| Art Alexion on 15 May 2006 18:22:14 -0000 |
|
On Sunday 14 May 2006 23:39, John Von Essen wrote: > Like Jeff said, its not the outage - but how the company responds to > it. Whether its DSL, Voice, DS3, whatever, the problem is the telco > business is managed as a pure commodity based operation. As a result, > companies make money by being as cheap as humanly possible. And since > they ALL are cheap, everyone has to follow that example to stay > competitive. That means hiring idiot customer service and tech support > people, and keeping a skeleton crew of platform engineers. Funny I just had to deal with Verizon on a connection problem this morning. I have only had a known outage once in 22 months, and despite a bad reputation, I have always found the tech support to be willing to work with my Linux setup, even if they didn't know anything about it. Some do know a bit of Linux, unofficially. Anyway, my connection has been down since the weekend, but I was out and didn't need it til this AM anyway. Called support. Got the standard 3 menu options: "Windows, Mac, or 'another operating system'". As usual, I pressed 3. This time, a guy gets on and asks me which version of Windows I am using. This is a Samba net, so I can always hop on the w2k machine, but I prefer to troubleshoot via Linux because I use IPMasq and the Linux machine is the 'router'; if it has a problem, it doesn't matter what I do on the Windows machine. I tell the guy I pressed option 3 -- another operating system. He just keeps repeating that he won't support Linux. I finally get him to admit that if my modem won't connect, it won't matter what is down the line. We go through the usual stuff about rebooting the modem, trying different RJ-11 cables, different wall jacks, etc. I tell him I have a spare modem around, and ask should I try it. He says, no, can't be the modem. He sets up a home visit for the wiring guys for Friday. After we get off the line, I plug in the old modem, and it connects in about 10 seconds. I call back to cancel the home visit and get a different tech. This guy is fine with Linux, helpful and knowledgeable. We cancel the visit and he transfers me to get a modem replacement for the broken one. Moral: In the roulette wheel of tech support, it usually depends more on who you get in the cue, than who the company is. BTW, I had the spare modem, because last year a tech didn't think I was getting enough speed, and sent me out a new one, free. In case this one really is slower, I tried to get a replacement for the one that went bad. Couldn't because it was out of warranty, but they now sell a combo modem/wireless router to existing customers for $49 -- a good deal if anyone is a Verizon customer and needs one. -- _____________________________________________________________ Art Alexion Arthur S. Alexion LLC PGP fingerprint: 52A4 B10C AA73 096F A661 92D2 3B65 8EAC ACC5 BA7A The attachment - signature.asc - is my electronic signature; no need for alarm. Info @ http://mysite.verizon.net/art.alexion/encryption/signature.asc.what.html _____________________________________________________________ Attachment:
pgpvbxHwaRExt.pgp ___________________________________________________________________________ Philadelphia Linux Users Group -- http://www.phillylinux.org Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce General Discussion -- http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
|
|