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techrecoverySo I thought that since I no longer answer end user calls my tech support job would improve exponentially. It has not however. To give an idea of what I do I am basically the third line of support. I work for one of the largest pc manufacturers in the world. To get to me, a commercial customer has to call in for support, then the call screeners answer that call, from there if neccessary they send out a field tech. If the field tech gets out there and doesn't know how to fix the problem, then they call us.
So yesterday I get a call from a field tech. First this tech is babbling and ranting at the speed of light as though this is a priority account. It isn't, this company probably pays less for support a year than I do for phone service. Anyway, he is absolutely panicked because he says the machine won't display video. He ordered a new lcd (this is an all-in-one unit :( ) and a new inverter card. Well he put the inverter card in and there was no effect (yeah, big surprise..) and then tried to put the LCD in but it didn't fit right. He had ordered a touch-screen LCD because the customer had told him they had touch screens. Well they didn't. I know this because this model has never ever ever shipped with a touch screen. It's not designed to have a touch screen, and there are missing connections on the system board that would have to be there for a touch screen to work on it. Well, he tried to install the touch screen and when it doesn't work calls me panicked.
So, I get the call and all he is saying is "I need the part number for the correct lcd". Now, I don't work in part lookup and if I send out uneeded parts it is my ass in trouble. So I start doing problem determination with him...turns out when he turns the machine on the lcd displays "no signal.". Now...let's think about this logically, why would a bad LCD be able to display no signal...? oh..that's right, it wouldn't. when LCD's go they generally do one of three things, none of which are display no signal. So, we start trying to determine the actual problem.
Pretty soon from his description it sounds like the box isn't posting. So I tell him to take it down to bare bones. Processor, Power Supply, and System Board. That is it, nothing else connected. No memory, no drives, no PCI cards, no anything. I have to explain this to him at LEAST 4 times. He won't shutup long enough for me to tell him what to do and to make matters worse the moron has the same vocal cords as Jar-Jar Binks. So, we finally strip it down to bare bones, and oh look, no post, no 1-3-1 (no memory found) beep code. Bad system board. mayyyybe bad processor but not too likely.
Now because this tech has gone on site about 10 times and it costs the company money each time I have to follow procedure and do a conference call with him and the group above me. Now the group above me is pretty much right below the product engineers. Actually they are usually on the same floor. What this means is they are very rarely wrong and you don't argue with them. Ok, fine.
I call the group above me, and we discuss it, and come to the conclusion, yep, bad system board. So now I transfer this goomba of a field tech in. The next two hours are spent between this damn field tech who won't listen and the guy above me. The field tech swears up and down that this machine had a touch screen. No..no it didn't. There is only one model of this machine made with a touch screen, and this isn't it. Unfortunately the field tech won't believe us, and it takes two hours of arguing with this guy till he agrees to send the bloody touchscreen back and order a system board.
Now I know this doesn't sound as frustrating as it truly was, but there are two things to consider, 1) this should have been a 15 minute call, not a 2 hour one. 2) THE DAMN FIELD TECH MAKES MORE MONEY THAN ME!!
Bah. I love working support :/
So yesterday I get a call from a field tech. First this tech is babbling and ranting at the speed of light as though this is a priority account. It isn't, this company probably pays less for support a year than I do for phone service. Anyway, he is absolutely panicked because he says the machine won't display video. He ordered a new lcd (this is an all-in-one unit :( ) and a new inverter card. Well he put the inverter card in and there was no effect (yeah, big surprise..) and then tried to put the LCD in but it didn't fit right. He had ordered a touch-screen LCD because the customer had told him they had touch screens. Well they didn't. I know this because this model has never ever ever shipped with a touch screen. It's not designed to have a touch screen, and there are missing connections on the system board that would have to be there for a touch screen to work on it. Well, he tried to install the touch screen and when it doesn't work calls me panicked.
So, I get the call and all he is saying is "I need the part number for the correct lcd". Now, I don't work in part lookup and if I send out uneeded parts it is my ass in trouble. So I start doing problem determination with him...turns out when he turns the machine on the lcd displays "no signal.". Now...let's think about this logically, why would a bad LCD be able to display no signal...? oh..that's right, it wouldn't. when LCD's go they generally do one of three things, none of which are display no signal. So, we start trying to determine the actual problem.
Pretty soon from his description it sounds like the box isn't posting. So I tell him to take it down to bare bones. Processor, Power Supply, and System Board. That is it, nothing else connected. No memory, no drives, no PCI cards, no anything. I have to explain this to him at LEAST 4 times. He won't shutup long enough for me to tell him what to do and to make matters worse the moron has the same vocal cords as Jar-Jar Binks. So, we finally strip it down to bare bones, and oh look, no post, no 1-3-1 (no memory found) beep code. Bad system board. mayyyybe bad processor but not too likely.
Now because this tech has gone on site about 10 times and it costs the company money each time I have to follow procedure and do a conference call with him and the group above me. Now the group above me is pretty much right below the product engineers. Actually they are usually on the same floor. What this means is they are very rarely wrong and you don't argue with them. Ok, fine.
I call the group above me, and we discuss it, and come to the conclusion, yep, bad system board. So now I transfer this goomba of a field tech in. The next two hours are spent between this damn field tech who won't listen and the guy above me. The field tech swears up and down that this machine had a touch screen. No..no it didn't. There is only one model of this machine made with a touch screen, and this isn't it. Unfortunately the field tech won't believe us, and it takes two hours of arguing with this guy till he agrees to send the bloody touchscreen back and order a system board.
Now I know this doesn't sound as frustrating as it truly was, but there are two things to consider, 1) this should have been a 15 minute call, not a 2 hour one. 2) THE DAMN FIELD TECH MAKES MORE MONEY THAN ME!!
Bah. I love working support :/
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no subject
Date: 2002-11-09 12:38 pm (UTC)I work with a guy who earns something like £9k more than I do, and he is supposedly more senior (well in terms of experience anyway) than the rest of our team.
I'm office based now doing server admin and policy development, and this guy phones from the field at least once a day to ask how to do the simplest of tasks.
Like how to assign security permissions on a folder on a NAS device. Or he phones to find out how to configure the DHCP service on an Apple Airport base station, which he's seen demoed several times. Or he calls to ask how to configure Outlook to access one of our mail servers.
The other thing is that he doesn't actually know how to fault find things - just yesterday he came to me to book out a replacement slot loading CD rom drive for an iMac. I asked him if he'd checked that there wasn't any 'foreign matter' inside the drive? At first he tried to say that he had, so I took the suspect unit from him and gave it a small shake. And guess what? It rattled. So I asked him to go take the top cover off the drive (four small cross head screws) and that would afford him a better view. 10 minutes later he's back after having found a plastic penny inside the drive (it was a primary school machine) and telling me that the drive is now OK.
Well duh.
no subject
Date: 2002-11-11 06:06 am (UTC)The second account I've been dumped into supporting has to deal with field techs from an outsource company, and I am honestly mystified as to where they find these people. I've seen brighter minds in my leftovers in the back of the fridge..
no subject
Date: 2002-11-11 04:16 pm (UTC)My company uses both in-house and outsourced techs. In general, the outsourced ones tend to be far far worse (don't you have to know what a hard-drive is anymore to be A+?), but amazingly the genius I talked about above was in-house.