PC rant

[aubie515]

My 3 month HP desktop died on me today. I spent 42 minutes with two Indian tech support people who were very difficult to understand. Not a very positive experience with HP at all. I won't bore you all with the details, but I will just say that I miss the days where you call a call center and an American actually answers the phone.

[LorDiego01]

I personally dont care for the nationality of the person answering the phone, so long as its an actual person answering the phone..

[Agent Ronin]

Hell, as far as i know you can't even call Dell anymore... Their preferred tech support method is a java-based Instant Message program. Which actually works quite well, but its damned if you only have access to one PC.

So in short, I feel for you there. I went though that with my Xbox360, some Indian i could not understand (which is not his fault at all) One hour later i got a "there is nothing wrong" conclusion. Ended up buying a new one two days later. (Out of warranty)

[RandomTask]

That's why I love my Macs; they're so easy. Never needed tech support in 15 years.
I'm glad too, because I hear Apple's tech support sucks elephant dick.

[reels18]

You should of bought a Dell. I was reading a report a couple of months back where Dell is training their Indian tech reps to sound like they are from the middle of America.

No lie.

They are teaching them to sound like Americans to fool customers into thinking that they are speaking with an American tech.

With the money they are spending to do this, why wouldn't they spend some money on teaching real Americans tech support.

I gave up on all of the store bought computers. Years of asking questions to someone that could not instruct me in understandable English forced me to start building my own computers. It is a lot easier than you think.

[aubie515]

Well, HP tried the same thing because I was talking to "Mark" lol, please...Even the supervisor I spoke to had no clue...the power wasn't working at all on the PC and she asked me to disable my password. I asked her how in the world was I suppose to disable my password when I couldn't even turn on my PC?

[Atomic Dog]

Sorry, can't relate to your experience

[dmg1969]

Agreed...it is annoying as hell to speak to a tech you can barely understand. I do IT for our law firm and end up calling support on a semi-regular basis. I noticed the attempted Americanization thing too. You call and a heavy Indian accent says "Thank you for calling Dell, my name is (insert American name ie: Dave, Chris, Tom), how may I help you?" I'm like...who do you think you're kidding???????

[D-FENS]

I don't know any tips or tricks about dealing with HP but a few mentioned Dell. Dell blows and their support is just as bad as anyone elses. The only saving grace is that if you get the small business support packages, you're more likely to get American/English customer support.

Also, if you're semi-savy or know someone knowledgeable. Have them make a checklist of everything they tried, when you get the foreign tech support, rattle off everything you wrote down, really fast. They'll put you on hold for a minute because they're just reading off of a screen. Then they'll come back and ask you to do something, if you've done it, holler "I've done that already and I just told you." They'll put you on hold again and shuffle you off to an American.



I do this a lot as we have a few hundred Dell's running around here and this is the fastest way of getting to reasonable support so that I can have the hardware shipped to me or have them send a tech out. As I see it, we pay for the next day support. My employer shouldn't have to pay me for 4 hours of phone BS when they'll come out and take care of it on the spot as their warranty states.

FYI: Not a newbie tactic. You'll get blacklisted if you cry wolf over something that's not even broken or wrong. I do it only for hardware replacement when I know a HD is worthless, MOBO, CPU, etc. If you can't isolate it to the problem yourself, you'd better hang on with that tech and listen intently

[Emptymag]

I don't so much have a problem with where, or what nationality the "support" person is... my problem is with the language used to communicate. If I need help, the person on the other end should be able to understand my question CLEARLY and I should be able to understand the person attempting to help me. An accent is acceptable, broken English is not!

Not pc related, but when we tried getting Verizon DSL, we were without internet for an entire MONTH, due to (a) Verizon incompetence and (b) the several HOURS each day were spent on hold and/or attempting to understand the non-English speaking "support" from India.
After telling Verizon where to stick their affordable DSL, we called Comcast and had service the next day. There was one problem at the time of set-up and when I called Comcast support, I was (a) speaking to someone within one minute. (b) speaking to someone who I could communicate with. (c) Speaking to a STEELER FAN! Yes, as it turns out, after telling him of our Verizon ordeal, he explained that when we need to call Comcast support, we would be speaking to someone in the local call center, about a 45 minute drive from where I'm located! Woo-Hoo!

Note: I've called Comcast about five times in the past year, when I couldn't connect and each time I was speaking to someone (in English) in under two minutes and each time, the "problem" was resolved quickly and cheerfully, without the usual "you're bothering me" feeling I get from so many other "support" staff.