[flash]

once again i was forced to deal with technical support and customer service on a product - once again i was transferred to india - i am so sick and tired of the following process:



1 - call - go through voice tree from hell (who decided these things were a good idea?) - get put on hold - listed to a stupid music loop, interrupted by the reminder that you could get help at their website (like i didn't try that first?)



2 - finally get to someone whom you can barely understand, who uses pigeon english



3 - go through ridiculous security checks of information



4 - finally get through all of that and get a job ticket number, only to get transferred and have to listen to the same stupid music loop



5 - get disconnected



6 - repeat steps 1 through 4



7 - finally get to someone who has the worst phone on the planet (2 tin cans and a string would have been better), forcing you to nearly scream your request to be transferred to someone else



8 - hang up



9 - repeat steps 1 through 4



10 - finally get to someone who is in the wrong department



11 - repeat steps 1 through 4



12 - finally get to the right person who then wants to re-verify security information (all i wanted was a quick tech question answered)



two hours later, i almost wish i had not resolved the issue, and could have just tossed the unit



this is possibly the worst way to build customer loyalty - are manufacturers really that stupid? don't they realize that one experience like this is enough to sour someone on the product?



i will now be asking who provides technical support of anything i buy - if it isn't here in the states, i won't buy it - period



by the way, in the end, the problem was with VISTA!!! not the product itself at all

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[Anchorman]

I think we've all shared in this kind of frustrating situation - but it's likely that most of us get folks that at least speak pidgin English. <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/wink.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

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[Ed Russo]

Flash,

get in the cab,find a nice open winding road,and work out all that built up STRESS <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/mad.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

Works for me <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/biggrin.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

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[DiREW0LF]

I am going to guess that you had to call Dell or HP\Compaq?

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[flash]

lol - HP



and before anybody accuses me of being racist or something, this had NOTHING to do with nationality or anything - the guy in the wrong department was clearly american, and everybody was very nice and apologetic - it was just a pain in the neck all around, and not being here, there was no recourse or option



i would even pay for the service if i could only call someone locally, even at the store, but they call guess who?



p.s. - anchorman, i actually took a little poetic license, and chose that spelling on purpose - lol - i found trying to communicate as annoying as those flying rats, and felt just as pooped on

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[rhudeboye]

http://www.outsourcedthemovie.com/

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[xrad]

I heard that microsoft was dumping vista in 2010 for an all new OS.....rumor or fact????

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[flash]

no idea - but if they outsource the support to someplace on the other side of the globe, we won't be getting that either



we have one vista machine, two other different windows machines, and 3 different types of macs - keeping up with it all is quite the challenge

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[Darryl]

[quote name='xrad' post='66637' date='Feb 6 2009, 07:04 PM']I heard that microsoft was dumping vista in 2010 for an all new OS.....rumor or fact????[/quote]





Yes, fact. The new OS is supposedly going to be "Windows 7". I believe you can download BETA versions now but haven't heard a firm release date.



VISTA is a huge failure and was only designed to be a band-aid interim OS kinda like Windows ME which bridged the gap between 98 and XP. I've never seen a PC running Vista work 100%. I've been buying PCs with Vista and doing clean formats and loading XP for people.



HP is one of the worst for calling...they usually charge you 25.00 to even talk to someone so you seem to have gotten lucky so to speak. They used to be the goto for printers but now that everything is relatively the same price, makes sense to shop around. One of my laser printers on my network just died and upon doing some research, turns out it is a very common problem and it seems to happen shortly after the 1 year warranty period expires and even though it's obviously a problem with this particular model, HP will not do anything about it. I've had one run in with HP support with a scanner conflicting with another HP product and the end result was simply that they wouldn't work together.



Couple the above scenario with flash's (and I'm sure others) nightmare phone call and yes, I think people may think before buying HP products.



- Darryl

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[flash]

lol - yup - that's what started this - the vista machine would not allow a scan from the networked hp - every time we tried, regardless of which computer we chose for destination, it sent the file to my system - we ended up having to start the scan from the computer, but after loading the document - very odd



having sorted that out, now i am in the middle of reconfiguring a thinkpad for applications i will run in the shop, that i can't run on the mac down there - unfortunately it was a windows 2000 machine, required reformatting, and now many updates...................

