The worst Tech Support Dept.!!!

EvilGeorge

So lads from your experience , which PC manufacture has the worst tech staff and service in history.

Now I have personally only dealt with Gateway, and they have good and complete and utter ****e in the same sentance.

Your views please and why !!

Saruman

Eh i have heard of a lot of disgruntled Dell customers.. horror stories worse than even Gateway! Gateway can be bad but depends on when you ring and with what problems... also on the tech you get.. noo B's are brutal!

Packard Bell suck so much its not worth mentioning them!

Captain Janway

i once spent 3 hours on line waiting for a tech, and then he was really rude to me.I think that his name was Colin /Colm(something like that)
I will never buy a Gateway again.

Typedef

I think that seeing as how Gateway EMEA no longer exists the fact that the Dell hatred rating is so high is telling.
We in Gateway Tech always maintained that Dell Tech were a shower of 'muppets' and the poll confirms this. Is it really fair to rate Gateway Tech seeing as how half of it doesn't even exist anymore? In light of that fact I suspect Dell have a few things/formats to answer for, suspect is too obvious a word, lets call it know, yeah that should introduce the appropiate level of ambiguity.

amp

Well as I use to work for Compaq support I should've voted for them but HP annoy me with the whole ring up and get through to HP Botwana or Canada or Mongolia or whereever malarky.

But by far the worst and not on the list in my opinion is Tas Books support, with their wait 1/2 hour on hold, answer, put on hold and then hang up method of support.

Gerry

Well I never bought a brand name machine so haven't had to go through phone jail for my own machine, I did have to ring packard bell support to resolve some issue with their bundled software and a modem and they did get the problem resolved in fairness to them. Their machines are fecking brutal though. From the experience of people I know, gateway seem to have the worst actual service record, but dell are just as bad on the phones.

EvilGeorge

I just think they are all shyt , my first PC was from Ultra , only had an issue once but its still going 5 1/2 years later (donated to my sister).

Built my own after that.

Now I didn't put these companies in the pole but has anyone gotten anything from Scan ?
I just had an rpl that I logged with them on the 3rd of Jan , I received my rpl mbd on 13th of Feb. - hows that , "we couldn't find your address" , its like saying I went to the UK but no one heard of this place called London!

Saruman

Captain Janway i think i know they guy your talking about and he is only like that with either someone displaying a serious ammount of muppetry or someone who can only complain... So it takes 2 to tango.. and also its absolutly not possible you spent 3 hours waiting! Typdef can also confirm it as he worked there as did evilgeorge.. at absolute most when we were shortstaffed and at our worst.. the longest wait i ever saw was almost an hour. Dont tripple it!

The only way you spent 3 hours is if you got through, hung up or was cut off and had to start all over again or something like that.

as for the quality of support? Gateway were actually won awards for their support!! YES!! With the exception of Compaq, Gateway had the best at certain years.. I can tell you for a fact if you ring Gateway right now you will get right through.. i know i just tried!! so none of this muppetry please!

EvilGeorge

Is muppetry in the dictionary ?

Saruman

Originally posted by EvilGeorge
Is muppetry in the dictionary ?

That answer your question?

EvilGeorge

OK, from the oxford version I assume then!

irishguy

well to cheer ye up i will tell you about my best experience with a company BostonAccoustics i purchased there BA7500 speakers with my gateway pc about 2 years ago, about 6 months ago i blew my power supply i rigged up a tempory one and i finaly got arround to contacting BA 3 days ago they answered my email in about 4 hours and dispached my power supply (which was out of warrenty) without question to me by first class airmail free of charge and i recived it within two days that from america and now they are working fine again

sceptre

Don't forget Apex (accounting software) support. Even worse than Tas. They will also keep you on hold for up to half an hour but have the added feature that they will never have an answer to the easiest query - "oh, John will ring you back before the end of today"

I've a particular list of things I'd like to do to Dell tech support though (most of them involving giant tweezers).

byte

TBH, I have never had much complaint with Gateway Tech as I always found them helpful. The only problem I had was the waiting to be answered but I guess nearly all big helplines are like this now!:(

ykt0di9url7bc3

and we do a good job at it too....

but compaq, as well as building shoddy pc's their tech support is cwap...

