You may have noticed a lag in posting for the last few days. This is due to the fact that I’ve been on the phone with various tech support representatives from various companies for the past five days or so. Sure, there have been breaks, but they were mainly used to drown my own hatred in a pool of soothing Jack Daniels®. At this point, I can honestly say that SBC has far and away taken the crown of “Most Fucking Useless” in the field of so-called “technical support.” Let me give you a hint as to what I’ve been attempting to accomplish:
Friend runs a company. Friend asks for help with a mailserver. I set up the mailserver, and figure that it’d be nice to have SBC (their T-1 provider) act as a backup DNS server, in case of a problem with their primary DNS server. Simple. Add a few records, take three minutes out of your average techie’s day, and it’s done. Finito. And for a company that’s used to dealing with $39.95/month customers, they should be able to handle a simple request from a client that’s spending upwards of $500/month for their dedicated connection. Or so you would think. Here are a few highlights from my journey into SBC’s bowels:
- Spent ten minutes explaining to a phone operator the difference between a DSL connection and a T-1. “About $450 dollars per month” was not an acceptible answer.
- Was hung up on by the billing department 8 times.
- Spoke to an automated person who couldn’t understand when I said the word “two” about a dozen times.
- Spent five minutes explaining the concept of DNS to a phone operator. I used phrases such as “when you type www.yahoo.com, magical things happen…”
- Spent ten minutes explaining the concept of DNS to a tech support representative. The phone operator got it in half the time.
- Number of calls it took to actually get someone on the phone who knew what I was talking about: About 15
Mind you, SBC was not the only place I was on hold with. I had three seperate companies regarding three seperate issues to speak to, and none of them had what you would consider “competent” support departments. Thankfully, it looks like I’m done. So now I guess I can die in peace.
HehKinda makes you wonder how the tech industry survives.
comcastTry to get Comcast to open a port so you can setup a fucking MS Exchange server…it took about 35 calls. It wasn’t a normal connection either…it was a buisness connection.
Read thisI do on-site support on a contract basis to various small businesses. Whenever anybody asks why phone support is so bad for their computers I point to this article:http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/02/23/no_support/
Tech support…If it makes you feel any better I got that from two companies in one week. I switched from ATT to SBC, during my cancelation of ATT I was hung up on me 3 times, finally I transfered to a supervisor who could barely speak english and who kept reading a script. \”I’m sorry sir but…\” over and over and over until I finally hung up the phone in frusteration and gave up all hopes on having my problem resolved.Then SBC had issues with their tech’s not knowing anything about their system or how to change configurations, so after about 15 minutes of not being able to understand what my ‘technician’ was saying (due to a thick accent, on top of having a limited script they could respond to my questions with) I was switched to her supervisor, had the same issue. Finally I was transferred to billing who understood more than the two people who were originally hired to fix my sort of issues. I spoke with her for about 10 minutes had it all sorted out, and complained about my experience, she gave me the phone number for \”level 2\” support which is based out of the US. (The phone number for english speaking tech support is 1-800-579-7861) -not kidding.
SBC sucksI was on the phone with them last night for work related stuff. Their router changemangement is only between 2am and 5am in the morning, which makes it far too difficult to do even simple things with them. They suck.
yes/noWe have had similiar problems with most of our backbone providers and setting up secondary DNS. A few of them didn’t even offer it as an option and most of the \”techs\” had no idea what it was in the first place.We did have 1 provider(that I can’t remember) that was on the ball. Only took 2 calls and then they also setup automatic pulls of our DNS info, so even if we changed it they would automatically make the changes daily.
Welcome to my world..Since SBC fucking pwns my whole town I can’t thorw a fucking rock without hitting one of their goddamned bell heads in the fucking head. Just wait untill they turn off the fucking T-1 and then sit on their ass for a month as you get transfered to every fucking tech support office in the world. With SBC just be thankful that you have a connection and move on. Don’t try and do anything else or you’re gonna get fucked.