Arg! Sucky customer service (and you thought it was just Nokia)

[Texrat]

ASUS packed the wrong i/o shield in a motherboard I bought (M2A-VM HDMI). First I tried searching for it (ebay, et al) and couldn't find the right one. I emailed ASUS support and they gave me a phone number to call. I just did.

Naturally, I get one of those pissy you-know-whats who doesn't want to listen and talks over the customer (!!!). I explained the wrong part was packed and I just needed a replacement. She starts off on some neverending, nasal spiel about how (brace yourselves) ASUS is not responsible for packing the wrong part.

Yes, I was just as stunned as you are, dear reader.

She insisted that the person who sold me the motherboard (new and unopened, via ebay) was responsible for the wrong part being packed. This person needed to procure the correct i/o shield and get it to me.

...

She insisted that since the manual states that ASUS is not responsible for making the mistake, that covers it. I informed her that, well, no, it actually doesn't. I can put anything I want in a manual but that doesn't automatically make it a) legally binding or b) proper. I asked her how, just philosophically, ASUS personnel could pack the wrong part and then the company claim it had no responsibility there. That stumped her, but she returned right back to her annoying canned spiel.

In the end I finally got another word in edgewise to inform her I was willing to pay for the part. She sent me to a "secret" store (why this isn't linked on their site I have NO idea) and I picked up what I needed for $5 USD plus shipping.

That's all I wanted.

So, dear readers who have run aground in Nokia's sometimes frustrating support channels, I sympathize. It's a shame so many support personnel have to be such... you-know-whats.

[sjgadsby]

She insisted that since the manual states that ASUS is not responsible for making the mistake, that covers it.

Years ago, I had an IBM computer with an on-motherboard video support. According to the documentation, this video hardware would automatically disable itself when a video card was installed in an expansion slot. This only half worked, and often resulted in Windows 95--which shipped with the computer--trying to use the half-disabled, built-in video hardware, generating a protection fault, and trashing the registry.

I called IBM technical support in an attempt to find out if any of the jumpers on the motherboard really disabled the on-board video hardware, and the support rep's response was, "We're IBM, Microsoft and the expansion card manufacturers need to make their products work with us."

[Texrat]

Oh man, do I know the circular pass-the-buck tactic! We all know Microsoft would be just as arrogant in their reply.

I had the exact same thing with Compaq (:o) once. I wanted to add a Matrox graphics card but their onboard video refused to give up. I went around and around with Compaq but their only line was "we don't support the addition of other video cards." I finally realized their config.sys had a systems check for all the proprietary crap, and commenting a single line out fixed it.

Of course, I posted my find prominently on Compuserve. :D And now I build all my PCs.

So... did you fix your issue with IBM?

[sjgadsby]

So... did you fix your issue with IBM?

Sure. I went back to building my own desktops after that machine.

In the meantime, Windows 98 brought multiple monitor support to Windows, which helped. 98 was happier with seeing two video cards in the computer, and just reported there was some problem it didn't understand with the on-board stuff. Every so often Windows 98 would decide to have a go at using the non-functional adapter as the primary display, and I'd have to boot into safe mode to clear that up, but that was the worst of it.

(Well, the worst of it was the Mwave (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Mwave) Dolphin card, but I won't go into that. This is a family site, Karel notwithstanding.)

[Texrat]

This is a family site, Karel notwithstanding.

Careful! I already woke the beast once today! :p

[Texrat]

Just to be fair, I wanted to bump this thread with TWO (edit: make that THREE) recent examples of GREAT customer service.

I bought Apevia X-Qpack2 cases to build my sons' new PCs. Very impressed with them. But-- I could not get headphones to work with the front jacks. I emailed Apevia and a friendly tech got back with me quickly to explain it was likely a sound configuration issue between their case and Asus' motherboard. After further discussion and testing it became obvious the true fault lie with Asus... probably in their BIOS. The tech then went out of his way to create and send me diagrams illustrating how to modify their cables to work-- WOW! delightful service! Also, one case had a bad temperature module, which he acknowledged was a known defect, and he sent me a good one right away without waiting for the other to be returned... no charge!

