Why Tech Support Is (Purposely) Unbearable

Tech support, as far back as I can remember, has always been this bad. Can you remember a time when you weren't on hold for at least an hour only to be transferred or hung up on? When is the last time you called tech support for anything and had your problem solved instantly? Exactly.

According to a survey conducted last year by the industry group International Customer Management Institute, or ICMI, 92 percent of customer service managers said their agents could be more effective and 74 percent said their company procedures prevented agents from providing satisfactory experiences. Moreover, 73 percent said the complexity of tech support calls is increasing as customers have become more technologically sophisticated and can resolve simpler issues on their own.

But is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Yes the monitor too. OK I will transfer you to another member of the forum for support as we have exhausted this level of tech support. Please hold.

As dumb as is it plugged in, is it on, are you using the right remote, you'd be amazed how many times a week it was the simple shit and they still failed the call center and had to have a truck roll to change a channel or plug in a box. I don't miss being a cable tech at all. Hell, even in the army, you be amazed how many times things just weren't plugged in, especially with our love affair with dell laptops and docks

Just imagine what the masses would have thought back in the early Win95 days (Plug and Pray) if technology was as widely used! My days of phone and email support for Creative Labs was painful in those dark days, and that was with the theoretically more "technically adept" users. Walking them through moving the sound cards from one PCI slot to another, changing IRQ and I/O port numbers, etc. I had callers that waited 2 hours on the phone to reach customer support.. and they were happy to reach us.

Company policies definitely caused some friction during my time. The all-important "time to resolution" hanging over employees head.. which resulted mostly in unresolved "try this and call back if that doesn't work" crap. My customer satisfaction scores were off the charts, but my time to resolution scores were abysmal, as well as my documentation. What's the point in documenting every tiny step for the 100th time of the same issue.. when I can get it solved and move on to spending my time on the harder issues? Probably why they moved me off phone support to email support and helping out in the RMA testing department, which worked out better anyways for me.

Only time I call tech support is if something is actually broken and I need to get it fixed or return it.

Dell seems to keep fining new ways to ask for more information (could you take a picture of the screen)

I had a lot to say about this, but it's so irritating to even remember the nightmares of tech support. I can't bring myself to type them up, I don't want to relive that again.

I can count the number of times I've needed to actually contact technical support on one hand.
In 2 of the instances, it was related to an internet outage in my area and they confirmed that almost immediately.
In 1 instance, it was an issue with my new phone not having the MMS protocol enabled by default. The AT&T guy was able to walk me through that in about 5 minutes.
The other times it has been work-related and because my system in the office has a company image on it that is borderline crippled.

Did tech support and customer service for a few years as a rep and eventually a trainer and escalation person. This was for the #2 dial up service and the #1 PC vendor. Can confirm that the employees were far more concerned about their call metrics and reading scripted text than they were about fixing issues. The average call time was expected to be under seven minutes. Their paycheck was based on call times and scripted text, not solving customer issues.

Been on the tech support line with TWC too many times. They always want you to power down everything. When I bought my own cable modem, they then want to blame the modem. It seems like it always takes 3-4 calls. They eventually do "something" on their end, and it magically starts working again.
The worse are when you call tech support and they go through the "flow chart". Once you are done with this, you get to talk to someone that probably knows more about what they are talking about.

My first real tech job was with Gateway 2000 in 1995. I was a first level tech and I used to have to walk people through doing everything (there was no remote login back then, people have it so easy now). From replacing a motherboard to re-installing Windows 3.11 (I started just before Windows 95 was released). Since I was first level I was supposed to try and fix the problem and if I couldn't within 15 minutes or so I'd have to transfer them to 2nd level. I worked the night shift and I almost never transferred the calls, I worked them to completion. I hated the call metrics and would prefer to do one long call then 10 short ones. Plus I knew the hold times for 2nd level and that late at night they could go over 2 hours.

