OT: Misc. Ramblings.

[Robatoy]

There's been some bitching that things are slow in here. That is perfect timing as I am full-up in production again after a tedious healing of a hernia op.

Business is traditionally slow this time of year, but it gives me time to get the promotional stuff done and to prepare the brown bags of receipts for the annual trip to the accountants.

Also got a nice price increase from one of my solid surface suppliers who does so much business, he doesn't need us anymore. (Berra, paraphrased).

Whilst enjoying a mug of coffee, (freshly ground in my burr-grinder and sent through my BUNN) I took on the task of ripping into my telecom supplier. I have waited for years to be able to tell Ma Bell to go screw herself. As my ISP, the speed has been dropping, dropping.. till I pick up the phone and call the tech dept. I get to talk to Rashni Vindalousyshiat, who promptly tells me it is all my fault, I have to disconnect 'ebreeteeengh' [sic] and start all over. THIS time I told his supervisor he could take my 3 cell phones, my fax line, my house line, my 2 internet connections and satellite dishes and shove them up his ass. I can get all those services from my cable company now... for less. He promptly changed his tone and told me he'd have somebody contact me who would make me happy again. This is where it gets weird. My internet speed suddenly more than doubled. Ergo: the sunsabiatches throttle people down till they complain? WTF? I'm serious, he flipped a switch. I went from 122 kbps to 279 kbps in a few minutes without touching a thing! I was getting that six months ago, when I had to bitch at them then. THEN I thought that they maybe had found a fault and fixed it. You don't really notice the slowdown until you start downloading large user manuals. etc.

I also notice Hitlary rearranging the deck chairs on her Titanic.

Have a nice day.

r-----> who burr-grinds his coffee beans in a 29 dollar refurbished Cuisinart grinder. Just your basic Costco 100% columbian beans, nothing fancy-schmancy, just awesome coffee. *gives Starbucks and Timmy's the finger*

[Leon]

Snip

I have ATT and have had a few outages on DSL which is naturally my fault untill they cannot help me make enough computer changes to work. Then thay want to send out a technition to see what the problem is. Then they call back 1 hour later and tell me that is their problem as they are workin on the lines. I knew that, and only wanted to know how long it would take. That person gave me an 1800 number to by pass Hadji and his relatives to get to some one that knows what is going on.

Yup, Sad but encouraging.

[nailshooter41]

Hey... I must have had the same guy (or his brother answer my phone calls last time I had a problem with the SBC skin on Explorer.

Repeatedly, he told me "thank you so much. Prease krick da bruey so we can futha investrigate."

Huh?

"OK, I got the click part, but I don't know where to click the bruey".

"Thank you so much. Put a mowws pointa on him and krick."

Silence. I look intently for he bruey part of my "desstop".

Nothing.

"Where would the bruey be on the desktop?"

"Thank you so much. You using Mikrasof Window, yes?"

"Yes"

"You have Sprorer, yes?"

"Yes"

"Thank you so much. Krick onna bruey"

I don't want to hang up. It has taken 20 minutes to get to "tech support". I search intently, but still nothing. Then, in a moment of inspiration I asked -

"Are you saying "click on the blue 'e' ?"

"Yes. Thank you so much. Prease krick to staht program."

I knew when I was beaten. I hung up. My life isn't long enough for that. However, I did get my problem solved.

I switched to Firefox.

I am afraid that is all there is to it, withing limitations. I went form 300 kbps to 600 kbps when I called and bitched to ATT/DSL about my bill. They had a "special on" that gave me double the speed for the same price, and when I bit, they had it switched to the higher speed in 72 hours from the call.

R------> who ROASTS his own beans from greens by hand, grinds his drip in a Capresso milled burr (not pressed, stamped or cast burrs) grinder, and his occasional 'spresso in a La Pavoni Zip. And yes, with a little practice, I can pull a 27 second shot with a thick amber crema. But what a pain in the ass... I am too lazy. After drinking my fill of espresso, there just isn't enough coffee there to make me happy, so it is drip for me.

But you know, I have been in Costco, and they almost got me to bite in a membership when they installed a giant roaster there at the store. They vent the roasting fumes out of the store as they aren't very good smelling. I am used to it, but some find it offensive. Kind of like burning green wood.

When properly roasted, the bean outgas for some time - that's the great coffee smell. I almost bought the membership as I was "hipmotized" when I went in there and they had just put out a large batch of beans to cool, and it smelled like Heaven in that store. The coffee was good, too. And the bastards gave out free samples.

Hey... it is slow around here, isn't it?

Robert

[Lee Michaels]

My story from three days ago.

I bought a printer for my wife and thought it would be a snap to install. Since I have installed about 30 or so of them in my life. It kept bitching about a corrupted file. Dreading talking to a brain dead techie who can't speak english, I toiled for over an hour, turning off firewalls, etc. I tried every trick in the book. Nothing worked. Soooo....., I called hp technical support line. I am still recovering from the trauma.

First I should mention that I have a hearing loss. My wife can hear a pin drop from a block away. (Which incredibly complicates my life from time to time) This heavily accented voice was almost impossible for my wife to understand, let alone me. So my wife and I handed the phone back and forth for an hour and a half trying to decipher this caveman techie's babble. And if I did not have some thirty years of computer experience, this printer would have never been installed.

