For those of you that don't know, Comcast recently bought AT&T Broadband, and the two times I have called them have been such forehead slapping experiences. The first time was just frankly bad support. They weren't willing to even try to help. But just now it was so funny I had to share.
I am doing a little network tweaking and I decided to ask them what they recommended as an MTU setting. Of course the guy was like "NTwhat?" but that wasn't a huge surprise. Went to ask lead...came back... "well we don't actually support that...but you may be able to find out at such and such speedguide.org or something." Fine...while I have you on the phone, what are your DNS servers? "Well no one has ever asked me that one before....da-her da-her da-her. I actually don't know how to find out either. Sorry."
That's okay man - have a good day.
So are there any qualifications to do that job. If a monkey could use a telephone it could probably do a better job. All you have to do is be able to read a list of common troubleshooting steps and you're hired. "Have you left your modem unplugged for 24 hours? No? Try that and call us back tomorrow."
I remember NWLink techs used to be crazy knowledgeable guys. How times have changed.
... can do pretty much any tech job. They wouldn't even have to be able to use a phone at Comcast. They could be conditioned to press an answer button when the phone rings. And then press automated response buttons depending on what was asked of them
There would be the "Have you tried power-cycling the modem?" button, and "Let me escalate this issue to tier 2." And other similar responses.
We should start a third-party tech support company that uses all monkeys.
..I've had attbi mail for over a year now and its been great! No spam whatsoever. No junk-mail. No crap that I didn't personally ask for. Well, yesterday was the switch between attbi.com and comcast.net. I woke up this morning I.E. 7:15am and I open my mail only to find spam. I am fucking IRATE.
The first two tiers of QwestMSN support is slightly worse than what you describe, but their top tier actually seems to get things done, so the combined score would be nearly equivalent to that of Comcast. They sent me a wanged up modem. I told them it was wanged up on about 30 or so occasions. About two months or so later they sent me a non-wanged modem. Bunch of wanged up support bastards!!! I wish they'd all just wang off.