Tiny and Curry's support told some of our customers that we (AOL) should provide them with new drivers for their faulty modems....oh they're twits

azezil

i found compaq pritty good... ya their comps suck ass but its easy enough find drivers etc. when you need em... pb however!

Rafter

I've only ever had to ring Dell once and that was toooooo often.
Apaling service, setting customers expectations and then ringing back 20 mins later to say "No, sorry, I made a mistake, you can't have your engineer, we will take the system and repair it instead"................:mad: :mad: :mad:

kayos

Well I have always found Dell good. I love the way you just put in your serial number and you get all your latest drivers listed up for you even if the PC was customised (Maybe thats a business only thing).
As for Gateway yikes is all I can say I had nothing but hell with gateway and would never ever ever buy from them again. When I ordered my system I customised it to the last and comfirmed everything to them before the order went through but still they fupped up the order then to get the PC I ordered in the first place they wanted me to pay again return the first one they sent me and then they would send on the proper PC!!! After about a week of rabid phone calls and having very little hair left they sent me my proper PC with out me paying again and picked up the orginal PC. But low and behold they got it all wrong again......... I could go into the rest of that saga but its way to long so to cut the story short it took nearly 2 months to get the PC I ordered.

Then when Win ME (/me runs and cuts off the finger that typed that) came out I went looking for drivers for my modem and low and behold no-one in Gateway tech support knew what the hell it was (I know I got it before it hit the retail shelves but OEMS had it for months). I just find it worring that Tech support would not be trained up on the new products that the company would be shipping their PC's with.

kayos

EvilGeorge

Kayos you would be suprised the **** that they pull.

When I worked for Gateway, the marketing dept changed something (VITAL) on the laptops without telling anyone in tech support or any technical dept.
It took two months of thinks customers were idiots before we copped on.

daithi

Gateway have the best tech support i have ever dealt with, if you are a major customer. You ring up, A tech answers the phone and you talk to that person and that person only.
I accidentally got onto normal customer support once, it was bad...... really bad, they apologised and told me to ring the other number.

Dell were ok before the IT downturn, if you are having real trouble with tech support in ireland just ring their head office in america, they will fix your problem, no questions asked within a few hours.
it goes like this,
Ring america and complain about ireland, mention a few names of techs u were dealing with. America rings ireland straight away and heads roll.
Dell ireland ring u and make u a very happy customer in case u do it again.
Problem solved.

gandalf

I have worked for 2 of the companies listed here (in the sales side) and I resell products from several of the others now. I have dealt with the TS in Gateway, Dell, Hewlett Packard, Compaq and I have found them all to be very good when you supply the correct information and you deal with them in a polite manner.

I believe that alot of the grief people get on TS comes from inadequate information supplied to the Tech originally and people coming on with the wrong attitude. Its the old crap in, crap out scenario.

Gandalf.

Supercell

Gateway tech support sucks..all they do all day is mess around on messageboards ..muhahahah.

Wheres shrek anyhow..havent seen him here?

Kegser

I think all the TS departments in large multinationals are desperate. I have never dealt with any who have inspired confidence or dealt unusually well with any problem or query.

However a lot of the time I get to deal with second-level or dealer support who tend to be slightly more intelligent and well trained than the usual run of TS monkeys.... but in saying that there's no dramatic improvement.

I tend to be very critical and demanding when I deal with TS departments though; because I know my hardware and software and expect anyone I deal with to have a similar knowledge which often isn't the case.... I also expect a certain level of civility and a willingness to actually help; which again is not something I see very often.

