Who has had the WORST Tech Support?

[SmugFrog]

A friend just emailed me a story about horrible tech support. I did a search but didn't find anything about this so, here are my stories and I would like to hear yours.

I have 2 stories - the first is my personal experience, which is one of those that makes you realize your tech support person is an idiot. The 2nd is an email I just received from a friend and... Well, I just can't believe he actually talked to a Tech from Sony about his Playstation 3 problem. It is UNREAL, and I think I would've asked to speak to that moron's supervisor.

Story 1 - MSN Internet Service
Back when Asheron's Call (MMORPG that competed against Everquest) came out, I bought into the $400 off your computer for signing up with MSN dial-up internet for a 4 year contract. I figured I would need internet anyway, so why not. It wasn't really a bad service; but half-way through the contract high-speed internet was really taking off.

While playing Asheron's Call, at random, I would get disconnected from the game. The dial-up connection would still show active, but I was unable to load any web pages - like the server I dialed into just randomly decided to stop responding. It wouldn't have been so bad if it just rarely happened - but it would sometimes disconnect me again immediately after I redialed and got logged back into the game - or sometimes just at random intervals (5, 15, 45, 90 minutes, who knows!?)

So the REALLY great thing about Asheron's Call was that when you disconnected, your character kept running in whichever direction you were moving at that time. This was pre-dead-body-markers, so who the hell knew where you ended up. Also, you would drop gear... so unless you found your body, you lost that gear PERMANENTLY! Sometimes I found my body, most times I did not.

I fix my own computer - I don't rely on any tech support. So I scoured forums and websites trying to find a problem similar to mine - but I couldn't find anything. I had disabled the "disconnect when idle" option for the modem and everything. The only thing I could figure out was that the problem was with MSN's Internet Service dropping me out because of something Asheron's Call was doing.

So after almost breaking my desk in two banging on it, my wife convinced me to call MSN's Tech Support. After an eternity of waiting, I finally spoke with a tech that wanted me to clear my internet explorer cache... what? I told her that was not even relating to the problem, but she insisted that would fix it. Next she told me to delete my cookies... This went on for a while with her suggesting miscellaneous things - even that my computer probably wasn't able to run the game because of hardware! Finally I just said, "Look, we're not getting anywhere, thanks." and hung up.

Story 2 - Sony Tech Support for the Playstation 3
-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 7:34 AM
To: FC1(SW) (MCB CF Div)
Subject: Re: Ironic

I tried to log into playstation store and it told me I needed a system update. Sure, no problem, it updates all the time and I've never had a problem. I had just finished watching a movie so I figured I'd let it update.

WRONG! It downloaded it, got to 66% and errored out. Restarted and boom, 66% ERROR try again same thing. It gave me a service code and said to call tech support.

Well, I bet you can guess what kind of BS that was. The guy on the phone told me to restart my wireless router. ROFL I said, uh, ok but how is that going to help my ps3 update? He said that it was probably trying to download the update and got an error. I told him no, it had already downloaded it and it was installing it when it gave me the error code.

So he said I needed to reboot my wireless router before we could continue. Fine. So i did and of course it didnt work. So he told me to access the wireless settings on my PS3. I asked him how I was supposed to do that since everytime I rebooted the PS3 it automatically went straight to the system update and failed. He told me to push the O button to cancel it. I told him there was no cancel option. He said to push the PS button first.

Yeah, no, it didnt work. So he put me on hold. He came back on the line and asked if I was playing a game and it was failing to load. LOL I said, no, I already told you, I was watching a movie, the movie finished, I tried to go into the PS store to look at the demos to download and it said I had to update, so I downloaded the update and it is now erroring out, there was no game involved.

Back on hold.

He comes back and tells me to turn off the ps3 and restart it so I can go into the network settings to make sure I'm getting a wireless connection...........

At that point I just hung up the phone. I think I would have had better luck talking to the wall. I searched the web and everything I found on that error code said i had to send it to Sony and it was going to cost me $75-100 to get it fixed. F that.

