oh yeah...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

i had a bad monitor at work today.
it was kinda cool bad, somewhere along the line the LCD panel had apparently started to LEAK. LCD stands for Liquid Crystal Display, and damned if somewhere some of that liquid crystal was oozing out. this resulted in very large black circles where there just weren't any pixels and being fluid they kinda moved around a bit.
long story short, the monitor was really really broken and only 6 months old.

i called dell.

after a very long ring time i got a very cordial sounding customer support person who quite obviously was in india. nothing too bad about that, but the poor people can't do anything if it's not on the script. i explained the problem. the monitor is BROKEN, it's LEAKING, it is definately DEAD, need a warranty replacement. this is after answering, desktop or laptop display? (desktop, it's a freakin monitor), and a host of other exceedingly annoying and frustrating questions not to mention unrelated to the issue. the rep wanted the express service code of the desktop. ... grrr... i tell her it's a MONITOR, we buy them in 50 monitor PALLETS. yes, but do you have an express service code? i take the phone away and yell out "ANYONE HAVE A DELL CLOSE BY?" "here's one!" "what's the damn express service tag?" they call it out, i repeat it. couple more stupid questions.
finally when she askes "is your desktop using Vista or Windows XP?" i start to really lose it.
"it's a MONITOR!!! it's BROKEN!! it's LEAKING CRYSTALS!!! there are large portions of the monitor that are PIXELLESS!! oh what the hell, let's say it's running xp!!"
"okay sir, and is this a dell monitor?"
O_o ... "NO! this is a SONY monitor, that's why i'm calling YOU!!!!"
... "um... okay sir... i'll transfer you to hardware support..."

yeah... you do that...

Valis
... YES... today i worked the 6th day of an 9 day straight work period and every day so far has been 10 hours or more long.
i've thought about keeping myself composed as much as possible, but i realized if i do that they might think i'm handling this well.

Comments

[fuego.livejournal.com]

i've thought about keeping myself composed as much as possible, but i realized if i do that they might think i'm handling this well.

be sure to keep an eye on that.

[fuego.livejournal.com]

"okay sir, and is this a dell monitor?"

My guess is that they get a lot of people who call up with dell towers and third party monitors.

I used to do tech support for Apple and you wouldn't believe how many people would call us because they had problems with a Dell, Sony, whatever third party monitor, and I don't mean not working with the Apple computer, I mean just plain not working, dead, blinking, on fire, whatever.

Additionally, a lot of people still refer to laptop screens as monitors.

Honestly, I understand the frustration, but I might very well have asked these same questions myself because at least five or six times a day, people gave me more cause than I'd like to ask those questions. I usually tried to explain to the intelligent ones just that- "I'm sorry to have to ask you such silly questions but unfortunately, this happens all the time and the second I don't ask is the second I have a guy trying to get help from me on his Sony laptop."

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

yes, this is all true, and i definately know where you're coming from there. we're SUPPOSED to have "gold level" support, meaning that we have a special lil number to call, 3 year replacement type warranty's and the rep's dont second guess us.

i'm thinking the main call center was backed up, i got xferred to india, and being that i've worked 60 hours in the last 6 days, my patience is a bit shorter than it usually is...

[duality.livejournal.com]

yeah since their gold level is like in idaho or montana or something, i forget where.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Texas.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

it's continental US wherever ;)

[duality.livejournal.com]

no, wasn't Texas when i'd call at my old job. it was upper West.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Hunh. I always got ones in Austin.

AND Idaho.

[curmudgn]

Specifically, Round Rock and Twin Falls.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

ultimately i did get a nice guy who did get the sense that i wasn't your average noob.

[curmudgn]

Yeah, Gold techs generally aren't flaming idiots when it comes to hardware, and are allowed a fair amount of leeway so long as you don't annoy 'em. You do, and you might get someone who's been around tech support about half as long as Michael has run the company, knows the rules upside down and backwards, and will "work to rule" just 'cos you annoyed him.

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

Yes, sir. Are you a computer user?


I just got ten new hire tickets hit my ticketing system tonight for Indian folk. The Apocalypse is at hand.

