I had to call Dell. (Long.)

[Mango]

I'm the IT manager for a small company.

Most things I can fix myself, but if something needs repair and is under warranty, I have two choices. I can pay for it and fix it myself, or deal with the company's techs and have them fix it for free.

It does not help that I am a self-proclaimed obsessive control freak.

This may be slightly funnier if you know the technology, but I'll try to keep things as universal as possible.

Last year we bought a lovely new colour laser printer, from Dell. It worked like a dream and completely eliminated having to drive across town to the print shop that made cheap copies. Life was good. Except, try as I might, I could not get the printer to go on the network, or even get the switch to realize that something was even plugged in. I could connect the printer with USB and it would work well. Not a problem for me, but I foresaw complaints from coworkers when they discovered that I was the only one who could use the shiny new printer.

I called tech support.

The tech first had me set the USB printer as the default.
Then he had me go to a command prompt and type 'copy con test.txt' and then put some random text.
Then he had me print a test page, using USB.
Then he put me on hold.
Then he released the call, while I was on hold.

I called back. The following gems were all from one single call.


I had a bad feeling right from the beginning...

Tech: "Why do you have a cable from the computer to the switch?"
Me: "Er...what?"
Tech: "You have an ethernet cable going from your computer to your switch, correct?"
Me: "Yes."
Tech: "All right, why is that?"
Me: "So...the computer can be on the network?"
[Pause]
Tech: "OH my gosh, I am SO sorry! I was...er...thinking of something else!"


The tech didn't even try to hide that she was reading from a script...

Tech: "Step three. Simply connect a Sea Ay Tea Five cable to the RJ45 port of the printer..."
Me: "You mean CAT5? Okay, done."
Tech: "I'm sorry...CAT5?"
Me: "Yeah, a CAT5 cable."
Tech: "It says here 'Sea Ay Tea Five'."
Me: *sigh* "All right, I'll connect a 'Sea Ay Tea Five' cable."


The attention span of some sort of gnat...

Tech: "Okay, it says 'Connect the 3110cn to a hub, switch, or router.' You've connected it to a router, right?"
Me: "Well, a switch, but for our purposes, it's the same basic thing."
Tech: "A switch?"
Me: "Yeah."
Tech: "I'm sorry, I don't understand. A switch?"
Me: "Yeah. You just said 'Connect the 3110cn to a hub, switch, or router.' I connected it to a switch."
Tech: "Oh."
[VERY long pause.]
Tech: "Right."


Maybe I should have just lied...

Tech: *brings me off hold* "Are these Dell computers you're hooking this up to?"
Me: "No, it's a Toshiba."
Tech: "A Toshiba. That's good to know. I'm going to place you on hold one more time, and research this issue again, now that I know it's a Toshiba." *hold*


Should I answer what you asked or what you meant to say?

Tech: "And does it still say that it's requiring an IP address?"
Me: "It says it's acquiring an IP address!"
Tech: "Oh. Well, I guess that's the same thing."


The next time I called, I spoke to a different tech. This one had apparently been doing his job for a while.


And thus I wished the tech had been female, because I would have asked her out.

Tech: "And you're printing from...Windows XP?"
Me: "Yes, that's right."
Tech: "Great. Not that it matters, but the system asks."


Cynical is thy name!

Tech: "Now, I'm going to ask you some questions. Some of these may seem a bit redundant, but I...guess I need to ask them for some reason."


The installer who came to put in the new part was a great guy

Installer: "Hmm. Not that you haven't waited long enough for this already, but it looks like Dell has sent me the wrong part."
Me: "Given the phone conversation I had with their tech support, I'm not entirely surprised."
Installer: "Me neither, but I'm not supposed to say that."


I'm not sure whether to research other brands for our next printer, or get another Dell, just for the entertainment value

[LoneWolf]

The first tech sounded like me on my first day in the phone store lol. Can't blame her, but it can be quite annoying to the customer in need of assistance. The only difference is that I can actually see the faces which show the marvelous: 'sh*t, just my luck to run into a trainee' look

[gunsage]

Nice...this sounds like a few tier 1 agents I know.

[sms001]

Tech: "Step three. Simply connect a Sea Ay Tea Five cable to the RJ45 port

Dang. Now I want one of them there fancy Sea Ay Tea Fives!

The installer who came to put in the new part was a great guy

So, dead NIC?

[Mango]

So, dead NIC?

Indeed. All's been lovely since.

[bigjimaz]

I'm on a Dell. The day I got it, set it up and hit the button Windows wouldn't load completely. I called support and got someone calling themselves Brad. Brad had a very thick Indian or Pakistani accent. He had me do a couple things, mostly toggling the on/off switch. It's when he asked me to unplug everything and rewire the components to the back of the computer that I began wondering if I had chosen the wrong brand of computer, or at least cursed the company for outsourcing their tech support.

Anyway, as it turns out, after rewiring everything in exactly the same way that it was originally wired, it still didn't work. Out of frustration I smacked the side of the box and tried one more time and it worked. So I guess that percussive maintenance does work. At least it saved a few days that it wouldn't have taken for the Dell tech to come to my place.