I pity anyone who has to use TS on any kind of regular basis for everyday problems however; that would just be pure pain.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

I have to agree with Gandalf, most of the people that ring TS are muppets that don't have a clue what they're on about and even worse the ones that *think* they know it all.

Now these people might have been working for 4 or 5 hours listening to idiots shout down the phone at them and then you ring up. I wouldn't blame them having a short fuse, you would if you had to do their job.

One of the best TS depts. I've come across has to be Dell corporate support - excellent all round.

Irish_Ranger_IR

You didn't put IBM in the poll !!!!!!

Ruu_Old

Compaq are always awful to me. They dont even know what they are talking about half the time and no info on their own products, bleach.

EvilGeorge

Some companies have ceased to exist since I started this pole, incase you didn't notice the date.

Mac daddy

I have had a good few problems with dell before.
I had to ring one day for my friend about his DVD- RW not working no power, needed a new one sent out.
I got some chinese lad on the phone first could not understand him. got put through to somebody else told him the problem i told him that i put my drive in the bay that one worked fine detected in the bios the other one was not detected at all problem faulty drive. i was on the phone for a hour he could still not figure it out.
He went of to seek advise rang back a hour later and said i will send out a new to you.
That's what i asked him to do in the first place. MUPPETS :mad: :mad:

elexes

i would have to say hp ( hp and compaq are the same company btw ) i rang to get a 17" monitor replaced 1 month after it was purchased for a customer and was told it was past the warrienty period

rang a second time to get a printer replaced and was told that they would not replace the printer cause it was 6 months old . eventualy after a month i got them to agree to replace it but took 3 weeks to get

there pants imo

Trebor

Originally posted by elexes
i would have to say hp ( hp and compaq are the same company btw ) i rang to get a 17" monitor replaced 1 month after it was purchased for a customer and was told it was past the warrienty period

rang a second time to get a printer replaced and was told that they would not replace the printer cause it was 6 months old . eventualy after a month i got them to agree to replace it but took 3 weeks to get

there pants imo

wrt the printer most of those multinational comanpies have contracts with the manufacture's that say if it breaks in the first 90 days then it was a faulty printer and they replace it, after that the manufacturer has to deal with it as it.

anywho used to work for Gateway Client Relations and i can tell you the tech support was come and go depending on who you get through to, if you get through to an american then your screwed, their first port of call to fix a problem is a format reinstall but overall they aren't bad, haven't had to deal with a tech support since and am not looking forward to the next time i do as they will all be based in India and i have a big problem understanding accents. I can't understand someone from cork never mind India!

juno75

I worker as a TS 'Monkey' at gateway, well client logic in the end.

It does really depend on who you get.There wer a few peeps there that I was like'how the hell did he get a job here??'

And the stress levels from being in call centre hell does make it hard to have patience for a customers problems.

I had to account for pretty much every second of the day- how long I spent in the toilet, getting a bollikin for loggin in 1 min late,
blah blah, orrible sh!te.

Why gateway suck for me is sending reconditioned and actually
broken parts out as replacements.
I used to see hard drives that I knew wer fragged going back out to customers all the time.

If anyone ever offers you a Quantum Fireball......


Thank god thats all ancient history:D

Saruman

Who were you Juno? I probably knew you

Anyway i dont think you can blame Tech support for sending out crap parts.. not their fault!! Especially in the case of Gateway/Clientlogic... Its other companies that send out the crap and even when Gateway was trading... it was another department that sent out the parts.. not Tech support. Its quality of Tech support thats the question on this old raised from the dead thread. In other words did the Gateway reps know what they were doing in general?

kamobe

I was also a gateway tech, and it really depended on how lucky you were on calling in...