You absolutely MUST send this post to Dell. Seriously.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

uh oh...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

we're SUPPOSED to have "gold level" support, meaning that we have a special lil number to call, 3 year replacement type warranty's and the rep's dont second guess us.

i'm thinking the main call center was backed up, i got xferred to india, and being that i've worked 60 hours in the last 6 days, my patience is a bit shorter than it usually is...

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

The fact that you haven't sold everything you own to hire a hit squad to go find that "person" and eviscerate him/her shows your patience is just FINE.

[moopet.livejournal.com]

I'm very surprised they covered that by warranty unless it was like that on delivery - smashed screens are always classed as used damage.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

typically no, and i wouldn't have called it in, but the monitor shows no sign of being dropped, or any sign that the screen was struck. also, i'm discovering that we received a batch of monitors with BAD CABLES if you can believe that crap.

we're SUPPOSED to have "gold level" support, meaning that we have a special lil number to call, 3 year replacement type warranty's and the rep's dont second guess us.

i'm thinking the main call center was backed up, i got xferred to india, and being that i've worked 60 hours in the last 6 days, my patience is a bit shorter than it usually is...

[vortex.livejournal.com]

I remember the days when Dell had Excellent Tech/Customer Support:

Dell: "Hi! This is Dell Tech Support, how can we help you?"
Us: "Hi, this is X company and I have a Broken Monitor."
Dell: "Ok sir, wait one moment while I write up a ticket to have your new monitor shipped out to you. Please use the Express shipping form and the box being shipped to return the broken Monitor."


Don't they still have the "Special" number for companies that have large Dell inventories?...

[heinousbitca.livejournal.com]

That sounds like Lenovo these days.

I called in because nobody would touch our T61 with drop damage as a PAID repair.

I requested a PAID repair.

Customer support dude does ask my permission to be dropped on hold, i wait about 90 seconds, and he comes back and mentions casually that as we have 11 deployed lenovo units, and we'd never had a drop issue before nor more than a couple of repairs that he'd be happy to see to it that it would be fixed UNDER WARRANTY.

me: "You do realize this is drop damage and not covered by the warranty?"
rep: "Yes, well, as a one-time courtesy...(blah blah which basically amounts to 'we don't care that your coder dropped it we're fixing it shut up, heinousbitca.)

We chat about the weather a bit, tag is generated, and i get off the phone and tell everyone within earshot how awesome this guy is.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

awesome!

[brotherflounder]

Even the gold support is crap now. They had my dad's office clear out a printer's network settings to fix an ink smearing problem. *headdesk*

[xforge.livejournal.com]

That's how they treat us, at least with the 320382869 printers we have of theirs. The cheap b/w non-networked lasers, if one screws up, they don't even ask - they replace it. Pretty cool.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

they have a problem with optiplex gx520 power supply fans fuxoring up. we call in about 4 a week. at least with that they dont give us any lip

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Probably because it is a known issue and they don't want to make waves.

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Oh gods I hate those things. We had about a hundred and fifty of those optiplexes on the warehouse floor at my last job, and we usually had to replace two a day. Dell'd given up and just mailed us a case of the suckers.

[curmudgn]

I'd suspect that, if you got the printers I think you do, you have what they call an "advance exchange" contract--which says "if anything on it breaks, exchange it and we'll send it back to the OEM for warranty claim." It's miles cheaper than sending out service techs to work on the entry-level printers.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

we're SUPPOSED to have "gold level" support, meaning that we have a special lil number to call, 3 year replacement type warranty's and the rep's dont second guess us.

i'm thinking the main call center was backed up, i got xferred to india, and being that i've worked 60 hours in the last 6 days, my patience is a bit shorter than it usually is...

[canray.livejournal.com]

"Is the only English you understand learned from the SCRIPT YOU READ?" I have said more than once.

You can't Tech Support from a Script. You require your wits and instincts.

More than once I had a feeling about a call, and jumped right to the issue. One of those was monitored. Luckily, I had a great Supervisor who put it up as a "Perfect Call" despite breaking the script.

Still trying to figure out how I did it.

[cjkline83.livejournal.com]

If it makes you feel any better, I had a similar experience with Dell this morning also on an out-of-warranty repair request for an Inspiron Laptop. After about 20 minutes of being interviewed by the tech, she transfers me to the out of warranty department; and upon selecting "out-of-warranty" am told that the department is closed and to try back on their NEXT business day.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

omg... stuff like that makes me want to climb a clock tower...

