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**Kiwi** · 09-12-2006, 06:33 AM

wow

I dont quite know what to say to that....

**Trisnic** · 09-12-2006, 09:45 AM

I went through a similar ordeal. My internet was down, I had rebooted the modem checked the connections, tried multiple computers etc and it was sending some packets and then stopping. I was told to download IE because netscape wasn't good enough (this was 6 years ago). Downloading did not work because the same issue occured. Three hours troubleshooting on the phone and the person wouldn't do a thing. We cancelled the service.

If it were today I would have asked for the supervisor and been more assertive.

HOWEVER working in phone tech support these days has taught me that some things. We are allowed to believe what the customer says he has done in regards to troubleshooting but we MUST do what they have not done before we service. It doesn't matter how stupid we think the procedure is we need to do it or we can get fired and I won't get fired just because someone wants to not do stuff and have a fit.

To me you sounded very abrasive and arrogant. I HATE dealing with people like. Of course a lot depends upon your tone on the phone but just from the quoted text you look like a SC:
Me: You don't listen do you? I just said that.
Me: Thank you. (thinking: Moron). <Shows your overall tone was probably horrid

.. and as for his errors I have done similar stuff. Sometimes I forget stuff and make mistakes. It's human nature. You don't know that that person didn't have a long grulling day or what is going on in their lives to cause the confusion but making mistakes doesn't make people morons. You got what you wanted.

**draftermatt** · 09-12-2006, 06:30 PM

Quoth Trisnic View Post

To me you sounded very abrasive and arrogant. I HATE dealing with people like. Of course a lot depends upon your tone on the phone but just from the quoted text you look like a SC:
Me: You don't listen do you? I just said that.
Me: Thank you. (thinking: Moron). <Shows your overall tone was probably horrid

I disagree. When someone tells you something and you ask them to do the same thing, I'd react the same way. Especially if they got an attitude with me for not being able to get to the internet.

**Customer Beating Robot** · 09-12-2006, 07:45 PM

I understand you were frustrated, but you were definitely being a sucky customer. True you were getting attitude first, but I am sure all the SC's we deal with on a daily basis would say the same thing about us.

I would have just said "I can't get a webpage without internet access." Playing the whole "How do I do that?" game was just being coy. Beating around the bush irritates me when coming from customers. Maybe the tech person was just having a brain fart. State the obvious for him so he will realize it and he will come up with another solutions. Customers who drag the problem out by being coy irritate me.

**RecoveringKinkoid** · 09-12-2006, 07:56 PM

When it's clear people arent' listening to what you say, it's annoying. I realize this guy's probably been on the phone for a while, and has likely hear it all, but if his job is to help people over the phone, he needs to pay attention to what is said.

It makes me crazy when people do this to me. How can a person help me if they aren't paying attention to me?

I had a DOCTOR....yes, a DOCTOR...do this to me. I had a separated rib from a fencing tournament accident. I explained how I had been injured, told him what had hit me (an epee...a very rigid piece of metal with a blunted tip, a hard rubber cap on the end.) I thought this was very relevant and he needed to understand my injury, right? He looked at me, paused, and said, and I quote:

"So....a fence fell on you?"

I mean, it's hilarious, but it isn't. This idiot somehow managed to get through med school being this dense. I just said, "Look, man, can we just go x ray me, please? I need to know if I have a broken rib or not, okay?" Which we did. MAN, that infuriated me. A DOCTOR, you know? Scary.

I don't understand this following bit:

Me: (says name, and out of habit, address.)
TS: Let me find the account. Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not showing an account at that location.
Me: Check (says other address. Why they can't keep that straight is beyond me.)

Did you initially give the wrong address? If so, that might be your first clue as to why they can't keep this straight.

**repsac** · 09-12-2006, 08:46 PM

I think, the problem I have with that tech support company in general, is their solution to everything.

Unplug the modem and plug it back in. Repeatedly.

That, or here's a fun one:

Well, we'll send a tech out to your house.

That tech, has yet to show up.

It's the local cable company that runs it, and their customer service has gotten more complaints about the techs. It's some company that the support has been outsourced to.

Just to give you an idea why I would be somewhat irritated with them, here's a rundown of my connection before, and after broadband.

