From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Jun 8 02:47:32 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 27FD1106564A for ; Mon, 8 Jun 2009 02:47:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: from outbound-mail-21.bluehost.com (outbound-mail-21.bluehost.com [69.89.21.16]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id B816E8FC08 for ; Mon, 8 Jun 2009 02:47:31 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: (qmail 15557 invoked by uid 0); 8 Jun 2009 02:47:31 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO box543.bluehost.com) (74.220.219.143) by outboundproxy2.bluehost.com with SMTP; 8 Jun 2009 02:47:31 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=apotheon.com; h=Date:From:To:Subject:Message-ID:Mail-Followup-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To:User-Agent:X-Identified-User; b=nHVsbUvVqxClhnmoNeCIMQ22wOVyZv47baXuSHLSlpbCTXrYS/WvELmXlXg5woOQ8n2ILMRFahi0ngmzsB4kI6DoH5vPZJ3+aPZ9W8iT3c8ezpINBBe1WWU3MiJyfPR2; Received: from c-24-8-180-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.180.234] helo=kokopelli.hydra) by box543.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1MDUtW-0006eD-Qx for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Sun, 07 Jun 2009 20:47:31 -0600 Received: by kokopelli.hydra (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Sun, 7 Jun 2009 20:42:13 -0600 Date: Sun, 7 Jun 2009 20:42:13 -0600 From: Chad Perrin To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20090608024213.GB9091@kokopelli.hydra> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org References: <4096aedd0906040923p6288e319ia083f47c7ccc29e1@mail.gmail.com> <64c038660906042034v43b340c6jf1e001ac9941f1f6@mail.gmail.com> <4A2920F5.7040504@ibctech.ca> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="Yylu36WmvOXNoKYn" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Identified-User: {2737:box543.bluehost.com:apotheon:apotheon.org} {sentby:smtp auth 24.8.180.234 authed with ren@apotheon.org} Subject: Re: ISP questions X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 08 Jun 2009 02:47:32 -0000 --Yylu36WmvOXNoKYn Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 06:23:56PM +0200, Wojciech Puchar wrote: > > > >The tech support people do what they are told to do. If you've ever had > >a job in which every single incoming call is someone who is frustrated, > >angry and is going to take it out on *you*, it might be understandable > >why the tech support call centre business is like an employee revolving > >door, and they can't keep anyone longer than a few months. >=20 > I think there are people doing this that can work for years. just a matte= r=20 > of personal character, they could completely don't care :) In my experience, the people who remain in such positions for more than a couple years and don't quit or get moved/promoted somewhere else tend to turn into BOFH-types who have a sense of entitlement, enjoy making others' lives difficult, and epitomize the very worst qualities of common tech support personnel. They basically turn into (or were, from the beginning) people that should just get an ass-kicking about daily. There are exceptions, of course, but they're few and far between, from what I've seen. >=20 > Some still insist that it's our fault, they we have to go to them, run=20 > some DVD-bootable linux distro with web browser and show that all is fine= =20 God, I *wish* I could find ISP tech support people who were knowledgeable enough to do something like that -- then maybe when I have a connectivity problem we'd actually be able to sort the problem out in one call, instead of the tech support people I talk to being hampered by both lack of knowledge and bureaucratic shackles so that nothing's going to get fixed for at least three hours. My at one point ISP actually had (I don't know if this is still the case) a special telephone number to call for some stupid automated connectivity test to be run, and when I called once to try to get troubleshooting for my connection I was told to hang up, call that number, follow directions, then call back with the case number it gave me if there was actually a connectivity problem. Seriously, this is what it has come to -- nobody knows how to use ping or traceroute any longer, apparently. This is especially problematic when the problem I was having wasn't a complete outage, but *intermittent* service failure, so the damned thing didn't even detect a connection problem because there wasn't one at that exact moment. Anyway . . . my point is that I'd love to deal with tech support that knows what a Linux distribution LiveCD is, rather than tech support that doesn't know what ping and traceroute are. I get the feeling modern public corporation ISPs actually *want* their tech support personnel to be ignorant morons so they can avoid having to fix problems, simply snowing users in with stupidity long enough to see if the problem "goes away" (even if only by the customer going away in annoyance). Clearly, individual customers aren't important to ISP management these days. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] Quoth Martin Golding: "Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live." --Yylu36WmvOXNoKYn Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.10 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAkoseoUACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKVo6gCeLtzAWc0gGXb3vl/INiBO9+Db sUQAmwSvaKxJgd8/lbH0qMvG5pg/bu8v =dw4l -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --Yylu36WmvOXNoKYn--