Monday, June 21, 2010

An unhapy tech user

I'm not really sure if the weekend passed as the weather forecasts had predicted late last week.  I'm also not sure it didn't.  The biggest difference, I think, may have occurred Sunday when we were told to expect showers and possibly thunder storms.

The weather announcement crawls on the television seemed to indicate that some places at least did get storms.  In fact, Gator Daughter, who spent Father's Day with us, called Sunday evening and asked how we had made out in the rain.  Huh?  My little plot of land did get four or five marble sized rain drops, but that was it.  The sidewalk and driveway never showed any sign of rain.  GD said it had rained hard enough to form puddles at her place on the north side of Portland.

It did get somewhat muggy, though.  We had a nice gentle breeze for much of the day and out of the sun, that breeze made living almost comfortable.  But when it dropped down, the discomfort levels rose quickly.

Monday and Tuesday should be nice and I'll probably take my weekly ride around the yard to trim the lawn Tuesday.  The official summer began at 7:29 Monday morning.

I had to visit the Linksys by Cisco tech support page over the weekend as I'm having a problem with my home network.  It may be the singularly most customer unfriendly site I've had the experience of visiting.  I did find the question in a forum that dealt with my problem, but clicking the question only got me to a "Page not found" error message.  I tried three or four other similar topics hoping for a solution.  Same error message. 

I did find a "live chat" link and clicked it and got a pleasant person with whom to chat.  But, after he looked at my serial number, he informed my router was no longer eligible for free support and offered me two choices:  a toll-free phone number for fee-based support or a link to a page where I could find "award-winning support tools."  I asked for both but told him I'd try the tools page first.  The chat was ended.

I tried the link.  There were no tools there.  In fact I was simply back to the page where it all started.  Since it wasn't the link I first opened, I tried the forum questions again.  Same error message.  It was, in fact, the same page but just a different route to it.  I could find no tools.

I realize that tech support is for a lifetime, but my router is only a couple years old.  That chat tech person probably could have given me my answer in less than a minute.  A satisfied customer is a happy customer and one who probably would get a new product from the same company.  I could see the fee-based part if the problem were more complex.

By now the frustration level was rising too rapidly so I ended the session.  Later Sunday I received an e-mail requesting a response.  It didn't ask for anything specific, only gave me a specific place for me to respond.  Since I didn't have a question to answer, I responded with basically what I've written here, except I added that I probably could buy a new Netgear or D-Link router cheaper than their fee-based support.

I did enjoy a super time with my daughter on Father's Day and she and Gator Wife prepared an excellent cook out meal for us, so the day wasn't a total loss. 

GiM

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