Bad Business (A Rant About a Lack of Tech Support)
Posted: 2005-04-26 12:26am
As some of you may know, I've spent the last few days struggling with my home networking issues. Specifically, my wireless card on my laptop stopped negotiating with my router, forcing me to use a wired connection (and rearrange my desk). I sent an e-mail to LinkSys tech support when I could not immediately resolve the problem myself. They sent a response in short order asking for further information, which I provided. They did not then respond.
Unsatisfied with waiting for them, I proceeded to continue addressing the problem on my own. I reinstalled Windows on my laptop as a first step (rather drastic first step, but eh, I don't mind it too terribly on the laptop -- reinstalling windows on the PC is a much bigger hassle). This did not resolve the problem. I started suspecting a damaged card in need of replacement. After a few networking woes at work this evening, I returned home to plug in my poor, wire-bound laptop...to find that it would no longer speak to the router. At all. Wired or not. Utterly confounded, I thought, "...the router has firmware, doesn't it? Maybe I should try updating that." I did so, and was pleased to find a new UI in the router's interface. I quickly re-configured everything as it should be and got the PC working again.
Inspired by my success, I decided to try tackling the wireless card again. At first, this proved fruitless, so I did a complete uninstall/reinstall of the entire card and was quite surprised to find it working! Of course, it had done this occasionally before -- it would work immediately after a reinstall, but then a subsequent reboot would render it inoperable once again. Suspecting this, I rebooted...and it still worked. Encouraged by my success, I decided to upgrade something that has been long in need of upgrading -- my laptop's BIOS. I downloaded the necessary files from IBM and did the non-diskette upgrade (thank you for finally removing the shackles of a BIOS upgrade requiring a floppy disk!) and proceeded successfully. Of course, upon rebooting I fully expected the wireless card to fail.
But it works, as you can see from the fact that I've written this entry from my laptop with no wires attached.
However, my success hilights the catastrophic and utter failure of the LinkSys technical support response team. The fact that an end-user (however competent) can resolve a problem faster than a tech support department is depressing and aggravating at once. It is something of a trend, though. I frequently find both phone and e-mail based technical support to be largely useless and unhelpful. Support personnel act as though they have more important things to be doing, even though helping end-users with their problems is their job!
What's even more of a crime and a sham are companies that require end-users to pay for tech support. A particular culprit of this digital atrocity is Adobe. I've frequently encountered errors and lost work due to problems with their Premiere and After Effects products (only lost work in Premiere, but I get errors with After Effects frequently). It seems as though I should be able to call Adobe, one of the most successful companies in the world, and say, "Hey, your products are great, but I have a problem. Can you help me?" But they want me to pay them to do this. After I've already bought their software. Which costs an arm and a leg. The fact that I (my parents, really, but the principle holds) shelled out so much for their software in the first place ought to entitle me to free technical support. This, I feel, is a necessary and required right of the end-user upon purchasing a product, and the operating costs necessary to maintain a tech support department should be factored into the product's MSRP as a matter of course. The fact that Adobe is pompous enough to break this covenant is almost irritating enough to make one abandon them as a company. Unfortunately, their products happen to be industry standard, thus chaining people like me to them and allowing them to get away with such despicable behavior.
The short version is that the business practices of technology-based companies when it comes to technical support is atrocious. Of course, you already knew that.
In all of this, though, I have failed to recognize IBM's fantastic success, and it would be unfair of me to make such a blanket statement about the failure of technology companies without recognizing a major exception. The upgrading process for my BIOS was utterly problem-free. IBM makes all their software/firmware updates very accessible and easy to find. Their searchable database is very user-friendly and I have never really encountered a single problem with IBM as a company. I've also never tried to call them for out-of-warranty tech support, so I may simply be naive with respect to my preceding remarks. However, IBM at least provides access to what users need to access and does so in an efficient and responsive manner that I appreciate.
So, yay for IBM, boo for LinkSys and Adobe!
Unsatisfied with waiting for them, I proceeded to continue addressing the problem on my own. I reinstalled Windows on my laptop as a first step (rather drastic first step, but eh, I don't mind it too terribly on the laptop -- reinstalling windows on the PC is a much bigger hassle). This did not resolve the problem. I started suspecting a damaged card in need of replacement. After a few networking woes at work this evening, I returned home to plug in my poor, wire-bound laptop...to find that it would no longer speak to the router. At all. Wired or not. Utterly confounded, I thought, "...the router has firmware, doesn't it? Maybe I should try updating that." I did so, and was pleased to find a new UI in the router's interface. I quickly re-configured everything as it should be and got the PC working again.
Inspired by my success, I decided to try tackling the wireless card again. At first, this proved fruitless, so I did a complete uninstall/reinstall of the entire card and was quite surprised to find it working! Of course, it had done this occasionally before -- it would work immediately after a reinstall, but then a subsequent reboot would render it inoperable once again. Suspecting this, I rebooted...and it still worked. Encouraged by my success, I decided to upgrade something that has been long in need of upgrading -- my laptop's BIOS. I downloaded the necessary files from IBM and did the non-diskette upgrade (thank you for finally removing the shackles of a BIOS upgrade requiring a floppy disk!) and proceeded successfully. Of course, upon rebooting I fully expected the wireless card to fail.
But it works, as you can see from the fact that I've written this entry from my laptop with no wires attached.
However, my success hilights the catastrophic and utter failure of the LinkSys technical support response team. The fact that an end-user (however competent) can resolve a problem faster than a tech support department is depressing and aggravating at once. It is something of a trend, though. I frequently find both phone and e-mail based technical support to be largely useless and unhelpful. Support personnel act as though they have more important things to be doing, even though helping end-users with their problems is their job!
What's even more of a crime and a sham are companies that require end-users to pay for tech support. A particular culprit of this digital atrocity is Adobe. I've frequently encountered errors and lost work due to problems with their Premiere and After Effects products (only lost work in Premiere, but I get errors with After Effects frequently). It seems as though I should be able to call Adobe, one of the most successful companies in the world, and say, "Hey, your products are great, but I have a problem. Can you help me?" But they want me to pay them to do this. After I've already bought their software. Which costs an arm and a leg. The fact that I (my parents, really, but the principle holds) shelled out so much for their software in the first place ought to entitle me to free technical support. This, I feel, is a necessary and required right of the end-user upon purchasing a product, and the operating costs necessary to maintain a tech support department should be factored into the product's MSRP as a matter of course. The fact that Adobe is pompous enough to break this covenant is almost irritating enough to make one abandon them as a company. Unfortunately, their products happen to be industry standard, thus chaining people like me to them and allowing them to get away with such despicable behavior.
The short version is that the business practices of technology-based companies when it comes to technical support is atrocious. Of course, you already knew that.
In all of this, though, I have failed to recognize IBM's fantastic success, and it would be unfair of me to make such a blanket statement about the failure of technology companies without recognizing a major exception. The upgrading process for my BIOS was utterly problem-free. IBM makes all their software/firmware updates very accessible and easy to find. Their searchable database is very user-friendly and I have never really encountered a single problem with IBM as a company. I've also never tried to call them for out-of-warranty tech support, so I may simply be naive with respect to my preceding remarks. However, IBM at least provides access to what users need to access and does so in an efficient and responsive manner that I appreciate.
So, yay for IBM, boo for LinkSys and Adobe!
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