Pollywogs!

So I needed to contact Dell “Customer Support” today.  I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach as I navigated to the chat queue…

02:14:50 PM		System	You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
02:14:50 PM		System	Connected with SMB_JORGE_172623
02:14:57 PM		GARY SOCLING	hello
02:14:57 PM		SMB_JORGE_172623	Thank you for contacting Dell’s Small and Medium Business Hardware support, my name is Jorge. How can I help you?
02:15:02 PM		GARY SOCLING	this computer died
02:15:14 PM		GARY SOCLING	we have next day support on it
02:15:24 PM		GARY SOCLING	so, I guess i’d like to schedule some support
02:17:10 PM		GARY SOCLING	?
02:17:30 PM		SMB_JORGE_172623	I have not received a response from you in over a minute. Please reply within the next minute to allow me to continue our chat.
02:17:36 PM		GARY SOCLING	err…
02:17:52 PM		GARY SOCLING	did you not get anything I wrote?
02:18:04 PM		GARY SOCLING	what was the last thing you got from me?
02:18:29 PM		GARY SOCLING	hello?
02:18:35 PM		SMB_JORGE_172623	Since I am not receiving any response from you within the last 1 minute, I will be ending this session. You’ll be receiving a transcript of our conversation via email. If you require assistance in the future, please visit us online at www.Dell.com/SmallBusinessChat. We appreciate your business. Thank you for choosing Dell. Have a great day!
02:18:35 PM		System	SMB_JORGE_172623 has left this session!
02:18:35 PM		System	The session has ended!

Oh, that is amusing, let me try this again…back to the end of the queue and another five minute wait…I like how my premium support warranty provides an 800 number to speak directly to techs in the US, and I can never seem to find it on the Dell.com website when I’m looking for support.  Ahh, this way is more amusing anyway, I love being able to get such juicy and choice material from a large corporation like this.

02:27:26 PM		System	You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
02:27:26 PM		System	Connected with SMB_Violeta_182987
02:27:31 PM		GARY SOCLING	hello
02:27:31 PM		SMB_Violeta_182987	Thank you for contacting Dell’s Small and Medium Business Hardware support, my name is Violeta. How can I help you?
02:27:35 PM		GARY SOCLING	i have a computer that died
02:27:40 PM		GARY SOCLING	it has next day support
02:27:44 PM		GARY SOCLING	so I’d like to schedule support for it
02:29:14 PM		GARY SOCLING	hello???
02:29:37 PM		SMB_Violeta_182987	I have not received a response from you in over a minute. Please reply within the next minute to allow me to continue our chat.
02:29:46 PM		GARY SOCLING	you can’t see what I’m typing???
02:29:57 PM		GARY SOCLING	jesus dell sucks
02:29:58 PM		GARY SOCLING	seriously
02:30:00 PM		GARY SOCLING	epic fail
02:30:04 PM		GARY SOCLING	what a fucking joke
02:30:07 PM		GARY SOCLING	I hate you dell
02:30:14 PM		GARY SOCLING	you’re lucky your competitors suck it harder
02:30:31 PM		GARY SOCLING	why must you insist on driving me insane with your pathetic customer support system
02:30:37 PM		SMB_Violeta_182987	Since I am not receiving any response from you within the last 1 minute, I will be ending this session. You’ll be receiving a transcript of our conversation via email. If you require assistance in the future, please visit us online at www.Dell.com/SmallBusinessChat. We appreciate your business. Thank you for choosing Dell. Have a great day!
02:30:42 PM		System	SMB_Violeta_182987 has left this session!
02:30:42 PM		System	The session has ended!

Fine.  Deny me the one pleasure I get from interacting with Dell Tech Support, posting what a terrible job they do at understanding the most basic tech support questions…I’ll have to try to find a phone number and interact in a way that doesn’t leave an amusing paper trail…

For future reference, if you have the US-based tech support with your service contract:

1-800-822-8965, ext. 7243891

Give them the company name that purchased it, and the service tag, and away you go.

Fairfield Toyota of Muncy PA, I think they’re jerking me around…

As you may or may not know, I hit a deer recently. Except that it isn’t recently anymore, it has been a month and six days.

The long and the short of the quote? The hood, fender, bumper, radiator, AC condenser and some other minor pieces. Very common and easy to replace items, you know, things that are commonly broken when having an accident. Nothing esoteric, nothing wildly complicated or elaborate. Just your basic accident repair estimate. And, apparently, they had to put AN ORDER IN WITH FUCKING TOYOTA OF JAPAN to get the parts, cause the shit STILL ISN’T DONE.