So I'm looking at my ps3. I reboot it, still nothing, 66% and error. well, I was playing Rock Band with Kevin when he was here last sunday and the guitar wireless reciever was still plugged into the USB slot on the front of the PS3. Surely that wouldnt cause it right? WRONG I unplugged the USB dongle and it went straight from 66% to 100%, rebooted and its working fine now. Stupid Sony tech support morons...

 

[Laughing Man]

Sorry who uses tech support? It's all very well calling the folk on the other end of the phone stupid because they can't solve your issue but in my own experience the people who resort to using tech support only do so because they are of equal or greater stupidity.

 

[wewontdie11]

I called a BT helpline once concerning my mobile phone. I hung up after 15 minutes of being on hold and just decided to buy a new phone. Ahh the irony, you would have thought a telecommunications company would have better phone service.

 

[Nmil-ek]

The worst personal experiance I have had would be with BT 3 1/2 hours of debating, transfers, and recaling to get my fucking connection back up and running and for them to finaly admit it was server side not client side, ugh.

 

[ultimatechance]

HP is absolutely terrible, and refuse to give information that even a local forum user can provide. Xbox Live is also pretty bad too.

 

[IsoNeko]

Sorry who uses tech support? It's all very well calling the folk on the other end of the phone stupid because they can't solve your issue but in my own experience the people who resort to using tech support only do so because they are of equal or greater stupidity.

Sorry, but when your company forget to tell you that they're doing service upgrades on your Internet connection for the next week so you might experience blackouts.

I find that a pretty valid reason to ring tech support...Although saying that they weren't exactly helpful. So I ring up, and it's a stereotypical Indian man. First thing I told them was.

"My modem keeps blacking out, what should I do"

"Oh, in that case it's broke. We'll send you another. It's near Easter, so don't expect it for another 5 days."

Fair enough, but when I actually have stable connection I take a look on their site, and I see that were getting ripped off. So I ring again, and now it's a stereotypical Indian Woman.

I then ask them, why are we paying £18 for Crappy service 2Megabit connection. When we can pay £15 for a 10 Megabit connection. They then tell me that they are upgrading everyones crap 2 Megabit to the 10 Megabit anyway, and the £15 is for new customers only. No customer loyalty for someone that's been with that company since it began? Like hell I was letting them get away with that. So we got the cheaper service, and a fair bit of money back that we were technically owed.

5 days without internet? F' that. I'm just going to go buy a router/modem. I have no idea about Modems, and the cheapeast one there is, is an ADSL one. No good for me, it requires a phone jack. So I ring them up. This time it's a British Woman, so I ask her about info on ADSL and what I can do to get it connected. They then tell me that they want to check what connection I'm on. So after 10 minutes on hold they tell me "You are aware there are repairs going on in your area now, right?"

Uhh. No. But thanks for being the first out of 3 people to tell me this, so I tell the lady thanks, and I want to speak to her manager. She puts him on, and I commend her for her excellent dilligence. She then gets put back on the phone and I can hear the excitedness in her voice, sounds like she got a bit of good news from my gratification report.

Anyway, so I return the ADSL router, and the new Modem finally gets here 8 days later.

So I try to hook it up, figuring why the heck not. And it doesn't work. I ring up a fourth time and it's another Indian Woman. The lady on the phone then tells me that it needs to be registered. So I give her the Mac Address of it, and she goes to register it. A few minutes later waiting on it, and it's still not working. I ask her is there anything I can do to get it fixed. She then asks me if I've registered it.

BANG. phone down. Fuck you Virgin Media. Stop hiring people who barely comprehend English. I'm not being racist here but Jesus. I want to be able to hear someone who can understand what I'm saying, and Vice Versa.

So I plug in the old Modem, which is now working fine again after the repairs. Out of 3 Indian People. Only one British person geniunely helped me.

