OT - To Stormin Mormon

[RobertMacy]

Thanks for taking my whining in the 'proper' vein. However, two things are evident. Your new 'whiz-band' high speed systems worked! My lo-tech, dial up kept failing, until...Perhaps, the key is that high speed 'gets in' gets out' and done. Whereas, everybody seemed to go there after that posting, and a slow dial-up got 'easily' interrupted and failed, until everybody quit bothering the link, then I got download completed. Has to be related to some of those 'invisible' java sripts timing out, failing, and never telling me.

Anyway, I did finally get the full image. Don't know who Greg Olsen is, nor am I familiar with his other works, but he has great skill at 'illustrative' art. Admit to being jealous of those skills. My art instructor at university asked for my works and kept them. Now they're probably lost for ever. Darn. One was of a building demolished shortly after I sketched it, too. No, it wasn't demolished because I sketched it. Just an old delapidated, but visually interesting, building.

[Wes Groleau]

It's a fact of life: so-called web designers are addicted to Microsoft products, including Internet Explorer. They work in large buildings with T1 lines and have 24-inch or bigger monitors, three-month-old CPUs, and 16 gigabytes RAM. They never reject cookies, and they don't test on anything else.

So stop whining and join the rest of the lemmings.

[RobertMacy]

My consolation is that when I call the vendor directly [because their website hangs/crashes/blanks] as they are forced to go through their own website, they have HUGE delays, multiple apologies at how slow things run. HA! And, my most enjoyable, when they go down blind alleys, find nothing, or find incomplete/error information! I quietly say, "That's why I called you directly."

[Wes Groleau]

Wow, you're lucky. What I usually get is "can you reboot your computer?" Followed by "which version of Internet Explorer do you have?"

[Wes Groleau]

If I were lucky enough to get the response you describe, I would handle it differently from you. I would say instead,

"That's why I called you instead of your incompetent web team."

[RobertMacy]

You may have sightly misunderstood. I called them to find out if they HAD what I needed and to PLACE an order, not to find out how to fix/work their website. If they even start down that path [reboot, what version, etc] I tell them along the lines of, "Send me the money and I'll buy the latest computer just for you, so I can buy from you! Further, requiring the most costly computer is a little like making a customer pay an entrance fee when going into your store, which I'll never do. More importantly, I don't wish to spend ANY MORE time, I can make my money back. I can't make my time back. If your firm keeps wasting my time, the cost of doing business with you has become too high, and I will not. Do YOU understand? I know it is NOT your fault, but tell people responsible, else it will never change." By admitting that I know it is not their fault, it removes any potential of them defensively posturing, AND by giving them a course of action, win their support. EVERYBODY likes a course of action, there is nothing worse than facing the frustrations of seeing something wrong and having NO WAY to inform, nor change.

[Wes Groleau]

You're right, I didn't understand. My words aren't intended to fix anything, just to vent. Because the person I would be talking to (even if I called tech support) (1) has no authority to do anything about it, (2) has no access to someone who does, and (3) doesn't care.

Well, _sometimes_ tech support has access to someone who can do something about it. But more often they know nothing and are sternly ordered "DO NOT DEVIATE FROM THE SCRIPT if you want to keep your minimum-wage, part-time job."

[Stormin Mormon]

I mostly end up on the phone with such drones. Sigh.

[Wes Groleau]

Not only that, but some of them are told "If the customer asks for a supervisor, put on hold hand the phone to your neighbor. If your neighbor hands you the phone, wait fifteen seconds, then go off hold and repeat what the script says."