
   The Last Word                                 A WindoWatch Feature


                           Hello? Is This Tech Support?
                         Copyright 1995 by Ben M. Schorr

 What has happened to technical support in the 90s?  I can remember when
 the WordPerfect Corporation, in its pre-Novell life, was the single
 largest user of 800  telephone numbers in the country. Did you ever need
 tech support on a WordPerfect product? You would call an 800 number, and
 within minutes a friendly person from Utah would  answer your question -
 no charge - and then wish you a pleasant day!

 Now when you call, at best its a long distance call, and at worst a 900
 number at $2/minute plus, or a $25 per incident charge. Some companies
 have so many tech support calls that they have their own DJ's on line,
 LIVE!

 Did you ever sit on hold with Microsoft's Tech Support? Its some-thing
 that more than  12,000 people do each day  - thanks to Win95. There, you
 can hear a live DJ play music and cheerfully update you on the wait times
 and the number of callers  queued up for the various support departments.

 Imagine your frustration! To go through that kind of waiting only to be
 told that the problem is with your video card, operating system,  word
 processor, or sound card - when it was the  %^&*# !! sound card people
 who insisted that you call Microsoft!

 THE BLIND LEADING THE BLIND
 Have you called Packard Bell for technical support lately? We do quite a
 bit of  service on Packard Bell machines and occasionally have a question
 we need to ask of the vendor. By now you'd think we'd know better.

 One of our first experiences was about three years ago when we had a
 client with a CMOS battery failure in a Packard Bell 386. Does that sound
 simple enough? The client was located forty-five minutes away so we
 thought we'd call Packard Bell and find out what kind of battery we
 needed to pick up to replace the bad one.

 I got a technician on the line, provided him the model number of the unit
 and  after a few moments of research he told me it took battery A.  I
 don't really remember his exact answer or the details, but that was the
 gist of it.

 The next morning we were ready to pick up the battery and go out to the
 client, but there was still some confusion as to what type of battery he
 had identified, so we called back. A different tech answered; so we gave
 him the model number and, after brief research, he told us that it took
 battery B. We weren't positive about what the first tech had said, but we
 WERE positive that it wasn't the same answer.

 Now, thoroughly concerned, we called back a third time to confirm; this
 time we got a third tech. We explained the situation and he confidently
 proclaimed that, in fact, that model of Packard Bell machine used Battery
 C.  He was so convincing that we picked up one of the "C" batteries and
 arrived on the client's site an hour later. As you might be expecting,
 after opening the case of the unit, we discovered that all three of the
 techs were wrong! In fact the unit took a  fourth type of battery.

 On a separate matter one of our technicians recently spent twenty minutes
 on the phone explaining their system to their tech. Who's supporting whom
 here?

 If you think that's bad, we recently picked up a new client which is a
 medium sized Los Angeles bank . They've been paying $200/hour to  several
 different large service companies trying to get their IBM PS/2 286 to
 connect into a mainframe/mini using PCLink. In the months of effort, they
 have had absolutely no connection. They've had the cabling checked and
 rechecked, even reRUN and they're sure it works fine. Still, no
 connection. I'm not that familiar with PCLink, but I offered to take a
 look at it for them.

 After arriving at the site my first thought was that perhaps the serial
 port on the PC was dead. So I fired up CheckIt Pro with a loopback plug
 and tested it. It worked like a champ. I checked PCLink's configuration
 to make sure that all was correct. "9600 baud, COM1" looked good to me.
 One more check of the back of the machine brought about an interesting
 discovery though.  The cable was plugged into LPT1.

 LPT1 was, in fact, the only port on the back of the machine that was
 pin-compatible with the cable and apparently the $200/hour blue suits
 didn't think to check and see which port that really was. Since PCLink,
 at least their version of it, doesn't support parallel connects, they
 weren't going to get very far with that setup.  A $2 adapter fixed the
 pin  compatibility problem and within minutes they had a live connection
 that was fully functional. The amazing thing is that after weeks of
 trying, none of these expensive professionals were able to come up with
 that simple solution!

 The point of this story, in fact this whole column, is that for whatever
 the reasons it seems as though the quality of technical support is
 sliding fast. End-users are enduring long waits and high costs to get
 wrong answers. I have dozens more stories of vendors and high priced
 service companies steering end-users wrong; I mean blatantly wrong!

 What's behind all of this? Have systems become so complicated and
 technological progress been so rapid that even those charged with
 supporting them can't keep up with accurate information? Do support
 companies not care about quality support anymore? Or are they just trying
 to gouge consumers?

 Things have been complicated further by the fact that users are, on the
 average, more savvy than they used to be. Often they know just enough to
 get themselves into trouble. I have one client who calls me every two
 weeks...right after he has tried to install a new operating system,
 environment, memory manager or other significant programs onto his
 system.

 Certainly we make mistakes on occasion, too, but I like to think that if
 we made mistakes like those Ive described, that we would either quickly
 catch it, or admit the error and accept responsibility. All too often it
 seems as though companies are making mistakes and then denying any
 responsibility.

 So what's the solution to this mess? Users are getting more and more
 disgruntled and the industry's reputation is slipping fast. What kind of
 remedies do you think are appropriate? If you have any notions or
 suggestions, E-Mail them to me at ben.schorr@bcsbbs.com, and in future
 columns we'll discuss these ideas, and perhaps get a response or two from
 a couple  of the major industry players.

 Ben Schorr is a computer consultant in Los Angeles.  He hosts the Ilink
 Consultants conference and is active on many more.  He is a WindoWatch
 regular. He can be reached at ben.schorr@bcsbbs.com



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