Silver Cloud at hand

Like Linda of late, I’ve been feeling a bit abused by that wonderful world of phone support. It seems the idea in most organizations is to get you off the phone any way possible including a few lies.

I mentioned you don’t want to buy Toshiba products. Not only do their support people lead a totally regimented life (I had to spell my first name twice to 2 different support people asking the same questions after the first transferred me to the second.) but they don’t have sufficient English or Technical expertise to resolve simple issues. They also cannot or will not pass you on to level II support.

Walmart and ‘higher ticket’ should be avoided at all cost. They print a 15 day return policy on the checkout slip. They really mean it too. The morbidly obese manager was only interested in telling me to basically F… off. She did not have any sympathy; only annoyance I wanted help from the outfit that 20-days earlier had happily taken a stack of Franklins. However, those Franklins were plastic and my credit card company resolved it by reversing the transaction. I waited 30 days just to make sure and then went where I should have gone to begin with – Dell’s outlet store. I spent several hundred more but got more than compensated for that. There were a number of items I could live without. But, to duplicate the basic machine – better than most low to moderate desk units – would have cost more had I ordered it new.

Dell too went through a streak of poor support. The attraction to off shore such operations enhances the bottom line. Unfortunately, many people use the adage of out of sight and out of mind. Dell corrected bad issues. If I have a problem in the next year, they will resolve the issue. I had issues with my desktop purchase and they resolved them promptly and very satisfactorily. I used their online chat setup and I’d recommend that over email and/or phone.

ADDENDUM:

The bummer here is Vista. Having used it on my multi-media desktop, I have to say it isn’t ready for prime time. It has been better than most Microsoft first release software but that isn’t a lofty standard. Their first service pack was released for public beta and seems to be breaking more than it is fixing. I still have to say that you are better off with XP. But, it isn’t a blue screen of death nightmare that other Version 1.0 stuff from Redmond is. But the occasional crash never seems to get there. Instead of the blue screen it goes flaky or locks up or the system slows to a crawl that eventually allows the reboot. Just to share the blame, vendor drivers are also often a work in progress.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 24th, 2008 at 10:15 am and is filed under Off Topic. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.