[ubuntu-uk] Packard Bell, what wonderful support!

William Anderson neuro at well.com
Fri May 10 00:29:07 UTC 2013


On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 8:05 PM, Gareth France <gareth.france at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll bare the ftp advice in mind and I agree you do get what you pay for,
> but that doesn't make it any less frustrating, especially when they treat
> you like an idiot when you know full well what the problem is.

I don't believe they were treating you like an idiot.  You need to
understand how frontline customer support, especially for large
companies such as Packard Bell, works.  The customer support
representatives likely have a wide range of IT experience and
knowledge.  Their training will be focused on headline issues that can
be easily solved without wasting too much time on triage.  Their
strongest experience will likely be limited to Packard Bell products
and their supported suppliers parts and software, i.e. Microsoft
Windows.  They will not expect you to be, nor will they be able to
support you as, a power user, geek, technician or whatever you feel
elevates your tech chops above your fellow man; their training will be
strongly geared around supporting customers who have little to no
knowledge of how computers actually work.

If you had somehow had your case escalated to a higher tier of
support, you would most likely a) have been dealing with native or
fluent English speakers in the UK or US, and b) have gained empathy
from a fellow, more experienced IT bod as to your woes and any
self-performed diagnostics you would have done prior to opening the
case.  But unfortunately you didn't, so you are treated the same as
everyone else: as someone who has an electronic device which normally
does stuff, but now doesn't do some or all of the stuff it normally
does.  They cannot deviate from this, it is how they are trained, and
it usually works quite efficiently.

Imagine you know "stuff" about how the public telephone network
operates, and you phone BT about a problem with your line,  and you
start talking about crosstalk, line attenuation and SS7 routing.  The
CS rep's head would likely explode.

Just as large companies generally treat customers with kid gloves when
they're making support requests, you should do the same in return.  By
all means try and outline your situation to see what they say in
return, but if they are unable to deviate from their scripts, and are
unwilling to escalate to a higher tier of support, there's not much
point in fighting further.  Just comply and get it over with.

Or buy a more expensive laptop next time!  KIDDING :)

-n



More information about the ubuntu-uk mailing list