Rekna

First let me start with a little background. I am a certified PC technician with a bachelors in CS and i'm currently 3 years into my PHD in CS. I have worked extensively with windows and linux many times going into the source and tweaking drivers by hand. I would consider myself an expert on computers.

So naturally every time I am forced to call Dell tech support I get slightly annoyed by the techs there. First before I ever call tech support you can bet that I have tried all the general fixes to my problem, second you can bet that i've read at least twenty forums on the issue i'm having and have been unable to come to a solution to my problem.

Now onto the problem I was having today. For the last 2 years my wireless has disconnected all the time. Every time i'd start to download the wireless would disconnect after a few minutes. Every time i'd ssh into work after a few minutes it would disconnect. This would happen on any access point. You can see how this would get quite annoying. I have called dell twice in the past on this issue and they always say the same thing.

1) update drivers
2) reseed the card
3) flash your router
4) ect

anyway after i spend an hour telling them i've done all that they have done tonight they finally referred me to an expert in the area.

So I get on the phone with this guy and he tells me to go through all the steps above. Great there goes another hour of me explaining i've already done all of this. Finally the guy is grasping at straws and suggests "well you are using mozilla firefox to download and firefox causes problems because it is more secure". My jaw dropped. How can anyone who is an "expert" in computers suggest using IE over firefox. IE is so insecure.... anyway I just had to rant at them telling their customers to use IE. That is just ridiculous. Every good technician will tell there customers/friends/family/ect to use something other than IE.

Anyway in case your curious after a few hours we finally got the problem resolved. It turns out dell's quickset is known to cause problems with wireless connections. Updating that to the latest version fixed it. Of course there was no mention of this in their support docs. Also I would have updated it myself had I known that quickset was somehow even remotely related to the wireless drivers.

Willravel

I've never come across tech support that's even adequate. Frankly, I'm very surprised that the 'expert' on the line was able to figure out to update the quickset. (Quickset is used to identify errors and change settings, right?)

Cynthetiq

While technical support has become a script based nonthinking job, I have to comment on the security stuff.

I encountered issues like that on all the secured wireless networks that I have ever installed including corporate ones. Different manufacturers didn't convert passphrases 100% the same, so usually had to manually type in the hash. Always had problems of disconnecting during transmissions or even after idle time.

I removed WEP/WPA security from the equation problem went away.

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Hanxter

"haro... theese eese babushka calling fo miclosloff... we haff yo inflomashun and am not abley to plocess that colectry... if you cold emair that back we may be abley plocess that in a veek and letuln the inflomashun legalding your inkwiley"

"you flom india?"

"yes... i'm flom india"

"good... wanna fuck?"

"solly... i do not unnerstand the kwestchun"

"you wanna come over tonight and have a juicy steak?"

CLICK!

consider this...

ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages...
toyota has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results:
toyota makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses. fgord folks are still scratching their heads

would be funny if it wasn't so sad

Plaid13

personaly i have never had a problem i couldnt fix myself on my computer after a few good google searches. I dont think i would ever want to deal with tech support.

That being said what kinda router do you use? is it a linksys? grr i hate linksys more trouble then its worth.

bendsley

For the record, I want to say that Cisco TAC (Technical Assistance Center) is top notch. I've had to call them several times with issues on routers (MPLS, EIGRP setup, etc.) and they have always fixed the problem within 2 days max. Many of their engineers are Cisco certified in one or multiple areas. Each group that you call works on specific product sets, so you won't have a switch engineer trying to troubleshoot your Call Manager installation.

Just thought that I would give them an A+ since we are on the subject of tech support.

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Kadath

I do technical support as part of my job (not out of a call center, only on solutions I have personally installed) and I will say this: 9 times out of 10, the easy stuff you've already tried solves the problem. Obviously your case is the 1 out of 10. But as tech support you get to a point where you tell them to do those things first because it saves your time and theirs on average. I agree that most tech support is undertrained, because they generally don't know how to do more than those basic things that fix the majority of problems. Unfortunately, that's the most cost-effective solution for businesses.

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it's quiet in here

Deltona Couple

I must agree with Hanxter. I can't think of any time less than 80% of the time I have EVER called tech support for ANYTHING, that I didn't find myself talking to someone who speaks EXTREMELY broken english. I mean if yo uare going to hire support, atleast find a person who has proper enunciation!

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