 

[LooK iTz Jinjo]

Sorry who uses tech support? It's all very well calling the folk on the other end of the phone stupid because they can't solve your issue but in my own experience the people who resort to using tech support only do so because they are of equal or greater stupidity.

Well in many situations you have no other choice. For example 360 RROD, you need to call and put up with their shit just so you can send your console away.

Heres my story though.

Now everybody knows that the Xbox 360 has... issues. But for once I found it was the consoles fault. Every time I turned it on with my 20GB Hard drive in I would get a system error, take out the HDD and it would work fine. So i figured the problem was my HDD. So I call up the indian morons at Xbox Tech Support and after about an hour of the Halo theme, I finally get some polite indian lady, who seems to know exactly what she's on about [end sarcasm]. I explain to her my dilemma and of course the first thing she suggests is that I reset my console with the HDD in. Error. She asks me the error code and what-not so I tell her what I can see on my screen. Now she says take out my HDD and turn it on. As I've already explained to her, it worked fine.

She asks me to place a game in the tray (with the HDD in). I skeptically place a disc in, and BAM! NOTHING. She then continues to ask me to do the most retarded things from restarting my modem and router, to removing all accessories, to even having the nerve to suggest that there was a problem with my T.V... Yes I'm sure that my LG LCD was the cause of this error message when my hard drive was connected.

She finally goes away and leaves me on hold for another 15 minutes (cue Halo theme), when she returns she informs me that my HDD has a hardware failure and suggests I go buy a replacement as mine is out of its warranty. Now those who know me are well aware of my anger management issues, so in a nutshell I went off at her. I'd been on he phone for nearly 2 hours going through her shit so she could inform me that I had lost all my game data, and they weren't going to do shit about it!

I then demanded to speak to her supervisor and had a long chat with another retard about why I deserved to be compensated for loosing a level 59 in Mass Effect, as well as the fact that maybe you Fuck Wits should just make decent products.

In the end I got no compensation, no new HDD from the dicks. It was the day before NXE was due out so I needed a HDD if I wanted to be able to play online, so I went out and blew $150 on a 60GB. If this one dies I will kill someone...

 

[Trivun]

I actually had extremely good customer service from Microsoft when I got the RRoD. They were extremely helpful on the phone, no charge for the call, sent it for repairs and because it couldn't be repaired they replaced it with a brand new model, plus a free month of XBL Gold Membership and apologies. The new model also arrived about a week early since the Microsoft Support Centre were extremely quick in processing the repair request. I've had nothing but good experiences from Microsoft, so why do people bash it all the time? If you want bad service, try Virgin Media...

 

[dmase]

My story starts off well enough you know. I buy a Belkin wireless router, 150$ or something if I remeber correctly went all out on that thing, i get it set up and all with out to much hassle. Everything works fine for the next couple of months. Then Limewire stops working, well i've illegally downloaded several hundred songs at this point so i assume its karma and said whatever. Then my ps3 won't work with it and my internet connection keeps going in and out and eventually stops working all togethor. So i try to get the Belkan guys to help me fix this they try everything the convential the unconvential and finally tell me to call embark my provider. Well i call and do some basic stuff that say might help and nothing and then the guy.... barely speaking english indian guy tells me that the most expensive modem i saw at best buy that can give my neighbors a mile away internet service won't work with this service. Eventually i get it working with the help of the indian guy which took another hour and a half, but this problem will happen again and again until i got tired of recalibrating and resetting the modem and router and now i don't even use it. I also spent forever trying to figure out why limewire wouldn't work even without the router. Eventually i just switched to frostwire and wow that works no idea why but it does.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Currently, I am emplyed in the wonderful field of IT support, and one of my common duties involves answering tech support calls on a wide variety of topics (we provide third party IT services, so we get calls that would generally be routed to the appropiate vendor if the user wasn't silly, which is fun).

