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Our anonymous Counter Insurgent columnist airs their woes about broadband telephone support conducted by the checklist…
In the PC trade we all have gripes: from customers and suppliers to the taxman himself. But my current gripe of the month is broadband companies. Yes, those who keep the lifeblood of IT flowing through the nation’s telephone connections.
More specifically, my gripe is with their tech support departments. From those in a foreign land to those on UK soil, they all seem to use the same ridiculous and outdated ways of troubleshooting.
As a tech expert I want to be able to communicate with these people and tell them what has been tried and what does not work. Instead, I have to put up with the bog standard checklist: Have you turned it on and off? Have you plugged it into the master socket? Have you checked the filters?
These guys should know that when they are talking to someone from a tech store, this will be our first port of call but, even so, they still expect us to go through the list wasting our time and customers’ money.
Have you ever tried telling them you have already tried what they’re suggesting? Oh yes, but they still insist you do it whilst on the phone to them – making you look like a clueless idiot to any customer present.
I was once on the phone to Sky. By its own rules it only allows Sky equipment to be connected to its systems, but the person on the phone didn’t even know this. The tech support guy told me to plug in a third party router – and I had to explain to him that this would break Sky’s rules. He wouldn’t give me the dial-up password for the ADSL service in the end.
Why can’t these companies get their acts together and start improving the reputation of the tech industry? The only exception I ever found to this rule was O2 but – you got it – they sold out to Sky.
