Tech support has a well deserved negative reputation. Read about a bad and a good tech support experience and then send in your own experiences.

Seeing as I do tech support on systems that aren't even mine I would think I would rate pretty high...
 
Oh yea, I forgot B, you don't even return emails. So how would Mobility Guru rate on your scale?  
 
The winner will be DELL or the next highest advertiser. That's hard to figure out.
 
Turn off laptop mouse pad...DILL tech says it can't be done. Yet it is plastered all over the internet and in their own user manual!
 
Gateway Audio Driver problem..., guy can't even get a response from GayWay (I didn't even know they were still in business).
 
Driver and Memory Issues. HP says they can't duplicate the problem.
 

First I'd like to say that I've worked in the IT field for approximately 9 years.  99% of the time I have no problem troubleshooting a problem and identifying what part(s) need replaced to make the system operational again...most of my encounters with tech support involve getting the parts I need to fix the systems that are under warranty.
 
My first story pertains to Toshiba.  While I was in the Marines (97-2001) Pretty much all of the laptops in service were Toshiba and they were bulletproof machines.  When I finished my tour with the Marines and moved to the private sector, I continued to employ Toshiba laptops whenever there was a need.  
 
It must have been in 2003 that we purchased a batch of Satellite Pros (6100).  In a short time nearly every 6100 Satellite pro that we owned had a drive failure.  Unfortunately Toshiba will not ship out parts for end-user service so this required us to box up the machines and send them to Toshiba for service.  Generally this would take around a week for turnaround.  Because of this service model, we seriously began to question whether Toshiba laptops are still a viable choice in our environment.
Being a rather faithful (or foolish) individual, we decided to give Toshiba a chance and purchased several P25's a short time later.
 
Within months of purchasing the P25's the modular DVD-ROM drives began failing.  Obviously we tested this by swapping in a known-good DVD-ROM which fixed the problem.  We contacted Toshiba and asked for them to send new DVD-ROM's and we would cross-ship the broken DVD-ROM drives.
Toshiba would not do this.  They would rather us ship the entire laptop for them to examine and replace the drives.  
 
At this point I was infuriated.  My end-users had to go without a machine for X period of time because Toshiba refused to send a modular drive to replace the broken ones.  After complaining to the technician about this, I finally agreed to send them the entire unit...what other choice did I have?  I provided the technician with my mailing address so that he could mail me the box which I would put the P25 into and return to them in Memphis.  I hung up.
 
10 minutes later I received a call from the same technician and I was told that Toshiba did not have a box big enough to accomodate the P25 laptop!!!  Therefore I would have to drive the unit to the nearest Depot which was 2 hours away!
 
This ended our relationship with Toshiba.

My favorite part...
 
Toshiba did not have a box big enough... so it became your problem. Unbelievable.

The second story I'd like to relay pertains to Dell.  
 
First of all I've been relatively happy with the support I have received from Dell.  As I mentioned before, I usually can identify a problem and it's really just a matter of getting the parts to remedy the issue.
 
The main gripe I have with dealing with Dell is that sometimes I have to spend a fair amount of time on the telephone with some jackass explaining that I know I have a failed hard drive.  Of course he'll want me to repeat everything I already did to identify the problem and it's a big waste of time for me.  This all depends on what technician you get and whether he is cool or not.
 
the good
Several years ago I had a strange problem with one of my raid controllers.  For some reason the machine was throwing errors during the post of the controller.  I swapped in a spare (known good) controller and the same thing was happening.  I tested a few other things and I came to the conclusion that it was a motherboard problem.
 
I called Dell and I spoke with a technician.  He had me test the disks and also the backplane of the machine.  Everything checked out and it was looking like it was indeed a motherboard issue.  He finally told me to update the bios and firmware...I laughed.  I said outloud:
 
"Are you kidding?  This machine was fine and just out of the blue it stops working.  We've ruled out the raid controller, the backplane, the cables, the disks...surely it must be the mobo".
 
He pretty much agreed with me but he had to go through the motions before dispatching a new motherboard for the system.
 
I applied the updates and somehow, someway--it fixed the machine.  This is by far one of the stranger things that I've encountered dealing with servers...so I always remember to test this out.
 
The bad
 
Just a few months ago I had a failed disk in one of my servers.  I contacted tech support and they dispatched a new disk.  When it arrived I noticed it was a 15K disk made by Maxtor while the disks in my system were 10K disks made by Seagate.
 
I know, I know...you can mix and match disks all day long in a RAID config.  But generally you want to use the same make, model, capacity, speed for all disks in a set...it's just a good practice that I adhere to.
 