Most of the time, from my perspective the problem with tech support fully lies on the side of the user. One common problem is the user is completely incapable of expressing what the problem is exactly, and if they have a vague notion (such as, my e-mail gives me an error and crashes sometimes) they are unable to provide any details regarding what any error messages might have been (they don't seem to think those are important for some reason). Another common problem is, the user's basic knowledge is so lacking that they are often unable to assist me in any fashion to aid their remote support. In some instances, I have had problems directing a user with instructions as simple as opening a specific web page, as apparently they are unaware which text box is an address bar, or that keys can be pressed simultaneously to accomplish special tasks (such as IE's ctrl+O, which brings up a dialog box for an address, thus alleviating confusion). In the famous words of Jeff Anderson in "Clerks" - The job would be great if it weren't for the customers.

My own terrible tech support experience came at the hands of my ISP (AT&T). One evening, my DSL modem lost connectivity, and the problem is common enough that I simply went to bed for the evening. The next day, I found the problem was not yet resolved, and as such I went through the normal procedures that tech support might send you through (i.e. power cycling the modem to start with). Given that I work in the field, it's probably fair to say that, having exhausted the possibility of anything I could control, the chances were pretty damn good the problem was one that I wouldn't be able to resolve by just "unplugging something".

So, I hopped on the phone with tech support, and after having to go through the same exact steps I had just completed, the support agent informed me there was an outage in Dallas that was causing the problem (I live 350 miles from Dallas Texas, and while an outage there may degrade my connection, it wouldn't prevent me from getting the DSL signal from my local station). Their advice was just give it a few days and it would self resolve.

Needless to say, after several days the problem had not self resolved, and by Friday, I figured I had given them enough time to call them again. Once again, I had to go through the basic steps I had now twice covered, and the agent determined that my problem was my account had been cancelled. Unable to offer explanation for the unexpected cancellation (seeing as I had never even come close to missing a bill), I was told I could only resolve the issue through the billing department, which was closed until monday.

On Monday, having gone fully a week without internet access I finally and at long last contacted the billing department, and I thought for sure the problem would be taken care of. The billing agent quickly agreed with the previous tech support agent - my account had indeed been cancelled, but could offer no explanation as to why. It was becomming increasingly obvious that, if anybody knew why my service had been cut off, they were't going to tell me. I decided the best thing to do was drop the line of inquiry and just have my service reactivated. The agent informed me the process was quick and painless, but would take 4 - 7 business days to complete. I was dumbfounded with the news, but my irate sputterings were dismissed: the process of changing an account status apparently involves some eldrich ritual that cannot be rushed.

I had held out hope that I would have net access by the weekend, but again I was frustrated. I quick call to AT&T on friday informed me the process was still ongoing but it would almost certainly work by Monday.

The next monday, a full two weeks into the debacle I was STILL without access. Having grown immensely tired of the entire ordeal, I once again called tech support. This time, I was clearly getting a DSL signal, and could even ping sites outside of my local network but all other access was being blocked. The tech support agent, finally decided that being useful would be a nice change of pace, determined the problem was my modem was not correctly registered. Apparently, the initial problem is my account was not cancelled in the normal fashion - it had been DELETED, meaning the registration information my modem contained was no longer valid. Through the fix was easy to implement, I was dumbfounded that it took a half dozen calls and two weeks to get this simple problem fixed.

Worse still, when I inquired as to why I should pay for a service that was denied by their own errors for two full weeks, I was once again dismissed, though my complaint was filed. I was informed later that my grievance was "unfounded" and they would not refund my 40 USD fee that I paid for the outage.

 

[atv_chic_18]

I had a bad experience with Dell. I bought a computer from them and when I recieved it, nothing on it was what I had paid for. Not to mention it had a dent in the side panel of the tower. We sent it back, they sent us another one. Yet this one was still incorrect. This continued on two more times and they still never got the correct computer to us.