I can honestly say I have never called a technical support number for anything, ever, but that's just me I suppose. As someone that grew up in the 1970s having a Dad that was an Electrical Engineer it rubbed off on me and I was one of those people that just had to "destroy everything" in the immortal complaints of my Mom in the process of learning how everything worked and that's always been a benefit to me. As a hardware Geek I'm one of those people that helped build out what we now know as "The Internet" from its days as strictly ARPANET with tightly controlled access to its capabilities (which in those days wasn't much at all really).

But as someone that has worked as a technical support supervisor at a Gateway call center back home in southeastern VA (it closed after only a few years as expected) and there was no end to the horror stories from the consumer/customer side of things, certainly not. No matter what we did, even if we got them off the phone with praise and thanks for our help in resolving their problems, they'd still file complaints after the fact in that we weren't friendly enough or fast enough or didn't sympathize with them enough.

Suffice to say the customer is not always right.

they used to have customer service handle the entry level stuff and the cs staff would be ten times the size of the ts team. Then cs team that they could do the ts tasks as well... and then most of it got off shored to save on money... now companies are bring the ts and cs back to local staff that has one goal fixing the issues.

The way it works at good companies is you hit tier one they have a checklist and they ask what your issue is. You respond with a simple phrase. That is compared by a thinking person to a list a common issues by a thinking person. They are supposed to see if looks like it might be one of those common issues if it is they give you the proven solution. They are paid to use reason to see if they have the answer to a simple problem. You solution either works or it does not a match on of there known issues, they you wait while they put you in a que for a supervisor that is tier two.

At tier two they tell you explain the issues exactly how you did to first representative. They check the representatives list of known issues to see if they made a mistake or misunderstood. If they representative made a mistake and gave the wrong info they often have to put there cs hat on and make sure no damage happened as a result. After they ascertain that they solution did not cause any more issues they check to see if they can explain how to use a known solution or put you in a que for a network engineer or a tier three.

At tier three you have an issue or issues that a known solution has not be typed up in a technical documentation and re-written so that a normal person can understand it. The technical manual is the solution as it worked to fix the issue, the solution binder is what the tech writer produces. Usually written by someone more customer orientated than technically orientated so that when tier one or the basic representative reads it there is no misunderstanding, since they can simply ask the tier three to explain the details if they need them. Then people always ask why you need both and response if if you did not have the technical manual you did not have any issues... upper management gets the joke, middle management never does. When they exhaust the fixes or the issues seems to be outside they knowledge base they tell the person they are going to research the issue and to please remain patience they will call back after trying to reproduce the issue. They tend look over everything the company can do or if it is there hardware causing the issue. They consult tier four which might be an internet engineer, upper management, a developer for the game or service. Pretty much if the issue is the fault of the company when you are working tier three you tend to be the last person the individual talks to from the company as you basically have to figure out how to fix the issue. If it is company to company a case manager might be assigned in which case you have what is called an executive assistant that handles the case at the tier five level.
I have worked in the first four tiers and have an individual at electronic arts help me at the tier five level.

At tier four you are dealing with someone who job is not to deal with customers but part of the normal workings of the company. Network engineers, coders, developers, upper management and so forth.

At tier five you are dealing with some one assigned to help your company come to a resolution over a legal issue.

If people would simply go back to a level one or tier one representative is supposed to be smart, savy and understand the companies product or service. They are suppose to triage the people who can be helped right away so they go away happy, from the people that hand holding and or troubleshooting is needed for.

