Occurs to me that whenever I call a customer service number for tech support, whether it be setting up an online bill-pay, or a tech issue with my ISP, or whatever, if the person who took the call can't fix the problem, or set up what I'm trying to set up, or whatever, the same thing happens...

They say "What is your name and number? I'll refer your problem to our people who can help you and they will give you a call." So I spend 30 seconds reciting it and supposing that he's actually writing it down or typing it into a form, then I happily thank him for his help and wait for the call back.

And, in like 15 years, I have NEVER actually gotten a call back. I invariably have to call the outfit back again in the next few days and try again.

Is that a game the call-takers play? I imagine it goes like this:

"I can't help this guy, so I'll ask him for his name and number because it doesn't put me out to sit here while he recites it, even though I'm not listening. Then I'll get rid of him quickly and quietly by promising him a call back, even though nobody ever will. Then I'll move on to the next call, who I may actually be able to help."

If you do the whole call-taking-tech-support thing, give it up! Am I right?

Depends. In my situation we always get a call back, and in a very timely manner, but we pay for enterprise level support for all the products we use.

Depending on the issue, I have a requirement to call back/ follow up on an end user or LAN/WAN related issue based on a set number of criteria. Usually we have a 1 hour to 24 hour call back response time depending on the issue.

We pay heavily for 24/7 enterprise level support too, but it can still be hit & miss. Our HP-Unix systems are the worst. It would take 20 minutes or more to navigate the menu prompts (the seven levels of hell :rolleyes: ) to get to a live person & half the time they can't help.

Example: I had a DAT drive go belly up. I pulled it out (all that stuff is hot swappable) & had it with when I called it in. When I finally got a person I gave him all the pertinent info (company name, address, site ID) & read him all the numbers on the drive (model, serial, even the internal replacement number we're not supposed to know about) & not only could he not find the part, but he told me we weren't under a service contract & would have to go through the entitlement department before he could dispatch a CE.

I ended up paging the CE directly & he called the warehouse & had a new drive overnighted so I could swap it out myself.

When HP bought Compaq (which owned Tandem NONSTOP) we told the Tandem CE just how different service calls were between the two houses. He got his boss involved & we had his boss (try to) place a service call. Let's just say that now we have a shortcut to bypass the endless menus & get a real live person.

As somebody who does enterprise software support for living, I can tell you only one thing: A good support engineer is priceless. A technical generalist who has a 'can-do-it-all' attitude is extremely hard to find. If you liked working with a particular support rep, make sure that the management knows it. It will pay back