Why don't you contact tech support? [closed]

Solution 1:

Solution 2:

My experiences with responses from company's tech support is that they have a wide range in quality. There were technicians who were very compentent, very commited, tremendously helpful. On the other end of support conversations there were frustrating attempts to describe a problem to incompetent call center employees.

In effect it's often more productive to raise a question in community sites like this one.

Solution 3:

I use only Open Source software (well 99% of the time). There is no tech support phone number to ring. In fact, sites like this are my tech support.

Solution 4:

With the outsourcing of most first level support to India, Costa Rica, and other countries where virtual slave labour is legal, calling tech support means fighting with script monkeys who cannot think, nor deviate from a script.

If it is a company you deal with regularly, you can learn the magic words to get escalated to second level, where you actually stand a chance of success.

The ability to communicate well in English (since I am an English speaker. I imagine the same is true for other languages) is often lacking, the staff often have little to no training outside of a script to follow, and it becomes immensely frustrating.

Additionally my experience is that the first level people not only are not well trained, poor communicators, they are also often inept at taking notes. Thus the time wasted explaining the issue to them, needs to be repeated if you succeed in getting escalated, since they did not take any notes, as you were explaining the issue.

I find that even when I write a comprehensive explanation with versions, logs, examples, (much like you would hope to see on sites like this) they either do not read it, or do not understand it.

Even though all the details needed are in the report submitted, I get re-asked each question. Maddening!

Why would I want to submit myself to that, if I do not have too?

Solution 5:

Oh, the reasons are legion:

I know more than the 1st tier support does by enough of a margin it is annoying For products I have to spend 15 minutes educating the 1st tier person about how their product works, I don't like to call in to support because of the sheer boulder-lifting needed. Yes, I may get my answer slower by googling it m'self but I'm less annoyed at the end of the process.
Some products have really good knowledge-bases, and I'm better at searching it than 1st tier is. Every so often I'm surprised when a 1st tier person finds an article I hadn't, but that's rare. For these products I typically get forwarded on to 2nd tier because my problem doesn't fit the search results.
Some vendors make accessing support a nightmare EMC has been mentioned in this thread, and I have had trouble with HP. Proving you can access support is often more aggravating than dealing with 1st tier.
Some vendors make a point of forwarding you to the free support options before they'll let you call in on a contract This is getting more common of late. More vendors are running peer support-forums in the hopes that volunteer gurus will camp the forums to show off how much they know of the product, which in turn allows them to take resources away from their support desk. The 'open source support model,' is gaining popularity. Because 'community' is free, and tier 1 support (even off-shore) cost money.
Because I always assume I'll be on hold at least 20 minutes before getting to someone If my problem can't be subjugated with 20 minutes of googling, then that hold time is justified. Most problems at least give me partial results within 20 minutes of hitting the big G.