Tier two are the people who are good and figuring out if the normal level one representative is doing there job or simply counting the hours until work is over in incidents filed. The only incidents that count are the ones resolved. Tier two is there to review the people who are doing the majority of the work the tier one representatives. But every one starts seeing people who have fifty to seventy five incidents a day promoted to tier three and getting their own office then suddenly only have to do as many incidents as they get per day. I was doing both tier one and tier three at Disney Media group at the same time do to lack of personnel. Then they merged in a team who was from playdom who had no experience and it was mess. Things that worked in a small team suddenly no longer worked right. People complained I had a nicer machine I was allowed to talk to developers and so forth. But basically from what I can tell people simply want a promotion. So the best solution would be Every year they are tier one add ten dollars and hour to their pay if they they keep a customer rating above ninety percent. If it fails take a dollar away for every two percent it falls. When it hits minimum wage let them go and hire some one else. The people checking the checklist need to be good at tier one and figure out who to manage people, this seems to be something middle management seems to fail at in large companies and most never seem to learn the concept. Their job is do the job of the people they are managing if they do not do there job and if they can not get it done they need to be replaced and or hire more people. Tier three is not supposed to be goal for people good at figuring out what the customer is trying to get it is for people who are troubleshooters people who generally are orientated but since people are told the only way to get promoted to a corner office is to... insanity. Maybe in time more companies will go back to promoting people to the tasks they are good at and paying people to do those task what they need to keep them doing that task.

Just remember most calls to tech support are horrible because someone did not want to pay full price for something, and everyone else said so I can get that half off if I whine a bit like a child... idiots. People have to remember everything in life costs currency be it time, money, or effort.

Tech support is not for intelligent and / or educated people. It's target are the most basic consumers, who ask trivial or idiotic questions.

Anyone who can add up 2+2 will probably get further on their own than tech support can go.

Steve said:

Moreover, 73 percent said the complexity of tech support calls is increasing as customers have become more technologically sophisticated and can resolve simpler issues on their own.

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You mean, most people no longer need someone to ask them if they have tried turning it off and turning it back on again? Shocking.

Besides, shouldn't this be making the tech support function EASIER? Now you don't have to have all those lower level techs sitting on phones doing the stupid simple stuff anymore. Your call volumes should be WAY down.


I used to get frustrated by having to wait forever, go through three levels of support, until I finally got to speak to someone who knew as much or more about the issue than I did. Maybe it's because I mostly buy enterprise hardware these days, or because Fios tech support is actually pretty OK, but I really feel this is improving over time.

M76 said:

Tech support is not for intelligent and / or educated people. It's target are the most basic consumers, who ask trivial or idiotic questions.

Anyone who can add up 2+2 will probably get further on their own than tech support can go.

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This is the most ignorant thing I've read in awhile. I had a tech support job and we'd field calls from Doctors, CEOs, kids that messed up their dad's computer, people in college, house wives and retired people.

When it comes to working with a customer on the phone their intelligence had nothing to do with how well the call went, their attitude made the difference.

azuza001 said:

But is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Yes the monitor too. OK I will transfer you to another member of the forum for support as we have exhausted this level of tech support. Please hold.

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I hate that. The first tier you talk to can only do those very basic troubleshooting steps. And in order to be transferred to someone that can actually fix your issue, you have to go through them again...

I liked my old ISP. They had a similar way of doing things (they did go a little deeper, but when a real tech was needed for checking logs or whatever, they had to transfer), but they knew me so when I'd call in they knew I had already gone through the steps to actually have reason to call. The technicians always asked why I didn't work there as I knew more about their network than their first tier support guys.

I think a lot of people that work in the IT field will call tech support when they really need it and after diagnosing the issue as much as they possibly can. Except for those rare mistakes that we won't admit to (Sorry Crashplan, those files aren't missing... I purposely deleted them... shit. I've never apologized to a company so much in my life!). When we call, it's because the issue is on their side and they need to fix it. We've checked our shit, checked our logs, error counts, etc...

Ur_Mom said:

I hate that. The first tier you talk to can only do those very basic troubleshooting steps. And in order to be transferred to someone that can actually fix your issue, you have to go through them again...

I liked my old ISP. They had a similar way of doing things (they did go a little deeper, but when a real tech was needed for checking logs or whatever, they had to transfer), but they knew me so when I'd call in they knew I had already gone through the steps to actually have reason to call. The technicians always asked why I didn't work there as I knew more about their network than their first tier support guys.