The most stressful and moronic aspect of this whole ordeal was that all the procedures were based on the fact that techies did not speak english well. If they spoke normally, the call could be shortened by two thirds. And this is the way that they are trained. Like parrots, they repeat what is before them. They can't interact with you or make decisions.

Eventually the problem was solved with a simple temporary msconfig change. This could have been included on a peice of paper in the printer box. In that whole hour and a half we only tried about five things. Is hp really saving money by pissing everybody off and have the caveman techies take many times longer to do the same job because they can't speak english? Or engage in simple reasoning processes?

Before going to bed that night, my wife gave me a big hug and thanked me. I asked what she was thanking me for. She said, "For installing my printer".

I did not realize what a big deal it would turn out to be. HP has alway had good printers and I never had problems installing them before. I spent two and a half hours of hell installing a simple inkjet printer.

I hope I am remaining on topic for this thread.

[John]

I've had two experiences with HP support (corporate account) in the last five years. Both were about replacement hard drives for under-warranty laptops.

Laptop # 1 - Talked to marginal English user and had to give the snail-mail address 3 times - spelled phonetically each time - before he got it right. Total call time probably 45 minutes.

Laptop # 2 (about a year later) - Talked to (apparently native) English speaker who sounded like southern California and understood a US pun. Call took all of 5 minutes.

The total "cost per call" has to be lower when the calls are handled 9 times as fast.

No experience with them in the last 24 months, so they may have gone back into stupid mode...

John

[Dave in Houston]

I thought they did those like orthoscopic surgery anymore? So, how's the single-payer Canadian health services?

Dave in Houston

[Dave in Houston]

You mean they didn't ask you to blow into the mouth piece three times to dislodge the bird shit off their lines? ~:o)))))))

Dave in Houston

[Upscale]

If speed is an important consideration for you, then you might want to consider a pay service. I spend about $15.75 for unlimited downloading subscription to Agent Premium News. That gives me an average download speed of approximately 1,000k or 1 megabyte a second. Of course, whomever you have your original Internet connection with is important. I pay for $35.99 a month for DSL service from teksavvy.com.

[Frank Stutzman]

Fifteen years ago I used to work for HP doing support. I wasn't dealing with consumer products though, but rather UNIX mini-computers and workstations.

The funny thing is that the middle management was always touting about how we were a profit center. The logic was that the quality of our support was an asset to the sale and that the support plans sold to customers was fairly profitable. Apparently long after I left HP realized that they could reduce the quality a bit make a much bigger profit by sending jobs like the one I had overseas.

I often wonder what RPM Bill and Dave are spinning in their graves.

[Robatoy]

There are many, many types and locations of hernias. No health service accounts for idiots like me who are back to work after 48 hours. So, yes, many are operable with otrthoscopic surgery, mine wasn't one of them. My surgeon was US trained, so he knew what he was doing. I also got a mitt-full of cool pain killers and total cost of the deal? ZERO. After I made the visit to my personal doctor, he set up an appointment with the surgeon. Total time? 2 weeks. I was in the hospital 14 days later. No emergency, just excellent service.

r

[Lew Hodgett]

Made an executive decision a long time ago.

I don't do business with HP.

Life is much toooooo short to waste it trying to do business with HP and also AT&T.

Lew

[Lew Hodgett]

Vindalousyshiat,

I try not to be prejudiced, every has to drink from the trough, but when I go to tech support and get a dot head, especially a female dot head, I usually end up saying, "I'm sorry it is my fault, but I can not understand you, may I speak to your supervisor?"

After about 3-5 of these exchanges, usually get somebody who I can understand.

When it comes to helping me, they are often as useless as breasts on a boar hog, but at least I can understand them.

SFWIW, US companies are starting to bring customer service and tech service back to the US using people operating from their homes rather than a centralized call center.

Proving to be more cost effective.

Lew

[Lew Hodgett]

At one time in my life was involved in high end data acquisition system front ends.

Still remember the marketing mgr's comment about HP products.

"They are the standard of mediocrity", or something close.

Although must say, they had a pretty decent engineering computer, at that point in time.

Lew

[Dave in Houston]

My surgeon was US trained, so he knew what he was doing. I also got a mitt-full of cool pain killers and total cost of the deal? ZERO. After I made the visit to my personal doctor, he set up an appointment with the surgeon. Total time? 2 weeks. I was in the hospital 14 days later. No emergency, just excellent service.

SOCIALIZED MEDICINE !!! SOCIALIZED MEDICINE !!! SOCIALIZED MEDICINE !!!

Dave in Houston

[Max]

You're telling me it's slow!!!

Look what I did.

[Twayne]

...

Ain't it funny how great an idea that is? Bringing support on-shore, I mean. Heck, we could even speak to English speaking people then! And just think, a few toll free lines instead of trans-oceanic cable saves a penny or so too! Huh!! Can't imagine them not reasizing that sooner; as in, before the idiots even tried it! Gads, intelligent people can sure be stupid.

[Robatoy]

WTF???

[Twayne]

lol, just don't press the "offa to pek" key! YOur'e dead-on!

[Twayne]

Finally! Someone reports good technical support! :)

[Joe]

Lew,

Is that right? I'd love to see some articles to that effect.

Sincerely hope it's true.

jc

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