I volunteered to stick around and wait for a Comcast technician to come down and install a cable modem at my girlfriends place this morning. Boy oh boy am I glad I did that. The tecn was scheduled for 9AM, and promptly arrived right on time at 11:05. I sat around playing Sim City on the old SNES I brought over (3D games make the girl sick) and after about 2 years of commerce had passed, he loudly lamented that he was not getting any “Internet through Internet Explorer.” At this point he called the support line, and I went along my merry way.
After another few years of development and muffled Spanish cursing on his part, I decided to pay a bit more attention. He stepped away from the machine and stated that it was a shitty thing to happen on his third day on the job. Great. He also informed me that he was not a “computer kinda guy” but that he was well informed on the “basic stuff.” Basic stuff being checking the internet options, and clearing the temporary internet files, which was useless considering that the computer was just purchased a week ago and had never experienced the vast tubes of the interweb.
I’ll spare the really technical details, but long story short: it didn’t get fixed. Things chugged along nicely after I jumped into the fray, but tech support for some reason will not provide adequate support to their technicians due to the fact that they are supposed to be well equipped to handle such emergencies on their own. This one was not. I became aware of this fact when the fellow turned the machine on, stared at the windows background for a few seconds, bent down to check the network cable and asked “is your computer on bro?”
…
“You mean the big black box humming next to you which is broadcasting the image that you are currently looking at onscreen?”
“Yeah.”
…. “Yes. I believe it is on.”
Eventually I just told the guy to take off. I can handle it better than he can, and according to him, tech support will treat me far better as I am an actual customer. He attempted to “trick those fuckers” (his words) by calling and pretending to be a customer at one point, but was stalled when asked for a social security number. Despondent, he admitted to the operator “Yeah, I’m a technician hommes.” Rather than debate this statement, I just sent him on his merry way. Four hours of my morning down the drain and I have a non-functional cable modem to show for it. Good to see that Time Warner’s takeover of Comcast did not cause any ill effects on their level of service.