Next comes guitarcenter.com. I ordered Dave Abbruzzese signature drumsticks for my oldest son. It's really neat because it turns out that Dave lives in our town now and his wife teaches my son World geography. So I figured my kid could get a real autograph on these sticks. But the sticks that arrived were generic-- someone had screwed up! They were even in the correct packaging sleeve! maybe an employee pulled a switch, or there was an honest mistake, or a customer returned them swapped... who knows. But I called Guitar center, got a human on the phone quickly who apologized and promised to handle it. She immediately emailed me a paid return UPS label. I sent it back and got an email today that they were backordered and would get to me soon.

Screwups happen. Typically about 3% to maybe 5% of the time. So I expect to encounter a few. What's refreshing is when they are handled PROPERLY. Asus didn't do that in the original example here. I still like their products, but another situation like that and I will begin considering the competition for my next build.

Apevia and Guitar Center, however, have earned a highly satisfied customer who gladly shares these experiences with you. Same goes for Lexarmedia, who once recovered critical data off a failed thumb drive free of charge (out of warranty!!!) and also sent me a new one with twice the capacity! IMO these companies easily deserve your consideration.

[idboehman]

Wow, that truly is customer support!

The thing I don't get it why people would be so nasty in a customer support situation. Do they WANT to lose that customer for a very long time to even forever?

[eetimm]

The thing I don't get it why people would be so nasty in a customer support situation. Do they WANT to lose that customer for a very long time to even forever?

Unfortunately, many phone support techs view the problem as how it affects THEM, rather than the customer. If your little problem is an inconvenience to them then you get the standard line.

When you run across a well-trained tech who is supported by good management, it can be a real uplifting experience (unfortunately, it happens less frequently).

[sd_proto]

I agree with eetimm, having good management makes the difference. I worked the phones for a miserable 2.5 years. Management was more concered about the quantity of calls answered and how quickly they were answered, not about how happy the customer was... BUT... on the other hand you do get some really whacked people wanting bizarre help with things unrelated and just won't leave you alone. They usually got put on hold until they hung up and hopefully didn't call back. I really hate it they way some of these people are all high and mighty, won't listen, talk down to you like you don't have a clue, or put you through some long stupid procedure that you know isn't related to the problem, and then tell you they can't help you.

[Texrat]

I really hate it they way some of these people are all high and mighty, won't listen, talk down to you like you don't have a clue, or put you through some long stupid procedure that you know isn't related to the problem, and then tell you they can't help you.

I hear you. I usually interrupt and say, "not to be rude, but I have over 20 years in computer tech, etc etc, and it will save your time and mine if we skip over the basic stuff I already looked at." 90% of the time they love it. ;)

[briand]

ha! I tried that very same line with the Comcast folks, [when I was continually getting switched onto what was obviously (to me) a bad port in the local node, causing my connection to just "go away" at random] and the girl's reponse was:

"You need to reboot your machine for the settings to take effect."

"No, I don't. They take effect immediately."

"Yes, you do. If you don't reboot, the settings aren't saved."

"Yes, they are. I haven't had to reboot my main workstation for months!"

"Sir. If you don't reboot your machine, then I cannot help you."

I agreed, wholeheartedly, that she could not help me, but I nonetheless needed them to do something about their crappy node, so I figured I had to play along and get past the front line before I could talk to somebody with a brain instead of a 3x5 card filled with common questions & answers. So, I asked, "which machine?"

...and she said, "All of them."

"All of them!", I said, "Why?"

"That's just the way Windows works."

"Oh," I said, "that's just the reason why I don't run Windows on any of my machines."

"If you won't reboot your machine, then I can't help you."

[click!]

[dialtone] (yes, she hung up the phone)


So, now I have a decent quality mp3 file on the desktop at home, that I recorded a while back. In it, you can clearly hear the sound of typing, Windows beeping and bopping, WinXP shutdown sound, hard drives spinning down, etc... followed by silence. There's a single key-tap at the 1:28 mark, to queue me to say "okay, let me flip the power switch back on...", and at the 1:32 mark, you can hear a positive click, followed by fans whirring, drives spinning, floppy drives seeking, BIOSes beeping, some typing, and so on... ;)

I've gotten to play it a few times, and it does work!

