Tech support on the eeePC

Joe (my eldest) has been making great use of the little Asus eeePC linux-based ultra-portable for a while. It has everything he needs day to day and he loves the fact that he's running a different OS to everyone else he knows!
Anyhow - ours developed a fault where it started crashing and eventually it couldn't even complete it's BIOS memory count before freezing - a classic case of a hardware problem (you'd think!).

Anyway - I just wanted to detail the miserable experience using Asus's tech support was;

Firstly you have to submit a web request for support - the online form has a couple of funnies - you can only enter 150 characters in the fault description and no punctuation is allowed! If you've ever tried to write something coherent with only alphabetic characters you'll appreciate what a challenge this is! Also - 150 characters? They need to hire a decent PHP programmer! Another niggle is the fact that the case number is a required field! You've just opened a case and they demand your case-number. They also wanted fax-proof of the age of the machine. Given that they've been out for about six months and they come with a two-year warranty.....
Anyhow - you submit the form (after a dozen attempt because they're server keeps firing it back at you with invalid data due to the full-stop you put at the end of the problem description!) and they tell you that it'll take 48 hours for them to acknowledge your request. They manufacture computers and yet they take two days to process a simple CGI form! They are clearly running their tech support system on counting-beads!
Anyhow - after three days I eventually found a number to call and got through to someone who told me that tech support had bounced back my request on the grounds that I hadn't done a system restore - that was required to eliminate software problems! Now, remember that this machine freezes after a few seconds of power AND it has no CD-drive! So, even if it was a software issue they expect you to have bought an external USB CD drive. After much ranting down the 'phone they persuaded me to re-submit on the web. I did and gave it another four days - no response!
So, back on the 'phone to be told that tech support had issued a collection notice but neglected to email me. Eventually I got the UPS details and the thing was collected and returned a week later with a new motherboard and it's all good.

One thing you can never get away from is that tech support departments are never properly funded and tech support engineers will often say anything to get you off the 'phone because they probably won't get you when you call back after having tried the pointless thing they've suggested - re-installing the OS rather than figuring out the problem, for example.


The 'phone number is 0870 1208340, and if you have to do battle with Asus here are a couple of names that helped me;

Virgin Media's tech support

I moaned about Virgin Media's tech support last year but when my connection was on a go-slow last week I discovered that you now have to pay 25p per minute to talk to tech support. Fantastic, I thought, a payed-for service will mean that it's worth having and I'll get to talk to a proper network engineer and not some person who is flipping over laminated pages. How wrong can you be?! The first thing the chap insisted was that it must be my router at fault - I told him that I'd swapped out the router with no change in performance - typically 40kBits per sec. He then told me to directly attach my PC to the cable-modem - never a good idea to come out from behind a NAT router, but we'll let that one go.

Anyhow - I told him that I'd already tried both a Mac and a Linux machine but there was no change;

Sir, we do not support Mac OS or Linux

So, you don't support the one OS that your entire network runs on?!

Sir, you must open Internet Explorer and delete all your cookies

And this is going to improve my connection speed how? How long before you advice my to re-install Windows?

Sir, that is step number five, now we must do things in order

I then told him that my neighbour (who also had Virgin) was suffering a slow connection;

Sir, my system is telling me that you have a perfect connection

It seems that Virgin's tech support have neither the tools to diagnose nor the expertise to fault-find any problems and the fact that everything he suggested was entirely without any merit leads me to believe they are just trying to keep you on the line as long as possible without any hope of resolving the issue.

And this you pay for!

British Telecom tom-foolery!

