It is indeed dark times in computing.
A lady called our tech support line and was wanting help with Windows Mail. She wasn't a customer, and had just simply searched for Windows Mail on the web and no doubt ran across our articles on configuring Windows Mail for our hosting services. Quite a few people do that, especially for Mozilla Thunderbird.
Unfortunately we can't assist people with their computer problems unless they are our customers. As much as we'd like to sometimes, we can't because:
- We don't know what info they should use to check their mail (ie. mail server, etc.) since we don't administer the mail servers that they're using
- They're not our customer, these questions should be taken to their ISP, host, help desk, local computer technician
What's more, calling us about e-mail issues when you don't use our service is the equivalent of calling your phone company complaining that your cable box is putting funny lines on your TV set and demanding that they help you fix it.
In this particular case the lady had really gotten the runaround, from Microsoft, her ISP, and several other places. I can understand the frustration, but other than Microsoft and her ISP, no one is obligated (nor really should they) assist her for free. Microsoft turning her away was shameful, because the problem with the software in all likelihood (we know Vista and its bundled software has many issues currently) and not some server setting.
I see ISP's turning away customers all of the time for problems if they're not directly related to their service. I suppose I can understand that, but some of the ISP's tech support staff will go as far as Google the product themselves and find companies like ours and have them call us, or perhaps even “transfer” them to us. This is horrible, because it implies to their customer that we're going to be able to help them, just like we were a subsidiary of said ISP. Multiple ISP's have sent their customers to us for support when we have nothing to do with them.
As you can see, the end user who really doesn't know who's responsibility it is to help them is just completely out of luck and stuck in the middle. For us to say, “we can't help you with that” sounds like another cop out, even though we really don't have the specific information to help them out anyway. I completely understand that. However, both I and a few other people on our staff have been yelled at because of this, and that's wrong.
The lady in question hung up on our staff member when they suggested that she obtain help from a local computer technician/guru. I think that was a perfectly reasonable person to refer her to, as her problem was either software or possibly even hardware related, and no amount of phone troubleshooting would have likely fixed it.
In the end though, what sympathy I had for this lady (I was honestly considering trying to help her when I heard about it) vanished when she rudely hung up on our staff member. I understand the frustration, but taking it out on us, who are not even involved in it, is not fair.
I've learned a few things from this particular incident (and in contemplation of the past times this has happened):
- Most ISP's technical support is very eager to pass the problem to anyone, even people who aren't even involved.
- Microsoft makes products that it doesn't support of sometimes questionable quality. Shame on them. I see why some folks are considering / switching to Mac
- Local computer businesses that provide on-site and carry in service have a real market here – they need to start reaching out to these stranded users.
In summary, the average user is SOL.
