October 5, 2001

Fight for your right to better tech support

Edi­tors note: This is one of sev­eral columns that I wrote for the Colum­bia Mis­sourian. They were orig­i­nally called Your Dig­i­tal World

Just recently, my soon-​to-​be mother-​in-​law had to call her com­puter man­u­fac­turer because her taskbar, the gray bar along the bottom of most Win­dows screens that includes the Start menu and the clock, had disappeared.

The com­pany told her to try a few simple tech­niques to get it back. When those failed, they told her to use their system restore CD to fix the problem.

The tech sup­port person she talked to didn’t know – or didn’t care – about the fact that the pro­gram on the CD refor­mat­ted her hard drive in the process. She had her taskbar back, but she lost every bit of data on her com­puter. I don’t know what caused her taskbar to dis­ap­pear. But even if the prob­lem neces­si­tated a system wipe, the tech­ni­cian could have had her install over the exist­ing oper­at­ing system first. (This often restores miss­ing or cor­rupted files while not harm­ing your data.) Assum­ing that her com­puter did need a com­plete refor­mat­ting, they could have at least warned her and maybe walked her through copy­ing data to a Zip disk.

I know there are plenty of people man­ning the phones out there who know their stuff. But a great many com­pa­nies hire people with little to no tech knowl­edge, and plop them down with a phone and a manual. These people are trained to tell cus­tomers that when all else fails use the system restore disk, or reboot or count­less other fall­back options.

So I’m here to tell you to run to your phones, to run to your e-mails and I want you to tell the tech sup­port depart­ment that you’re mad as hell, and you’re not going to take it anymore!

Well, not really. But you should have that kind of an atti­tude. Let me leave you with a few tips for get­ting tech support:

They are there to work for you – if they’re talk­ing too fast, or you don’t under­stand what they want you to do, tell them to slow down and explain it. Don’t let them push you around.

Don’t take no for an answer – if you don’t get the infor­ma­tion you need, or don’t like the way a tech sup­port person is treat­ing you, bump it upstairs … ask to speak to his or her super­vi­sor. If the same thing hap­pens, keep going (if you get a response from Bill Gates, e-mail me a tran­script for posterity).

When all else fails – make sure to check man­u­als and Web sites for help before call­ing because you just might find the answer you need and you’ll get it with­out the hassle of a phone call.

Don’t pay for it – there are too many people like me walk­ing around to have to pay for an answer. If your prod­uct or pro­gram requires you to pay for help, give your local tech guru (or “geek” if they prefer) a call.

Good places to start are at your company’s infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy depart­ment; ask a friend or neigh­bor where to get help; finally feel free to e-mail, I’ll answer all the e-mails I get. And if I don’t have it, I’ll find some­one who does – I know where people like me hang out.

Filed under: Technology

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