Reader Feedback on Tech Support Woes

After publishing the story of my woes with Dell tech support we received what could literally be considered an avalanche of reader feedback on the subject. Many people told us their stories of woe with various companies tech support, some at an individual and some at a company level.

Here's a sampling of the best of the feedback we received. All names have been given, but we've purposely kept them anonymous to avoid workplace backlash. We might also point out that while the vast majority of the feedback we received was negative, we've often found that those who are satisfied with a product or service are far less vocal than those who have had problems, and so we would not discount a silent majority who have received exemplary service from their tech support. However, we all pay the same for the warranty and the levels of service described by our readers, often at length, is less than ideal.

First up, we have the sheer (comical) reverse of the situation I described as my experience of Dell tech support:

I found your recent article concerning Dell's Tech Support to be highly amusing (Sorry! I know it's not polite to say that...) directly in lieu of my own experience regarding Dell, an XPS notebook, and a particular hard drive.

My story started late last fall when my notebook started randomly getting Blue screens, usually right as I was gaming, doing work, or otherwise in any other highly annoying time for it to choose to do so. This was about two months after I received the notebook.

Figuring that why should I not give Dell's technical support a try, seeming as I had paid for the full warranty and matching massive price tag (Even with said 40% code and extra MIR) instead of solving the issue myself? So I called them up...

Skipping a rather large time period here of several transfers and listening to the same fading and unending cycle of the same track of bad quality music, I was talking to a tech also in India. After describing the issues I was instructed to run the built in HDD diagnostic programs. I read to him the exact error codes from the two types of BSODs I had been receiving, and the tech then goes to his manager to cross-check them. He quickly comes back to exclaim that yes, it is definitely a problem with the notebook's hard drive! As I was thinking this was more of a driver problem I expressed my doubts, but again, he had checked his department's manager and the manager said these codes pointed to the HDD having a mechanical fault! He then tells me to cancel the diagnostic program which was about 7% completed, and proceeds to start on the process of sending me a new drive.

Knowing that a faulty HDD would be displaying other kinds of warnings, and that none of my checks of the drive or SMART info had turned up anything wrong with the drive, I let the Dell HDD Diagnostic run it's course in the background as I gave him the information and waited for him to arrange the shipment. Just before the call concluded I informed him that the drive had indeed also passed the entire Dell HDD diagnostic suite without a single problem or error detected! The tech said that that was okay, and proceeded to send me a expensive (About $255 according to the invoice sent with the replacement unit) replacement to my 7200rpm, 80gig 2.5inch notebook drive anyway, as I was to uncertain that at this point I should just say no and refuse to be sent the drive.

Long story short, I found the offending driver/program and fixed the problem myself a few days later, and sent back the refurbished drive as I naturally decided to keep my original 2 month old unit instead. I never once did find anything through Google pointing to the drive being a potential source of those particular error codes, nor have I had anymore problems of that nature with my notebook or the original hard drive!

I've also been getting an earful from people for not building my own rigs, instead of this buying hoopola.

Well dude, I'm sorry about your problems, but as an IT writer, you should be well aware of the problems with tech support, they certainly aren't new. 8 years ago, when we had many different choices in computer manufacturers, they still had trouble getting these kinds of issues resolved. Now that we have basically Dell, HP, and Gateway, none of them have to care about providing service, they just want to make what they can and leave it at that. The extended warranties have become the source of profit, and since you can't get your money back, they don't care one bit that you are pissed off.