I think a lot of people that work in the IT field will call tech support when they really need it and after diagnosing the issue as much as they possibly can. Except for those rare mistakes that we won't admit to (Sorry Crashplan, those files aren't missing... I purposely deleted them... shit. I've never apologized to a company so much in my life!). When we call, it's because the issue is on their side and they need to fix it. We've checked our shit, checked our logs, error counts, etc...

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The only time I have had to call Verizon FiOS tech support lately is when I have switched routers.

For some crazy reason (which is neither here nor there) their DHCP leases are manually tied to the WAN MAC address of your router, and when it changes, you have to call them and have it reset.

The experience has been excellent thus far. I do have to get through the automated system to get me to the right place, which can be a little frustrating, but usually I am speaking with a tech support agent empowered to fix my problem within 2 minutes of dialing.

I usually tell them "Hi, I need to you reset my DHCP lease for my public IP address" and they usually respond something like "Wow, you are actually the first customer I've spoken to who actually called it by its right name", and proceed to reset it, and I'm off the phone within 30 seconds of getting to a live person. No forwarding to a higher tier tech support or anything.

Obviously, it would be better if they didn't require this at all, and my router could just grab it's own lease freely, but all things considered, the tech support interaction isn't bad.

And yes, I know I could spoof it, but I'd rather not have to keep track of which MAC address Verizon thinks my hardware is on. If they made it any more difficult, I might just do this, but since it isn't that bad, I just call in and have them reset it.

I wonder if - maybe - I have better tech support in my area, because I live in one of those few areas where I actually have multiple broadband providers competing for my business. It would be interesting to find out if they employ different customer service teams for geographies with competition, than they do in areas where they have monopolies.

Best I had was an ATT call. I was getting terrible ping times (which ultimately was a repeater on their side needed replaced) so knowing a bit about networking I called tech support...

Me: "Hi, my xbox is getting terrible lag when I play online"
ATT: "blah blah reset modem and router"
Me: "yup, still isn't working correctly".
ATT: "Okay, let us go to your pc browser and clear out the temporary internet files and cookies"
Me: "...."
Me: "What does that have to do with my xbox?"
ATT: "sometimes cookies and cluttered temp files can slow internet down for other computers at your home"
Me: "my pc is turned off..."
ATT: "please delete all temporary...."

This continued on for a while until I just laid in bed and pretended to do what they said until they moved me to next tier of tech support. In which case this person tracert my network and found the bad repeater and had it replaced. All was better.

Your WAP worked fine with a FiOS router for years and now it won't connect to our cable router? Obviously it's the WAPs fault, we can't help you.

Yeah... How many of you got to deal with the abomination that EarthLink 5.0 was, as a support rep. I was in T2 when that crap came out, and jumped to e-support as quick as I could.

Was promoted through the ranks in a company where I started as tech support.
First, it's hard to find a good tech support agent, second, if they are good, they usually are promoted quickly and used to much greater value.
As for management, when they do not understand the technical aspects the support team deals with, they fall back to metrics and call times, since they have no other tangible form of evaluation.

So generally management is not aware of the work they manage, problem one, and good tech support agents promote, or get a better job quickly. Leaves what becomes a pool of shit.

Pro tip if you've never worked in a client facing position, lose the indignation and attitude when speaking to strangers, the difference in treatment is significant (and no, just because someone is paid to deal with you, does not mean they will do so in the fashion you believe you deserve, you selfish, small minded ignoramus).

Kalabalana said:

First, it's hard to find a good tech support agent, second, if they are good, they usually are promoted quickly and used to much greater value.

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I think this is the key. Tech support is the entry level position. If you're there for more than 2 years, you're either not any good or you have no motivation to move forward. Good tech support people move up to higher positions.

Rustynuts said:

Your WAP worked fine with a FiOS router for years and now it won't connect to our cable router? Obviously it's the WAPs fault, we can't help you.