Here's a question - has anyone ever had a pleasant experience at the hand of BT tech support? Here is a previous post with another example of their poor customer service.
Anyhow - a few weeks ago I'd set up an audio streaming server for a (non-technical) friend. All was well with him edge-serving the stream to another server that had a shed-load of bandwidth. Now, he has BT broadband and they offered him a free upgrade from his 2meg aDSL to their basic business offering (which is an eight-meg circuit). He jumped, but on the day that they upgraded him his connection went dead - well, the crappy little USB modem claimed it was connected but no traffic would flow. When I got to it I discovered that I could ping IP addresses on the internet but no DNS instantiation was going on. So - I called BT and after the usual 'is your anti-virus up to date' etc. I got to speak to a tech who seemed to know what he was talking about. Eventually he did admit that the fault must be in the BT network and gave me a fault reference number. Why he bothered is anyone's guess because when I'd gone another support rep called back and despite my friend giving him the fault reference number they persuaded my friend the fault must be with his PC!
Anyways - I returned a couple of evenings later with a Draytek Vigor 2600 router (it's the standard router we provide to clients for our remote access support). It has a superb status page and will happily detect correct Virtual Path and Channel Identifiers (VPI and VCI figures). guess what - when BT goes from two to eight megs you need to update the VCI to 38 - why do none of their tech's know this?
Anyhow - it's kind of interesting that with a VCI figure of 37 only some protocols worked - I think the difference is between UDP/IP and ICMP - DNS uses (by default) UDP to do look-ups. I should have forced the PC to do DNS look-up over TCP and seen if it made a difference.

Virgin Media, cable modems and bad tech support

I had my cable go down on Wednesday - it would stay up for half an hour after resetting the cable modem. So - a quick call to their tech support only to be told that it had to be my wireless router - hmm, I began to wish I hadn't blogged that Dilbert cartoon on 12th May! So - I tried another routers and even hooked the ethernet out of the router directly to a couple of computers. Of course when I called back the guy was on his break and I had to start the whole procedure with another person. Anyhow - today I had the tech support visit and the engineer showed me how bad the feed from the cabinet in the street was; -27dBuV - he said he'd normally expect to see -6dBuV! So - at the box end he discovered the port feeding my house was faulty and replaced it - nice signal level at the house. But, when he drove off the ping I was running fell over and the link was down again. I got straight back on the 'phone and this time got a representative who actually knew what he was talking about. When I told him the story and the half hour business he knew exactly what the problem was. A couple of days ago Virgin pushed out a firmware upgrade to the Scientific Atlanta cable modems and it corrupted the data rate sync settings so the buffer in the modem would over-run after n-minutes of use. See these screenshots if you're similarly troubled!

NOT Root6 tech support!

Overpriced Apple stuff & unreliability

Wow - lovely bank holiday weekend but things went wrong! The battery on my MacBook died (just vanished - not seen under Vista or OS-X) - and guess what, a trip to the Apple Store revealed that it will take 'till Friday for a genius to see me (they drink the Kool Aid!) - in the meantime it's just shy of a hundred quid for a replacement battery. On the subject of the Genius Bar - How can someone in their mid-twenties be an expert in anything? Anyhow - I seemed to remember it being the same price for a replacement DC power supply. In fact, looking around I saw an Apple branded rucksack for a hundred quid, the cheapest iPod, and Joe found a set of headphones for (yes!), a ton. The Apple Store is like the Pound Store for wealthy people; ¨yes, ladies and gents, everything a hundred pounds (or multiples thereof)¨.
Also - my Belkin Skype handset stopped working and the good folks at Broadband Buyer did the usual reseller step-backwards and refused to be of any help further than giving me Belkin US's tech support number.
Then, after tidying out one of our attics and putting down a rug etc. so the kids can do Warhammer up there I fell out of the loft! I need a hot bath....

Not sure I'd recommend Tiscali again

Dear insert customer name here!