So I call them today, the day they’ve been saying is ‘the day’, the day they estimated the work will be done…and am told once again that they are ‘waiting on (insert some part here) part’, and that I should call early next week. At that point, they’ll have a better idea of when the work will be done.

First time I called, they were ‘waiting on parts’. The next time, ‘waiting on a fan blade’. This time, ‘waiting on some trim parts’.

Let me tell you fucking what: next time I have a problem, I’m going to a different fucking Toyota dealership to have the work done. If I have to drive an hour to get there, and wait two weeks to have the work done, I’ll still be ahead by A MONTH. Hell, it says right on the estimate ‘12 days to repair’. That is a generous allowance for watching paint dry…

I don’t care if they are busy, I don’t care if they have a problem getting this item or that item. A month and a half for a simple bit of body repair and a few minor mechanicals IS FUCKING BULLSHIT, FAIRFIELD TOYOTA. Stock the shit, make sure Toyota stocks the shit, have your crew work two shifts, hire more help…I don’t care what you have to do, this is a pile of shit for a major corporation with dealerships across the globe, factories everywhere, warehouses full of parts, billions of dollars of cash in the bank…

Almost the same style of of shit as quoting 46 hours for 8 hours of work…26 hours on the mechanicals? I had the bumper and AC condenser off the Corolla in all of 30 minutes, and I had never done it before…and they have two hours…An hour to replace the hood? Its like four fucking bolts! And 20 minutes to replace the MAF? What the FUCK are they smoking??? Now, I don’t know a damn thing about painting, but it is a small fucking car…and they have 20 hours down for painting…jesus, its not a fucking Ferrari. Anyway, Toyota OEM paint jobs have more orange peel than a crate of citrus fruit…

So today I go to call my cell phone and I get a message that ‘At the Immix wireless subscribers request, this phone does not accept incoming calls’…

I don’t remember choosing that…so I decide to call Immix ‘customer service’ to find out what is going on. I call up the number, do my typical ‘jam on the 0 button until I get through to a human’ and it disconnects me. Strike one…

I call back, be a slave to their machine, and end up talking to some guy. We’ll call him Fred. Fred says “What seems to be your problem today?”, or something similar. I explain my message when calling my phone, and ask him ‘what does that mean’. He is treating me like a typical ‘pain in the ass customer’, not volunteering any help. Strike two…

He continues that I haven’t paid my bill, it has been past due since June 11th…

That’s odd, I have it set up to auto-pay from my debit card, tied to my checking account. No problems there, so I inquire to the oh-so-not-quite-polite Fred ‘How is this being paid?’. He acts like I’m speaking French, so I lead him through the options and repeat the question. He says ‘a credit card’. Thanks for the big help there Fred! I lead him through the options and ask if he can confirm the last four digits of the card in question, which he does. I then inform him that I’ve been using this very same card for years to pay my bill, read him the entire card number and expiration date and he suddenly changes his oh-so-not-quite-polite tone…apparently, SOMEHOW, Immix had my expiration date as May instead of June…

…despite successfully charging it for the past 40-odd months.  Strike three, Fred, you’re out…

I ask why I haven’t gotten any notification about being past due and he mumbles something about ’someone calling the phone’ to let me know. Odd, I don’t remember someone calling and saying I’m past due. I explain to him that I rarely use the phone and I don’t have service in my house, and it would be much better for me to receive notification on my land line, since apparently they can just fuck you over with no recourse if you leave it assigned to notify your cell…at least they refunded me the late fee…they are so generous…

So, the guy is a rude dick to me, I’m forced to walk him through the possibility and get to the problem in the situation, and it all turns out to be what seems an impossible mistake, that something that should honestly never change got changed. Who was in there messing around? Why would they change the expiration date of the card? Is it a computer glitch? If so, that is quite scary in itself…needless to say if someone was just randomly tampering with that sensitive financial data…

Thanks Immix, glad to help you with my problem! If I can help you help me in the future, I’m sure I’ll have to call to find out what is going on!

…oh, of course you can’t, what was I thinking…

—

“Hello,

I just wanted to register a couple comments.

