understand what the problem was and instead tried explaining to my friend she needed to take the phone back to factory settings and re-install all updates. My friend was furious! Why did she need to drive 20 miles out of her way to get the same information from him a technician over the phone could have instructed her to do? Not only that, but he tried treating both of us like we were idiots:
Tech Guy: we need to reset your softwareAnd it went on like that for a couple of minutes with the tech even admitting it might not fix the actual problem. The tech couldn't properly explain to her he meant the OS, the Android or anything -- he just kept saying "software" and then he couldn't be sure a re-install of her base software wouldn't solve any issues?
Friend: what software?Tech Guy: the software on your phoneFriend (frustrated): what do you mean? An app? The OS? What do you mean by "software?"Tech Guy: The phone's software!Friend: (even more frustrated): You mean the OS?Tech Guy: No, the software
A loss of everything with no guarantee of success? Are you kidding?
If he couldn't explain it properly he shouldn't be working in "tech support." Who was it, Einstein, who said if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it?
Whew!
Needless to say we didn't want anything more to do with this tech or this store. Before we walked out, though, I addressed the technician and the other two behind the counter explaining to them this is exactly why I advised them to research the issue before she arrived for support. The little tech guy tried explaining again that the tech on break in the back has the same phone and should be the expert. He still didn't seem to understand that he should have brought the tech out or looked up solutions on an in-house tech support wiki (or whatever).
Needless to say, I almost switched from +T-Mobile to +Sprint on recommendation from my friend and while +T-Mobile doesn't always get the best service, they're at least competent.
Yes, yes, this is a terribly long post but what's the point? Oh yeah, customer service is a lost commodity these days. People are so used to terrible service it's become expected and the norm.
Fast forward a few more days and the Century Link technician arrives a day early. He says he was in the area and saw our ticket on the call sheet for the following day and decided to knock it out while he was already here. After a couple of minutes he excuses himself saying he will check the end of the block.
About a half hour later he comes back and admits someone disconnected the lines to our place while they were out there on Monday. So, Century Link technicians disconnected a customer for nearly a week and who gets the suffer? Oh yeah, the customer. Why? Because there are really only two names in broadband internet in the area: Century Link and Comcast. Anyone else is just reselling those two services. And as it turns out, +T-Mobile nor +Sprint were viable alternatives to loss of wired service.
Google Fiber, where are you when we need you?
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