I had a couple of friends connect with Tiscali recently - my inlaws had an entirely unremarkable experience - the self-install modem kit arrived and it installed and worked. My only beef is that it re-brands your Internet Explorer so you see "Tiscali Internet Explorer" in the title-bar. Easily fixed by undo'ing the reg-hack their installer does. Truth to tell if you actually run the ISP's CD you deserve all you get!
Anyhow - our friend Frances had the same kit mailed to her but her experience with them has been awful and shows up how bad cheap tech-support can be. Initially her line was too noisy for a reliable aDSL connection - the modem would loose sync and I spent a while swapping filters and moving 'phone handsets but I couldn't get it reliable - definitely on the hairy edge. Well it took Tiscali two or three calls from me to persuade them to get BT to re-test the line. Two weeks later a BT engineer shows up and sticks in an extra 12dBs at the exchange and the connection was at least reliable. Since I'd uninstalled Tiscali's installer from Frances's PC in disgust they had her re-install (I was out of town) and then she couldn't get any Internet traffic. So, she started on the long slog of 'phone tech support. The variously advised her;

• To disable any firewalls or antivirus because "that must be the problem".
• To re-install Windows!
• Her PC was of too lower spec (like they knew what processor/memory/HD config she had!)

What was apparent to me was that all the tech support representatives she talked to had the attitude that they'd say anything to get her off the line because in all likelihood she'd get someone else when she called back. They had no useful advice, but you're paying £1 a minute for this!
In the end the problem was down to the Tiscali installer CD! I tested this and discovered that about one time in five the installer sets your connection encapsulation to PPOE rather than PPOA (point-to-point over ATM) - now (according to a chum at BT) they could have detected this at their end - he told me that BT tech support representatives would have that on their screen when taking the call and they would have talked her through changing it.

In the end I suppose that when you're paying a mere £15 for a 2Mbits^-1 connection you can't expect anything other than a tech support person who reads the laminated folder pages and doesn't really understand IP networking. They all need to listen to Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast.

Old newbies are better than young ones!

I've spent a few days setting up and cinfiguring a PC for my inlaws. They've been into digital photography for a couple of years and are keen to start editing their pictures, post them on Flickr (see the right hand link bar) and generally do email/browsing etc. Skype and VNC have proved invaluable in subsequent tech support sessions!
Anyhow - I've been reflecting on how nice it's been dealing with none-technical users who have a lifetime of dealing with kids/friends/family etc. rather than the arrogant young idiots I normally have to instruct. It made me think of a couple of instances when I was working on a big reality show (ok, Big Brother if you really want to know!).

• I got a call to a production office where someone was complaining that their PC was beeping - when I got there I noticed that there was a camcorder resting on the numeric key-pad. I lifted the PD150 and the PC stopped it's electronic moaning and ceased the string of zeros it was entering into Microsoft Word. I glanced over at the person (who was no doubt about eighteen months out of meeja-skool) and they seemed unimpressed. So, to illustrate what the problem had been I placed the camcorder back on the keypad and within a few seconds the "fault" returned. Rather than a "..oh, how silly of me - terribly sorry.." I got a dirty look and a curt; "Well if that's the problem then don't put it back!".
  
• Emily, one of my engineers, got called to sort out a broken printer. When she got there the printer was out of paper - what made it ammusing was that although it was a network printer it was on the desk next to the user. The "paper-out" light was winking and the paper-hopper (top-rear of the printer, so clearly visible) was obviously empty. There was even a ream of A4 on the desk! When Emily pointed this out they made her load the paper. At that point it became clear that they had sent the document MANY times. Now I'd have let them wait while all 207 copies came out but Emily had a bit more grace than me and cleared the server queue.
  
• I was talking someone through moving a file over the network. When it became clear that whatever had wound up at the user's workstation was not what they expected I asked "..how big is the file?" the response was "..oh, about two by three millimeters, little yellow icon..". The few seconds of silence on the 'phone let them know I hadn't expected that response!

With these three examples I was astonished how young-adults' arrogance often shines through. A smile and an apology would mean eveyone would walk away feeling good rather than an angry exchange and my prejudice of media-fools being confirmed. Give me OAP newbies any day!

"...to paraphrase from the treatment of alcoholics, "Don't be their "crutch" in the absence of their own responsibility." Their excuses for not learning are not acceptable." - I spotted this quote on Lockergnome (link in right-hand content bar) from a PC repair shop. I think the same is true providing tech support to the film & TV industry. So many folks are too proud to "sully" themselves with details!