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Oen of the many reasons my life improved immensely when I discarded the ISP's provided router in favor of my own enterprise grade hardware.

Right now I have a low power embedded AMD based board running pfSense as my router, connected to a 24 port managed HP ProCurve switch in turn connected to two Ubiquiti Unifi 802.11ac AP's, one on either side of the house, and life is beautiful all the time

Darunion said:

Best I had was an ATT call. I was getting terrible ping times (which ultimately was a repeater on their side needed replaced) so knowing a bit about networking I called tech support...

Me: "Hi, my xbox is getting terrible lag when I play online"
ATT: "blah blah reset modem and router"
Me: "yup, still isn't working correctly".
ATT: "Okay, let us go to your pc browser and clear out the temporary internet files and cookies"
Me: "...."
Me: "What does that have to do with my xbox?"
ATT: "sometimes cookies and cluttered temp files can slow internet down for other computers at your home"
Me: "my pc is turned off..."
ATT: "please delete all temporary...."

This continued on for a while until I just laid in bed and pretended to do what they said until they moved me to next tier of tech support. In which case this person tracert my network and found the bad repeater and had it replaced. All was better.

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Wait, what?

ATT? Do they do regular internet? or were you running your xbox through our phone?

EDIT: Quick search said that they do... I'll be damned. I never actually looked at them for that.


Uh, anyway, back to what I was going to say. Some customer service is intentionally bad, I know I've done it. If you're a cunt, I don't see why I would want to bend to your every whim. On the other hand, if you're not an ass, I don't see why I wouldn't try to get it done right and quick, to get it over with for both.

Apparently turning it off and on again isn't working anymore. Now the Tech people need to know shit.

canontk said:

This is the most ignorant thing I've read in awhile. I had a tech support job and we'd field calls from Doctors, CEOs, kids that messed up their dad's computer, people in college, house wives and retired people.

When it comes to working with a customer on the phone their intelligence had nothing to do with how well the call went, their attitude made the difference.

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You clearly misunderstood what I meant, so don't get angry over it. You either need high intelligence or high level IT knowledge to solve tech problems. The kind of people you list are perfectly capable to have zero tech knowledge. There was no derogative statement on my part, only you see it that way. And of course instantly throw out the insults without asking for clarification. Chill out.

To clarify what I mean. If the guy who calls tech support asks about a basic question the tech support will be able to help most likely, because those are the things they're equipped to handle over a phone. So the whole story ends positively. But if someone like me contacts tech support who already gone down most troubleshooting options and diagnosed the problem, will most likely don't get anything from the average tech support representative. So the experience will be mostly negative because they can't help. Esecially if the ticket is handled by a guy sitting in India, who is not even capable of understanding English.

This post is exactly 100% what I mean. When you get "tech support" from a guy slash robot who goes trough the list of most common solutions without even trying or being capable of understanding the problem. And many of the callers will have the knowledge level that their problem would be solved by the generic blanket scenarios.

DukenukemX said:

Apparently turning it off and on again isn't working anymore. Now the Tech people need to know shit.

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What little actual IT content that show has, is actually pretty funny.

And of course I came here to see if anyone posted that already.

azuza001 said:

But is it plugged in? Is it turned on? Yes the monitor too. OK I will transfer you to another member of the forum for support as we have exhausted this level of tech support. Please hold.

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you laugh at those questions but we have customers call and report that their internet isn't working and all the lights on their modem are off. Then a few moments later bring up how their entire road has no power. They don't understand why they don't have internet since they have a laptop which is running on a battery.

canontk said:

This is the most ignorant thing I've read in awhile. I had a tech support job and we'd field calls from Doctors, CEOs, kids that messed up their dad's computer, people in college, house wives and retired people.

When it comes to working with a customer on the phone their intelligence had nothing to do with how well the call went, their attitude made the difference.

Click to expand...

