Community poll forum: What's your biggest gripe about tech support?

With so much outsourcing of support functions to foreign countries, sometimes it is extremely difficult to understand what is being said. The technical answer to a problem may be excellent, but if you can't understand a persons English it doesn't do you any good!

I have had the same prob! & w/sbc too! But one thing is for sure. If they can't speak well enough for you to understand, then they should not be there for that reason alone! So it is the fault of the damn company that hires the "un-english speaking" whatever peope!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hewlett Packard has, by far, the worst tech support ever. After 2 phone calls and 4 hours of reinstalling windows, they could not fix my problem and had the nerve to blame me for the system crashes. "You're doing something wrong," is what I was told. Yeah, I did something wrong; I bought a HP computer, printer and scanner. I did not think it was a coincidence that my system crashed right after I installed the scanner. After some research on the internet (and the HP website), I found out that many people with the same HP printer model and HP scanner model had the exact same problem I had. Luckily, the usb scanner could also be attached via a scsi port. I didn't pay the $100 support bill, and I have never called HP support again. I also do not buy HP products anymore.

I called HP support about my HP Officejet 7410 all-in-one freezing up. While going through the steps he sent me to the registry and asked me to delete some HP keys. I questioned him about this since I'd heard that is generally a no-no, but what do I know. They are the support for this product. He said this was fine. To make a long story short, after that fiasco I had to move all my files off my computer and re-install everything. Hp was not very apologetic although they realized they made a big mistake. So much for tech support. Yeah, and it was support from India.

I have reformatted my hardrive 12 times since purchasing the computer in sept 2004....everytime I called sony for help during warranty period their ultimate suggestion was to do a recovery, and reformat.
I am now an exprert at reformatting, and the turnaround is about 7 hours.

Can't understand what they are saying.
Most talk in broken english.

I agree with you that if you are persistent you will probably (underlined) resolve the issue. But, if your paying for a service then why should it be a well know fact that you HAVE to be persistent.

The Only company I have good luck with is HP. But this concerns Printers ONLY and on line. NOT by way of phone calls to India, Taiwan, Korea.

How about a poll for those of us who work in Technical Support and have to put up with customers who do not know how to use a pc?
How many of you have to teach the end user the difference between a left click and a right click.
How many people out there don't even know how to turn a pc on? I shan't even mention those that don't know how to restart one.
Yeah I know there is bad support out there but then there is also bad end users out there that really should be told just to use there wonderful pc as a door stop as it would serve them a more productive purpose.
Is this post meant to get peoples back's up? NO.
I am just trying to point out that there is good and bad in all walks of life but when you are trying to support someone who is not even in the same house as there pc is darn right farcical.

Everyone wants and should get good tech support but then shouldn't tech support get customers who are going to listen instead of being told they hold some stupid crendential and try to make you feel small. If they are so damn clever then why call and not get on and fix the problem themselves instead of wasting so much of my time when I could be dealing with someone who just wants their issue resolved and are prepared to listen to the advice that is given.

*end of rant*
Have a good weekend all

Unknowledgable support

Tech support from most companies nowadays, especially from companies like Qwest.net, MSN, Dell, HP, and almost anybody else is worthless. It takes me less time to figure out my own tech problems and fix them than it does to call one of those guys and get transferred several times and then not get the answer I need.

These comments are for my Dell Dimension 8300 I bought 2+ years ago. Sadly, I still remember the 'glory' days of my Dell Dimension XPS T550 over 7 years ago when their tech support totally rocked! Oh how the mighty have fallen, outsourced, and cut costs to stay on budget. Anyways....

Being put on hold - medium-high gripes with this
This isn't that high in whatever measurement of frustration being used, but it's still among my highest. Hold times up to 20 minutes, avearge times 15 minutes, and as low as 5 minutes. 15 minutes, maybe, but I have called at all times of the day and all days of the week, and on average, it's still pretty bad.

Can't understand what they're saying - medium
even tho it's not THAT high perse, I'd have to ask them to repeat themselves slowly to get the jist of what they're saying so that I could then figure it out. A tech agent left a message on my answering machine telling me what happened with her research. It would've been worthless, but i was able to tell by her tone that she would have to work on my problem more or escalate the problem higher up.

Simply bad advice - low
>"u need to reboot" even tho I alr told that i just did that.
>"clean install winXP" to solve the problem of USB 2.0 ports only working at 1.1 speeds. I ended up googling a solution that let me fix that problem with 6 easy steps of clicking.
>"call <manufacturer's tech support> instead". It's annoying now that Dell doesn't really cover software troubleshooting anymore, but they should at least know how to deal with their own software that THEY pre-installed for you. The other manuf. (Sonic in that case) wasn't too helpful either. Told me to just upgrade which mihgt fix the problem.

Disconnected calls - rather low
I've had a few of these. twice was likely due to my cellphone. Other time was probably due to their fault in transferring a call.

No reply to my e-mail queries - very low
To my surprise, they got back within 2.5 business days. What wasn't surprising was the email query wasn't that much better off than the phone query. I avoid email since i normally want instant solution by phone. It was only that one time for email.

Ridiculously short support hours - none
Dell's TS is 24/7. Despite the offshore outsourcing and cutbacks, they definately have at least this.

Using a Mac for years, Apple does not support their computers for very long without a large fee to keep using their support services. Consequently, most of my requests for support are ignored because I cannot and could not afford the extra fee. Support for a Mac is also hard to find online but I do find answers to questions occasionally (with a great deal of searching). I am slowing getting convinced that Mac is not the way to go. I have had somewhat better support on my Dell computer, although there is still a problem of them not understanding the problem or not replying at times as well.

Dell's support is ridiculous, not only have I gotten contradictory information from them, but they will not answer many questions without paying for support, 239.00 for one year sofware support, and even when you do get them to respond they respond by trying to sell you something. (If you are wondering what the contradictory information was, I was trying to get a video card for my Dell Dim 3000, it only has PCI slots, so my choices were limited to begin with, one tech support person tried to sell me a video card and another told me it wouldn't take any video card except the onboard card, Later on I reported this to them and they blew me off, once again Don't buy a Dell !!!!)

What bothers me is when a tech person from India or another country speaks too quickly or too low, and then get highly annoyed that I cannot understand what they are saying. I have had some very good service from Microsoft tech support when I have used their email based support service. If the problem does not resolve with the tech's suggestions, it is then upgraded to a higher tech support level.

The only problem I have had with this is in two cases, I did not reply within 2 or 3 days, and my case was closed. One tech opened it with no problem, however, the other tech would not do so. Of course, all MS techs are told to tell each caller that this isn't an MS problem, it is because of added hardware or some software. That makes it very difficult for them to help, because they are not looking for a possible MS problem. I had to stop using ZoneAlarm, which I have used for many years because the latest version of Norton System Works interfered with Zone Alarm,and I could not use the internet. From what I have heard, there is an MS fix for this, but I could not find it. When I contacted Zone Alarm, they faulted Norton and vice versa.

If anyone has the fix, please send it to me. I found Zone Alarm to be far superior to the Iolo firewall I am using now.

Thank you,
Waddlepat