The "what's On Your Mind?" Thread -2019

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tarasgirl06

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kashmir64 kashmir64 Bites your head? Wow. I'm speechless.:fear:Yelling at your ISP is good, though. Give 'em hell! I avoid having to deal with tech support whenever possible, because either I get someone entry-level who doesn't have the foggiest, or (once only) I get someone so far advanced that he almost has me in tears. I'm my own tech support, 99.999% of the time. It just works better that way. :bliss:
 
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kashmir64

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kashmir64 kashmir64 Bites your head? Wow. I'm speechless.:fear:Yelling at your ISP is good, though. Give 'em hell! I avoid having to deal with tech support whenever possible, because either I get someone entry-level who doesn't have the foggiest, or (once only) I get someone so far advanced that he almost has me in tears. I'm my own tech support, 99.999% of the time. It just works better that way. :bliss:
I don't mind most of the time, if they help. But an hour wait time just to speak with someone who's first language is NOT English is extremely annoying.
I couldn't be my own tech support on this one. First time a technician had to come out and reset the box/hub for the area. (the one on the road). This last time (after 2 hours on the phone the night before) I spoke to a nice man from Texas (who at least I could understand) and he reset the line and modem on his end.
There was a big storm with a power outage that messed everything up.
 

Mamanyt1953

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There needs to be a season 5 of Lucifer. Just finished watching season 4. I was completely enthralled with every episode. Fortunately, my internet kept going out so it made the series last a little longer than if I had binge watched it like planned.
There had better be! I will NOT have it left like that...and did you notice? He
has his angel wings back at the end
!
 

catspaw66

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I don't mind most of the time, if they help. But an hour wait time just to speak with someone who's first language is NOT English is extremely annoying.
I couldn't be my own tech support on this one. First time a technician had to come out and reset the box/hub for the area. (the one on the road). This last time (after 2 hours on the phone the night before) I spoke to a nice man from Texas (who at least I could understand) and he reset the line and modem on his end.
There was a big storm with a power outage that messed everything up.
I used to connect to tech in Ft. Worth, TX. The office was on Hulen St., just north of the mall. Now, it goes overseas somewhere.
 
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kashmir64

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Now, it goes overseas somewhere.
It's almost tempting to move to India and get a job in customer service so that when someone from the US calls CS about a US product, there will be someone that they can understand.
Don't get me wrong, the people of India are great. But I called 3 different times in as many days and could only understand about 75% of what they were saying.
 

foxxycat

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Yep calling tech support is the last thing I like. For one being hearing impaired and their accent really makes it hard to understand. That's why I much prefer texting. I have been able to communicate much better with the technology of texting..I don't feel so isolated from the world anymore. The old days we had those phones that dial each number and those phones were the only ones that I can hear out of. The new electric phones stink. They echo and no matter how loud I set it , some women's voices I can only hear half of what is said

And now that the snow is finally gone I've been able to poke around here and there in the garden. And my project with these plants That I bought off Ebay. I bid on too many but figured I can sell them at cost at work..there are 5 or 6 people who say they want to buy them..I just need to take inventory of how many of which colors and start figuring out who gets what..I bit off more than I could chew ... there were some tears and frustration with it. But I managed to fit them all in 2 rooms plus 2 crates at work.

We finally getting warmer weather this weekend. It was snowing here on Tue morning on way to work. Normally we put the plants outside by now but with the temps in 37 to 45 range they wouldn't have liked it. I've been able to water them out on the deck and they didnt seem to mind the 45 degree air. I only have them out there for half an hour.

So hopefully they survive the transitions of indoor to outdoor. I got my saw horses and plenty of plywood to set them up in the shade soon. I just need a dry day so I can paint the boards with deck staining. Then they can stay outside without worrying about the rain.
 

Mia6

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I had a surprising but amazing situation with Windows Tech Support about 5 years ago. There was something wrong with my laptop so I called WTS after trying with no avail to fix on my own. The agent was from Pakistan and told me almost immediately that my warranty had expired and the only way he could help would be for me to pay, cannot remember the exact amount, but it was over $150.00. I began crying and I was not faking it, telling me that my laptop was my way of communicating with others because of my disability. He said he was very sorry, etc. By this time I was begging and he took pity on me and said he would see if he could fix. I had to "sign" to let him have access to my laptop. Within seconds I could see he was "in" my PC. There was a virus and I knew it was from a fake Mozilla thingy I had clicked on. It took him about 10 minutes to fix. Gosh, I was soo grateful. He said he nor anyone else would be able to do that again and suggested I buy the warranty.

I've had other occasions to call Tech Support, mostly about my cable tv and these always went bad with the agents not understanding me or my problem.
Sometimes I'll download a book from Kindle and I cannot get it to load but the agents are always helpful.

I guess it's kind of a hit or miss kind of thing.
 