I spent an extra $15 for overnight delivery only to have it take an extra week: apparently, my signature is required to receive the item. I found this on the website in small print at the bottom of some page unrelated to the application procedure. It would have been very nice to know this ahead of time. Rather, it should be essential to have this information ahead of time.

So, I call FedEx. They say, call Capital One and ask them to drop the requirement (which they assure me Capital One can do). I call Capital One, they say ‘If you can’t pick it up from FedEx, and you aren’t home to sign for the item, you have to have a new check sent via mail, another 3-5 days’. Thanks!

I don’t know WHO is home at 12:30 to sign for the FedEx shipments, I don’t know about you but I’m at work at that time. And then to ask me to drive two hours round trip to the nearest FedEx location to pick the item up?

Wow, I paid $15 for this service? Oh, non-refundable you say?

—

Ideally, the application where it asked if you wanted the check the next day would say “REQUIRES SIGNATURE” in big red letters, preferably with the delivery time below that. Otherwise THAT OPTION IS COMPLETELY WORTHLESS as in it wastes my TIME and MONEY.

Do I have it shipped to my home? To my work? Does it come at 8AM? 3:30PM? 8PM? Does it require a signature? Can I remove that option?

ETC ETC ETC.

Thank you for allowing me to complain,
Garrett”

When you are speaking with someone on the phone and they provide no feedback while you are reading off a number to them. I just got off the phone with some ‘lady’ (please insert your derogatory term of choice for women here) with Comcast and I was giving her my phone number. I rattled off the phone number assigned to the account and she said “I am writing this down here” (please insert the appropriate ‘I hate customers’ tone of voice here). I immediately apologized (in an honest tone of voice while thinking ‘WHO is looking at a computer with our account information on it???’) and repeated the number off slowly. After each group of numbers, there was just this echoing gulf of silence…did we lose our connection? Is she still writing? So, I altered my speed over the next dozen odd digits: I provided two phone numbers with area code all told, without a single response from the ‘lady’.

Personally, I consider that not only rude but simple incompetance. If your JOB is customer service, SERVE THE FUCKING CUSTOMER. It is not MY job to make YOUR job easier, it is YOUR job to assist me in dealing with this gigantic nameless faceless corporation, where one fucking hand has no god damn clue what the other fucking hand is doing and every time you try to explain a simple fact you end up spending half a fucking hour bringing some dumbass up to speed, some dumbass who is constantly trying to pass the buck off of Comcast and back on yourself as if they get a fucking $5 bonus for every call they can disconnect as resolved regardless of the actual fucking problem.

(god that whole despair.com website is awesome)

You could say I’m fairly annoyed with the amount of time I have spend ‘dealing’ (insert your favorite term for beating your head against a brick wall until only a bloody stump remains) with Comcast over the past month or so…

Below is the transcript from a typical ‘joyfest’ I have with Comcast…

—

LiveAssist Transcript
[Print] Print [Close] Close
chat id : bad8b8cd-…
Problem : Connection/Other

Curtis > Thank you for contacting Comcast, my name is Curtis. How may I assist you?

Garrett > hello

Garrett > Target Name: (resolving host name) IP: 73.116.114.1 Date/Time: 4/26/2007 6:00:35 PM 1 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms [192.168.8.1] 2 1201 ms 1125 ms 1216 ms 1126 ms [73.116.114.1]

Garrett > we have a local router which is acting up

Garrett > I guess it is the one our local neighborhood is running on

Garrett > it is the first hop outside our cable modem at least

Garrett > it has been terrible all day, slow, dropped packets, crazy high latency

Garrett > maybe it needs rebooted?

Garrett > most of the time is is boucning around half a second :

Garrett > Target Name: ge-3-16-rtr01.jerseyshore.pa.panjde.comcast.net IP: 64.78.83.69 Date/Time: 4/26/2007 6:02:25 PM 1 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms [192.168.8.1] 2 229 ms 256 ms 662 ms 204 ms 499 ms 422 ms 236 ms 414 ms [73.116.114.1] 3 261 ms 287 ms 682 ms 176 ms 511 ms 393 ms 252 ms 430 ms ge-3-16-rtr01.jerseyshore.pa.panjde.comcast.net [64.78.83.69]

Garrett > some times it pegs up to one or two seconds, and everything slows to a crawl

Curtis > I see that you are connected to the Internet using a router at this time, Garrett. The IP address: [192.168.8.1] is your router.

