Pet Peeves With Vendor Responses To Software / Hardware Problems

A.    Waste your time support requests

1.     Getting you to reinstall the software instead of advising the correct way to reinstall which ensures greater chances of success. Support teams frequently do not understand that your machine could have been mid updates or had partial uninstalls done. It is important not to waste time trying to fix a machine that is in a mix state.

a.      To perform a clean install on a PC running windows, especially for a program that is not quite working correctly, you should uninstall the software, reboot the machine with a cold boot and then install again. Short cuts lead to issues.

b.     You may even have to run a registry cleaner as with the case when I was trying to install Epsons printer driver and utilities on a machine that did not like the drivers. The constant install failures caused the registry to have entries that prevented a clean install. Free cleaners are available.

2.     Getting you to reboot your system .. again.. just because they are on the line… though rebooting does clean memory what is more important is the steps you take before and after to identify any differences in how your machine is working or configured.
3.   Suggesting advice that has no affect instead of escalating the problem or attempting to get help.
4.  Saying that no one else seems to have the problem.

    

B.    Support people that insist they know it all even though they are limited to their domain experience. This is especially frustrating when you are dealing with someone who does not understand subtle errors and they waste your time getting you to do things that are pointless, dangerous to your security access or just one of several steps that need to be taken. I get this all the time, especially from Telco support teams. Bell Canada has a terrible time escalating issue and I recently had the wonderful experience of having to argue with the support team that I should not have to expose my system to a security breach simply because their software was not working.. worst they were very proud that they could offer me a device that I would have to purchase to be able to use their service the way I was already paying for. What they clearly do not have is a method of providing a consistent set of support steps. Every time I phoned in I got a different answer.