Before: 46.6 (roughly) connection speed. slow download speed, slow upload speed. Stable connection. In five years of dial-up service, only had to call tech support twice, both times were situations that ended up being their fault. Once left the computer (and internet) running on for six days straight with no trouble.

After:
1mbps connection speed upload, 4mbps download. (again, roughly). Have had broadband for about six months now. In that time I've had to call tech support enough that some of the techies know me by first name. My average, is twice a week. Usually, I'm told to reboot the modem, though I've also had the rather amusing "Well. There's nothing wrong with it." comment. Which was followed by my "If there's nothing wrong with it, why won't it connect?" This caused the ever popular "I'll send a tech out." which never happened. Longest time online, 12 hours. My average, is much less. I have lost three contracts because of the connection.

Someone also asked, I think else where, why I don't consider DSL. I would, but they don't offer it in my area. So it's either local cable, or dial up. I hate to be honest here, but I'm getting to the point that Dial up is looking somewhat good by now.

As to the address.

Nah, my uncle lives across the street. Same last name. I'm not totally sure why, but they seem to think HE, and I are the same person. Even though his name starts with a G, and mine a C

**hsigrunt** · 09-13-2006, 04:31 PM

It sounds like your provider stinks and their tech support reads from a script as forced upon them by management. If the actual modem is dropping offline often you can usually check the signal by surfing to 192.168.100.1. Most modems have an internal webpage and this is the most common way to access it. Of course, this all depends on your brand of modem. You will be concerned with downstream/upstream power levels #dbmv and the snr #db.
Downstream is best close to 0dbmv and generally has problems once the number goes past -12dbmv. Upstream usually falls between 30-55dbmv. Snr or the signal to noise ratio gets better the higher it is, >25db is optimal. If these check out but you still have problems then methinks your modem is bad, but I could be wrong

Hopefully this is of some help and if not, hopefully this confused the dickens out of you.

**Dips** · 09-13-2006, 04:55 PM

I have to ask people to repeat stuff. It's not that I don't listen. It's that they are rattling off imformation before I've asked for it or am ready for it.

It's also not very amusing to deal with someone being deliberately coy to prove a point. If you have a point (and you certainly had an extremely good one), it's usually best to just come to it quickly.

It does sound like you have enough of a history with these guys that I can't really blame you for getting a bit frustrated and snarky. If dial-up sounds good in comparison, it must be pretty bad.

**phillippbo** · 09-13-2006, 05:31 PM

I can see both sides of it here. I can understand totally why repsac would be upset, in their shoes I would probably be a little more than peeved myself.

On the other hand, you really do not know what kind of pressures are being put on the support staff you call. If the call you quoted was representative of the interactions you've had, there are probably two main issues at work: the cable company is unwilling to pay a salary high enough for it's support staff to attract technically-minded, trained, or at least experienced people, and (possibly because of that very reason) QA insists under penalty of punishment that every call must follow the scripts to the letter. I've worked in an environment like that, and I can tell you that it makes a job horrible, and turnover rates are normally very high, meaning knowledgable people are virtually non-existant. Couple that with management that breathes down the employees' necks, and you end up with a terrible customer experience (after a while, they either break the agents that actually try to help the customer in an intelligent way, and at the worst breeds employees who no longer care to actually do a good job, only do whatever they need to do to stay out of trouble).

In the end, it's up to you to decide if the headaches are worth it to you. If they are not, it's probably better to just switch services.

(BTW - if the only broadband solution in your area is cable, have you considered DirecWay? It's really pricy, but it is an alternative to the World Wide Wait of dial-up.)

**LostMyMind** · 09-13-2006, 06:26 PM

I had the same problem for a while with my broadband. After about 4 weeks of me pestering the tech support, they finally checked the modem. Oops, that modem is no longer compatible, we have to send out a tech with a new modem.

4 weeks of crappy internet problems, all because the tech support wanted to assume it was a user error and not some physical hardware problem on their end. I probably would be as grouchy as repsac if I had to actually had to phone the problem in.

As far as the address thing, I have the same problem. My Dad's name is like mine and it's name/address for everything because his will come up and not mine.

**Customer Beating Robot** · 09-13-2006, 06:58 PM

Quoth repsac View Post

It's the local cable company that runs it, and their customer service has gotten more complaints about the techs. It's some company that the support has been outsourced to.

