Yeah, I’m still here…
November 30, 2009
…mind you, I’ve been at best…lax…about posting regularly. But I’m still here.
And to make up for it, here’s a cartoon:
Got bored…
January 29, 2009
The question is, is anyone actually reading this so as to notice?
The wonderful world of tech support…
January 22, 2009
…of course, with me, the formatting often defaults to “too crazy…”
Anywho, over those last couple of years I’ve spent some time making sure all my stuff is converted from wpd to odt files just in case my old copy of Word Perfect 10 becomes unavailable for some reason. And today I was finishing up some of the last of them when I came across an old letter that I had sent to Earthlink and was going to send to “thisisbroken.com” – a blog that covered “broken” things (both physical and conceptual)…
…but by then, “thisisbroken.com” stopped being “thisisbroken.com” and I had no where, really, to send it.
So I’m going to annoy you guys with it…two years later:
****************************
Okay, where to begin…
Last night, my net connection went down. After trying the usual things (rebooting the modem, the router, the computers – several times) I try to call Earthlink Technical Support. Unfortunately, the only number I have is for Earthlink in Pasadena.
No problem, I’ll call them – their after hours message should have the number to call for support.
So I call, get a brief message and notification that “your call may be monitored” and then get forwarded off into dead air…that lasts a minute or two until it hangs up on me. Well, not quite “dead air” – I could hear an echo of my own voice on the phone going “hello?…”
After trying this three times, with the same result, I gave up for the night – no internet for me!
The next morning, I hesitantly try the number again, and this time I get a menu and a “if you need technical support, please call…”
So I do. I dialed up your number and was asked to enter my phone number (as on my account) – apparently, so that it could be pulled up.
Then, after navigating through three or four levels of “choose 1 if you’s…” – which is stupid as in spite of the fact this is suppose to be the number for technical support, there’s twelve other things here as well – I got to choose technical support…which then asked to enter my phone number (as on my account) – apparently, so that it could be pulled up…again.
Apparently, you system isn’t bright enough to pass that along.
Then another round of “choose 1 if you’s…” – I’ve now had to enter twenty-six or twenty-seven digits to get to this point (if you add in the two phone number entries) – and I finally get to a live tech support person.
“Alex” (who is about as much an “Alex” as I am a “Devarsi” – look, everyone knows you farm out tech support to India, stop trying to pretend…), then asked me a couple of questions (“what is your problem?” “I have no internet access”) and then asked me for my Earthlink email address “so I can pull up your account…”
Let me repeat that: I have to enter my phone number twice, the only possibly purpose of which would be to identify me so that you could pull up my account and have it ready…and one of the first questions asked is for my email address so that you could pull up my account!
Well, that was a waste of twenty button pushes!
He checks and says the problem is that “your account is inactive.” I – not unnaturally – ask “why,” as it worked just fine the day before and I have an email invoice from a week prior that says you dinged my Visa account just fine. He doesn’t know – but will pass me along to a representative.
He passes me along to a representative – “Joe” (see parenthetical about “Alex…”) – who then asks me my email address – again – so that he can pull up my account and then asks me what the problem is, because apparently, no information can be passed from person to person in your system. I tell him that the last person told me my account was inactive. He looks and says “no, everything is very active.”
He asks who told me this.
I tell him the tech support person.
He asks me how long ago I was told this.
I tell him right before I was transferred to him.
Meanwhile, my net connection suddenly restores (after being down from the night before), so after going through the meaningless pleasantries of “we’re glad we could assist you” – which were especially meaningless as “we” did nothing – I hang up and wait for this email.
So let’s sum the problems I had, shall we?
1) Phone systems that don’t work.
2) Excessive levels of menus to get to Technical Support. There should be a Technical Support number that actually takes you directly to Technical Support. That’s its whole purpose!
3) Pointless entering of phone numbers – twice! – to identify yourself. Pointless because the first thing you’re asked is for your email address…to identify yourself.
4) The complete inability of your system to pass information along from person to person. For pete’s sake – you’re an internet company, whose whole purpose is to connect hundreds of millions of computers together to share information. And you can’t even pass along as much as an email address between two of your support representatives?
That’s not just stupid, that’s stupid stupid.
5) I was about to say “Having reps that are unable to deduce that if you’re transferred from one person to them, the information you’re now giving them probably came from that one person, just a second ago” – but then realized that the second person probably has no idea where your phone call was transferred from, due to the “number 4” problem above. Still, he didn’t actually do anything to warrant thanking me for being allowed to help, so I won’t totally apologize here.
And let’s sum what should have happened, just for fun:
1. I either call the Earthlink-Pasadena number, which gives me a menu choice to take me directly to Tech Support, or I call the Tech Support number straight off. Both choices take me to Tech Support, without any further button pushing.
2. I enter my phone number to identify me. This brings up (on your system) my account and this information is passed along wherever I go – I never have to enter a number or give an email address again for the duration of the call.
3. Since the system knows who I am and where I am, it can – and does – tell me if there are any service interruptions in my area and what their status is. That way, if this is the cause of my problem (which it very often could be) I can now hang up. This saves me time – and saves you time and money.
