I think I had that guy on the phone this morning.

Reminds me of trying to teach the Saudi Air Force how to read T.O.'s (tech orders). Mission impossible!

I've spoken to that guy and all his family when I used to do tech support.

"Stress is when you wake up screaming, and realize you weren't asleep."

Who wants to hear about the NZ Navy at Def HQ paying $1500 for an emergency call out which was resolved by the tech plugging the computer in at the wall?

I see from the comments for much of the civilized world we have not advanced much from the middle ages........If you have to call for tech support, you will get some Pakistani or Indian goat herder who is a wizard with computer problems but cannot carry on an intelligent conversation. When they do accumulate enough money, they emigrate to the USA & go to work at 7-11 or become a taxi driver.

Dudley1 - The first guy you talk to at tech support is NOT a computer wizard. He is reading from a script of which the most common solution is rebooting the computer. The trick is to find someone who actually knows what he is doing.

We had the same thing at IBM in the mainframe world. Level 1 was a guy who was a tube jockey and looked up common problems in a database called RETAIN. Since I had the same access as he did, I had already done all the RETAIN searches before I called Level 1. I was usually able to get bumped to Level 2 within 5 minutes of dealing with Level 1. Level 2 knew all the internals and could usually fix my bug. If not, I got bumped to Level 3. These were the guys who actually wrote the code. Yeah, I'm a mainframe bigot, but we had a support structure that actually worked.

While working at IBM, I had to call PC support and the guy I was dealing with in India, who was reading a script, knew less about PC's than I did. I got bumped to deskside support, but my team lead was able to fix the problem before deskside support called me two days later. Is it any wonder I'm a mainframe bigot? Support like that in the mainframe world was not and is not tolerated.

"Level 1 was a guy who was a tube jockey and looked up common problems in a database called RETAIN."

They do the same thing in the PC world; we always referred to them as "script monkeys", because they usually couldn't figure out how to wipe their asses without a flowchart.

Denny & BobG........

Thanks for the enlightenment but today when you call what passes for Tech support , if you listen closely you can hear the Muslim call to prayer in the background or somebody catching hell for upsetting the herd of white cows milling about in the part of the alley called home.

Even if you by miracle of miracles find someone who knows what they are doing, they still can`t speak English.

It is not just computers, one very large company who I do business with moved their online accounts payable system to somewhere in the mountain region near the Khyber Pass,with the language problem, gunfire in the background, plus the fact no one exists in the USA who understands the system & the apparent need to change passwords on a random basis , the afore-mentioned large company now issues purchase orders via Credit Card. This required me to install a credit card terminal, but at least I get paid promptly & have had no problems to date after almost three years.