From assembling the discount lawn mower you bought at Wal-Mart to calling Iomega for help with plugging in your fire-wired partitioned cross platform portable hard drive into your old MacBook’s USB port, we have all had to reach out and touch one technical support department or another.
Having worked in technical support in the past, I was under the delusion that I could communicate with some of these wannabe Bastard Operators from Hell. Communicate? Yes… well, to a point. Get what I need? Well, I will let you make that determination yourself.
Fall dawned on my junior year at WSU Vancouver and I decided that having a laptop would turn me into a master student. Think of the time it would save! I could take more effective notes, more complete notes… notes at all! Efficiency! Productivit… yeah, it’s all about being able to IM my friends on Meebo, check my Gmail, play Bejeweled in all my multi-tasking ADD glory while looking like I’m concentrating.
My shiny widescreen dual-processing HP Pavilion finally arrived with its Lightscribe DVD/RW Burner and 12 cell lithium ion battery. I happily lugged my laptop all over campus until three weeks before the end of spring semester when I booted, well, tried to boot my machine. Instead I got a Beeeep Beep Beep. A long beep and two short ones. Huh? I RTFM. I used a campus computer to Google my beeps. I re-seated the RAM and discharged the battery. No luck. This is not a PEBKAC or ID 10 T error.
Resigned to the inevitable, I dialed HP technical support. After going through one of the shorter phone trees I’ve come across, I finally reached a real, breathing, presumably thinking, human being and after holding for only moments. Communicating was difficult, being as I reached a surely outsourced call center somewhere on another continent. Finding no solution after plowing through the first two tiers of technical support, I was told I would have to send it to them for repair.
My problem in this was that the semester was almost over. Taking 17 credits and so close to the end of the semester, I was in a panic. I spent two hours repeatedly re-seating my RAM and discharging the battery and got it to boot at last. Not trusting it would ever boot again, I quit carrying it, and left it on, sitting on my desk. I left it on for 6 weeks, opening and closing hundreds of files, using a dozen different applications.
The semester well over, I sent my laptop in for warranty service. A few weeks passed and it came back. Opening the packaging, I found two ‘Quality Assurance’ department letters inside, thanking me and assuring me that my computer was now full repaired and the work was quality reviewed. Great. I hit the button and what did I get? Beeeep Beep Beep. Incredulous and speech-full, I called my technical support friends again. I plowed through the first two tiers of technical support again. When the third tier tried to troubleshoot the problem, it became unfortunate for him in short order.
Once again, I packed my machine and sent it away. This time it was returned to me quickly. I hit the button and what did I get? Juice! That was July of last year. It came back with a fun new quirk, but work it does. I do not mind that the DVD tray ejects randomly. I know that it is randomly because I kept a keystroke log to determine why. A tad OCD of me, true. It eventually stopped as inexplicably as it started.
Last week, here in my final semester as a Digital Technology (DTC) student, I rebooted my machine. This was a mistake. Beeeep Beep Beep. Here I am again, counting on some more of that amazing HP up-time and not wanting to part with my machine during a semester. Frustrated with inept technical support, I must remind myself to remember what it is like to sit in a box taking call after call. CACTUS!
Last week I was called to a friend’s house to make the call to tech support for her. It seems she bought MS Excel 2007 upgrade and not the software. I called Best Buy and when their in house version of technical support did not know the difference between Windows Vista and Microsoft Office, I hung up and drove to the store myself. I just regret that I cannot do so with my laptop.
Surely I am not the only one to whom this happens? Have a tech support nightmare to share? Please do!
1 comments:
Thanks for sharing nice informative article.....good post.
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