[TriLUG] Earthlink Tech Support

[Rick DeNatale]

Back when I was on Mindspring, I was nothing but satisfied the few
times I need technical support. I actually started with nando.net and
went to Mindspring when the N&O sold their ISP business to Mindspring.
 Things didn't seem to change when the bought Earthlink and took over
the name.  It's been nearly three years since I moved and changed ISPs
so I don't know how things are now, as the old Burroughs ads used to
say "bigger isn't always better.*"

I had a similar bad experience not with an ISP but with Crucial.com.
I've got an old Thinkpad A21e. There are two models of this TP one
which has a maximum memory of 256MB and another with a max of 512MB. 
I hadn't figured out how to tell the difference so I tried their
on-line chat support.  After answering "Brenda's" questions to the
best of my ability, she finally told me that I needed to contact
Toshiba?!?

So it goes.

* I don't know how many Trilugers are old enough to remember these old
Burroughs ads, or the parody issue of ComputerWorld which started with
the headline:

    IBM Calls It Quits: Burroughs Decides Bigger IS Better


On Thu, 24 Feb 2005 11:20:31 -0500, Ben Pitzer <bpitzer at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 21:45:38 -0500, Rick DeNatale
> <rick.denatale at gmail.com> wrote:
> > What do you think the average number of support employees per customer is?
> 
> Answer:  1 employee per 1000 customers, probably
> 
> > What do you think the average length of a support call is?
> 
> Answer: 8 minutes.  Mine, however, usually averaged 12-15, but I had
> one of the best customer satisfaction scores in the support group, so
> they let me slide a little on the call times.
> 
> As for the rest of this thread, well, that guy was probably cutting
> and pasting canned answers, or using some new tool they've developed.
> When I worked for Mindspring tech support, they had a great internal
> website full of support info, everything from screenshot/image mapped
> walkthroughs of the config screens of dozens of applications to an
> internal knowledgebase for support employees.  It helped us have one
> of the best rated support groups in the industry at the time.
> 
> I, too, had an interesting Earthlink chat session recently.  Helping
> out my wife's client get his email account set up from work, I got the
> most condescending support employee on the face of the planet, and
> told him so.  Since I'm sure that some of each tech's chats are logged
> at random, I made sure to put what I thought of his style in the chat,
> so that if he supervisor reads it, he'll know how lousy he was.  I
> know that when I worked for Mindspring, they randomly listened in on
> our calls, at least n per week, and talked to us about the stuff they
> heard, trying to improve us.  Hopefully, that jackhole's supervisor
> will read that chat with me and raise the pimp hand on him.
> 
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