When the lines were busy they outsourced calls to some American jokers who kept wrecking PC's. They also hired a few ppl with shag all IT knowledge, hoping they'd learn. Ethics like this are probably what put them out of buisness, but if you got through to me on the phones you'd have been okay

ozt9vdujny3srf

I found dell's tech support horrible. My call constantly got outsourced to india after a 15 minute wait (Which was fine) but the reason i was ringing was beacause i KNEW my mouse was faulty and needed replacing, instead i just went throught the whole rigmarole of drivers this connections that b0rk. One of these people felt i could fix ot in he bios, another wanted me to format and reinstall! It took about 5 phonecalls to hammer the fact into their heads that the mouse was broken.

To be fair, after that, everything was fine. Mouse came out fairly promptly.

Shamo

In my experience gateway can be ok sometimes.

I rang up about a blown power supply to get it replaced, they said you have to send the whole computer up.
Sent up anyway, about a week later I rang up again wondering what happened to my P.C. They said it hasn't been sent back down to you yet so it's probably still getting serviced. Grand i'll wait a few more days. Another few days went, still not fixed, started getting a bit worried so eventually after loads of calls asking to speak to supervisors etc they told me the P.C never arrived at Gateway but they will send me down a replacement P.C. Pretty pleased about that as I didn't send my hard drive up with the P.C.
Anyway got that P.C then a week later my old P.C turned up aswell fixed. A lot of stress trying to get it done but worth it in the end.
I don't know whether they were sending me down bad hdd's or what but i'd say when I had a gateway P.C about 4 hard drives failed on me. Quatum hdd's I think they were.

Oxidise

I am going to have to agree with Elexes here,
a guy brought in a scanner that was obviously faulty and it took them a week to get the new one down to the store and the expect me to send the broken one back to them.

This time in particular they didn't send the docs to send it back so after a week a women rang me from hp saying that she hadn't received the broken scanner back. i told her what had happend and she said sh would send me some new ones but as of yet is has been 1 month since.
Altogether useless.

I have to say that Epson have a very good after sales/tech service, they have the now online tech chat and they also replace items pretty much the next day.

thisid

I can't take the time out to explain right now but I'll try to post it tonight... I can explain the quality of your tech support from all angles. I work for one company that supports almost ALL of the major manufacturers. Their name is an oxy-moron because they don't think like a Client and there is no Logic in their methods. We used to be a small company called ServiceZone and supported just Dell and Gateway (SUPRISE, you can't say one is better than the other b/c they're the same.)

I'll post a ton of stuff about this later, and if you want... advertise it on the web. See I'm a nice tech support person, but there are things I'm required to do that I don't agree with and things that I CAN NOT do that would fix your problems right away.

I don't even care if the company gets mad at me anymore or not... I'm already held in a lower position because one of my managers views me as a "Security Risk" after helping fix their virus infected network.

Ryan Badge 13*4

Adeptus Titanicus

I think the quality of support you get from Dell depends greatly on what kind of system you are looking for support on. If you're going Dimension/Inspiron, you usually end up with the robot who asks the simple questions (Is it plugged in) and follows prompts on a screen, or at least it seems like that. Calling for Optiplex/Latitude support, you get someone who can talk sense and actually listens. Server support, you get the best they have. I think they must progress through these levels, though they probably cull the low-life levels occasionally.

I had a perfect experience of this in one day. The Inspiron muppet just could not understand that I know what the problem was and just wanted someone to come replace a bit of kit. Took ages answering muppet questions. An hour later placed a call on a Optiplex system and had a decent conversation with the guy and he mailed me bits that I needed and generally bent over backwards to help. I think their support is generally excellent if you are a business user.

Compaq get my vote for worst... Grrrrr

Matt Simis

Originally posted by Typedef
I think that seeing as how Gateway EMEA no longer exists the fact that the Dell hatred rating is so high is telling.
We in Gateway Tech always maintained that Dell Tech were a shower of 'muppets' and the poll confirms this. Is it really fair to rate Gateway Tech seeing as how half of it doesn't even exist anymore? In light of that fact I suspect Dell have a few things/formats to answer for, suspect is too obvious a word, lets call it know, yeah that should introduce the appropiate level of ambiguity.

