Fun with Verizon Tech Support

[vsp]

I had a semi-entertaining run-in this weekend with two Verizon tech support workers. One of them was quite competent; the other thought she was.

The setup: My Verizon DSL abruptly stopped working on Thursday or Friday; the modem continually froze on "Connecting to remote device." I figured it was a remote problem, and gave it a little while to be fixed; when it wasn't, I called tech support on Saturday.

The woman who answered the call clearly had a checklist in hand, and immediately diagnosed the problem as "If it's hanging, the problem must be on your end. Now click the Start button, and select Control Panel..."

She had me tinker with a wide variety of settings, with the requisite reboot after each, and nothing worked. She also expressed a great deal of indignation at my notion that since I hadn't installed or uninstalled any programs, used any programs more complicated than Notepad and typical IE browsing over the previous day or two, and that my system had not changed in any way between when the DSL worked and when it didn't, PERHAPS the problem might not be on my system...

I will give her a small modicum of defense, in that I've been on the other end of the tech-support call as well, and sometimes you simply have to play it as Computers for Morons and assume that the customer knows nothing. Very often, the problem is because Customer X installed something new, tinkered with settings or removed something and swears that there's no WAY that could affect anything. But when exchanges like the following take place:

TS Drone: "Go to Network. Select your Ethernet card from the list."
Me: "Okay. Under Details, I see..."
TS: "Now, did I tell you to click Details? You have to stop assuming that you know what you're doing."
Me: "Huh? Well, I..."
TS: "Do you want me to continue with this call?"
Me: "Yes, I do, if I want this problem fixed."
TS: "Are you SURE?"
Me: "...YES."
TS: "Okay. Now, click Details..."

...it's a bit much to stomach.

After about twenty minutes of tinkering, including removal and reinstallation of Dial-Up Networking, three repetitions of "Do you want me to continue with this call?" and my being told that I "simply have to let go of the notion that your computer won't change settings and do things all by itself, because it will" [exact quote], she gave up and passed me to a Verizon network-support person. The only reasons I hadn't hung up the phone or demanded to talk to her supervisor by this point was that (a) I really wanted this fixed and (b) I had no guarantee that anyone else I talked to wouldn't swear by the same "The Customer Is Always Wrong" checklist.

Verizon Network Support: "Okay, I see the notes from the previous person."
Me: (restating the problem, briefly)
VNS: "Okay, let me try something. [pause] Try connecting now."

It worked on the first attempt.

VNS: "Oh, the problem was on our end. We didn't have you bound to a router properly, and I just fixed that."

It took some willpower for me not to request to be transferred back to the first TS representative.

The moral of the story is: Play nice until someone intelligent comes along...