Provide Good Service, Or No Service At All (rant)

[Pinnacle]

Monsters Inc. came out on DVD earlier this week. My daughter was VERY excited to see it again. I put the first DVD in the player (Panasonic VCR/DVD combo) and it did not play. Instead, I got a message suggesting my DVD had a scratch or was dirty. I tried the second DVD (outtakes and etc.), and the same thing happen. All my other DVDs work fine. I took the Monsters Inc. DVD downstairs to try it on a cheapo player we got for free from Earthlink and it played perfect.

Disney has a support section on their website, so I decided to ask them what the problem was rather than figure it out myself. I told them everything, plus the exact model numbers of players and televisions per their request. A couple of days later, I received a generic e-mail suggesting I clean the DVD and/or cycle the power on the player. What a waste of time! I realize that they must receive a ton of e-mails, but what is the point of offering support if all they do is tell me something stupid?

When I have some spare time, I will research this myself. Despite the fact that both players are less than a year old, the Panasonic must not be compatible with some format.

Okay, I'm done with my rant now.

[ilovetheusers]

I get the same thing from sony.

Letter - hi, when editing video from you camera - the sound gets garbled.

Them - thank you for writing, blah, blah, blah. have you cleaned the lens of the camera, blah, blah, generic fixes for silly crap.

Anyway - I don't even call help centers at any corporation. They are generally useless and deal with the regular morons who can't figure out how to put a tape in or push play. So that's the service level you are starting at...

[Shard92]

my brother had a similiar problem with his DVD player. He took the dvd's back to best buy and they replaced them. Of course their other option would have been to replace the player as he had just bought it from them!

[NooNoo]

Had the same thing with Nero... The installer crashed it wouldn't install, they sent me a bunch of suggestions on how to check registry entries after it had installed

[drewmaztech]

It's gotten to the point that a few companies I've called or emailed that a REAL person either emails me back immediatly or picks up the phone ( no automated perma-menus ) I actually don't know what to do!

My credit card company actually has someone, a human being - who speaks english, pick up the phone. I was so thrown-off!~

[Radical Dreamer]

The worst company for generic stupid solutions has to be SYMANTEC.

I had a project to do for one of my classes and in it we had to make a mock 7 remote site 450 machine network proposal, one of my jobs was to get the EULA for ghost corporate edition and NAV corp edition. I could not find the information on their site so I sent them an e-mail and requested that they send me the EULA's

3 days later I get an email back with the "links" to the url's of both....both of em dead.

So I send another e-mail...same thing, different url same dead end

Third times a charm right? Nah not in the case of symantec, the third time I got yup you guessed it BS info.

4th Time I write them and am not nice about it ask something to the effect of "Are all the staff at symantec ****ing morons?"

They write back once again with the stupid dead end links

After that I said to hell with it, I'll find it myself elsewhere.

Will I ever buy another symantec product?

HELL NO

and all because their email monkeys are too damn stupid to help me with a simple problem

[silencio]

Dishnetwork: I write them asking why I can't record pay per view movies now. They send me a FAQ on how to buy PPV movies that says nothing about recording them. I email them back and thank them for all the helpful information that didn't address my question. They reply, please call.

Marantz: I email and ask them "how do I bridge my MA6100 AMPs?" They reply "look in your manual." I reply "it's not in the manual." They reply "bridging is not recommended." I reply "bridging is a feature you use to sell the AMP and a reason I bought it." They reply "please contact your local authorized Marantz dealer." I do that. They say "look in your manual." I say "I did that, it's not in the manual." They say "contact Marantz." Then I get mad, email them both, call them dumb ****s and next time I'm buying Sonus Faber.

Bellsouth: T1 loop install, first they leave 80 feet of cable lying across my lawn and driveway instead of burying it. Then they bury it and wire it back up to the wrong smart jack. Then it still doesn't work and they blame covads switch. Then they wire it back to the correct smart jack and realize the SJ card was bad. Then they say it's good but speakeasy tests it and it fails 2 out of 3 times. Bellsouth says, gee your right, we don't know what's wrong. It's still not up.

Covad: Installer comes with the router and say's"where's the demark?" I say "it's wired to the smart jack, Bellsouth said you'd wire it from there." He say's "no, I can't do that." I say "you can't do that or your not authorized?" He say's "I"m only supposed to be here 15 minutes." I get on the phone. He wires up the line. He starts to plug it into his router and I say "no, I have my own Cisco 2600." He says "I can't install that." I say "you aren't authorized or don't know how?" He says "I don't know how." I say "don't worry it's already configed." He says "I have to install it to this." I say "fine, I'll plug it into mine after you show me it works." Two and a half hours later he says there's an LMI error on the line and it doesn't work.

IBM: 4 out of 6 hard drives dead in about 18 months. Two bad drives are GXPs, two are ultrastars. One is an RMA replacement that doesn't work out of the box. Apparently they don't test them.

Whew, I like to bitch

[Darksteel]

awhile back when i got deus ex anytime the game made a sound effect the game would crash. I email support, they say i need to update my vid drivers. I say: no, the problem is that the game is attempting to use 3d sound when I dont have support for it and it is crashing the game because the only way to play was in safe mode with 3d sound disabled. they reply: update the vid drivers. I send one back saying im not some idiot who doesnt know how to use a computer and he cant just tell me some bs excuse to keep himself from having to get up off his lazy butt.

Then recently my friend and i order the exact same mobo package but we get different fans/hs. I call and ask them if i got the wrong fan, they said no, my fan was correct. my friend calls, they say that he got the correct one, and i got a better one because they were out of stock. They could at least not try to blatantly lie to us.

[-Senectus-]

You know the saying.. "Doctors make the worst patience" well the same goes for us tech peoples..

We make the worst customers..

[geeksRus]

years ago (more than i care to think about) tech-support people were often the same ones that designed/coded the software/hardware (some of you other old geezers will know what i am talking about...Wordperfect comes to mind). now i am sad to say that tech-support is often someone with limited knowledge of the product working from a book of known bugs or problems that may be outdated. i am afraid that it will get worse before it gets better.

[FatalException0E]

Originally posted by -Senectus-
You know the saying.. "Doctors make the worst patience" well the same goes for us tech peoples..

We make the worst customers..

That's because we actually know enough to see through the cloud of BS that they spew at their customers.
My friend just bought GTA3 for PC. It didn't work...would crash as soon as they opening cinematic started. He updated all drivers he could, bought a new sound card, and reloaded.....first reloaded XP....then tried SP1 on it, then loaded win2k with SP3.....

He tried to take it back to Best Buy and was told that it would violate copyright laws for them to take it back.