We went all over the world in phone calls dealing with them and never actually got what we paid for. Long story short, I'll never buy another Dell.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

cough [BETHESDA} cough

 

[Mrsoupcup]

Bell Canada. (Its a phone company in Canada duh)

 

[Cortheya]

Charter...I spent more hours on the phone with them then on their actual internet.... and I'm not kidding

 

[TheDoctor455]

All in all, I'd have to go with 2K Games. For not providing helpful updates or answering the fucking phone EVERYTIME I call. First I bought Bioshock for the PC, and I was genuinely looking forward to wandering the pseudo-streets of Rapture. But... the game simply refused to start up. Oh, sure I could install it all right, but after I hit "Play Game", the game would show a nice splash screen, and suddenly, the process would get dropped for no bloody reason. I downloaded EVERY patch for the game, and it still refused to work. I sent an e-mail with my launch analysis files to those idiots at SecuRom. Still nothing. So, I put Bioshock in a dark corner where it began to gather dust.

Several months later I bought Far Cry 2 for my computer. I got a little suspicious, of course, when I noticed that 2K Games was involved with it, but then I thoguht, well, maybe they learned from their mistakes... Short answer: No. Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Went through the EXACT same process that I went through with Bioshock, and still got nowhere. So, I have promised myself never to buy anything that 2K Games has ever had any involvement with ever again.

 

[SmugFrog]

So, Laughing Man, what are you going to do when something is still under warranty? Just throw it away? When you've done all you can for something, you might as well try the tech support - even if my wife has to force me at times.

If this one dies I will kill someone...

Ok, hey... let us know so we can all call in sick that day and lock our doors, ok?

One common problem is the user is completely incapable of expressing what the problem is exactly,

I hate that. My grandmother (that ran her own chatroom, drank whiskey, and listened to hard rock MP3's) would call me up and say, "Chad, I have a box that popped and now this program I downloaded won't work! How do I fix it?" With me (or her even) having no clue what the error message was or what program she downloaded.

Charter...I spent more hours on the phone with them then on their actual internet.... and I'm not kidding

Charter... Urgggghhh... I had forgot about that one! I had Charter in Texas as our cable provider for a while. Things were good up to the last year there, when suddenly out of nowhere our cable box went bad. They said it would take a week or two to replace it - no big deal, they're busy and we had never had any problems.

A week after we received the new box, the new one went bad as well! Then they told us it would be another 2 weeks before they could get another one to us.

4 weeks later, THAT box went bad. We called Charter up and they said it would be 2-3 weeks - my wife said "Forget it!" - we went with Dish Network after that, and loved it so much I wish we had switched earlier.

 

[iggyus]

Microsoft. They are just horrible

 

[SoonerMatt]

Dell's tech support is atrocious.

Surprisingly enough, Apple's tech support is very good.

 

[Spleenbag]

All in all, I'd have to go with 2K Games. For not providing helpful updates or answering the fucking phone EVERYTIME I call. First I bought Bioshock for the PC, and I was genuinely looking forward to wandering the pseudo-streets of Rapture. But... the game simply refused to start up. Oh, sure I could install it all right, but after I hit "Play Game", the game would show a nice splash screen, and suddenly, the process would get dropped for no bloody reason. I downloaded EVERY patch for the game, and it still refused to work. I sent an e-mail with my launch analysis files to those idiots at SecuRom. Still nothing. So, I put Bioshock in a dark corner where it began to gather dust.

Several months later I bought Far Cry 2 for my computer. I got a little suspicious, of course, when I noticed that 2K Games was involved with it, but then I thoguht, well, maybe they learned from their mistakes... Short answer: No. Long answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!

Went through the EXACT same process that I went through with Bioshock, and still got nowhere. So, I have promised myself never to buy anything that 2K Games has ever had any involvement with ever again.

Replace this with Ubisoft and you've got me. Their Ubisoft pack didn't work and all the games I've managed to play by them have sucked or had technical issues I'd be ashamed to release a game with. Never buying their shit again.