Support Hate.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

I knew it. I knew I knew it. I told them it wouldn't work and they still did it ... I knew it.



We have a remote (~300 miles) warehouse in the middle of boonieland that needs to be able to connect to our ERP with only DSL service. Okay, it's "business class service" but that only means the salesman puts a suit on before screwing with you. So, a couple of static IP's and a VPN later we're cruising along right up until the Monday after xmas. (Actually it was Christmas day when I got the status:disconnected alert in my inbox stocking.) We have no IT staff there, just a trained monkey General Manager (GM) who calls the provider to see if there are any outages at the moment. They try to remote into their equipment only to discover it's offline. You'd have thought the amber flashing light on the modem would have been a clue, but after going through the tech support checklist, they determine that the hardware has failed. They offer to overnight a replacement and walk him through the config -- no, send the new equipment and *I'll* walk him through it. Just in case, please add these notes to the case ... the modem must be set to bridge mode, WiFi and DHCP must be disabled and the subnet is *not* the default and must be changed to xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

It doesn't show the next day ... promise it the next. It doesn't show so instead of tracking it they email a tracking number to the remote location. HELLO???? They have no f*cking connectivity, how the hell are they supposed to get this email? I have to get the tracking number from his inbox and discover they have delivered it to the wrong address. Now this telecom that shall remain nameless (starts with a "V" and rhymes with "Jerizon") sends replacement hardware to the correct address with instructions in the box to call their techsupport for assistance. I told the GM to call me and the case notes should have indicated that as well, but y'know morons have to be who they are. They waste all morning configuring the thing to death only to fail and came to the conclusion that the Cisco router must have gone bad, too. GM calls me to "break the bad news."

With a workstation plugged directly into the modem, which did connect BTW, I logged in to find it was set to "routed bridge mode" with WiFi and DHCP enabled and the wrong subnet. Config'ed in 30 seconds, confirmed it was cabled correctly to the router, rebooted and the VPN was back up almost immediately.

I feel for telecom techsupport, having to deal with grandma's and know-it-alls, but could you at least read your own case notes once in a while?

Comments

[mouser.livejournal.com]

C'mon! Reading case notes only slows the process down!

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

a PROCESS!! I knew I was forgetting something.

[lunatic59.livejournal.com]

But wasn't OJ innocent?

[kuang.livejournal.com]

'.. General Manager (GM) who calls the provider to see if there are any outages at the moment'

Whaaa?

It's a trick! The management team has been infiltrated by sentient life, expect black helicopters soon.

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Other than the book, you mean?

[trixtah.livejournal.com]

But that was "hypothetical"...!

[pixilated-serra.livejournal.com]

"business class service only means the salesman puts a suit on before screwing with you"

LULZ