Friday, February 01, 2008

Joys of Tech Support



I'm sure you've all been through something similar, but--

I can't get my tablet to go back to horizontal position, like in the picture above, so I tried live chat from the tablet. I had to write my answers on the tablet so I didn't want to use too many words. As a result my English sounds as peculiar as my tech support chat pal-- or is it a robot? hmm.

just a portion: (I'm in pink and purple)
I cant get rid of tablet orientation (trust me not easy to write that one.)
I am sorry to hear that.
Sure, I will do my best to resolve the issue you are facing with the Notebook.
Could you please elaborate on the issue?
thanks
Please go ahead with your issue.
when I turn it on it's vertical I can't get back to horizontal mode.
Sure, I will help you with this.
Sally, In order to resolve the issue you need to uninstall and reinstall
the graphic card drivers of the Notebook to fix the issue permanently.
are you sure? this brand new.
Yes.
Sally, One minute please
can you send me instruct ?
Sure
Let me assist you in this regard.
Sally, on the right side of the LCD screen, You will find two arrows
invertors.
May I know have you found the two invertor arrows?
I don't see them Do you mean triangles
One minute please
It is hard using the tablet
Update the Bios of the Notebook :
(now I know how tricky and risky that can be, especially since I'm doing this onehanded. No way am I going to update the Bios with my little tablet pen sideways)
this is a new model
I see.
Not to worry we can easily fix the issue.
(a 20 step instruction is emailed next day)
you are not any help!
Sure, I will help you with this.
Let me assist you in this regard.
I give up-you are no good!
I am really sorry for that.
Sally, not to worry we can easily fix the issue .
By uninstall and reinstall the graphic card drivers of the Notebook to
fix the issue.

on and on but I gave up at that point. going to open it up tomorrow and see if little tablet has solved its mystery.


15 comments:

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

Geez, that's ridiculous!
Statements like "please go ahead with your issue" and "could you please elaborate on the issue" are suspiciously botlike.
Especially when it answers "you are not any help," with "Sure, I will help you with this"

To confirm suspicions, I took your complaints to an online version of ELIZA:

Guest: I cant get rid of tablet orientation
Eliza: Perhaps you can get rid of tablet orientation and you just don't know it...
Guest: when I turn it on it's vertical I can't get back to horizontal mode.
Eliza: Even if you never get back to horizontal mode, there's a lot you can do.
Guest: are you sure? this brand new.
Eliza : Perhaps in your daydreams I am sure? this brand new...
Guest: You are not any help!
Eliza : Does it please you to believe I am not any help?

Not much difference. At least ELIZA doesn't suggest you uninstall and reinstall stuff on a new machine. Maybe those cheapskates at tech support should use her instead.

Anonymous said...

goddamned robots. but what's worse are people who stick to the corporate script and sound like robots and wish you a great day. They drive me raving mad and I scream at them. They work for Dell, and maybe others. Nice slates. How are the watercolors coming? I'm sure they want to emerge from retirement soon. Nice tablet, good tablet.

Jesse said...

Yep, My diagnosis? This could be a tech farm in India who uses an Eliza like system to assist them with pleonisms and niceties they would otherwise have to think to hard about getting right.

Imagine for a moment you're a tech support slave with bad english. Ah, but someone has put a handy English robot (almost smarter than you!) on the side, with suggestion responses to each request.. you can choose to click on them to buy yourself time! ;)

I used to work tech support for T-mobile, so I do know the biz. This Homestar Runner animation currently sets the watermark for me re: tech support parody. :)

Linda Davick said...

I'm so sorry this has been going on on top of my pestering you for help. Getting your laptop to work in the horizontal mode is paramount. But do you notice what you've taught me to do? I never could figure out those tags below the Leave your comment box until now.

Getting new equipment is wonderful. But you have to get lots of sleep and be strong the first week or so because getting acquainted can be so difficult. I have a feeling it will be worth it.

Anonymous said...

Pat suggests trying to install Windows XP on it.

Sally said...

This morning I got ten repeat emails, identical, with my verbatim chat inside. Is this tech support or a virus? Namowal, funny about Eliza! Katy, I know what you mean about robo-greetings.

Jesse, I laughed out loud at that cartoon.

As part of the goofy bargain deal I got, in order to get $260 off the price, you had to buy the $100 dollar extra support package, so I guess I just need to figure out those documents to get somewhere here.

Sal, I wouldn't dare install another operating system on this sucker at this point. I'm sure the tablet and I will become good friends once we solve a few mystical problems.

Totally off topic but Hillary made a giant grammar booboo at the debate: "The differences between Barack and I pale in comparison to the differences that we have with the Republicans."

That's supposed to be: between Barack and ME, grammar girl. English teachers must be cringing, (if they teach that anymore.)

Anonymous said...

About grammar: I obsessed after leaving a dangling participle in a comment on your post once, but I was unable to correct it.

Anonymous said...

Has Whinsey ever worked at a help desk?

Jesse said...

I concur with PS Sal. Whinsey would look adorable with a headset.

"Monster's Inc, Please hold, Monster's Inc, Sorry wrong number.."

Say, that non sequitur raises another valid point. Could we con Jennifer Tilly into doing the voice for Whinsey in future flash animations? :)

Sally said...

Whinsey's driving me nuts too. Some part of her chatbot brain is firing so many errors that I had about 80 mgs of error logs on my server. Got to get back to working on her I guess.

Jesse said...

Jesse volunteers his assistance on the "Ack, it's broken!" front.

Jesse goes on to cite his Grand Master credentials in JavaScript, Flash ActionScript, PHP and (in case it's relevant) MySQL.

Lemme know if such services will be helpful. :]

Anonymous said...

Could Jesse recommend books for teaching myself SQL and PHP to build an interactive database for a website for my boss? Might be more than I want to take on.

Anonymous said...

P.S. I never meant to suggest Whinsey was driving me nuts, only that it might be funny to see her in a few scenes at a help desk.

Jesse said...

Hey there Sal. (Jesse keeps an eye out in case Sally releases the goats on us for straying too far off-topic ;)

For building a new database driven website, and especially for someone who hasn't already rotted their poor craniums on the likes of PHP, I'll recommend Ruby on Rails instead. Recommended books would be "Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmer's Guide" (aka the "pickaxe") and "Agile web development with Ruby on Rails".

I agree on the helpdesk to. Whinsey has not been nagging me (get it? Nag? I kill me :) but I'm becoming intrigued by the seguay from chat bot to parody help desk chat bot .. with a headset on.

You can ask whatever tech questions you'd like and she'll dance about the issue with such an adorable grin you can't stay mad. Shuffling papers, being klutzy and knocking over the coffee, just whatever it takes to avoid the central issue of solving the supplicant's problem.

Am I right or am I correct?

Sally said...

Jesse, Are you using ActionScript 3? I need to rebuild Whinsey in AS 3 now that they've included regular expressions, but I never seem to work up to it.

My problem with Whinsey is I use php scripts to grab extra information from places like google and cnn. But as soon as they change their layouts, the php scripts break down. I should probably just do without them. Thanks for the offer.