Hello, Tech Support?

The events in this post are real. The names have been changed or omitted to protect the guilty.

How many times have you called the support line for your cable, phone, internet or other service or device and heard a recording tell you how much the company values your business, but not enough for you to be able to speak to a real person without a significant wait? Nor do most companies value their customers enough to ensure seamless transfer from one rep to another when that is required. The next rep asks for the same identifying information as the previous one even though that rep should have your info up on his/her computer screen from the transfer.

I had the pleasure of experiencing all of this from our cable company when I tried to install the new modem they sent us. It seemed easy enough as it was just a matter of disconnecting the old one and plugging in the new one. The modem worked but our router wouldn’t connect to the internet. I re-connected the old modem, got internet back up and running, and made a service appointment to have a technician come to the house to troubleshoot the issue.

The technician arrived on time the next day and promptly encountered the same issue I had. He called his tech support line and found out that the company had not linked the modem to our account. That required me to call the customer tech support line, and the fun began. After being on hold for several minutes, a rep took my information but once I told him what was needed, he had to transfer me to someone else who handled that type of issue. That person asked me for the same information that I had already given and had to put me on hold several times during the process of getting the new modem linked to our account. All of this while the technician sat by patiently.

Step one accomplished but leery of success I kept the tech support person on the phone while the technician tried the modem again – after it was reset a couple of times from the office. Same result as first time. Our router – from the cable company – was not accepting the signal from the modem. After speaking with yet another person on the phone, she and the technician in my home realized that the router in the modem needed to be disabled as it was overriding our router. Due to the location of our computer equipment it was going to be a huge job to run cable to move the modem so we were trying to avoid this.

After several “let me put you on hold” iterations and a couple more modem – and router - resets, the person on the phone informed us that the settings had been changed and everything should work. No such luck. Still nothing at the router – even though both modem and router are from the cable company. At this point it was time to just go back to the old modem which works fine. I let the technician go as there was nothing else he could do, and started the next part of the customer service odyssey; dropping the new modem and re-linking the old one to our account. Of course, this required yet another representative who asked for the same information I’d given 3 times already. After going through the same steps as we had for the new modem, we were finally back up and running. And it only took 2 HOURS on the phone!

I’m sure many of you reading this have similar stories to tell. It’s not just the wait time that is frustrating. Having to bounce between reps to get to one who can help with your issue is painful enough. Add to that, having the rep freeze up if the issue is not on the script he/she is reading from and the fiasco is on.

There are a couple of ways to avoid this, in many cases at least. First, getting savvy with internet searches can help with many issues, technical and mechanical. YouTube has troubleshooting videos on almost everything and is a great source of information (I easily found what I needed to diagnose my laptop’s camera issue without resorting to the tech line). Next up are your kids or grandkids. Yes, your child or grandchild can probably diagnose and even fix or at least diagnose your technology issue quickly having been immersed in it since birth. A good thing technically speaking but not necessarily so from a social standpoint.

So the next time you find yourself in need of tech support, try those alternate routes first. If they don’t work and you are forced to call the product’s help line, pour something to drink, grab a snack, turn on speaker phone, and get comfortable as you will likely be there for a while.

Post script: Having returned the new modem the next day I was assured it would be removed from our bill as we were being billed for both the old and new modems. 2 months and a few phone calls later I am still waiting for the reduced bill and credits for previous months. So glad I am a valued customer!

www.RetiredandInspiredat55.com 6-05-2023