"Things/Formats to answer for"? What the hell are you talking about? You worked in their competition, did your industrial spy in Dell fill in you on some secrets or did you simply swallow everything G2K Brand fed you? :rolleyes:


This poll is pointless and skewed, because of these simple facts:

a) People only ring TS when they are unhappy. TS deals in pissed off people.
b) People can (should) only rate the companies they have experience with (ie these people are customers)
c) Most people have experience with only 1 or 2 companies listed
d) Dell sell more than any other company on the list, therefore Dell have more customers, the single most popular company in this poll should be Dell.


So, (a)+(b)*(d) means, by the numbers, Dell should walk away as the "winner", purely because they are the most successful company listed, more customers means more TS calls means more pissed off people. It doesnt mean they are the worst as the votes dont count as relative to each other. The fact Gateway are riding high when I checked however, despite being absent for years, doesnt bode well at all for them, contrary to whatever you are trying to say above.. :ninja:



Matt

Caliden

hp, cause they dont have chipset drivers for mobos in there computers site is rarely updated if at all,
so im stuck with a mobo and xp home and cant put on any other o/s :dunno:

thisid

I work for a company that provides outsourced tech support for everybody from dell to microsoft. I work for the arm that gives support to the gateway users. We're horribly mistreated, underpaid, understaffed, and expected to work miracles. There are a few of us that do KNOW what we're doing, but we're prevented from moving up in the ranks. For example, I'm stuck as a regular level 1 tech and cannot move up b/c I'm considered a security risk. There's actually a funny explanation for that: Our call center was infected with the blaster virus. Yeah, tech support has crappy computers that usually work worse than yours, lol. The boss called in the site's ex-admin at 3 times the normal pay rate, he caused more problems that he fixed. My room-mate and I are security buff's and I had known about the exploit that blaster used months before the virus came out. So, guess who fixed EVERYTHING in 2 days. I have been considered a security risk since that day b/c I knew what was happening and they were afraid I would use my "m4d skillz" to cause trouble.

On to the other techs: Most of our techs come from various backgrounds in the fast food industry (this includes our management.) We make 7.50 an hour and are expected to perform the duties of tech support, sales, and customer relations. The rules we are FORCED to follow come to us from gateway and we have no choice but to follow them. A lot of the tech's have little to no experience, one of our level 2 tech's has never even OWNED a comptuer or used one before he came to work with us. They are given a database of possible fixes that include such useful information as: If the client suspects they have a virus, redirect them to [url]Http://symantic.com.[/url] Notice anything there. SYMANTEC makes Norton antivirus NOT SYMANTIC. How can they provide proper support when the information they're given is so wrong. You are just as guilty as the ppl you are complaining about. You guys bought the systems without learning what you were getting into, and really... in the YEARS I've been working in the tech field I have yet to find a reason that any home user NEEDS a comptuer unless it's for business. Most ppl just buy them b/c everybody else on the block has one. WHAT KIND OF CALCULATIONS ARE YOU DOING THAT REQUIRES YOU TO HAVE A 3GB SYSTEM WITH 1GB OF RAM! Jesus.... sorry, I was ranting.

Anyway, flame me if you guys want... I would expect no less considering who I work for, most ppl don't like me to start with. lol

Ryan

BuffyBot

I would expect no less considering who I work for

Easy answer - get a new job!