I called up Dell and told them that I'd really just like my 10K seagate disk.  They told me that my system was originally equipped with 15K maxtors and that is why they sent the Maxtor.  I proved to them that this was not true.  At this point the tech said to just use the 15K disk...it would be fine.  He also mentioned the reason I didn't receive the correct disk is because they ran out of them.
 
I forwarded this email to some other folks higher in the food-chain at Dell.  They responded in the same manner.  I replied and said something along the lines of:
 
-I currently have 2 systems running raid 5 in a cluster.  They are both equipped with 10K seagate disks (model# XXXX).  For a total of 6 disks.
-One of my disks failed, I requested a replacement disk and received a Maxtor 15K disk which is more expensive than the replacement disk.
-Either send me the 10K seagate or send me 5 more Maxtor 15K's.
 
This got the attention of someone.  I was put in touch with a technician who had an interest in what I had to say.  He agreed that it wasn't unreasonable to expect the 10K disk as a replacement.  He even went so far as to offer to send me 5 additional disks.  I wasn't particularly interested in this...I just wanted the 10k.
 
Turns out that they had a warehouse full of the disks in question and I received one the following day.  Case closed.

The more I think about it...the more I realize I could easily spend several days typing up my numerous encounters with Tech Support....This will be my last one.
 
Verizon DSL
 
In 1999 I was in the Marine Corps living outside of Jacksonville, North Carolina.  My house was so far out in the boonies that I was lucky to have telephone service.  I had to use bunny-ears on my television to watch the one station that came in clear...PBS.
 
In those days I was limited to dial-up internet.  I played Tribes and Asherons Call on my laughable connection.
 
In 2001, I finished my tour with the Marines and moved to Massachusetts.  One of the first things on my agenda was to get high-speed internet.  This was available through Verizon "High Speed DSL".
 
I signed up and received my modem and "starter kit" a few days later.  The instructions said that I had to wait until I received the confirmation email that my service had been turned on, before connecting the modem and DSL filters.  The estimate was 6 weeks before this would happen.
 
Let the waiting begin.
 
Three weeks went by and I received an email saying that my service had been started and I could now hookup my systems.  I went home that evening and hooked everything up and...no service.
 
I called TECH SUPPORT...here's where it gets good.
I spent several hours on the telephone with these people.  They had me troubleshooting everything.  They finally told me that my network adapter was not supported.
 
My main system was equipped with a 3COM 3C905 card.  This is by far the most widely recognized and supported card in the world of network cards.  Just about any operating system you load on your machine will have support for this card...so I knew they were full of shit.
 
It was then and there that I was sick of playing this game.  I told them that I was a CCNA and an MCSE and I can guarantee that the problem is not on my end.  The call was escalated and the end result was...The service had not been activated, I would need to wait another 3 weeks.
Fine, I can live with that.
 
I went to work the next day and I started thinking about how pissed off I was that Verizon was jerking me around.  Why did I receive an email saying my service had been activated?  Why did I spend several hours on the phone troubleshooting crap only to be told that my service wasn't activated?  I decided to call Verizon and give them a piece of my mind.
 
I explained the situation to the customer service representative.  She looked in the system and told me...My service IS ACTIVE.  WTF?!  I was instructed to go home and call tech support to resolve my issue.
 
Once I arrived home that evening I went through some of the same crap as the night before.  I finally said to the technician to "put me in touch with someone who knows what they are doing." and tossed my credentials her way.
 
Within 5 minutes I had someone on the line who had identified a problem on their end pertaining to the binding of the protocol to my line...I had connectivity.

Interesting article, but I disagree with a few of your conclusions.
 
First of all for IT staff to pay for technical support kind of defeats the purpose of having IT staff doesn't it? Why pay someone to pay someone $245 to get support.
Secondly, public forums can potentially be the best places to look for help. Simply because its free and web based doesn't mean it should be taken with "a grain of salt". IT thrives on free software (open source\linux) and solutions, you just have to know where to look.

Hey KN. I do my best with email and the forums. I read 'em all, but can't answer 'em all. I'm the sole manager and often only producer of content for MG. That takes up 12 hours a day seven days a week. What specifically did you write about? To the best of my knowledge, Dell doesn't advertise on any of the TG Publishing sites.
 
As for Dell, it can take a day or so, if you don't buy 24/7 support, but they get the job done. I recently had a Dell server go down. Aside from their putting me through tests I'd already done, they quickly figured out what was wrong and the next day a tech showed up with replacement parts. If I bought 24/7 support, they say it would have been fixed in 2-4 hours.