4. Assuming I need a live Tech Support person, once one picks up my call, his/her computer automatically opens up with my account information so that – rather than having to identify myself for the third time in five minutes – he/she can simply say “Earthlink Technical Support, Mr. Johnson, how can I help you?”
Heck, if I use the debit card reader, my supermarket cashier can do that much!
5. Should they need to pass me along to a different representative, then – as always – my account information, along with whatever steps they’ve already taken should be passed along with me to the new rep, so that I don’t spend another five minutes repeating both all the information I told the first person and explaining all the things the first person has already done/said.
Face it, guys, technical support for Earthlink…well…sucks is the only viable way to describe it. I spent fifteen minutes on the phone, pushing buttons and repeating myself, with essentially no results. Had the problem not cleared itself, I would have had to been transferred back to a third tech support person…where I would have had to repeat everything I’d already said all over again even before he/she could start working on my problem.
To sum: This one is going to thisisbroken.com…
****************************
Of course, it then didn’t, but the problems still remain as I described them. Oh, Earthlink may have fixed some of my issues since then (it has been two years, after all), but it was and is hardly the only place these kinds of problems come across (having to explain everything the first technician you talked to did to the second is, I believe, universal…) and I’ve yet to come across any tech support phone lines that match my “what should have happened” sufficiently to make me a happy camper.
Why is this such a problem?
Happy New Year!
January 2, 2009
Meanwhile, parade-goers seem to think “trash can” and “Colorado Blvd” are synonyms. When the parade is over, they literally have to go down the street with bulldozers to pick up all the garbage. How people can stand to, well, stand there surrounded by all the trash they’ve tossed about them over the last twenty hours is beyond me. Even driving down the street it smelled…
Apart from that, my only connection with all the “festivities” was managing to catch a picture of the B-2 as it flew by.
Predictions for the new year:
1) The stock market will eventually hit as low as 7,000-7,500 before it starts crawling back up. And I mean crawling – if it’s above 8,000 again by the end of the year I’ll be surprised.
2) Gas is not going to hit a dollar a gallon. It’s pretty much as low as it’s going to get now. It might – briefly – hit a U.S. average of $1.40 a gallon, but only if the economy is doing a whole lot worse than it is now. Admittedly, this could happen…
3) The recession will not be over by the end of the year. The Feds will declare it over sometime in early 2010, but of course, for real people, it’ll be at least another three years before it’s over.
4) Psychic, astrological and other woo-woo predictions for the year will average less than random chance…and only do that well because they put in some obvious guesses like I did.
Stupid signs are everywhere…
December 19, 2008
No, really? And here I thought the total absence of a drinking fountain in that spot meant we had actually gotten one of those new, invisible ones…
Ahem.
In other news, I’ve just spent the last two days trying to set up all the new student computers here at work before I leave for winter break…since when I come back, we’ll already be in session (okay, it’s only the stupid Intersession, still…). Mind you, two weeks ago we didn’t even know we were getting new computers to replace the old Gateways, so it’s not like I could do any planning for the changeover or anything.
And it didn’t help that, while they said they’d be installed on Monday, they didn’t actually start until Wednesday.
Anywho, I’ve basically been doing nothing for the last twelve hours at work (over two days) but configuring computers – and that’s with most of the work done by downloading an image of everything they needed! This wouldn’t be so bad, but I also have a bunch of regular, end of the semester/year stuff to do as well. Still, it’s all basically done now. I just have to make sure all the plants are watered and I’m off for two weeks of holiday fun…
…or, at least, two weeks of not being at work.
A surprise afternoon off…
December 17, 2008
What happened is that around noon, the Library Directory was talking to someone who happened to mention that “the power was going to be turned off at one.” Mind you, no one had done anything like warn us about this ahead of time, so we were all quite surprised.
So, Loretta goes down to Administration to see what’s happening and we sorta sit around wondering if we should be shutting everything down, or just going on with work. Around 12:30 she returns with the information that, yes, the power’s going off at 1:30 and that we’ll all be going home for the day (nicely, still paid for the hours we weren’t going to be there).
So I run around, shutting off computers and monitors and printers and such.
Quarter of one, and someone in Administration actually sends out an email warning everyone the power will be turned off. You would have thought that was the first thing they would have done…but then, you obviously don’t have had experience working for Rio Hondo.
At 1:15 with everything off, we leave the building, crossing our fingers the elevator will reach bottom before hands reach the “off” switch…
…and now I’m home, doing fiddly things. Like this blog entry.
Joining the blog world a little late…
December 10, 2008
Well, I put if off as long as I could, but eventually even I have succumbed to the lure of blogging.
It’s not as if this is really a new thing for me, though. I’ve been doing zines for apas for over a quarter century now (and isn’t that a scary thought!) which – in their slow, papery way – have big chunks of what could easily be a “blog” if only it was on the web, instead of 8 1/2 by 11.
Mind you, I’m still in an apa – “Point of Divergence” – which is a more or less bimonthly Alternate History apa (wanna join? Ask for Dale…), but I figure I can do both.
How long this will last? I can’t tell at the moment. Most blogs seem to gather about two months worth of posts before people get bored with them and they more or less die. OTOH, I’ve kept up (and updated) my website for over twelve years now, so I’m at least semi-reliable.
We’ll see…
