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I'm So Annoyed I Could Spit
Over the last week I've changed Internet service providers from Dodo to Pacific Internet and activated 2 domains I had registered with a web hosting company called Crazy Domains a Perth Western Australia based company. The first of the domains feral-penguin.com.au was set up and I went in and set up email addresses, and modified the default message via ftp and everything looks hunky dory, and you beaut. Changed all our emails over and made sure our regular contacts are informed of the change of email address, no worries. The second domain adailypenguin.com proved to be somewhat of a problem, they told me it was a goer, I even logged into the control panel and set up the email address, but then things went pear shaped. I was unable to connect to the server. So I call up the help desk, as one does, this was on Friday, and talk to the help desk person. Just before I go on I should point out that I chose this Crazy Domains because their default server option is Linux (Debian to be precise). So I talk to the help desk person, who wants to know if I'm using Outlook or some other email client, when I tell him it's Evolution on Linux, he says we don't support that client or that operating system. Ok fair enough I say to myself, nobody does apparently. I inform him that I went with Crazy Domains because they offer Linux. No comment was the reply I got. So we get into the details of the problem and namely that while I can in fact log in to the control panel and add/delete email addresses; I can't access the email address from my client. In fact the client is reporting to me that the server is un-contactable. His response to all of this is that as I'm not using Windows or a Windows based email client and that the problem must be at my end as he has no trouble seeing the adailypenguin.com mail server. This in spite of the fact that as I pointed out, the feral-penguin domain is working perfectly with my email client. In the end he tells me that because I'm not using Windows he is not prepared to go on with the help call, and that I need to get a technician to look at my set up. On Saturday I fired up the Windows XP virtual machine and tried to access the email server from Outlook Express mostly in the hope that I will get some error messages that I can ram down this persons throat. Indeed I do and I send these back to him - actually as far as I am aware he only works weekdays and he probably still hasn't received those e-mails. I also add in some additional tests such as surfing to http://www.adailypenguin.com which naturally and as the server hasn't been configured or configured properly, it takes me to a page that informs me the domain is currently parked. So I gather up all of this plus the results of pings I did to adailypenguin.com and feral-penguin.com.au (a ping to adailypenguin.com resulted in a response from the Crazy Domain name server, while a ping to feral-penguin.com.au, naturally resulted in a response from the actual virtual machine that the server resides on) and posted all of this information to the 24/7 email help desk which is the only point of contact with Crazy Domains on the weekend. Up until now (10:32 Sunday morning) the only response I've had back from Crazy Domains help desk was an automated email informing me that someone will read the original email and have a look at the problem. I've not yet received any response from them to let me know the problem is resolved or that it was indeed at their end or not. By the way, they did offer a windows server as an upgrade because, as the sales person pointed out it's more expensive than the Linux option. Somehow that didn't fill me with confidence.. As of early Monday morning they appear to have fixed the problem, but have so far, 24 hours after fixing the problem, not bothered to inform me. |
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Comments (24)
Clueless IT support staff
Customers, who can be excused for being clueless, also know that they can end your career with a phone call to a supervisor. Customers will often behave irrationally and without regard to consequences.
Quoting: Customers will often behave irrationally and without regard to consequences.
What's irrational about raising heck with an incompetent helpdesk person? whether the alleged helpdesk tech is by nature a twit, or has received special training in being a twit, is not the customer's problem.
I find it refreshing to be able to change perceptions like this with just some careful language and some extra attention/care.
Nothing - but the problem is the end-user being competent enough themselves to recognize when this is the situation and when they themselves are the problem. MOST customers of ISP's and related companies really don't understand what they're dealing with, and many are prone to throw tantrums when they don't like the answer the tech has given.
(That said, yes, I've been on the "clueless tech driving me nuts" end of the situation too. Our moderately-competent ISP got bought out by a "lowest-common-denominator" outfit with the most maddeningly clueless people answering the phones...)
tuxchick, There's raising heck, and then there's abuse. I've learned over years of support calls that most of the time my attitude towards the help desk person will be reflected back at me. When I'm courteous and the help desk person is not, it's time to escalate. Having said that, I completely agree that advertising a linux option and not supporting it deserves to be out of business.
I should run hosting business. It sounds like mere competence could be quite lucrative.
Dave
Quoting:It sounds like mere competence could be quite lucrative.
It can, but spreading the word and getting clients is hard. Most people look for the cheapest price and will only start to look at quality after they have been burned 3-5 times.
@TC, The Supervisor is claiming that it was a simple matter of the domain name/IP address not propagating out to the names servers. I could be wrong, but I find it somewhat strange that it took over 48 hours for this to happen for adailypenguin.com, while feral-penguin.com.au (and indeed feral-penguin.com), which was configured on a server within, allegedly, minutes of adailypenguin.com, was almost immediately available, on Friday, and appears to have propagated to the name servers within a few minutes of the server being configured.
Not that, any of that excuses the help desk person, for simply brushing of my help desk request as my problem, because I'm using a system he knows nothing about.
And yeah, no excuse for help desk brushing off a request just because you aren't using the "approved" (i.e. what they have a script for) OS.
Possible, but unlikely within the same ISP. It should take a few hours at most. It sounds like that provider had one or more nameservers misconfigured for it to take that long. In any case, pointing to the domain servers in question (where the changes were made) would have eliminated the propagation problem. I suspect Tracyanne tried that before calling, though I obviously I can't be certain.
> Not that, any of that excuses the help desk person, for simply brushing of my help desk request as my problem, because I'm using a system he knows nothing about.
Especially since he was almost certainly running a "supported system" and could have checked with his equipment. How long would it taken him to have reconfigured his copy of outlook express (or whatever) and verify that it didn't work. Apparently longer than he wanted to spend.