Let's get together so you can review A K/N Executioner.  
 
I will put it against that DELL XPS any day.
 
I am thinking:
Executioner
Core 2 Duo T7400 2.16
Flash RAM drive for the OS & Programs
100 GB 7,200 media & Data
7900 GTX 512 MB
108 Mbps G+ internal wireless
2 Gigs RAM
and a body bag for the DELL XPS.

First of all, I do tech support and have for years.  If you were to go into any tech support call center and ask which customers are the hardest to deal and they would say that the hardest to deal with are network admins, people with the CCNA, MCSE, ect ect, that have already troubleshot, basically any customer that thinks they know more about our system than we do.
 
Granted, there are a lot of incredibly talented individuals out there that know a whole lot about computers, networking, and programming.  But you wouldn't have the experience in dealing with the network at hand.  Everyone that has done any kind of long term troubleshooting of a network knows that every network has is own little quirks and difficulties.  DSL especially!
 
You may have troubleshot the issue and know exactly what the issue is, but until we troubleshoot we won't.  Do you realize how many customers call in on a daily basis and say something like "my modem is broken, replace it"  only to find out that reboot fixes it?  Imagine how much your DSL bill would be if you had to pay to ship out every part that every "technician" calls in to get replaced.  It wouldn't be 14.99 a month!
 
Any technician that has had to work within an organization knows that before any money is spent, whether it be to replace a part, or repair it, that it has to meet certain requirements.  So be patient as we do what is required to get your issue resolved, or part replaced.  If we can see for ourselves that it is broken we will take care of it. (If it is the customer that is broken, we will take care of that too - see below)
 
Where I used to work for a major high speed provider, we had a customer that would call in every so often and throw credentials around and escalate and just generally be a pain.  We could run tests on our side and show that he was getting what he was supposed to, but he kept calling.  He eventually got blacklisted.  Now he is on dial up through a local mom- and pop provider.  He was not permitted to get high speed through our company again.  That list is forwarded through all the major high speed providers and the do take it seriously.
 
In closing, just remember that we are people too, we make mistakes, but we are just trying to get you fixed.  Besides, when you troubleshoot, how to do take someone standing over your should second guessing every step you are taking?
 
Brassfly

I concur totally on this post.
 
The job of the support call is to fix the problem and get off the phone.
If they are really good, they will make sure it happens again so that can collect another service charge.  They are there to make money.
 
What a GOOD IT support person does is understand how things work and is able to solve his own problems quickly.  The guy you are calling has little knowledge of your IT network as a whole and many other things.  Additionally, the 1st/2nd/3rd level guys you often speak to are paid much less than you and are still doing scripts.
 
They key to getting GOOD online help that is free is knowing who you are talking too.  Generally the "On-Line" guys I talk to are all famous authors who worked on the development of the products they are supporting.  Often there are only a handful of people in the world who know more than they do on the topic, and those are not the ones you get when you shell out your money.
 
Now, if you don't know what you are doing on a product, call.  This can be expected in small shops where the amount of stuff you need to know can easily stretch beyond what the IT staff can learn/know.  They key is to know what you dont know.

I am your tech support.  
 
I've worked on contracts with to do technical support for cellular data products, a national ISP supporting dialup, DSL, Dialup DSL, Fibre Connections, T1 lines, DNS, Web, and Email hosting as well as on-site tech support at a major US bank on behalf of Dell, another US investment company on behalf of Dell, a large regional hospital in Seattle, and I was also a bench technician at a small computer retailer and local ISP. All of these positions required proprietary and specialized information to properly support. From host names to ISP settings to niche operating systems and plain business proceedures there is no way someone could perform these roles whithout recieving training or experience for these specific jobs. For all of these postitions combined I recieved less then 5 weeks of training, 4 of which were for the wireless data products support. None of the companies had what I would call "good" knowlege bases, if they had one at all.  
 
Most tech support positions have high turnover. If you get someone who has been working there for more then 4 months you're lucky. If you have any experience supporting the problem you're calling about your chances of getting someone who knows more about the problem then you are slim.
 
In my unbiased opinion I am an extremely good technician. However, I have commited countless numbers of flat-out failures at technical support due to a lack of training or access to effeciently searchable knowlege bases.
 