The funny thing about the whole call was after it booted up, and I told the tech that I didn't need the tech to come, at least for right now, I called him Bart, not Brad. He proceeded to correct me. Sir, my name is Brad. Bee - A - Arrrr - Dee. (Bard not Brad)

By the way, I haven't had a lick of trouble with it since I bought it over 2 years ago other than software issues that I caused myself. It's an el-cheapo off-the-shelf Dell 2400 I got at Wal-Mart for $300.00. I added a 3.5 floppy drive, dvd/rw drive, two 1 gig memory sticks and an aftermarket video card.

[Impetrix]

Bigjimaz:

Not to excuse bad call center training, or the whole name issue (which, really, is kinda a shitty thing for an employer to require, that their employees can't even use their real name for the sake of the xenophobia of callers. Then again, it hopefully shields the employees from mockery and derison, but then again, xenophobic SCs aren't fooled either... but I digress), but asking a customer to rewire things often IS a very good idea.

If you tell a customer to check the cables, often they'll lie because they're sure it's plugged in and they don't wanna move things around or climb under the table to check. If you tell them to disconnect and reconnect, you're checking the "is the cable plugged in" question a.) in a way they'll respond to properly and b.) without implying that they're morons.

Then again, uh, if you get any picture at all, the video cable's at least somewhat in, and if it freezes rather than powers off, the power cable's in, and those are the only conceivable not-internal-hardware causes of not-booting I can think of, so there's really nothing to be reset.

Even then, though, it's bad scriptwriting, not the fault of that guy. I really feel sorry for outsourced techs... The most annoying part of my hardware support job, other than my idjit boss, was having to call the Windows Authentication folks after a reinstall. Having to read off this long-ass string of numbers, answer a few repititive questions, and then get another long-ass string of numbers to enter myself, isn't my idea of fun. And these folks had to do that ALL DAY LONG! *shudder*

[Qaeria]

Between Dell and my ISP, I have had to fight to bypass Tier 1 entirely. But in the days that I had to endure the thickly accented script readers, I still have an indent on my desk the exact shape of my forehead. What amazes me the most is that these idiots read from a script very efficiently and thouroughly when they are wasting your time, but fail to see the BIG BOLD ALERT at the top of their screen to transfer me to either Tier 2 or 3.

Some of the doozies I have had that match the Sea Ay Tee 5 is one as*hat calling it a Tiger cable. I've had one that diagnosed my DUNS settings to troubleshoot ADSL. One dingus tried telling me that my Ubuntu installation on my Dell was a MASSIVE virus infection even though Dell distributes with Ubuntu now.

Which brings me to the question: If Brains were tinfoil, would a tier 1 support worker have enough to short circuit a fireflies ass? This super geek is not optimistic.

[JustADude]

If Brains were tinfoil, would a tier 1 support worker have enough to short circuit a fireflies ass? This super geek is not optimistic.

*digs out Big Book of Insults* Yay, a new one! *scribbles*

Oh, and welcome to the boards, Qaeria!

[MadMike]

I called support and got someone calling themselves Brad. Brad had a very thick Indian or Pakistani accent.

I talked to one who called himself "James" when I had to call in to troubleshoot my one friends new router that I was trying to set up for her.

I'm not complaining about the outsourcing, but I just had to chuckle about the company expecting me to believe that.

Then again, I suppose that it could have been the truth. After all, there used to be an Indian family, apparently "Americanized", living in the house behind mine. The guy introduced himself to me as "Gary."

[ibor132]

I don't even bother to call Dell anymore. I usually go through the chat applet on their web site. The actual support is moderatly lousy, but it isn't usually too hard to manuver them into shipping me the parts I need, or into sending one of their local techs (who were quite good, at least when I was living in ME). It also eliminates the languge barrier, for the most part. I've still gotten some weird grammar, but most of the "techs" seem to have a pretty solid command of written English.

[technical.angel]

Except, try as I might, I could not get the printer to go on the network, or even get the switch to realize that something was even plugged in. I could connect the printer with USB and it would work well. Not a problem for me, but I foresaw complaints from coworkers when they discovered that I was the only one who could use the shiny new printer.

Um... couldn't you have just shared it from your PC?

[technical.angel]

So I guess that percussive maintenance does work.

You just have to look at my sig to find that out!!

We've recently switched from Dell to HP. I'm a little worried. I LIKE Dell Gold tech support.

We'll see how HP goes. Of course, :: knock on wood :: we haven't had any problems yet!!

[Sandman]

I got someone from India the other day. The name they used....


Calvin Kline

[Geek King]

We've recently switched from Dell to HP. I'm a little worried. I LIKE Dell Gold tech support.

We'll see how HP goes. Of course, :: knock on wood :: we haven't had any problems yet!!

HP isn't too bad, but make sure you can run through everything you have done to troubleshoot a problem in detail if you are calling for a replacement part, or the techs will make you troubleshoot from the very beginning. I find if I overwelm them with information, I get a replace ment shipped immediately.

Other than that, we've had a small problem with hard drives dying in the first year of system life, but that may have been a bad batch. All the replacements have worked fine so far. Also, we're government, so we tend to purchase the cheapest thing at the time. Stress backups just in case.