#59: Phone techs: Don't hang up on people just because you don't know WTF you're doing

I spent six hours with Dell tech help yesterday because the computer I bought from them was so rife with conflicting settings that it crashed pretty much every day. (This is an especially fun thing to contemplate happening during a law school final.) First, one of their techs had me a run a wee test--without telling me first that it would take THREE HOURS. After the test had run and I called back, the guy I talked with--who apparently lived somewhere on the outskirts of Kabul--grew so panicked at my description of the issue that he said, "Uh, um, I need to transfer you. This is wrong department." When I asked him how so--this is the number I had been calling since JANUARY, trying to get the issues fixed--the line suddenly went dead. After a few minutes of slamming the phone into the sofa cushions and shouting "Fuck you," I called back and demanded to speak with a supervisor. Of course there wasn't one around until I informed the woman that I was composing a letter to Michael Dell while I waited (true). The supervisor actually rounded up the guy who had hung up on me and made him apologize. Ha! And then he put me in contact with a woman who seemed to know what she was doing. She even told me "God Bless" (which was pretty generous, considering how pissed off I was).

But none of this would have happened if companies like Dell would just train their people. I've had the same issue with companies like Comcast and some crappy wireless router manufacturer (D-Link). They hang their employees out to dry and probably don't pay them enough for a bowl of rice and ants. Even so, if you're a tech person and you don't know what the hell you're doing, at least have the decency to admit it.

A corollary to this "Don't" is "Don't make people be bitches in order to get service. Treat them right the first time."

P.S. If you're buds with Michael Dell, please forward this post.