In my first job as an ISP telephone tech support person I had never heard of "Dialup DSL" until a customer told me how it worked (nothing new in the technology, just your DSL connection isn't always on, you will get disconnected and have to reconnect. A special DSL modem in a host computer acts just like a regular 56k modem). I didn't know we provided internet access to home fibre connection until the customers started calling us for support. Half the time I didn't know what domains were hosted where and the only way to find out was to ask an admin or search all the servers, one by one, as there was no centralized search tool.
 
Although they did attempt to provide at least some training, the wireless data product support position was probably the one I was least prepaired for. 3 new operating systems with several subtypes each (Palm OS, Windows Mobile, whatever the other one was) on a dozen different supported PDAs, plus a dozen smart phones each with a completely unique user interface, several new pieces of software and web interfaces for wired and wireless data syncronizing. Combine this with a knowlege base that worked not by searching for keywords in a problem discription, as one would expect, but by searching for relevance of search terms to the solution of the problem. You could not find a solution by searching for the problem it solved, you had to search for the solution directly. If you didn't already know something about the solution you were SOL. (This database search engine was obviously designed by my most-hated technician archetype that I have dubbed "the guess-tech" A guess tech does not problem solve or trouble shoot to find root-causes and solutions. They inventory symptoms and create relational databases to solutions. When presented with symptoms a guess tech will start going down a list of, ie. guessing at, relevant solutions without ever trying to determine the cause and having no way to know if the solution solved the root problem or merely alleviated known symptoms and no way to effeciently address symptoms they have not previously encountered.) Not only is this an ass-backwards way to trouble shoot to begin with, the search logic would sometimes give you completely irrelevant results. 1 moth of training me in this and I was thrown into an almost completely unfiltered "teir 1" for all support problems with all data services on all internet-cabable devices. Also, the support queue that wasn't hooked into the telephone directory system (ie, we had to ask customers for their information even though they had already entered it at least once). Quite frankly half the time I had no idea what the customer was talking about and with the wide variety of OSes supported I had to look up the walkthrough almost every time or I wouldn't be able to guilde an end-user due to minor differences in the OS (while it's annoying that most end-users can't cope with minor descrepencies like "ok" or "accept" mean the same thing, especially when the only other button says "cancel" if you say the wrong word you'll confuse them. A good technician says the names of the options exactly as they appear to the customer.) At least when I started out with ISP support teir one they filtered the queue so that I only dealt with one of 2 problems on only 3 versions of windows until I learned the companies proprietary settings and recieved some additional training and moved to a different queue. Here I could be dealing with one of many (network connectivity, email, contact list syncing with remote or local host, blue tooth, internet connectivity, etc, etc) problems on one of several versions of 3 major OS types. I feel truely sorry for the people that got me as their technician for the first ~2weeks I was taking calls. If you happened to be one of them... I'm sorry, but it's not my fault.
 
On site Dell technician at major financial institutions? "Hi, my name is Lex. I'm with Dell." Ha, ha ha ahahahahaha... Dell didn't hire me, Dell contracted Qualixserve... they didn't hire me either, they contracted Go2IT who hired me off of monster.com with only a cursory telephone interview. In my case, Dell got lucky. Some of the other guys I worked with were morons. The directions they gave us were fairly complete and accurate, but there was so much paperwork most of the people didn't even read it (personally I never read any of the revisions as I had already written my own 1page version).
 
On site technician at a regional hospital? I got to see a woman's ovaries, no joke, along with all the rest of her internal organs. Although the computer that controlled the cat-scan machine was never comprimised the other computers in the imaging lab were virus laden, so there I was cleaning them up durring her appointment. The look on her face when 4 guys walked into the control room and started poking around on all the computers was... amusing, and distrubing. Oh, and my lead technician made lewd comments about all the attractive female receptionists and the woman who's more-than-private bits we got a free show of.
 
In summary: low-level tech support persons are not properly screened or trained. Higher level tech support persons are ussually just low-level ones that managed to not get fired or quit for more than a few months. Good technicians get better jobs. Tech support should be your last resort.
 
