[OT] Brand name or Beige-Box?

#21

Jeffrey:

I had the same experience with Dell on their "Next business day support" for
my notebook. This is the 5th time I've had the same hassles contacting
their support. My solution: sell the darned thing (with the remaining
support agreement) and buy an IBM. I should have done this a long time ago.
:-)

Bill

"Jeffrey Kaufman" <jkaufman (AT) keydata (DOT) us> wrote

Quote:

Speaking of Tier-1 support, I am moving and wanted to set up DSL at my new
house. SBC failed to send out the install disk and IP address data sheet.
To
complicate matters, I have my own router. So I had to call support. Tier-1
passed me to Tier-2 who passed me to Tier-3 who passed me to Tier-4. The
Tier-4 guy was the only one who spoke English as his first language.
Within
15 minutes he had me up and running. To bad it took over an hour and 45
minutes to get to him. The wonders of outsourcing.

"Tony Gravagno" <g6q3x9lu53001 (AT) sneakemail (DOT) com.invalid> wrote in message
news:s63m711qm7dqorpls6voutsq4cfkchc7e2 (AT) 4ax (DOT) com...
bruce ackman <bjackm (AT) comcast (DOT) net> wrote:
Whatever else people say about Dell, I've found that their
tech support people will always treat you as if you were an idiot. On
the other hand, if you tell HP you know what you're doing, they will
talk to you as an equal.

Funny you should say that. In a non-MV forum I just expressed concern
that I think this is a major phenomenon. Tier-1 support people are
not the best trained themselves, so they need to deal with issues by
the script and aren't capable of deviating much. The responses that I
tend to get from these people, especially in e-mail support are very
basic, it's apparent that they don't read the problem descriptions or
that they don't understand the problem, and the resolutions they
provide are so generic as to make them not worth the electrons they're
written on. For those tier-1 people that DO have a clue, the finger
can point in the opposite direction. Literally everyone and their
grandma has a computer, and everyone is calling for support. Most of
the people who do call for support truly don't have a clue and/or,
yes, they may be idiots. So between the lowest common denominator of
consumers calling to the lowest paid help that money can buy, it's no
wonder that there is such a lack of quality perceived by those of us
who (think we) have a clue.

It's to HP's credit that they can recognize and react to avoid keeping
the bar down so many notches. FWIW, I've found Microsoft Support to
be similar, which may be one of the reasons why I don't hate them as
much as people who haven't actually had close contact with them.

T

#22

Bill H wrote:

Quote:

My solution: sell the darned thing
(with the remaining support agreement) and buy an IBM.

Except that IBM really isn't anymore -- at least when it comes to PCs
and notebooks. As of May 2005, those products have been outsourced to
Lenovo of China.

http://www.lenovo.com/lenovo/us/en/

--
Kevin Powick

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[OT] Brand name or Beige-Box?

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Re: [OT] Brand name or Beige-Box? - 05-14-2005 , 11:33 PM

Re: [OT] Brand name or Beige-Box? - 05-15-2005 , 12:09 AM