#@!$ end users….
Maybe an oldy, but found on rulesemporium.com.
*RANT*
Dear End User,
While you may think it is ok to call a person in the computer industry at home for help, it drives us crazy. Let me try to put it in terms you might understand.
Try this and see what happens:
1) Call your friend who is a mechanic at home, at dinner time.
2) Tell him your car is not running right, or won't even start.
3) Tell him you saw a neon sign while driving that said your car wasn't running right, so you pulled in and let these strangers install:
Fuel Helper
Pot hole blockers
Wheel assistants
A special radio station
An engine watcher
4) Ask them if they mind talking you thru figuring out why the car won't run. Optional: Laugh really loud and say "I know nothing about these complicated machines.", because they love to hear that!
5) Tell him you have no tools.
6a) When he asks you to open the hood and have a look, ask him "Where is the hood?" Optional: Tell them your cousin tried doing "something" to fix it, but you don't know what it was, and the problem is worse now.
6b) While looking at the engine, read them the very long serial numbers of the parts. Because mechanics have them all memorized for all cars.
6c) Always keep asking if you should turn things, "Left or Right?"
6d) Ask them if they see the part near the other part. Because they can see thru the phone.
6e) Ask then if the problem has anything to do with the new garage door you installed.
7) After they patiently talk you thru checking for "Fuel and Fire", and it still doesn't work, ask them if they can drive 30+ minutes to your home on their day off and come fix it. Optional: Whine about how much you need your car.
8) Have them do all this for just a "Thank you."
9) Pretend to understand when they say not to believe neon signs saying your car isn't running right. Just smile when they say you need to regularly schedule maintenance on your car, and to use only well known mechanics.
10) Repeat the whole process every 60-90 days. Optional: Call from your family members house because you tried to fix theirs and you messed up their cars now. Optioanl2: Tell your friends about us, have them call to have their car problems fixed as well.
Does that help you understand what tech people go thru? No?
Would you:
Call a plumber to talk you thru installing a water heater at 10PM?
Call a lawyer to talk you thru defending yourself on a murder charge on a Saturday morning? Call a doctor to help you get rid of that "burning feeling" during dinner?
Understand yet? No?
While we love technology, we HATE phone support. Nothing aggravates a tech person more then trying to solve a problem over the phone.
Tech people have lives as well. There are things we would like to do after working on computer problems all day then to do phone support during some of the very little time we have to ourselves or our own family.
We are not tech whores. If we help, buy us something small, a video game, a bottle of wine, or dinner. Hell if you're a mechanic, fix our car!
I'm sorry end user, but you needed to learn what you are doing isn't right. Think before you pick up that phone.
Thank you.
HP being very good with support?
One year and two months ago I became the proud owner of a HP NC6120 notebook. Soon I repartioned it to make space for a dual boot Windows XP and Debian GNU/Linux system. Everything was fine. I could do anything within Windows and most of the hardware worken in debian after I started using testing. But, last week while working in the console some strange messages started to show up:
kernel: hub 5-0:1.0: over-current change on port 2 kernel: hub 1-0:1.0: over-current change on port 2
At first I thought it was a problem in the USB driver in my kernel because I did just reboot into a new kernel. When I got to work next day and used Windows I got:
Power Surge on Hub Port
These very annoying 'help-balloons' started showing up as fast as I could close them. At that time it was extremely warm in the Netherlands so I blamed that. Later that day I was in Telecity (amsterdam) to connect a server. I needed some some development tools so I started using my laptop in there. Then it struck me that I still got those error messages even when I was in a very good airconditioned environment. The next day I called HP customer support. I explained the guy answering my call the problem I had. After doing some stuff with him he told me he had never seen this problem before. A quick google on 'NC6120 usb power surge' learned that there was a thread at the HP forums about this. After searching the forums some more I found multiple threads about this problem. I confronted the customer support guy with this, but he told me that my laptop was out of warranty by 2 months and that it would cost me 660,- euro's to fix this problem. I was a bit astonished with this outcome because while reading the forums it seemed to me like a production fault with this type of laptops. And if it's a production fault it doesn't matter if it's in or out of warranty. Or they could at least make an arrangement. The customer support guy told me to email customer relations. I emailed customer relations with my case number and the URL's to the threads attached. After 2 days of silence I got a reply saying that they denied my request to make an arrangement. As a producer of hardware they are not obligated to give any type of warranty. You should be happy that we give you one year of warranty. This got me totally pissed off. It just can't be true that a big manufacturer like HP makes equipment that failes after one year and they deny any support. If I was the only one I wouldn't mind. But it is a known problem and there are many people suffering from it. When you buy a laptop, even a business laptop you can reasonably expect it to work for more than one year... Well with HP it doesn't. I won't repair the laptop because the price to repair the darn thing is 66% of the price for a new one. Guess that I'll buy a new one... and guess what... it definitly won't be an HP...
First Post
Well well well, here's the second first post. Let's hope I've got something useful to say. Which currently is not the situation....