Stephen

I've a friend who used work for Client Logic in bt openworld support, says its the worst job in the world.

thisid

Yeah, that would be the easier thing to do... that would be why I'm going back to school to get the paper work showing that I know how to do what I do. Boy, have I learned my lesson... If I had it all to do over again, I would have went to college a LOT sooner.

lol

bizmark

WHAT KIND OF CALCULATIONS ARE YOU DOING THAT REQUIRES YOU TO HAVE A 3GB SYSTEM WITH 1GB OF RAM

Games.......pritty much every thing else you could do on a 486 or p1 tbh

thisid

Yeah, games would require that much. However, I think everybody finally figured out that we're no help when it comes to that. Even the Ever-crackers don't call us anymore. You know, I've had about 3 calls for support with games that weren't working and of them the one guy that was cool needed support with UT2k4... the other two were (no joked) miffed little old ladies that cussed me about their solitare game not being reinstalled when we reloaded them. I will still never figure out why ppl spend so much money on OUR comptuers to play crummy games when there are cheaper, faster, and better comptuers that are out there. Poorly informed purchases I say. Buy a deck of cards.

All in all though, I do enjoy it when someone does talk to me after speaking with 5 or 6 other techs (many of whom speak in VERY broken english) and I'm the one they fall in love with b/c I fix the problem and don't try to push them into buying XP or something else they don't need. Sad thing is... my job has been threatened because of that very behaviour. I went there to be a tech, not a salesman. I really do like my users, I just wish I could do more for them... like personally teach each one step by step, but it's just not feasible.

Ryan

AdMMM

I found Fujitsu Siemens to have very good tech support.

I had a problem with my PSU and I rang them up, next day they had a replacement!

Dell are by far the worst! Getting redirected to India while listening to someone who you can't understand, talk for 30mins reading set instructions.... for the wrong printer!

irishgeo

Dont bother with technical support lines. i just log on here or do a search on google to solve the problem.

The_Conductor

This makes the third resurrection of this thread in as many years.
I'm ex-CL as well- was tech spec on the IOM side for- well it seems like forever..... Also doubled up as helpdesk, teamleader at large, quality control, I was also chucked randomly on French/German/UK lines as the service levels went south, interviewer for new starts technical examiner (the only examiner who got into trouble for refusing to pass people- just for the sake of passing them) and general dogs body. When I was made do a 13 hour stint on Christmas eve without so much as a Christmas card or a thankyou fromr the company- I had enough. :mad: Didn't really matter though- one of the teamleaders who knew I was looking elsewhere threatened to report me to HR unless I handed in my resignation, b*****d. :mad: Had to resign- my position was untenable. Day following my handing in my resignation- was brought into HR and told that I would have been made redundant anyway- but as I had resigned i) I wouldn't be paid redundancy, ii) I would be expected to work out my notice in full, iii) the other tech spec who was being made redundant- I was expected to cover for him while I worked out my notice, as he was leaving immediately...... :mad: That has to be one of the bitchiest things that has ever ever happened to me........ w*****s :mad:

This followed being overpaid by the company for a number of years- and being asked to repay the entire overpayment immediately too..... (my only salary for a few months was PAYE refunds.....) :mad:

Temper raising several notches as I remember the ******* **** expected to put up with.

******* ****** ****

Arrrrrgghhhhhhhhhhh the ******s :mad:

I see there is a Yahoo list set up for ex CL people...... hmmmmmm

:mad: :mad:

mcgovern

Gateway were fine for me, maybe because I was an employee at the time, but apart from having to hold for ages they were very helpful.

Epson sent me out out new printers a few times, granted it didnt fix my problem and its still not fixed, but at least they tried

Packard Bell are evil. Hadn't a clue what they were talking about, gave us "cheaper number for Tech Support" which was premium number in UK for a company not related to PB in anyway. As far as I can remember they didn't solve our problem or even really try, eventually we got fed up and sent it off to a PC clinic.

C Fodder

Nobody has mentioned the worst offenders yet who are -hiss - eircom.
If I have to explain to another person that the faulty modem / virus / need windows reinstalling is in fact set connection to dial my default connection, I will go hunting for these people and insert an external modem internally.

BTW the best tech support I have come across was also from eircom on the corporate premium support line. A person who actually knew what he was talking about and solved multiple real probs in less than 5 minutes.