I'm really tired of people...

[gaymafiakingpin.livejournal.com]

I'm so tired of taking calls from idiots. Err... id10ts. I work for an ISP and all day long I have to take calls from jackasses who lost their Internet connection and think it's our fault.

• I'm tired of telling people to unhook their damn routers, which nine times out of ten are the cause of their problem.
  
• I'm tired of getting nearly done with reading off a URL to a customer or getting half way through a DOS command before the customer asks me what the first letter was. Me: "w-i-n-i-p-c..." Them: "Wait, that was w-i-what????" *sigh*
  
• Speaking of "*sigh*"... I hate the sighers. After you ask them any question, before they can answer there is the obligatory *sigh*. I know asking you to check your modem lights is a toughy but do it anyway and stop grumbling about it!
  
• I'm tired of people who call us bitching that they can't get online and having to ask the customer to take their modem out of standby mode.
  
• I'm tired of people who don't know how to explain their problem. "I keep trying to check my email and it keeps tellin' me it cain't do it." "Can you go to any web sites?" "Oh yeah, that's another thing... But can you fix my email?"
  
• I'm tired of people bitching to me about the hold time. There isn't shit that I can do about the hold time. And it wouldn't do us any good to hire more reps when it's just this busy for a few days. Do these people realize that half the reason they are sitting on hold for so long is because the person that we are speaking to, just before them, had to spend ten minutes bitching about the hold time too?
  
• When we tell you the problem is with your computer, it's with your computer. If we are having an outage we will fucking tell you we are having an outage. Why? Because it gets you off the phone sooner and we don't have to troubleshoot your P.O.S. computer if there's an outage.
  
• Yes, you have to be home and in front of your computer in order for us to tell you why you can't get online!

Okay, I think I'm done griping for the time being. Let me know if I missed anything.

Comments

[folkypunk.livejournal.com]

i do that too.

i always loved the modem-on-standby calls though. short handle times, yay! :)

now... i am in ecare. primarily chat support with some email. it's great because all of the things i thought of the customers i can now say under my breath and they can't hear me ;)

added you to the friendslist.

[gaymafiakingpin.livejournal.com]

Awww... I've been added... I added ya back!

I wish I could be doing email or chat support. Then I wouldn' have to listen to customers all day. Plus, it's easier to interrupt a customer in chat. They can't talk over you as much. Heh!

[folkypunk.livejournal.com]

there are pros and cons...

voice:
pro - one customer at a time
con - really quite busy all of the time
con - no mumbling about idiocy
con - literally tied to your desk
con - managers monitor the phone folks constantly for call times, after call, etc.

ecare [i also work overnight, which likely plays a part in some of these]:
pro - can listen to music
pro - can comment out loud
pro - can wander away from your station when the customer is a slow typer without being strangled by the phone cord
pro - related to above: not having a phone cord also makes it a lot safer to spin in ones' chair when bored
pro/con - in slow times there is up to an hour between chats/you have more freedom to fill said time with things like commenting in livejournal, playing game boy, or learning a new language
con - when it is busy you are expected to take two at once
con - with regards to overnight shifts: no social life, as i am sitting here on friday night/sat morning
pro - with regards to the above: combine no chance to spend money with the shift premium = more $
pro - techs on ecare know what the hell they are doing.

so yes.
i rarely see these things called 'people' or that glowing thing i have heard rumours of... the sun? but it is a lot better than what i have lived with over the past long while.

[methedras.livejournal.com]

Interesting concept. Chatting with a customer to get their shit fixed.

Do they have major dramas, or what?

[twitchfetish.livejournal.com]

how about this one: "no, the power switch on the COMPUTER, not the MONITOR"

*suffers an aneurysm*

bloody PEBKACs...

T

[gaymafiakingpin.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah, love that! You ask them to reboot and five seconds later they say, "Okay, it's back on."

how about..

[zig-mover.livejournal.com]

How about..

I'm tired of people calling and starting out with "Hi, I can't dial in to the Internet and it says I have a bad password, I know it's not a billing issue because there's nothing wrong with the credit card, so my account couldn't be suspended or anything for missed payment because I'm sure I paid my bill.."

Yeah, you know what his problem is.. Account Status 4/Suspended

or..

Don't tell me that you're sure there's no problems with your internal wiring. Your noise margins are like 23423409823098/209384029834. And remember that experiment we did where you plugged your router into the NID and got an awesome connection? And your noise margins dropped to 2/3? Yeah. Either get someone to come fix it, or keep the router outside and run a cord through your wind-- No, we won't send someone to fix your internal wiring for you. NO. Ma'am. Listen to me. Please stop yelli- Look, if you can't talk civily then I am hangin--NO I DO NOT WANT TO TALK TO YOUR HUSBAND

Sorry. Long day yesterday :)

Other than that, I think you have a complete list there!

Re: how about..

[gaymafiakingpin.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that the majority of our callers are people who are delinquent with their payments. It could just be that most of our customers are delinquent, but since it's more amusing to think it's just the Delinquents calling in, I'll go with that theory.

What's really entertaining is how irritated these delinquent customers are when we shut them off after they haven't paid us in 90 days. They expect us to reconnect them right that minute. When we tell them they'll have to wait a few days for the reconnect, whooo boy! If they would have made their friggin' payment in the first place they wouldn't have had thise problem. And if they think we're going to bend over backwards to reconnect them quickly after waiting three months for payment, well, their just stupid.

And oh, yes, the people with crappy phone lines. Thank God I don't do dial-up support any more. I used to ask the customers, "Do you hear that static on the phone line?" "Yes..." "Well, that's what's keeping you from getting online." And yet they would still get pissed off and blame us. And their phone company doesn't care if they can get online. Their responsibility is to make sure the customer's voice can be heard when they make a call. They don't give a shit if you can't get a modem handshake.

[punkygoat.livejournal.com]

Oh the router people. God bless 'em. And by 'bless', I mean 'strike em dead'

Normally, it's actually not even their router, and even the people who claim to be savvy have a hard time comprehending that I need the router out of their so I can get an error message.

Modem stand-by? What crazy kind of voodoo is that? Anything related to having built-in PPPoE? SBC still hasn't gotten up to that, but they HAVE just added more software that will fuck up...that's a plus.

[krzy.livejournal.com]

ugh i'm so glad I stopped working the sbc account before they merged with yahoo!

[gaymafiakingpin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we need the router out so that we can ping their computer and do all of our testing. People just don't get it. And they lie about having the damn thing too.

And the crazy voodoo "Standby" is a pointless option on certain cable modems. I don't know why someone would want to put their modem in standby mode. The button on the damn things is so prominent that it can easily be bumped too.

Luckily I just deal with Cable Internet so I don't need to worry about PPPoE. And at my previous job I managed to avoid ever having to take any DSL calls. Heh! Just from info that I've gathered from other people, DSL is a bitch to tech!

[tjernobyl.livejournal.com]

Recently moved from cable to DSL. Advantage is that one can remove/recreate connection which fixes stuff a lot... Finding I'm not having to deal with as many outages or wierd problems, but I'm not sure how much of that is just from having a good plant and homogenous modem-base...