[GeneralAntilles]

Hehe, I had that happen when I tried to get Sears to fix the family iMac after the 3rd electrical event fried the network card (their replacement service was actually really great—home service, fast and friendly! :D). My parents always made me make the tech support calls since they "didn't know what to say".

Sears always had the customer reformat the drive and reinstall the OS as part of their normal troubleshooting procedure, and since I didn't really have an easy backup solution at the time, I always just resorted to calling them back and saying I did it since I knew it was the network card (and thus the entire motherboard), and I knew their stupid troubleshooting procedures weren't going to fix it. Got me a new mobo every time. :D

[LordFu]

ROFL, the canned reboot is great. I've had to lie to tech support. We had a name-brand system that came with a bad memory module, and I knew that was the issue before I called.

I had to argue with them over what the problem was. Memtest would start finding errors within minutes of running, and they never bothered suggesting that I test the ram.

Instead, for whatever reason, they were convinced it was the hard drive and went so far as to ship me another, against my wishes. We were thankfully able to exchange the machine with the brick and mortar retailer we'd bought it from, thus avoiding their goofy, tech "support", altogether.

I had an even worse experience with the local cable company whom I get broadband at home from. A tree had hit my line during a wind storm. TV pictures were fuzzy and I'd lost my network connection, completely. I tried calling their support line, only to find it completely useless. It refused to accept my account number, and there was no way to get to a living person, otherwise.

I made the trek to their local office, and they claimed they would get to it within a couple days. The couple days were up, so I stopped in, again. They'd get to it by 5 p.m. Well, they didn't, so I stopped in again a few days later, and they again claimed, by 5 p.m. About the fourth time I'd heard this, I was getting pretty angry.

They lady at the counter finally decided to track down the individual my repair service had been assigned to. He had quit working for them the first day I'd reported my outage. All those times they'd told me, "by 5 p.m.", they had the work assigned to an ex-employee and never caught the mistake.

[krisse]

Reading this thread, it seems to be that screwups aren't the problem, it's the way companies deal with screwups.

Just to defend Nokia somewhat, here in Finland I've never had a problem with getting anything repaired at our local service centre. They've never turned anything down, and there's a 2 year guarantee in the EU so that's quite a lot of potential repairs. Even when I've taken stuff to them that's out of guarantee, they've been perfectly willing to sell me spare parts (if they're still made) and install the parts themselves at no extra charge.

Of course that's just one service centre, maybe it's a particularly well-managed one, but it does exist. I've heard some horror stories about Nokia in the USA though, especially concerning trying to avoid taking responsibility for repairing something.


Wow, that truly is customer support!

The thing I don't get it why people would be so nasty in a customer support situation. Do they WANT to lose that customer for a very long time to even forever?

Part of the problem is that employees don't always see that it's the customer who ultimately pays their wages. A lot of employees seem to think their boss just magically makes money appear out of thin air.

The rest of the problem are customer service people who are treated like dirt by their employers. If they have minimum-level wages and no long term contract, there's just no incentive for them to invest any enthusiasm in their job.

[Wzrd]

You want crappy customer service, talk to the idiots at Dell or Magellan. You get to talk to stupid idiots in India who obviously go through a script which usually doesn't pertain to what your problem is or what you have already done. Try to make you go through it again. And if you don't, they repeat themselves like an f-ing broken record until you do or they piss you off so much you hang up on them.

I hate people from India. They are a bunch of rude idiots. It's gotten to the point that If I get one of them, I hang up and call back until I get someone from here. The people from here will solve your problem in a quick manner especially if you tell them what you already did or tested, etc.

The idiots from India want you to repeat what you already did even though you already went through those steps already.

[GeneralAntilles]

I hate people from India. They are a bunch of rude idiots. It's gotten to the point that If I get one of them, I hang up and call back until I get someone from here. The people from here will solve your problem in a quick manner especially if you tell them what you already did or tested, etc.