Would it be out of line for me to ask the tech support person to skip to like step 6? I don't want to be rude though, so I usually go through the paces.

westrock2000 said:

Would it be out of line for me to ask the tech support person to skip to like step 6? I don't want to be rude though, so I usually go through the paces.

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I've struggled with this myself on occasion.

I try to start out with using very specific terminology in my questions that clearly illustrates that I know what I'm talking about in the first few seconds of the call, to kind of give the Tech Support person a clue that maybe they can dispense with the initial tech illiterate steps and jump right to the meat of the problem solving. Sometimes I think it works, but you can never be quite sure.

Zarathustra[H] said:

I've struggled with this myself on occasion.

I try to start out with using very specific terminology in my questions that clearly illustrates that I know what I'm talking about in the first few seconds of the call, to kind of give the Tech Support person a clue that maybe they can dispense with the initial tech illiterate steps and jump right to the meat of the problem solving. Sometimes I think it works, but you can never be quite sure.

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I understand what you are trying to convey, but when a customer called in and sounded like they knew what they were doing, inevitably, they had only screwed things up worse. Granted this was in the day of manual winsock repairs, but that's been my experience.
It was usually a case of knowing just enough to REALLY screw stuff up.

westrock2000 said:

Would it be out of line for me to ask the tech support person to skip to like step 6? I don't want to be rude though, so I usually go through the paces.

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I've only ever had to call tech support once in my life (to RMA a dead BFG 7800gtx way back when) and I instantly realized that you have to go with them when they tell you what to try. It doesn't help them to list what you've already done. I basically determined it was dead with all the knowledge I had but they had to have it documented that each thing was done. So I humored the guy and 'did' everything until he got to the conclusion. It sounds bad but the call only took 10 minutes plus a much shorter follow up after I 'reinstalled' windows.

Exavior said:

you laugh at those questions but we have customers call and report that their internet isn't working and all the lights on their modem are off. Then a few moments later bring up how their entire road has no power. They don't understand why they don't have internet since they have a laptop which is running on a battery.

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I worked for an cable ISP (a long time ago...ugh) and this was a common plight. When VoiP started testing we actually had to start shipping cable modems with battery backups to meet 911 regulations. I left before that went live so no idea what it takes today However, for the life of me figure out why that didn't simply become standard. It was brilliant in it's simplicity and the modems with VoiP were the same cost as the standard ones...circa DOCSIS 1.x.

canontk said:

I worked them to completion.

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See, now that's service

pothb said:

Wait, what?

ATT? Do they do regular internet? or were you running your xbox through our phone?

EDIT: Quick search said that they do... I'll be damned. I never actually looked at them for that.


Uh, anyway, back to what I was going to say. Some customer service is intentionally bad, I know I've done it. If you're a cunt, I don't see why I would want to bend to your every whim. On the other hand, if you're not an ass, I don't see why I wouldn't try to get it done right and quick, to get it over with for both.

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I can see that. I try to be polite and patient as best as possible. It could be that the person was new or has not even heard of an xbox at the time. Which is why I let them run me through the script. It was funny though that it was so far off track for what the problem was. I wish there was a way to move to tech 2 but I understand that then everyone would just do that and still have problems with it not being plugged in.

Exavior said:

you laugh at those questions but we have customers call and report that their internet isn't working and all the lights on their modem are off. Then a few moments later bring up how their entire road has no power. They don't understand why they don't have internet since they have a laptop which is running on a battery.

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That is so..... I mean..... I am just so sorry. I get my fair share of stupid people at work (my phone doesn't work and I charged it all night long and it turns out it's just not turned on, or the person who tried to dry out their phone after it fell in the toilet by wrapping it in a paper towel and then microwaving it for a few seconds) but there is no power, of course the modem would not work....

The number of people that don't have a clue how tech works and think things should just work because they think they should is staggering, its enough to make one want to go hide in a mountain cottage and stay as far away from others as physically possible. Don't get me wrong, I don't 100% understand exactly how a processor works down to its micro level but I also don't need to to fix a pc.

