Your experiences calling tech support

[NeilVA]

Gave up calling. I don't know whats worse: pressing all the buttons to contact support, talking to one person and then be placed into a hold pattern for the next tech or listening to the muzak for an hour just to be cut off. If I have an issue now, I do the online chat with support (have other computers). Usually don't have to go thru all the hoops and usually online with a tech within 10-15 minutes. As to who is the worst for tech support I'd say Dell (But if they have a chance to sell you something, boy do you get to a person within minutes 24/7). Their knowledge is fine but the time wasted to call them is the killer. The best on all counts in Apple.

[AnUnidentifiedMale]

Online tech support through a chat window drives me nuts. I'd much rather sit on hold on the phone. At least half the time with chat, I'll ask a simple question and then sit there for a couple of minutes before I get any response at all. The last time I tried it, it took 6 minutes after the tech said, "I'll check on that for you" for him to come back. For all I know, he's eating his lunch while I wait for his response.

[bs13690]

Lenovo's call center is in Atlanta, for those of you who are keeping track. I bought a Lenovo but can't really judge their Tech Support since I have never used it. I probably never will until I have a real hardware problem.

I do sometimes have to call Tech Support at my job and they are in India. They are pretty awful but are really only doing what they are set up to do. These companies give them a script to read and they will be reprimanded if they don't follow it. We are in the process of moving our call center to the Philipines, I guess that will be the next big trend.

[scarmig]

I've had two very good recent tech support experiences. First with Nintendo (no much of a surprise there). It seems their last Wii update bricked some perfectly legit Wiis, including mine. The replaced the whole damn thing free of charge even though it was well beyond the warranty period. One phone call, two weeks, no hassle, and they even covered shipping both ways.

The other was with Sansa. My kids each bought a Fuze Mp3 player with their birthday money and we couldn't videos to load into them. I hit up their tech support online chat, and the had the problem fixed in about 10 minutes (incompatible codec pack).

The worst has always been AT&T. How those people manage to button their pants every day eludes me. One of those morons tried to tell me that a faulty DSL modem was caused by my computer running Windows 2000 instead of XP. "We don't support Windows 2000," he said. Well it's a damn good thing your modem doesn't run Windows, numbnuts!

[macroy]

I've typically had better support with items that can't be altered too much (i.e. XBOXes, ATAs, cable boxes, appliances, or software that ran on specific platforms). A user's computer is probably the hardest thing to troubleshoot since it is the most dynamic (meaning it tends to have the most variety of issues). So i'd think companies that support those will often have less "favorable" opinions. For the most part, you spend the first 5 minutes just going over your specs (make, OS, version, etc...). The other is of course companies that basically have a monopoly... your cable company, phone provider etc. They never seen to give a crap.

Although I have to say, my last few calls to Verizon has been very pleasant.

And as for the support reps, I rather deal with a hard working foreigner than a local 'don't give a rats a$% hoodlem or redneck' - both takes concentration to understand what they're saying... but at least the former have always been more helpful.

[bs13690]

Even though I do tech support for my company I sometimes have to call to central support which is in India. If a user is having a problem with their email, for instance, we have to call in a ticket because we don't have access to Exchange.

I once called in and told the tech that the problem was happening only on the Outlook client. I wanted them to understand that Outlook Web Access was working fine. The tech almost immediately shut down and kept saying "If the issue is happening at a client site, then there is nothing we can do about it". Took me the better part of 15 minutes to explain what the Outlook client is.