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[rhudeboye]

Which one are you?













Those commercials about the stressed caused by PC's are dead on. We have all been in a situation like Flash. I now have a mac, a vista laptop, a XP PC and soon to start using Kunbuntu as a duel boot for the laptop. I think I'll be pleased with it after I work around the Itunes issue.

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[T-Bone]

We have a couple of IT people running Windows 7 beta. It's very Mac-like in terms of all the floating icons at the bottom of the screen. So far, they like it. I have a 64-bit version of Vista and have found even the 32-bit version to be pretty good. It's a little strange at times (menus, etc.) and I haven't figured out some of the menu logic (it's a little cumbersome to move around at times) but overall I have had a good experience with it. I have the Windows 7 beta version on my spare laptop at home but haven't found any time to play with it yet.

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[S_Cal968]

I gave up using MS long ago...

I run Linux x64 on my main system and have dual boot laptop, [XP & Linux]. I'm considering getting a Apple system too because I've heard good things about it.

At work we formatted all our Vista systems and installed XP.

We live - we learn....

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[Chris Vais]

In the last year I dumped all but one of our PCs. My wife and I both have MacBooks and we love them. I have a wiresless network in the house, works great. If I have a problem with something I just go down to the Mac Store and the techs at the store are generally able to solve my problem. The final straw with the PCs was trying to do a system operating software upgrade. I spent 6 hours on the phone tech support in India and go no where. Finally figured out my younger brothers help.



The remaining PC is for games and that is all.

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[DiREW0LF]

Vista is no where near as bad as people say and it is not the failure that Millenium Edition was. All my techs run Vista on their primary desktops and laptops. They do have XP for dual booting but its more for reference tool when supporting users on our network not running Vista (80%XP - 20% Vista, 1300 pc's). So far all our servers and apps (in house developed for XP) work fine on Vista and the only problem we ran into was our unlimited license for one of the terminal emulation apps wouldn't work, we needed to purchase a new license.



For home use Vista does have a few issues. Such as the requirements to use Aero. Not a big deal when running on a gaming computer but for a standard HP\Dell\Gateway\Sony\etc... that were purchased off the shelf, good luck. Performance wise games take a major performance hit as well as not being great at large file transfers.



My personal laptop is a triple boot, Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux. My personal PC is Vista. The only problems I have run into is compatibility with CD burning apps which were resolved fairly quickly with updates.

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[xrad]

1.5 yrs ago, I bought a Dell with Vista installed. Did not work with my 3d and voice programs nearly as smoothly as XP. Returned the Dell. Built my own PC from internet parts with 2.8 gig AMD dual core and installed a new (old) copy of XP from ebay with SP3, Spyware Doc and Reg Mechanic(excellent programs), and 2 back up drives...32 bit, but never had a crash.

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[gryphon]

IIRC, Jack-In-The-Box is testing drive-through order taking by warm bodies in India.



As if ordering in broken Spanish isn't hard enough now.



Tom

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[968Syncro]

I've been using Vista for 2 years now, gotta get the business edition or higher, and at least 2 gigs of memory, and it should be fine. Then tune all the options to make it look and run like XP (forget the vista wizz-bang useless stuff). That was the whole problem with Vista, it didn't add anything useful beyond XP for the overwhelming majority of users.



Only got 1 blue screen in 2 years.



Roland

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[ds968]

been there many times, felt the pain..

but you guys just wait, india will soon be too expensive for companies to outsource "support " services , then so will china, and then after a myriad of other trial & error nations, all customer support will be outsourced to sub-saharan africa - the clickity-clocks you'll hear on the line won't be static, it'll be the language you'll be expected to follow to troubleshoot your PC issues.. <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/dry.gif" class="smilie" alt="" /> <img src="/forum/images/smilies/968/wink.gif" class="smilie" alt="" />

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[Chris Vais]

Who knows, if the economy continues to tank, tech support will return to the US.

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