The Absolute Horror of Technical Support

My travel buddy got an Express Card for her Wireless service so we can use it in my laptop when we're over seas, with global roaming.

I knew this would not be as simple as it seems, in my many years of dealing with The Company I have never had the seamless 'integrated customer experience' that their ads promise. Reluctantly, I put the CD in my laptop thinking "it won't be long before I'm on the phone" but, shock, the CD actually worked and seemed to be doing what I wanted it to do.

Unfortunately at the end, even though it had successfully tested everything to do with this connection , when I tried to connect it came up with "INVALID USERNAME OR PASSWORD". grr..

So I rebooted, then I gave it a while (i went to Coles) and when I returned home thirty minutes later I tried it again, still the same error.

It was time to call The Company.

I was hung up on twice by the interactive voice recording system, which kept cracking me up because I remember the guys who "managed" the IVR and they thought they were so great and that the rest of us had no idea, and it was fulfilling on some level to find out that they had less of a clue than me all along. Thanks guys!

On the third attempt I got through after yelling "c*nt" at the recorded person, and made it through to a consultant in like 30 seconds, impressive.

I told the guy my situation, the problem, and the desired solution and he started troubleshooting. At first he was doing some meaningful stuff like checking the connection manager but when the most basic of tasks failed ("retype the password, press ok, try again") he resorted to "well we are having problems with Authentication nationwide at the moment" and i was like "oh, really?" and let him carry on about that for a while. Having worked in several Internet Service Providers I understand the implication of a nationwide Authentication outage, but that stuff happened back in the 90's when Point of Presence for Dial Up were scattered in strategic locations around the country and not centralised like they are now.

Had I reset my password in the last 24 hours? no. He asked this about 3 times and I kept repeating the same answer.

I said "i thought that The Company would have multiple redundant systems in case of a situation like this?" and the guy was like "oh yeah, but this is pretty big". While I mentioned to him early on in the call that I had worked for The Company at a point in time, I neglected to say that I had a fairly good understanding of the systems, including the backups.

I asked him to check the event log to make sure that the system had recorded the new device to which he replied "oh yeah-- hold up... yep, yep it has".

Great - *I* was finally getting somewhere.

Anyway, he continues on about this Authentication outage, about how it started on Friday afternoon and went over the weekend and was still being worked on, as we speak.

He told me to try again in 24 to 48 hours because "someone is working on this as we speak" (I heard you the first time) and having worked at The Company I knew this probably meant that someone probably sent an email about it last Friday and then the recipient had Monday off, or something like that.

While he was doing this, I fired up my fully functional Unwired connection and checked out The Company Service Status which of course, said there were absolutely no problems with the network that I was attempting to connect to.

I said to the guy "Listen, I have checked out the service status page and it tells me there is no problem, but you tell me there has been a problem since Friday? Surely it would have hit the Service Status page by now. I'm not sure who to believe, you or the web page. I'd like an explanation".

For good measure I also tacked on a "if I was a paying customer, i would be appalled at The Company for not being able to provide the most basic of services, for which you charge a premium price".

He puts me on hold for 3 minutes, during which time I tried the The Company Wireless connection again and shock of shocks, it connected!

The consultant took me off hold and wouldn't let me interrupt, so I let him carry on about how it had only been raised in the call centre as an issue and hadn't yet been transferred to Operations (or something) and got the whole long and convoluted story about how he was right & i am wrong, but that a technician was working on it and I should sit tight. Right!

So I said to him "Well sunshine (i actually said that!), its your lucky day. It connected while you had me on hold".

He responded with several explanations but my all time favourite was "oh! ... had you reset your password in the last 24 to 48 hours?" and i was like "c'mon man... we established that i hadn't a while back. Aren't you taking notes?".

Anyway, rather than banging on any more I thanked him for his time and infinite amounts of wisdom, and hung up.

What REALLY frustrated me was how the guy on the phone thought he was just the bee's knee's authoritative source and I was some pathetic customer who had no idea, when he was talking out of his a r s e the whole time.

It is how The Company rolls these days I guess. Its all Marketing Spin and not an ounce of Service. I don't wish to paint the entire employee base with the same brush, there are some really cool people who work there, but the unfortunate majority who assume that because they work for The Company that everyone is supposed to believe everything they say without question, because that is how they operate.

I called a friend who works at The Company.

"Guess what, i have a story"

"yeah? shoot"

"I had to call The Company".

We shared experiences, she had to call last week for something similar and was being bullsh~tted to in the exact same way, but she had the benefit of reading the internal notes and catching the consultant out at his game, after eventually revealing her sources to him after he asked "where are you getting your information?".

Its funny that she was getting it from the same place he was.

Rather than just going "yeah... you caught me out, i have no idea what i'm on about" and eating some humble pie, which can be reciprocated with "its alright, it happens" - The Company mantra seems to be to spin more and more and more to make it seem like they're "in control" of the situation.

I was wondering what other excuses they use to get people off the phone, because the only time The Company wants to talk is when they are making a sale, not when they're supporting something they've already sold.

"oh, you can't connect - what colour is your hair? blonde - unsupported!"

"your phone won't work - did you have chicken for lunch - well that would be it then!"

As a way of wrapping up this overly long blog post, I'll leave you with one of the most inane situations I've encountered with The Company. Whenever I call they try to "upsell" me products which I can legitimately get for free from The Internet.