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Back in the CRT days, the vertical magnets on one of my monitors went, so the screen coalesces into a white horizontal line. I popped the top and couldn't find anything obvious (blown cap, etc.) so it was probably in an IC. I didn't mind so much, because it gave me an excuse to order my first LCD... Problem is, I needed a monitor. Some carefully placed hard drive magnets later, and I had manually restored the magnetic field.. I still don't quite follow exactly HOW this worked, but somehow it did.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

that's awesome!

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Yeah.. I know that magnets are used to align the electron beam, but I figured that it would need more than just a static magnetic field..

[codevixen.livejournal.com]

Ha! My coworker had an equally fun time calling them about a monitor that was shipped with a scratch in the screen. "No, we don't need to do any troubleshooting - there's nothing to troubleshoot. We just need a new monitor. No, see - no! No troubleshooting! There's a SCRATCH! On the SCREEN! You know what? Do you have an LCD monitor in front of you? Okay, take your hand and SCRATCH DOWN THE FRONT OF IT. That's what we have. Yeah, 'ohhhh'."

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

LOL

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Beatings. The only answer is beatings - usually of my head upon the desk. (Seriously - I've had to call Dell support so many times that my name has evidently been flagged in their system; if I tell them hardware is borked, they just say okay and ask for my shipping address. It's nice.)

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

hehehehe, the bitchy wheel gets the fast shipping!

[ravenofdreams.livejournal.com]

Whatever works, you know.

[compwizrd.livejournal.com]

The power button on my 24" 2407FP fell in, and I have to go through the online chat someday(as I can't use the phone support, as I'm deaf)

I'm praying they don't ask me those sort of questions.

I dread talkign to them enough that I've been using a P.O.S. NEC Multisync 1720M for the last couple months...

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

Sadly chat support for most companies sucks...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

ew, i've run into that same scenario twice before and both times it was a university where all the machines were ordered in batches of 30 or more so everything was on palettes. i think we wound up having to do the same and just pick a random service tag, but i don't think they asked what OS was running. However, i DID have a broken hard drive incident where I got the run around from a Dell tech and wound up saying "it's physically dead, making the usual clicking sound of a dead hard drive, here listen" and shoved the phone near the drive for a few seconds because they kept wanting me to format the drive and run diagnostics on it even though i had already done diagnostics and found bad sectors. -_-

i usually use the chat support. i've had less pain and suffering with it in general. plus, i don't have to deal with the thick accents.

[agentz.livejournal.com]

Dell are offering us a customised version of their DCSE training with some minor bells and whistles, part of which then enables us to book warranty replacement parts directly online without having to talk to Dell support. The criterion I've seen so far are very very strict and we have to achieve a very high accuracy in our diagnosis and return of faulty modules. I personally can't wait as I could do with spending far less time on the phone with Dell, my schedule is hectic enough as it is, but some of my colleagues aren't looking forward to it, mainly because there is every chance that they're going to be shown up as the incompetent spanners they are.

Having said that, I tend to find that most of the people I speak to in Glasgow (being UK based, and being a Scotsman myself) have a sense of humour and are quite happy to have a bit of a bleather while building the case, and trust me (sad as it seems) this can actually brighten up an otherwise dismal day filed with stupid users (and our bosses forbid the use of the clue-bat).

[jecook]

We are a Dell Warranty Parts Direct house. the tests are 'open book' (literally- you have the test in one window, and the reference library in another window)

It's worth it.

I had to call in a brand new, DOA touch panel monitor last week. (The panel got stuck in a power up loop, if you can imagine that.) Oddly enough, the parts direct dude I called in and talked to stated that he couldn't help me, and bounced me to the queue for monitor support. Fortunately, I was able to 'convince' the monkey to set up and advance exchange.

Unfortunately, I have to take the %^$&^# tests again, because my cert expires tomorrow. I'm going to have to hav words with the boss about it too, he's known about it for the better part of a month.

[jecook]

Oh, one other amusing thing- We have some kiosk that that's happened to, but the department that owns them refuses to buy new ones, because they are industrial panels with touch screens build into them and run ~$1200 each. Much amusement was had by me when I found that nugget out. (I think the company nets that much in under 15 minutes...)