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Machiavellian on 22 October 2014
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Mr Puggsly said:
Machiavellian said:

There is never a time when you need to be rude when seeking support.  I can tell you once you cross that bridge if you thought you were not getting help, you just killed it.  Instead you have to do the opposite.  Be very polite implore the person to do everything he or she can and ask them to go the extra mile.  You will find out tech reps are more than willing to help somone like that out and will go the extra mile to help out.

Having worked in tech support and even doing time as a MS tech support way back in the day, I have some insight for you.  They were not making you do useless stuff.  Most support cannot rely on the customer to actually have performed the basic troubleshooting steps needed to resolve issues, even if they are technical.  If MS support is like I remember, each call is logged and all steps are traked within the call.  If the issue get esculated, the person who gets the issue will review those notes so they know they do not need to cover those steps again.  The problem I see is that the issue did not get esculated.  

Were you just calling in and getting different people or did you get a issue number so that you can have the person on the other end reference your issue so that you would not have to go through the basics steps each time.  Hopfully you were civil thoughout the whole process.


They weren't going the extra mile for me, they wanted me to do the same crap over and over.

If I tell them I already called MS and did those steps the solution isn't do it again.

Frankly, if I wasn't rude useless troubleshooting for what appears to be a potential bug would have continued.

Of course they were not going the extra mile because attitude makes a big difference if the rep on the other end wants to bother.  Since I can only go by your chat message, it appears that maybe you did not have the right attitude when you approached support.

Here is the thing about telling support you did something, most times customers just lie.  If there is no record of the previous call, then its hard for the rep to just take your word for it.  Customer lie about stuff like that all the time and its one of the most fustrating thing when doing support.  You believe the customer and eliminate those steps only have to come back later and find out it fixes the problem.  Way to many times I have had this problem when I was in support.  Also not sure why you think Nat settings and checking port forward are useless because those are legit reasons why you can have download issues.  

No, getting rude did not help the situation more than being polite.  Tech reps shut down when customers get rude and most times they want to now get you off the phone then actually help.  So instead of the rep thinging, I want to do whatever it takes to help this guy, instead they are thinking I want to do whatever it takes to get this guy off the phone.  So while you think you were getting progress, in reality, you just made the rep want to end the call and care less about your issue.

One thing to take away from this problem is to get a issue number from support if the problem was not fixed.  The support rep should be logging the issue with an ID.  Also good to ask for esculation if the problem was not fixed.  This would require someone to call you back but at least that second tier support should have much better understanding of whats needed for testing.