In fact, reading this also reminded me how my father-in-law purchased a brand new Dell after consulting me for my opinion on what he should buy.

Later on, my wife told me that he purchased a Dell with the optional technical support contract. She said to me, "I don't know why he bought that. You even told me the frustration of dealing with technical support reps that just read from a script. Such as, ‘Is the power cord connected?” Besides my dad can just call you to fix it and if you can’t fix it then most likely it’s a hardware issue and it has to be returned. What a waste of money!

My wife knows the frustration I’ve experienced dealing with technical support reps that read from a script. By the time you get past the “Is the power connected”, “Is the keyboard plugged in”, and all the other mundane checks, it seems like an eternity has past; worse - you feel like the technician is being condescending - “Yes, the power corn is on! I know there is no such thing as an “any key” on the keyboard and I’m not using the CD-ROM as a cup holder either!”.

In the past when I have tried to “fast forward” to the meat by saying to the technician, “Sir, I’m very technically savvy, let me just explain the problem, tell you what I think the problem is and let’s work from there,” many technicians get flustered and respond with “Sir, I need to go through the script.”

So I just play along, go through the script and usually just pretend to do what they tell me to do until I think the steps they are telling me to do merit expounding the energy to perform mouse-clicks and keystrokes.

I feel like many help desks have are filled with drones or automatons that can’t think on their feet. Of course, this is not always the case, I have experienced some very smart tech support persons, but unfortunately, they are few and far in-between.

Go check out Andy’s customer service experience:
VoIP Watch: My Views On Customer Service In the USA