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I don't understand how SOPs full of typos and grammatical errors are able to be company approved :headscratch: To be fair, the person who wrote the SOPs speaks English as second language. His grasp and understanding of English is quite good but grammar and sentence structure and punctuation is lacking.
 
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kashmir64

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I had a surprising but amazing situation with Windows Tech Support about 5 years ago. There was something wrong with my laptop so I called WTS after trying with no avail to fix on my own. The agent was from Pakistan and told me almost immediately that my warranty had expired and the only way he could help would be for me to pay, cannot remember the exact amount, but it was over $150.00. I began crying and I was not faking it, telling me that my laptop was my way of communicating with others because of my disability. He said he was very sorry, etc. By this time I was begging and he took pity on me and said he would see if he could fix. I had to "sign" to let him have access to my laptop. Within seconds I could see he was "in" my PC. There was a virus and I knew it was from a fake Mozilla thingy I had clicked on. It took him about 10 minutes to fix. Gosh, I was soo grateful. He said he nor anyone else would be able to do that again and suggested I buy the warranty.

I've had other occasions to call Tech Support, mostly about my cable tv and these always went bad with the agents not understanding me or my problem.
Sometimes I'll download a book from Kindle and I cannot get it to load but the agents are always helpful.

I guess it's kind of a hit or miss kind of thing.
Are you sure it was Windows TS that you called? Or was it the number that came up on your computer? The one that says 'your computer has a virus, call this number'. That whole scenario sounds like a scam. I've never heard of WTS asking for access to your computer. You might want to consider changing all passwords.
 

Margret

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Around thirty years ago a friend and I were hired to upgrade a computer program for a company. We had the original source code, and it was horrible - what programmers refer to as "spaghetti code" - very hard to follow, with whole sections that couldn't run at all because there was nothing linking to them, no comments (also known as "internal documentation" - notes programmers leave to explain things), nonsensical variable names, basically we were about at the point of deciding it would be easier to write a new program from scratch than to fix the current program.

But we needed to know about the protocols the program used to communicate with other computers, and we were having trouble finding that information. The user's manual was about two pages long and included no technical information at all, so we finally called customer service. It was the first time I'd ever encountered a customer service department based in India and it was a nightmare. As far as I could tell the only thing the guy we talked to understood was the name of the program we were calling about, and he had only one resource - his own copy of the user manual. So he did the only thing he could - he read the user manual to us, verbatim.

We ended up having to default on the job because we couldn't get the information we needed. I found out later that when someone from the company that was using this program had to call customer service because they were having trouble with the program the instructions they received would have had them formatting their hard drive and wiping out all of their data if they'd been naive enough to follow them.

Margret
 

tarasgirl06

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Are you sure it was Windows TS that you called? Or was it the number that came up on your computer? The one that says 'your computer has a virus, call this number'. That whole scenario sounds like a scam. I've never heard of WTS asking for access to your computer. You might want to consider changing all passwords.
Just FYI, I let a tech take control once. It was legit, and he dealt with the problem successfully. And yes, of course once you let anyone into your system you change your password immediately.
 

artiemom

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FYI, I have had Apple Support have access to VIEW my laptop screen. I had to sign a waver, and they did not have the capability to go anywhere into it, nor perform tasks.

They used their remote arrow to show me what to do. They were awesome for tech support. I did this twice, when I had an issue.

What I love about Apple Tech Support: They are all located in the United States! I value that. I can understand them. We can chat about things while waiting for the computer to load.

I have had terrible tech support from my cable carrier; not being able to understand them. They are either located in India, the Philippines, or even Pakistan--once...

I always demand to speak with someone in the United States.. I do it nicely.

When you are under stress, by having to call for tech support, is not the time to have someone with an accent you find difficult to understand, give you instructions.
 

Mia6

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Are you sure it was Windows TS that you called? Or was it the number that came up on your computer? The one that says 'your computer has a virus, call this number'. That whole scenario sounds like a scam. I've never heard of WTS asking for access to your computer. You might want to consider changing all passwords.
No it was Windows. They have to have access to repair.
 

Willowy

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I once talked to a southern American that I couldn't understand at all! I also have a hard time understanding people with a strong Boston accent, though I haven't talked to one on tech support yet. I do think accent "softening" should be a part of call center training, no matter where it's located.
 

kashmir64

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No it was Windows. They have to have access to repair.
That's good. It just sounded a little fishy to me. Especially with all the scams around.

The tech support I had to call was for my ISP. I didn't have internet for some reason (probably the storm). One of them actually tried to have me change things in my gateway, but he couldn't gain access to my account. Which was a good thing, because the Texan I spoke with said it would have messed things up and caused a $100 fee for a technician to come out and fix.
He told me always call during the day, when tech support is in the US. The night time tech support is outsourced to various places.

This is Frontier BTW, so if any of you have Frontier as an ISP, keep this in mind. Frontier covers 27 states.
 
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