"You want me to put what where?"

I hate Indian tech support. Don't get me wrong: I like the idea of "Indians" and tech support is sort of a necessary evil of microcomputing. The problem is when those two forces combine to form a time-wasting, infuriating segment of an industry.

I'm the de facto Ms. Fixit in the office. If someone's PC goes bonkers it's my job to either fix it or complain to someone who can.

There's a PC in our server room that has two purposes: collecting call data from the phone system, and broadcasting the "on hold" music. That's all it does. Nothing else (well.....occassionally I go back there to check my bank balance before lunch without the prying eyes of my cohorts). About a month ago the computer stopped collecting data from the phone system. This was very confusing and sent the entire office into an emasculating clusterfuck. You see, the boys don't know what to do with themselves if they don't know how many phone calls they've made.

I hounded the software manufacturer and discovered it wasn't their fault. Nor was it a problem with the phone system as it was sending data as programmed. After much back and forth we learned the problem was a busted COM port.

The remote tech people we have on retainer informed me that the unit itself was no longer under service warranty but the part itself was eligible for replacement. They never got back to me on that, but being armed with this information I attempted to get the problem solved directly through the OEM.

Let me tell you - I wasted two hours of my life this morning dealing with some bozo who didn't even understand the problem. Such is the case when you have people sit around all day, scan for keywords, and search a F.A.Q. database.

He tried to walk me through taking the machine apart (which I pretended to do), resetting this and that, and finally determined that problem was with the external modem which was not shipped with the unit and therefore not covered by warranty.

Um...WHAT EXTERNAL MODEM? This dude needed to be blindfolded and whipped.

I logged out of the session and gave up. Tomorrow I have to try this all over again. Pray for me.

Posted by Tiffany at September 20, 2005 09:11 PM | TrackBack