Garrett > yes, very good

Garrett > the problem is the first hop outsidie our local LAN

Garrett > I’ve been complaining about this for a couple weeks

Garrett > it has been happeing more and more frequently

Curtis > A router will always receive an IP address starting with “192″. At this time, I would suggest disabling your network. Please disable your router and connect directly to your cable modem. Please powercycle the modem before connecting directly. If these issues still persist while you are connected directly to your cable modem, you may contact us back and we will assist you further.

Garrett > …

Garrett > hello

Garrett > didi you even look at the traceroute?

Garrett > there is nothing wrong with my router

Garrett > try pinging our first hop yourself

Garrett > 73.116.114.1

Garrett > its been terrible all day

Curtis > We do not offer support for latency or connectivity issues due to using a router, Garrett. If you are having connection issues, you need to disable your router altogether, then contact us back and we will assist you further.

Garrett > every time I complain, it seems to be fixed for a little bit, a day, 12 hours

Garrett > but eventually it is going to happen over again and again

Garrett > if you stoped and listened to what I am saying

Garrett > and read what I am typing

Garrett > you would realize i am talking about YOUR ROUTER

Garrett > 73.116.114.1

Garrett > you are the worst tech I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with in a while

Curtis > Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Garrett > like I mentioned, check out the ping yoruself to yoru box

Garrett > your box is having problems

Garrett > not my box

Garrett > your box needs reset or rebooted

Garrett > it is really acting up

Garrett > our pings are crazy, packet loss

Curtis > Garrett, I have already explained to you that we do not offer support for latency or connectivity issues due to using a router. If you are having connection issues, you need to disable your router altogether, then contact us back and we will assist you further.

Garrett > ahh, you reseT IT?

Garrett > can I speak with your supervisor?

Garrett > if you are going to play games with me, I’ve had it

Curtis > May I ask what you are referring to exactly? I do not understand what you are referring to.

Garrett > I’m serious

Garrett > if you are going to jerk me around, I want to talk to your supervisor

Garrett > you want specifics?

Garrett > Target Name: ge-3-16-rtr01.jerseyshore.pa.panjde.comcast.net IP: 64.78.83.69 Date/Time: 4/26/2007 6:02:25 PM 1 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms 0 ms [192.168.8.1] 2 229 ms 256 ms 662 ms 204 ms 499 ms 422 ms 236 ms 414 ms [73.116.114.1] 3 261 ms 287 ms 682 ms 176 ms 511 ms 393 ms 252 ms 430 ms ge-3-16-rtr01.jerseyshore.pa.panjde.comcast.net [64.78.83.69]

Garrett > what does that look like to you?

Garrett > is that specific enough?

Curtis > Garrett, I have already explained to you twice that we do not offer support for latency or connectivity issues due to using a router. If you are having connection issues, you need to disable your router altogether, then contact us back and we will assist you further.

Garrett > your supervisor is enroute I suppose?

Garrett > yep, your supervisor

Garrett > pronto

Curtis > A supervisor or another agent will also tell you no differently than I already have.

Garrett > I beg to differ

Garrett > if you ping 73.116.114.3

Garrett > which is a box on COMCASTS NETWORK

Garrett > you’d see the ping fluctuate wildly

Garrett > there is something wrong with that box

Garrett > I assume it needs reset

Curtis > If there is nothing else I can help you with please let me know, then I can move on and help the next person who is waiting in queue for assistance.

Curtis > Is there anything else I can help you with today?

Garrett > no

Garrett > you can get your supervisory

Garrett > since you insist on ignoring everything I am trying to explain to you

Garrett > either on purpose or out of ignorance

Curtis > Since there is nothing else I can assist you with at this time and you are not maintaining a professional tone, I am now ending this chat, Garrett.

Curtis > You’re welcome and thank you for contacing Comcast. If you need assistance in the future, please do not hesitiate to contact us through the Live Chat or E-mail 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Simply visit http://www.comcast.net/help/

Curtis > Analyst has closed chat and left the room

This fucking wanking jackass I DID follow up with their supervisor with who apologized for the way in which Curtis cock-blocked my joy over and over. They confirmed that the reps are at least supposed to be able to understand a traceroute…christ thinking of all the time I’ve spent gets me so fired up I think I’m going to have a stroke. I need to go for a walk…all I can hope is that fuck is now boxing fries at McDonalds…

I did create a new category for these kinds of nightmares called ‘Customer Disservice’…so some good came of it…