All along, this guy was trying to flog me their "firewall and security software" but the first thing he did when I rang was to ask me to disable all of my security software, and not once tell me to re-enable it after the call. So you pay, to turn it off.

The miscommunication in the place that is trusted with OUR communication is appalling, but the new ad about how easy life can be with their products and services - priceless.

blah

sup?

i was in sydney on the weekend - hectic visit. ended up greeting my mum with "fuck off!" when she woke me up on mothers day for an early breakfast with family. as soon as i realised where i was i felt so bad, but these days i wake up at some really strange places and it can be a little confusing.

huge fuck off tarantula walked across the dash board when i was attempting to do a manual hill start, both of which i hate, and that was an exceptionally fucked up moment that came very close to disaster.

my folks let me drive the Audi on my own, which was a total wheel spin, so i did... but a turbo A3 manual is a bit too much for me. i stalled it once and was shaking and dad specifically said "no smoking in the car" . I don't think i could relax anyway, imagine if shit happened with that car, i'm positive they would take it out of my inheritance. haha... kidding. that car IS my inheritance, so it is in the cars best interest that i don't drive it right now.

i called my sis and asked her to swing past my friends place on her way home from work and swap cars... i traded audi for excel, and that was a bit more fun for me. not so much stress!!

people looked at me in the audi as well cause i did some of the absolute worst driving ever

another source of stress was my sisters Wii. Nintendo took it one step further with Wii as it is no longer taboo to emphatically move the controller in a vain attempt to get around a corner faster in mario kart - however poking out the tongue during game play is still controversial in some circles.

I found that the new Wii cordless remote thing brought a level of stress which goes against the sense of relaxation which these games were originally designed to provide. we would finish races and feel physically and emotionally drained when we didn't place, or super hyperactive if we placed.

it is weird living on a floor in melbourne but kind of cool - my home life revolves around my mattress and whatever mess i make has to be on it, which means before bed i have to clean it up. i highly recommend it as a life style, very japanese and all that. cultural squatting, i'd better get used to it now.

if you ate meat a big mac, you would totally understand the weird, bland zen that my life is right now.

Moving House Blues

I am on the cusp of living in the suburbs.

I am vacating my much loved shack in Richmond, next door to a quiet train station 5 minutes from the middle of the city, with Vic St and Bridge Rd within walking distance, to live in a triplex two towns over. I shouldn't talk down about it, its a great place to squat while I prepare for 3-6 months travelling the world (starting June 8).

I have been running a shuttle service between Richmond and Oakleigh or Murrumbeena or whatever the suburb is called (Chadstone?) and I'm an expert at the Monash's random speed limits (not as bad as the Maroondah Hwy) and one more than one occasion I've driven along random backstreets in the direction I thought to be home, which was for the most part, successful, and along the way i got to see some of the more weird and wonderful parts of Melbourne.

There is this intersection on Glenferrie Road that involves 2 trains, 2 trams, 4 car lanes and 2 bike lanes. Its amazing more people don't get hurt. Someone is always running into mass transit in this state, its almost epidemic! Shane Warne did it a couple of weeks ago.

A really nice chick came with a spunky guy to pick up some shelves i sold her via ebay and it didn't fit in her car. The situation played out in a comical way as we all pretended that with a bit of push and shove and nudge and tweak that we would get it in. The spunky guy was useless and i was equally unhelpful, only really stating the obvious and occasionally scratching my chin like i gave a shit. So the chick resorted to calling her father. This achieved nothing, but bought me some time to come up with the helpful suggestion that they go on a mission to buy hockey straps. First attempt at the servo was unsuccessful - second attempt at Coles was successful. The spunky guy knew what to do with the straps so they were on their way in no time.

Still, their car looked like something from the third world - That photo of that eastern bloc guy driving his Skoda with the horse squeezsed in the back seat - they know how that man felt.

After this debacle, I drove Tania home with an absolute truck load of stuff shoved in to the boot and back seat of The Silver Bullet in a fashion that can only be described as "illegal", on top of this I managed to fit in two really bulky plaster casts (for use in Tania's personal endeavors) in by sliding them on top of everything else, including surface that made the heavy casts the perfect projectiles. I didn't realize the casts were so bulky and heavy and she didn't say anything when she saw my car bursting at the seams, but i wasn't going to back down from the challenge.

Those bastards slid in on top of the clothes drying rack, which was on top of several layers of boxes and random stuff that fit in (like a toaster that was poking the back of my seat). It may have been a bit silly and it probably was... i was packing shit the whole way... literally... stuff was falling into the front (thankfully not the plaster casts) and it was pretty funny in the end. I unpacked that car that night in the way of a manic obsessive - i never ever want to drive a car that feels like i am providing a taxi driver service for a horse.

Other trips to the suburbs have involved screaming at an old person and i ALLEGEDLY had a little fender bender in a narrow street during a three point turn, if you can find the evidence.

So all in all it has been an incredibly frustrating and fulfilling few weeks, I can't wait to actually move, then run some interstate errands, then go out with my nearest & dearest and get trashed and celebrate the good times.

Good bye Richmond! xo

I also had an MRI today, it was weird. I fell asleep which is really strange because it is constantly making weird and wonderful noises not unlike a jack hammer or some hard trance. At some points the magnets really did sound like the beat of some of the more shit subgenres of trance which at least to me, was strangely comforting.