Hosting problems.
Reply from Crazy Domains
As the CTO for Crazydomains, I can respond with authority on this issue.
1: There is nothing we don't offer support on as far as client side software goes. The type of support we can offer on various software packages will differ depending on their popularity. For example, you can expect great step-by-step (read: hand holding) support for all things Microsoft. Fact is, these are the most popular. If you use something a little more obscure, one of our tech support staff may be able to find screenshots or something and guide you through. (Ie, Apple Mail). If you use something that none of our staff have heard of before (Evolution), all you can expect is some generic support, such as the basic settings. If you are using something like this, you should be capable of finding the configuration wizard and interpreting its instructions on what settings to put where.
2: The issue that you had was nothing that we had to 'fix'. You requested to enable hosting on your previously parked domain, adailypenguin.com. This required a change to your DNS, specifically, where it was delegated to. Domain registries can take some time to update these records, and there is nothing that can be done.Additionally, your ISP's DNS server will cache records that you (or any of their other customers lookup). The TTLs on your records may be as long as 24 hours, so if your ISP has cached one of these records prior to the changes occurring, this can add further delays to the changes required.
3: Our support tech informed you that you'd need to wait a few hours and it should hopefully start working for you. He also mentioned that if it didn't work, it may be a setting in your client, and if you wanted to, you could call back for more help.
Hopefully this clears up all your issues. Failing that, please get in touch with me via the helpdesk. Ask to be forwarded to Shaun in the Engineering department.
Further posts to forums will be ignored; its not the most productive or effective way to resolve your problems.
Cheers! -Shaun
Quoting:: There is nothing we don't offer support on as far as client side software goes. ......
That is not what the help deskperson said to me. He first of all wanted me to open Outlook. I told him I don't use Outlook. When I told him I use Evolution, he told me you don't support it, and that he was not familiar with it, so he couldn't help me. He then asked me if i had Mozilla Thunderbird, which I obligingly installed.
When we got the same results in Thunder bird he told me the problem was at my end.
There is and was no problem at my end.
Quoting:2: The issue that you had was nothing that we had to 'fix'. You requested to enable hosting on your previously parked domain, adailypenguin.com. This required a change to your DNS, specifically, where it was delegated to. Domain registries can take some time to update these records, and there is nothing that can be done........
What you fail to mention is that you were requested to enable 2 domains, feral-penguin.com.au and adailypenguin.com. feral-penguin.com.au was available within minutes. What specifically is different about adailypenguin.com that it took over 48 hours to become available?
Quoting:3: Our support tech informed you that you'd need to wait a few hours and it should hopefully start working for you. He also mentioned that if it didn't work, it may be a setting in your client, and if you wanted to, you could call back for more help.
There were no setting changes required on my client end to access feral-penguin.com.au which was commissioned within minutes of adailypenguin.com (or so I am lead to believe).
He did not say that I could get back if I needed additional help, he asked me if I could do the tests from a Windows computer, and that he could not help me with my current setup. He suggested that if I was willing to use Windows and Outlook he could help me.
Quoting:Hopefully this clears up all your issues. Failing that, please get in touch with me via the helpdesk. Ask to be forwarded to Shaun in the Engineering department.
Not really, but it does increase my respect for you, as you were at least willing to respond in public.
It was the help desk person who treated the issues as a problem with my email client, everything I did was to get us past that point to where we could deal with the real problem. In the end rather than refer this to a more senior technical person, he settled for telling me it was a problem with my set up.
First, I would like to commend you for making a public response to the issue of support for your Linux users. This speaks to your character, openness, and customer concern.
You should probably know that many of us who use and love Linux have encountered resistance when dealing with technical support at our ISPs, and perhaps our collective experience is spilling over to you. Maybe both sides of the phone could take time to step back and look at the other's point of view.
You say: "There is nothing we don't offer support on as far as client side software goes." You said this well, because the number ONE thing that will be guaranteed to make a Linux user cringe is to hear "we only support windows". Most of the Linux users I know are highly competent technically, and are almost undoubtedly not expecting support on their Linux OS. They are on the phone to resolve a network issue.
In tracyanne's case, the technician chose to take a troubleshooting path with a highly qualified software professional that was appropriate for an unskilled windows user, but inefficient (and frustrating) in tracyanne's case.
In reading through the scenario, I'm seeing that a different troubleshooting path could have yielded results in a couple minutes and would have avoided the mutual frustration. (and saved your company time/money)
- Open a terminal nslookup adailypenguin.com ns131.syra.net.au nslookup adailypenguin.com
The first command verifies that dns is set up at the ISPs end, and the second command checks to see if it has propagated to tracyanne's DNS. By the way, this works on windows too.
If the first test passes, then drill down a level and look at email specifically:
dig @ns131.syra.net.au adailypenguin.com mx dig adailypenguin.com mx
Do you see how simple and elegant such troubleshooting can be. Now compare that with a long and tedious trial and error runthrough of email client setup parameters.
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I really can't understand why companies keep putting clueless people on the helldesk. They all seem to focus on hourly wage but totally ignore the fact that a skilled worker can have a productivity that's an order of magnitude higher. Hire someone who can resolve 98% of incoming calls immediately. Yeah, he will demand a nop-notch salary (especially because tech experts find helldesk a boring job) but you get much more bang for your buck.
I am very pleased that my own ISP (XS4All in The Netherlands) seems to be one of the few companies that understand this. When you phone their helpdesk you won't get a clueless underpaid wageslave that got his MSCE with a packet of cereal, but a real geek. As a result, the service is great. In the past 7 years they have won the award for best helpdesk 6 times.