Darunion said:

Best I had was an ATT call. I was getting terrible ping times (which ultimately was a repeater on their side needed replaced) so knowing a bit about networking I called tech support...

Me: "Hi, my xbox is getting terrible lag when I play online"
ATT: "blah blah reset modem and router"
Me: "yup, still isn't working correctly".
ATT: "Okay, let us go to your pc browser and clear out the temporary internet files and cookies"
Me: "...."
Me: "What does that have to do with my xbox?"
ATT: "sometimes cookies and cluttered temp files can slow internet down for other computers at your home"
Me: "my pc is turned off..."
ATT: "please delete all temporary...."

This continued on for a while until I just laid in bed and pretended to do what they said until they moved me to next tier of tech support. In which case this person tracert my network and found the bad repeater and had it replaced. All was better.

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Repeater? What type of connection are you on that makes use of a repeater?

westrock2000 said:

Would it be out of line for me to ask the tech support person to skip to like step 6? I don't want to be rude though, so I usually go through the paces.

Click to expand...

Zarathustra[H] said:

I've struggled with this myself on occasion.

I try to start out with using very specific terminology in my questions that clearly illustrates that I know what I'm talking about in the first few seconds of the call, to kind of give the Tech Support person a clue that maybe they can dispense with the initial tech illiterate steps and jump right to the meat of the problem solving. Sometimes I think it works, but you can never be quite sure.

Click to expand...

The problem with that is for the person on the other side trying to decide if you really know what you are talking about of if you are just trying to make it found that way. Unfortunately for both of you and everyone else out there that knows even the basic of knowledge, there are many that don't but want to think that they do. So the tech support on the phone ends up believing people a few times, sends out somebody to fix an issue and then finds it was something stupid to fix the issue that the customer insist that they already did many times before calling you. So they give up believing people and ask you to please entertain them by doing what they ask for the basic steps just to be sure to cover their own ass. Had a guy a few weeks ago. His internet connection worked fine if he connected his laptop straight to our equipment, but as soon as his home network was involved nothing worked. He through one hell of a fit as we were fucking up his plans as he was supposed to be leaving on a business trip and was having to deal with me on the phone (after my people transferred the angry customer up to me). He kept insisting that his network didn't need troubleshooting as his wife does networking for a living and is far smarter than any person that works for the telco / ISP I work at. I tried to get him to troubleshoot a few things with his routers and he refused stating that his wife configured everything and knows what she is doing as she works for a company that designs and setups networks for nation wide companies. We finally told him that he was going to let us come to his house and do whatever we found necessary to fix the issue or he wasn't allowed to call anymore to complain that his internet wasn't working. Sent a network / system admin out with the normal I&R tech, she had setup 6 routers in the house, all on the same network ranges so of course routing was all jacked up. Everything had to be given a static IP and then they could only talk to devices in certain directions through the network. Guy spent 2+ hours reconfiguring the main router and getting that one working, the reconfigured all the others to just be access points and not routers, then reconfigured all the devices in the house. Haven't heard back from the customer since. Going by the logic of believing a customer that claims they know what they are talking about or can throw out the correct words, if we had believed they had the perfect network that had no issues they would still not have working internet. Everyone out there today wants to believe they are a computer expert because they setup their own dell laptop out of the box on their own.

Exavior said:

Repeater? What type of connection are you on that makes use of a repeater?

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DSL, this was from about 10-12yrs ago, this was not recent.

There's always the company that has pretty much zero tech support. Instead, they point you towards a forum for answers. My friend tried to get a hold of Facebook tech support, since he had an issue with his acct and couldn't login. There is no way to get a hold of them apparently.

Darunion said:

DSL, this was from about 10-12yrs ago, this was not recent.

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Even at that, a repeater for DSL isn't that common but I guess you will do whatever you can in some cases to get a customer.