Personal horror story: My mother's internet connection with Charter went out. I couldn't call in because it said I had an outstanding ballance, but I had automatic payment enabled. So I called business line and got transfered, they said billing was fine and sent out a technician. The technician said it was a billing problem. So I call in and pay the ballance less 57cents as they didn't have an option to just pay the whole ballance and I didn't remember how many odd cents they said I owed them, then tried to get to a technician to make sure everything was ok. After screaming at the automated voice-recognician AI I was told I'd be transfered to a real person and was disconnected. I called in again and was asked to pay the full ballance again, I hang up in disgust. The next day I call in and it asks for the 57cents before it will let me talk to anyone. I pay it, hoping the transaction fees betweent he two payments total more than 57cents, get to someone who says that it's turned on now, but refuses to refund any money as the service was disconnected due to non-payment. "Well, if I DIDN'T pay why are you charging me for it? And it's YOUR FAULT you didn't recieve payment. Why didn't you call if there was a problem? Like sometime before you disconnected her IP-phone??? If there was a billling problem why didn't you just use a DNS-redirect to ask for account information like you did the first time we hooked it up instead of disconnecting my mother's internet access?" I got transfered to a manager who did give me a small refund, but the internet connection never worked. She got a wireless connection instead that's faster and more reliable (after the telephone company refused to even talk to me about my options for getting new copper or fibre installed as the CO was only a few blocks away but they insisted I couldn't get DSL).  
 
Good story: Dell tech support. Called several times for systems under warrenty. I told them what was wrong, they quickly ran me through a few tests to confirm, and sent replacement parts with return shipping packaging. Why trying to deal with them just sound competent and tell them all the steps you did to diagnose the problem, no problems after that. Don't expect them to send you new part just because you say you have some Certs and it's "broken".

duplicate post-

Brassfly,
 
I want it to be known that I don't call up "Company_X" and start mouthing off my certifications and make outrageous demands.  I'm a pretty easy-going and humble individual.  When I pickup the phone to call technical support, it's the first step in me admitting that the current situation requires assistance...be it a new hard disk or someone telling me to upgrade the bios.
 
Calling up tech support, treating them like shit and trying to make them feel inferior by blasting them with professional certifications does absolutely nothing to remedy my problems...so I don't want you to get the wrong impression here.  I respect the job that tech support folks do.  In fact, I have many of the same responsibilities.  I deal with my fair share of ignorant people on a daily basis.  I hang up the phone after speaking with one of my end-users and I laugh at his or her foolishness.
 
When I call tech support I'd like to be able to speak tech-to-tech to cut through most of the bullshit.  I don't think that's too much to ask.  
 
If you worked for my ISP and I was having problems, I should be able to call you up and say "look bro, I can ping the ISP DNS server from both of my machines, but when I traceroute to google I can't get past this hop."
 
Instead of:
"Sir, I need you to turn off your modem and router and pc.  Once that has been done turn your modem ON.  Wait 1 minute and turn the router ON.
Wait 1 minute and turn the PC on....is your computer up yet?"

Ok, I have some stories to share and some comments on your article.
 
Back in 2001 I tried to get broadband at my new apartment I moved into, little did I know this would become a long an drawn out affair.  
 
The reason I picked the complex I did was that they offered a massive discount on a T1 line service.  At the time I was big into file sharing so I could really dig the extra upload speed.  I called them to open service and they said that I would have to wait a week as they were in the middle of a migration.  I called a week later and they said that they were still busy with the changes and to call back a week later.  I called the next week only to find out that they were out of business and no service was possible.
 
This annoyed me greatly since there were two better deals on apartments that I would have gone with if not for this offering but I darned sure wasn't going to move again so soon.
 
So I tried getting cable modem in my area.  I called the local cable modem provider (which if I remember correctly was still AT&T @ Home) and they said they didn't service my area yet but that it was on the list.  I'm not sure what list this is but they told me if I was a worldnet customer when service did become available then I would get a massive discount.  I held off to see what my other options were first.
 
Then I tried Southwestern Bell DSL since I had my phone service through them already.  That was a mistake.  First they said I was supported and they sent out my welcome package.  Then they charged me for the welcome package after they told me they would not.  Then the DSL did not work.  Then they restarted my service and charged me for (and sent me) another welcome package.  I spent an hour on the phone and got them to reverse the charges for those two welcome packages.  They didn't want the spare back so I got a spare DSL modem for free.  On top of that they double reimbursed me and I ended up not having to pay for the service for quite a long time.  This is good since it never worked.
 
For about four months I called tech support weekly because my internet connection only worked about a quarter of the time and when it did work my speeds were only slightly better than dialup.  Finally after four months of this pain they said I was in fact not in their supported area and they terminated my service.
 
Great.
 
So I try Earthlink.  Another mistake.  They send me my startup kit and charge me appropriately (score one for them).  I get my kit and proceed to have very similar problems to the ones I had with SWB.  I call their tech support, who seemed fairly competent and patient, but ultimately ineffectual.  I spent a full year calling them up between weekly and monthly trying many different things to fix my internet connection, but at least I was getting decent speeds and 75% uptime so I could make do. &