Agent ... Agent.... AGENT YOU STUPID POS!

Sorry, just prepping for a call into Charter's tech support today. My modem has started having minor packet loss. I'll be playing along and listening to music through ventrilo and periodically I'll get a 5 second lag spike where I can't talk on vent, my music gets interrupted and my game lags. Now I know its the internet and its not going to be perfect 100% of the time, but what was a once in a long while kind of thing that everyone experiences, has turned into a once every 20 minutes or so thing and is extremely annoying.

So today when I get home, I get the pleasure of calling their tech support. After listening to menus and pushing about 47 keys, you get to tech support. An automated system immediately picks up and informs you that all technicians are busy, but she (the computer voice response system) would be glad to help you troubleshoot and assures you that it can help you find the problem right now so you don't have to wait. The really annoying thing with this is that there is no option to skip past it. It doesn't ask you if you want to go through the stuff with the troubleshooter or wait for a technician. It just launches and starts asking you questions which you need to respond to in a clear slow voice for it to understand, or it stalls. I went through it all once. Never again. Not only did it not solve the problem, its complete bullshit.

The first time I called with problems, I went through the prompts. As it was my modem having a problem, I was by the computer on my cell phone talking to them. As I'm going through the prompts, the computer announces that it needs to look up my acount and then check the modem for any problems. Literally 2 seconds later it says "Ok, done." and starts asking more questions like the brand of modem I have etc. W. T. F. Do you seriously think I'm that stupid? How did you look up my account even? I have neither punched in or spoken my name, address, phone number, account number or anything else at this point. They can't be doing a lookup on the phone number because I am on my cell and that number is not in their system. Not to mention that when I am talking to a live technician, it takes several minutes to look up the modem's MAC address and then connect to it and check the logs, signal strength etc. So super computer has somehow through the powers of voodoo not only determined who I am, where I am located, what my modems MAC address is, but also somehow connected, analyzed it and determined its ok? All in 2 seconds? I call shennanigans. The next question out of the system is then "what is the brand on your modem?" If you just connected and looked at it, you would know that already.

So.. after listening to this crap for like 25 minutes.. rebooting various things to no avail, it still wasn't working and I had to get transferred. To who? And AGENT. Haha! I have you now system. Next time I called in, instead of doing anything it asked, I just repeated agent over and over. Oh, it played dumb at first. Said it didn't understand me. But eventually I broke it's spirit and it admitted it heard me. "Sounds like you would like to speak to an agent. Is that correct?" Oh you sneaky little bastard. Trying to get me to give you an answer which you can the misinterpret as me wanting to continue down the computer assisted troubeshooting road. I see what you did there though..and I won't be dettered. AGENT YOU STUPID POS!

So as people around me are vastly amused with the fact that I am getting agitated and arguing with a voice activated computer system, I finally get through to an agent. So I should be good now right? Hardly. I am a computer guy. I do networking for a living. By the time I am calling charter I usually know what the issue is and I just need you to acknowledge and fix said problem. Instead I get some 18 year old that had to take his GED 6 times to pass and can't even spell "packet loss" much less have a clue as to what I'm talking about. It makes me insane to be talked to like a toddler you are trying to teach to walk for the first time. I know how to reboot my modem. If I am calling you, I have done that a half dozen times already. Yes, I rebooted my router. I rebooted my computer too.

One time I told a tech down there that I had done a release / renew on my IP address for my PC as well as doing the same function on the router just to be sure nothing funky was going on. He asked me what I was talking about.. releasing an IP. He told me only he could release IPs. /sigh

Last time I moved, I set up everything weeks ahead of time. I was moving a mile away, taking all my equipment with me and all I need them to do was to activate the line for me and verify that it all worked. Modem guy showed up and boom everything was working. I won't even go into the phone stuff as that is a nightmare of a long story on its own. A week after install my modem stops working. I call in, verbally spar with the computer til it cries uncle and gives me a live person, and promptly get told that my modem was never set up correctly. I informed them that it had been working for a week with no problems and just suddenly shut off. She says to me and I quote:

"Ummm... hmmmm.. that's wierd. Maybe it was set up in like a one week trial mode or something."

Trial mode? Why would a modem for a customer that has had your service for over 3 years suddenly be set to trial mode? Its the SAME DAMN MODEM. I brought it with me. The tech didn't touch it when he was there. Shennanigans again. If you don't know, put me on hold and ask somebody who wasn't cooking the fries at Wendy's yesterday before they were fired because they couldn't get the "put the fries in the box" thing down right.

My favorite experience with the joke that is Charter tech support was when they came out to fix my modem again after that phone call. Not one, but two techs showed up. They check everything out and one of them says to me "they messed up the provisioning of your modem on their end of things. There is nothing wrong here, it has to be fixed in the computer on the charter side" Do it with me now.. make that Lewis Black noise. BWAWAWAwawhahwaHUH? I just spent over 90 minutes on the phone with them yesterday and they said it was a line issue and that she tried to reprovision it and that wasnt the problem. So the tech calls up the office. As he is dialing he says, "Please don't let it be Tina that answers" He's got it turned up really loud so suddenly I hear, "This is Tina, what can I do for you?" The tech sighs, and explains that he needs the modem provisioned correctly and she starts clicking and typing away. She says its all done and they hang up. We reboot and sure as hell.. same problems. He is upset now and calls back..and sure as shit Tina answers again. He doesn't say a word and hangs right up on her and immediately dials back. Now she knows it was him from their caller ID, but since he is now on the phone when she calls back for what she thought was a random disconnect, she gets his voicemail and he gets through to someone else who manages to fix the problem in a matter of minutes. Something that could have and should have been handled on the phone 2 days prior.

There are plenty of jobs for stupid people. Like the guy that follows the horses in parades with the shovel and wheelbarow for picking up horseshit. Internet tech support is NOT where you should be. Now I'm sure any tech support person who knows their stuff will be the first to tell you that most of the people they deal with are idiots, but that is the job of the end user. They are allowed to be retarded. Its not okay for the people that are supposed to understand and fix your problem to have the IQ of a ceramic yard gnome. To you Tina and the rest of the tools that I have run into in Charter tech support, let me be the first to congratulate you. Here is your shiny new shovel.. go follow that horse and smile nice for the crowd!

Now that I have bitched about internet tech support, I leave you with a riot of a video that is from the tech support side of things. Its old, but hilarious just the same.