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<TITLE>Re: [Maced] Fantastic Help Desk and Apple Service</TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>I know this has nothing to with this list and is only vaguely associated with this thread BUT I have the support tale end all support tales. Two weeks ago our Foxtel cable TV iQ said that the card was invalid. I rang Foxtel and talked to accounts – the only section answering. They stated our account was overdue. Rang Telstra who collect our money who said rubbish and passed me back. I then played the phone calls of death. No matter which menu selections I made in their system I got cut off. Finally got someone by lying and saying I wanted to upgrade my package. Strangely I got someone immediately. He said “Let me guess you lied to get someone to complain to about your card not working?” It seemed that a software upgrade had managed to corrupt almost all the iQ boxes in eastern Australia. Seems that according to this gentleman Tech support got sick of answering their phones so turned off their phone system. After 10 hours we back up and running.<BR>
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Fast forward two weeks. Same scenario but this time they blamed Telstra (Understandable), a possum (yes really) and Energex (our local power supply authority). It ended with the second successful person to person contact that day with their supervisor yelling – loud enough for my wife seated on the other couch to hear, that I couldn’t blame Foxtel as they had nothing to do with the lack of their pay TV signal after it left their studio and then threatening to report me for being abusive during both episodes. I pointed out that its hard to be abusive when no-one answers the phone and if they adopted the same system as the local power company the fault would be stated on the phone system and an expected timeline for repair. This person stated that that was too hard as Foxtel is not responsible for the signal.... (notice a pattern) I a little sarcastically said I was not responsible for the arrival of the cheque after it left my hand. He then said that would lead to them cutting our service to which my exasperated response was “who’d notice?”. He then hung up on me. Our free to air antennae has been repaired and I have told Foxtel their iQ box is on the footapth ready for them to collect...<BR>
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Sorry to clutter the list with this but it is an object lesson in how bad tech support can get.... And how it feels to be an end user when you are the tech support at times...<BR>
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Terry Druery<BR>
(Now subscription TV free)<BR>
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On 1/4/08 7:36 PM, "Quentin Hall" <quentin@highway1.com.au> wrote:<BR>
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</SPAN></FONT><BLOCKQUOTE><FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>Dear Reg,<BR>
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Saviour the moment! Here's one that I had today finally "finish successfully".<BR>
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<B>BAD SUPPORT - TELSTRA / BIGPOND (gee, how unusual for me!)<BR>
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Spent about a day helping a school (BigPond) who said their connection "kept dropping out after 3 minutes - any phone line and any computer in the community" (still use dialup folks I am working on them to get at least satellite).<BR>
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<B>BigPond said</B> (in stern voice of the rude 17 year old "Help" desk employee) "BE QUIET AND LISTEN TO WHAT I'M SAYING (great customer satisfaction training there - they must be proud of this employee of the month) - IT MUST BE YOUR COMPUTER EQUIPMENT as Macintosh's do this sort of thing". (Q says - "Yeah, sure!") <BR>
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<B>Outcome</B>: After 2 weeks of Telstra/Bigpond denials the head teacher rings BigPond an reads the riot act (aided with my tech notes to back it up). For a change they could say, "NO! You shut up and listen" Local Kimberley Telstra get involved instead of "some call centre - somewhere in the world". Telstra said, "Oh dear, Telstra equipment in the Geraldton exchange - about 800 km away - is faulty".<BR>
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So much for their claim "ALL YOUR computer equipment is faulty".<BR>
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Regards<BR>
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Q<BR>
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On 01/04/2008, at 4:46 PM, Reg Whitely wrote:<BR>
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