What do normal people do?

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When someone adopts Lelani's suggestion and sets up a site which rates technical support, please can they also accumulate statistics about how much money companies are making through not staffing their technical support. I don't know what the situation is like in other countries but in the UK almost all technical support is on premium rate telephone lines where the company makes money from forcing the public to navigate long menus and then either keeping people on hold, or telling us that "We are currently experiencing abnormally high demand. Please phone again later. Your business is important to us"

My ISP, Tiscali/Pipex offers several different packages, each with a different download limit. I wanted to know my actual usage over the past few months so that I could determine if I was on the best package. The company refused to provide me with this information by e-mail or to put it on my “My account” page, referring to “security” and “data protection” issues (My “My account” page has far more sensitive information than the number of Gigabytes I downloaded in February, so I didn’t find this excuse convincing. As far as I am concerned they can publicize my broadband usage on prime-time TV, just as long as I don’t have to pay for the advertisement) They were prepared to give me this information if I phoned a premium rate line. All they were prepared to say by e-mail was “Thank you for expressing your deepest interest in our service. We understand your frustration. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

After I had incurred considerable costs through abortive phone calls I tried to get Pipex to agree to refund the cost of abortive calls. They refused, saying that they told me in advance how much per minute I would be paying for the calls, and that was what the law demanded. They did not feel that they had any obligation to actually have sufficient staff available to answer calls. I complained to the regulatory authorities and trade bodies. In the UK they include Ofcom www.ofcom.org.uk , PhonePayPlus www.phonepayplus.org.uk, The Internet Service Providers’ Association (ISPA) UK ww.ispa.org.uk, and Otelo http://www.otelo.org.uk/

Pipex have eventually agreed that when I receive my phone bill and can quantify how much I spent on abortive phone calls, I should let them have the figures. In the UK it still appears to be legal for companies to have a machine answering revenue sharing phone numbers, and not actually have staff available. Should I emigrate, and if so, to which country?

Cheers

Natalie

I'm not a 'tech expert', just the computer guy next door'.

My question 'How do you fix a problem where all your messages have disappered from favourite?'. This was an actual call I got.

The solution; This guy called me before, and was having trouble with Internet Exploerer. I tried to clear it out but couldn't, so I installed Firefox, and then I set up a few shortcuts in the 'Favorite' or bookmarks of Firefox. One was of course was his hotmail account.

And it wasn't working. The problem turned out he was using the 'History' menu instead of the 'favorites' menu.

It isn't the first time I didn't understand what the problem was until I saw it for myself. And trying to explain to some people how to fix a problem, thats another story altogether.

http://www.geocities.com/terryhollett2003/

When I encounter problems understanding tech support folks, I say so immediately : "I can't understand your English. Get me someone who speaks better English." I repeat this statement until I get someone I understand. Then, if this person can't help, I ask him to escalate the problem to the next level. If they start with their canned comments, I repeat the request. Most of the time when they realize that you will persist, they will get you someone who probably can help you solve the problem. If not, then I Google the problem. It is faster than going to individual sites. Try rewording the problem, if there are few hits. If there are tons of hits, then you know the problem is not your fault.

quote>>>What would you advise the "average" non-technical computer user to do in the face of situations like the one I've described?

At age 77, my main complaint against MS is their circular-thinking-catch-22-maddening instructions and 37-procedure-steps to get things working which should not need any detailed attention. Those advocating "Google" as a newest best friend are exactly right. And, this website is invaluable. Pity those of us not accustomed to truncated, verb-omitting computerese laden with bafflegarble.
Rant ends here.
A big, generalized, thank you!, Leo.

Leo, You've helped me more than anyone w/your site information. You explain things in terms that I - as a Dummy out here - can understand.
The high Techie parts, I just figure I will/can learn about them later! So far, so good. And I am glad to hear you say that NO ONE has all the answers...pc's seem to be like Doctor's anymore...
each one does it a different way.
THANK YOU for all your help and I'm very satisfied w/your "walking the fine line" to reach each and every one of us.
Very sincerely,
Barbara J. Wovas

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Thanks. But I know that I'm definitely not reaching
everyone, not could I. I regularly get feedback from some
people that I'm being too technical, and from others that
I'm not being technical enough :-).

More here:
http://ask-leo.com/the_plight_of_the_average_user.html

Leo

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