Having been in between the tech support and the actual technicians who run things I have some insight into what really goes on. Tech support by nature is very limited by what they can do. Anything beyond having you reset your modem and checking to see if you are connected now, is beyond their ability. They my be smart people, but they just don't have access to the tools or the training to do more.

Tech support are usually minimum wage high school graduates or college students. They aren't paid to know anything more. Sure we would all like to have network admins manning the phones, but no company is going to pay someone $20 an hour or more to answer the phones.

So all the really knowledageable people are in the back earning their pay keeping the infrastructure running. 99.9% of these guys have an attitude toward tech suppport. Tech support has a genuine willingness to help, but they don't have the ability. They need the support of the network admins to get things accomplished.

Network admins do not want to be bothered. Period. End of story. Any tech support person who dares ask network admin for help is immediately met with tons of attitude and the network admin usually does his best to get the tech support person fired because, as the network admin puts it, "That guy doesn't know anything." This problem is reinforced when on a few occassions a network admin actually does help out, the problem tends to be a lose cable somewhere. Which only reinforces the network admin's idea of tech support being stupid.

It is when the problem is more severe than a lose cable that the system breaks down. The tech support person reports the problem to the newtork admin. The network admin is 100% sure that it is a lose cable and refuses to do anything. The tech support person does all he can for the customers. Eventually a network admin might be asked by his boss to go fix it and he does. This process takes a few weeks.

You have every right to be pissed off. Tech support isn't really the problem. They get crap from customers and the network admins. The network admins are the ones who are to blame. The poor tech support guy just can't winning for losing.

**repsac** · 09-13-2006, 08:48 PM

One of the strangest things I've ever had happen, occured around a certain port.

It's hard to explain, but I play text based games online. I noticed, oddly enough, that I couldn't connect to one that used port 5500. I tried everything before finding this neat little program that would tell you if 5500 was blocked somehow. (Which can happen with certain programs.)

I ran the diagnostic, found that while it wasn't blocked on my home system, it was on the server. So, I called up to ask them if there was something they could do.

Well, TS and their supervisor flatly denied that it was blocked. In fact, they went so far as to say that maybe I didn't know what I was doing and that it had to be on my end. Well, I bugged around, poked and finally dug up a tunneler (yeah, big no no in most cases.) I decided to test to see if this port was blocked on my system. Reroute the tunnler back to my computer through that port and out another one. This worked for a while (their security actually suggested it.) but I didn't want to have to work around like that.

I called them half a dozen times about this, each time having them deny it. Until about two weeks after the problem started. I recieved a call from their security (again, the same woman that had suggested the tunneling program) to inform me that yes. They had blocked the port. Someone on their end had done it, but they quote "couldn't tell me why because of security issues." Further, Tech Support, and their sup would have known that it was blocked; but by saying it wasn't they'd broken some sort of rule with the company. Security went further to say that the tech, and sup had been "spoken to" or "coached."

I still wonder what was going on, and why their security would tell me to tunnel around it. Any thoughts?

**LostMyMind** · 09-13-2006, 09:11 PM

Blocking port 5500, why???? That just dumb.

You should complain to them about blocking ports, an ISP have no business blocking any outbound ports unless you request to block ports. I can understand them blocking known hacker's incoming ports but not outgoing.

Security probably told you to tunnel around it because they get alot of calls about it and it was easier to tell you to tunnel than to turn off the blocking.

**phillippbo** · 09-14-2006, 06:47 PM

Quoth LostMyMind View Post

You should complain to them about blocking ports, an ISP have no business blocking any outbound ports unless you request to block ports. I can understand them blocking known hacker's incoming ports but not outgoing.

Sometimes, if a specific worm, Trojan, or virus uses a known port to propogate itself, and no other "critical" program (ie- something that all or a vast majority of users could be expected to need) uses it, then an ISP will block it to stop the infection from spreading. Unfortunately, sometimes the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing, and sometimes they get blocked without anyone on the support side being informed. Yes, this has happened to us on a few occasions.

As far as the ISP having "no business" blocking outbound ports, they can block whatever they want to, it's their system. If enough demand grows to unblock a specific port, it can be taken into consideration, but I wouldn't hold your breath. Most of the time, the few customers that are upset by it are FAR outweighed by the customers who are protected by not having that port open, but would be calling in demanding "something be done" to stop their computer from picking up viruses, Trojans, etc. It's all a trade-off...

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