The idiots from India want you to repeat what you already did even though you already went through those steps already.

Really, this has little to do with 'people from India' (what an incredibly ignorant thing to say), and more to do with the overall corporate attitude towards customer support.

[krisse]

I've used call centres from all over the world and they're all pretty script-based and inflexible. No one you talk to has any real responsibility for anything, so there's nothing they can do if your problem departs from the script.

This all seems to be an inevitable consequence of cutting customer support costs to a bare minimum, which is why so many actual branches of banks and shops have closed and the phone service they offer is so awful.

[Texrat]

Good points Krisse.

The metrics should not be just about handling cases quickly-- they should have more to do with cases solved vs unsolved, lowering of overall field failure rates, customer satisfaction on follow-up surveys, etc. Of course, meaningful metrics depend on an infrastructure to support them. That's what tends to be missing or malfunctioning in general it seems.

I hate people from India. They are a bunch of rude idiots. It's gotten to the point that If I get one of them, I hang up and call back until I get someone from here. The people from here will solve your problem in a quick manner especially if you tell them what you already did or tested, etc.

The idiots from India want you to repeat what you already did even though you already went through those steps already.

Wow, what a terrible thing to say, and a prime example of flawed generalizing.

Indians are on average as intelligent as anyone else, and in fact the ones I've known even more so. They pride themselves on education and apply themselves diligently.

And I've encountered plenty of American support personnel doing exactly that which you complan about-- more often, in fact, than any other nationality (I'm American btw).

The problems you cite are not caused by nationality, but by poor management at a higher level. Support has to be local to be truly effective, and it's not the fault of the poor shlubs answering phones if upper management is too stupid to see that. They're just doing the job they were paid to do. So if you want to hate anyone, hate the penny-pinching *****s who implement offshore "support" in the first place.

[krisse]

Perhaps there should be a company with its own consumer brand name which specialises in customer support. Other companies could outsource to them, and advertise the fact that they use them. Because it has its own public brand, the incentive would then be for this support-oriented company to do as good a job as possible, which would benefit both the customers and the product manufacturers.

For example, in the same way Nokia advertises their use of Carl Zeiss optics, they could advertise their use of "brand x" customer support.

I've no idea if this is economically viable, but it just seems like there's a gap in the market for user-friendly high quality customer support that people will KNOW is high quality just from its brand name. It might run up higher costs than current support centres, but if it increased sales significantly then it would pay for itself.

[Texrat]

That is already implemented by some companies, krisse. I have no idea about effectivity though. Seems that like anything there are potential pros and cons.

[zeleftikam]

She insisted that the person who sold me the motherboard (new and unopened, via ebay) was responsible for the wrong part being packed.

Plausible deniability. ;)

[Texrat]

LOL... yeah, but I find her excuse highly IMplausible. :p

[Wzrd]

I agree with Krisse totally on his points.

Sorry to say, but everyone from India I have talked to is rude. It seems to be the way they all are (possibly from the way the culture is there?) especially in telephone support.

My opinion is based on personal experience over the years talking to phone support from various companies.

[Texrat]

Most people I've spoken with from India have been courteous.

Don't confuse cultural differences with discourtesy. A common mistake that one can overcome with a little broader cultural exposure.

[geneven]

We all have spoken to lots of people from India, so no one can expect their opinion to dominate here all by itself.

I don't remember having spoken to any rude people from India. The main rude people I have encountered have been my fellow American arrogant techs. Most so-called techs are clueless, and the ones who aren't clueless tend to be arrogant. Then there are some heroically nice and friendly techs, who seem to me to be becoming more common as time passes.

[Texrat]

I don't expect my humble little opinion to dominate anything. I only added my experience for balance.

[krisse]

That is already implemented by some companies, krisse. I have no idea about effectivity though. Seems that like anything there are potential pros and cons.

I've never seen a company actually promote the fact that they use a particular brand of support service. I could be wrong though...

[Texrat]

I've seen it. I just don't have examples offhand, sorry. But it isn't terribly uncommon.