techrecovery | Not sure who's worse this time.

A call center in Florida, amongst others, is in competition for the business of handling their ~~lusers~~ customer care needs in way of technical support. In a move to bid for our client's favor, they made it known to the client and passed on to all of the other competitors that they would not be outdone in terms of customer satisfaction. We all laughed at this, being that they have consistently screwed up system after system with improper support and the "when in doubt, sell them something" philosophy (which usually does nothing to fix the problem). Were I Gawd, I Would Smack These People With Dimensional Lumber.

But I'm not, so we have stories like this to pass on.

Tonight I dealt with a lady who had been pretty well burned by Florida. At least eight contacts under the same ticket and numerous callback requests, less callback attempts than requests, every last one handled by that call center. She wanted to get a CD burner for her system. Cool, we sell those. She got it and for some reason it wouldn't work. So how do we fix that? Of course, you need more RAM :). Sold her a 256MB RIMM module. She gets it, puts it in, no post. Gee, whodathunk that rimjobs have to be installed in pairs :). Gullible as all hell, she buys another one cause she is pretty well told that she has to have the memory to run her CD burner properly. Got it, installed it, works. CD burner is still hosed. So how do we fix that?

Of course, we sell her an upgrade to Windows XP Home Edition. One small catch - she was running Win2k Pro. Upgrade's not gonna work. Sure enough, it didn't. She calls back to us in New York for our first contact with the lady. To top this off, she's had a spyware problem that software alone didn't fix (we sell a bundle with Spy Sweeper, typically good software but it's not perfect). Mind you, all of this started back in February, with the purchase of XP in the beginning of March. She's well out of return period for all of these items, and the XP return would be a real bitch to push through but might have gone because of how she got jacked with by Florida. Nope, not gonna happen this time. Referred to Executive Appeals to plead her case. Spyware - well, we don't support that. Go talk to Webroot.

Oh, and the CD burner? Yeah, it was purchased as an add-on. Warranty support doesn't support that, and never should have in the first place. Go talk to the manufacturer or the software vendor (Nero, in this case).

So who is the bigger jackass? The company, for having put her through this, or the customer, for having continued to shell out her cash after being screwed time and time again?