Category Archives: J&J Rant

So, we have all probably been there, it’s 10:00 am and you have a project that’s due at 10:30 but your internet isn’t working so you can’t finish it.  You call your internet provider for help and you get some first line help desk technician that wants to know your name, your address, your telephone number (just in case they lose contact with you), your last four of your social, your make and model of computer, your brand of modem, etc.  After 10 minutes of answering questions that have nothing to really do with the issue, and then they start walking you through this mundane check list of:   Is your computer connected directly to your modem (which almost no one is anymore).  Does your modem have power?  How many lights are lit on your modem?  And the list of questions goes on and on…  They will even ask you to reboot your modem, and reboot your computer.  (Don’t get me wrong, this list of questions is necessary for figuring out the problem, but most of us have already checked these things before we even called them, and even if you have checked these things, they will normally make you do them again.)
Now if it was a simple problem, the standardized checklist given to these people has done its job, and you are back up and running.  It doesn’t matter to them that this took 30 minutes to do, as long as you are up and running.  Now if this list doesn’t fix the issue, then they ask you to hold on for just a minute to see if there is an outage in your area (Yes, this should have been checked already, but they normally don’t!)  After about 2 – who knows how long on hold, they come back with a response that there isn’t an outage in your area (assuming there actually wasn’t), and that their not actually sure what the problem is but they want to have you try some things.
They will then have you double click on some icons, read some settings, and do any of a number of procedures.  During this process they will put you on hold numerous times for unknown reasons, and come back with another great thing to look at.  For the truth of the matter, they don’t know what the issue is and they are putting you on hold to check with more skilled people or to look into a data base of pre-worded scripts to read from, all the time hoping that one of these things will get you back on line.
In the end, and way after your deadline, one of three things will happen:  1. They will either accidentally come across something that fixes your issue.  2. They will forward you to a second line technician (that will probably start some if not all of this process over again.)  3. They will tell you that the problem is not on their end and that you should have your computer looked at by someone.
I’ve known several people that have worked these types of jobs and the fact is that they don’t get a lot of training, and the majority of the time they are reading scripts of the most common easy to answer problems there are, and they are fighting the clock of how long they have been on the phone with you (Yes, a lot of them are scored by their employers how fast they can solve your problem, get you off the phone, and answer the next call.)  Every so often you will get someone skilled with extra knowledge, but this isn’t the norm.
I recently had a client that was putting up a new website, and although she could connect to the internet, she could not see her new site.  All other sites were working, just not her site.  So she started the phone calls to see what the problem was.  Her first call was to the web host for her new site.  The web host front line tech told her that there wasn’t a problem with the site and that they could see it just fine.  After a few simple procedures, they referred her to her internet provider.  So following this advice, she called her internet provider.  The front line tech for her internet provider went through the normal BS as front line techs are trained to do.  This resulted in basically nothing and she was forwarded to a second line tech.  The second line tech went through all kinds of procedures that my client didn’t understand and went even as far as taking remote control of one of her computers to hunt down the issue.  In the end, the second line tech had no clue and told my client that the issue wasn’t on their end and that something had to be wrong with her system and she should have someone look at it.
At this point my client had basically wasted more than one and a half hours on the phone with help desk technicians reading scripts and fumbling through the problem, so she then calls me.  Luckily I have remote access to this clients system, so I log in remotely.  I test on my local machine the URL (web address) for her new site and the tech from the web host is correct, the site is up and running.  I test it on her machine and it isn’t available.  So I bring up a DOS window and ping that URL of the site.  It responds back that the DNS (Domain Name Server) can’t resolve the IP address.  I ping it on my local machine to get the IP address and then type this address into the browser on her system, and poof the site appears.  It’s a DNS issue!  I look up her DNS server IP addresses and verify that they are the standard addresses for her internet provider.  I change my DNS servers to hers and poof, I can’t get to the site anymore either.  I then set her DNS servers to use an additional server not provided by her internet provider and she is up and running!
The whole process of fixing the issue took all of 30 minutes, and the majority of the time was spent on the phone with the client getting an explanation of the problem and what she had to go through with the other techs.    Not only was this problem easy to find, it was easy to resolve.  The other techs either just didn’t have the training, knowledge, or care.  A few days later we were able to take the additional server out of her DNS list because the internet provider’s DNS servers finally got the necessary information to make her site show up.
This is not an isolated instance and I could tell many more scenarios where things like this have happened.  The big issue is that companies are worried about their bottom line so much, that they aren’t spending the time training their people to actually support you.  It is all about the efficiency of time and money to them.  The main reason I used this real case scenario, was that not only should all three techs before me have been able to find and fix this issue, but that both companies could have corrected this issue on their end if their techs had the knowledge to be able to find the problem.  Instead, this site and possibly others from this web host, were not available to most of the internet clients from this provider for an extended amount of time.
Two final thoughts:  1. Companies need to start taking the time and money to train their support people properly.  In the long run it will only benefit the company to give the proper support and keep their clients happy with the services they are contracted to supply.  2.  If you find yourself in one of these situations that a first line help desk technician can’t find your issue, don’t get mad!  Just realize that they are just doing the job the best way they can and the way their company has trained them too.  And just because they can’t find the issue and resolve it, doesn’t mean that a call to a more knowledgeable resource is in vain.

Jason Thomas
J&J Computers