Tips for Troubleshootees

Let's face it, we all have to call some kind of tech support person at least once in our lifetime.  So, unless your name is 'Gates' or 'Jobs', you'll be dialing one number or another.  Here's some helpful hints to make your experience less taxing for you and the guy on the other end.

1.)  Read The Manual!

     Please, for the love of deity, hone those reading comprehension skills on a manual.  Mind you, some manuals suck.  Hardware manuals are chronically unfriendly at times.  If you are really unfortunate, the manual is in broken English, or worse, a manual that isn't in English at all.  (Provided that you don't know any other languages.)  If a problem is a software application, you stand a better chance by visiting your local bookstore and scroungeing up a supplemental book.  Of course, sometimes the answer is simple and you can look it up in the store.  There by, saving yourself $30-$50(US) on a book that you will barely touch.

2.)  Have EVERYTHING Related to the Problem Handy

     When you call some tech-support folks they will ask you various questions about what you bought.  (IE: Serial numbers, model of piece of equipment, version number, what color is the dog on page 6 of your manual -- you get the picture.)  With all of these things handy, you probably will have your problem solved properly.  Remember, the person on the other end does not live with you, know your system setup, understand your methods of work or play on your computer.  Try your best to draw him a mental picture of what you are working with.  If you don't, he might make assumptions about your computer that are inaccurate and cause unknown results.  If you feel educated enough to question a suspicious instruction, question it!  They are not perfect either, but be prepared to back up your logic.

3.)  To Call Them, or to Call Them Names

     This is a personal pet-peeve of mine:  1-900 tech-support.  This is a mean way for the producer of a product you bought to capitalize on your lack of knowledge.  In these cases, I suggest reading the manual more or coming up with a workaround.  Mind you, I am also not fond of dialing long distance and being on hold for over an hour just to get two minutes of real tech-support.  Even companies with 1-800/1-888 lines can have a nasty habit of putting you in voice-mail-hell.  But hey, it's their nickel.

4.)  The Person on the Other End Will Assume You are an Idiot

     Don't be insulted.  From my own personal experiences as a troubleshooter, nine out of ten phone calls are related to user stupidity, or the user doing something weird with a setting that now has the whole system in a tizzy.  Good service-techs are able to detect computer literate people from the blundering masses.  Try to explain your question as clearly as possible.  They cannot see what you see on your computer and may ask what will strike you as silly questions like, " Is your computer plugged in and turned on? "  People miss these obvious things.  If none of their users ever made such a simple error the question would never be asked.  The lesson here is, check the obvious things first and save everyone some grief, and yourself some embarrassment.

5.)  Take Notes

     It's just like school.  Grab a pad and pen and jot down all the important things, like the buttons you pushed to get through the voice mail maze, your question(s), the name of your service-tech, and what he / she told you to do.  This tactic can be infinitely handy when you have to call back later that same day and state who told you what to do, because it did not solve your problem.  This also guards you against forgetting or misunderstanding critical instructions.

6.)  Stumping the Peanut Gallery

     You had better own up to it now while you still can.  Tech-support folks are not complete experts and in some cases they can be an utter joke.  If the person on the other end is stumped, sometimes they will use the phrase, " Can I call you back about this? ", there are a few things you can do before you hang up:

     Here are a few examples of where I have stumped the tech-support folks:

     My first example is Sony.  I had a 4x IDE CD-ROM drive that refused to work on one of my computers.  (It was an Acer 486-50 for what it's worth.)  I tried using the included Sony IDE adapter, the on-board IDE controller, and variations in between.  Also included was Sony's "Auto-Detect" program that is supposed to ease installation.  I tried this approach first and it failed completely.  After playing with all of the jumper settings and still having no luck, I called tech-support.  We discussed what I had tried and they had no suggestions or explanations.

     Roughly the same thing occurred with my CSC brand ISA SCSI controller.  After some experimenting, I concluded that the card was just 'picky'.  While I still regard it as a good card, the nasty compatibility problems I have with it greatly limit its usefulness.

7.)  Workarounds

     To quote Mick Jagger, " You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes; you get what you need. "  As unpalatable as it sounds, tech-support will not always be able to help you out.  Your best bet is to try and come up with some alternative solutions in order to move on.  Sometimes it means doing something the 'hard' way.  In other cases, it's just that certain hardware configurations just don't like one another.  In these cases, your'e stuck and must just regard it as "experience".

     Take the SCSI controller I talked about above.  It failed on every motherboard I own, except one.  At that point, I can either take the board back or keep it specifically for that computer.  By the same token, my Sony 4x CD-ROM drive worked perfectly in every computer I have with the exception of the one that likes the SCSI controller.  Since I put off taking the SCSI card back and the CD-ROM was in my possession for well over a year, (not to mention, I lost the receipt, and the store I bought it from went out of business) I just decided to make the best use of the equipment on hand.

     So, while some may lead a charmed existence and never encounter problems with their computers, don't bank on being one of them.

Party on!

--Hex.

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