This just needed to be shared

[elobscuro.livejournal.com]

First: Who appointed onsite techs as the customers' lawyers?

Second: Especially with incredibly stupid customers?

Okay, some explaination: Tech calls in, thells me that he's not onsite anymroe because he just couldn't stand the environment. What enviornment would that be? OH, they have their system set up in a GREENHOUSE, next to the pile o' peat moss. Dry peat moss. When the tech opens a CD tray? dust cascades forth from within the system. He's been out there replacing a hard drive. groovy, groovy. Then he tries to boot to the Windows CD to start the customer on reinstallation. Yes, using the CD drive that was just full of peat moss. He tries the other drive after rearranging the IDEs. Same sotry. He tries another bootable CD. He tries swaping the controllers on the motherboard. Everything stays in BIOS all the time, it's jsut that the optical drives are FULL OF PEAT MOSS. SO could I kindly replace both drives, the Windows disk, and the driver disk? Errrr....

After consulting my L2, and being reassurred that no, we can't do this, the warranty does not cover acts of bog, I tell the tech this. He tells me to call the custoemr and inform them of this. I tell him no. He starts arguing, insisting that he's not the one "refusing the warranty, and I thought with Gold you'd replace ANYTHING, no limits". After much hemming, hawing, holding, and "going to bat", I still come back and tell him, no, you're gonna have to bite the bullet and tell these people. I'm not allowed to initiate contact with customers, since I'm on the service provider queue.

Now, I'm used to acting as an advocate for customers, if they seem to need it, if policy seems awfully arbitrary, or if they tell me they're dying of cancer right this minute (had that call). But this guy was just trying to get me to tell teh custoemr soemthing that would upset them, so he didn't have to. Am I out of line for thinking thats...well, asshattery?

Comments

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

What a dweeb.

[wesmills.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I wouldn't call him an asshat. He's onsite with the customer, and he's been there for $TIME_PERIOD with them breathing down his neck, probably demanding the world. He's been saying "no" or "we'll see" in the most politically correct manner possible, and, judging by the environment, he's probably at the end of his rope.

Your policy prohibits you from talking to the customer, and it IS the onsite tech's job, 100% true. However, I can understand why he might want a bit of a break. If he puts you on with the customer and you say "look, mr. customer, you're SOL and our tech is going to his next assignment," he can shrug and leave without possibly getting yelled at. You hang up the phone and go to the next call, he closes the door and goes to the next visit.

As a phone tech myself, I've gotten on with customers who had a person onsite, but our policy doesn't prohibit it, so I'm a little more free to do so. Granted, I wouldn't dare for an onsite guy who'd shafted me before.... :)

[jecook]

Charming.

reminds me of all the "gross" moments I had at one old job wher I was the on site tech.

One of the places used these ancient 486s and a cheesy dos/novell lan application for thier laundry application. These machines were in the "dirty sort" area. They would get in dirty laundry from various and sundry places, it's roll down a conveyer belt and get sorted for the big washing machines.

To say that it was gross is an understatement. I damn near puked once in that area. Almost as gross as the PC I brought in that was full of rodent droppings.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

"acts of bog"

comedy genius. Thanks for the laugh, I needed it.

[bekscilla.livejournal.com]

I could understand that, definitely... but the guy already left the site (from what I can read into the post), so he's left and wants them to call up the customer and tell them something he should have said before he left.

[elobscuro.livejournal.com]

technically, the policy doesn't prohibit me from talking to the customer when the tech is onsite, the tech jsut hands me off. What I can't do is call the customer up while the tech is nowhere to be found and more or less directly antagonize the custoemr with no hope ofr a resolution, as I can't even transfer an outbound call to another department.