A couple months ago I bought one of those little hand held PDA things from a major brand to help me keep organized. I love the thing, but it's always had one small problem with it. When I'd turn it off (essentially a sleep mode) about 75% of the time it wouldn't wake up when I'd hit the power button and I'd have to do a soft-reset (essentially reboot). Pretty annoying and sometimes left me with lost data if I hadn't saved.

So the other day I send an email to their tech support outlining the problem, basically sometimes the device won't wake up, but it does every time if I soft-reset it.

So tech sends me back an email with a link to some trouble shooting steps on their website... cool. I go and start following the steps and they are steps you'd do if you can't get the device to turn on at all, remove the battery and see if it comes on with just the power cord, plug in the USB cradle and try that, etc.

Um... ok, it turns on just fine every time I do a soft reset. So I send tech back an email saying basically you didn't understand what I meant, I don't have a problem getting the device to turn on... it just hangs up most of the time.

Tech responds with an email that says ok, those were just generic steps that we send everyone and usually it solve the problem (great, thanks for wasting my time). If you're still having a problem, try a hard-reset (which basically is like formatting the hard drive and starting over).

I'm thinking WTF!?!? Does this guy not even read! I'm not going to wipe out my system and have to reinstall everything (not that I had much installed anyway). So I write back and ask what good a hard-reset would do?

That was last friday I still haven't heard back even after sending another email.

In the mean time I did some digging on their website and found a patch for the system that specifically addresses the problem I was having.

So I have to ask, what good is tech support if they can't even point you to a patch for an obviously well-known issue? Grrrr.

In the long run I probably won't be looking at that brand of computers again.

 

The problem is not tech support in general. The problem is you got 1st line tech support who are basically boneheads who follow a script on the computer and keep you running in circles. Next time ask for 2nd or upper level support and then you may find some intelligent life...

The person you got was probably from India or Taiwain and do no understand english well.

 

ALWAYS google your problem first. 99% of the time, you will find the problem and solution.

 

yeah in the second to the last message I sent I asked for the issue to be escalated to the next level... haven't heard back since. Maybe the word "escalated" means "deleted" in Indian.

 

To top it off, I just now got an email back from "Prantik" where he (I guess that's a guy) appologizes for the long delay and tells me that he discussed the issue with his supervisor and they feel the best course of action is for me to send my unit back in and receive a replacement. Apparently he missed the part of my last email that told him that the patch from their website fixed the problem.

Morons.

 

Welcome to the world of outsourcing. I won't call Support for most things, unless it's under warranty and is an appliance, like a stove.

My job position:
Lead Tech Support for a software company (no not that one). So, I understand the frustration, and try to deal with it best I can in my position.

 

Just about as bad as trying to get documentation from a poorly organized vendors support site. I have one I deal with almost constantly trying to get documentation from, even when I know the document number i am looking for, it returns a search message saying it is not found.
Why even bother if they cannot keep the site updated. It really PO's me to have to call their tech support and get them to fax or email the documents I need. If they can get to them, why the he!! can't I ?

 

Absolutely. Google is your friend!

 

you emailed india....