Technical support

by William Jackson on 2007-02-03

I work in the technical support field, but I donʼt have to deal withtechnical support myself very often. I recently had to, however, when my networkbroke.

I was trying to change settings on my router when I ran into some trouble. Iwould enable a certain feature, then the interface would reload and the featurein question would be disabled again. I tried it several times, and the onlyreason I could think of for the problem was that my router was broken.

I remembered one of my coworkers telling me that Belkin products have alifetime warranty, so I pulled out the box for the router and sure enough, Ifound “Lifetime Warranty” written right on the top, and a 24/7 technical supportnumber to call. I wasnʼt busy, so I called the number.

At first I had to navigate an automated menu. Thankfully it wasnʼt one ofthose voice-recognition jobs that wouldnʼt recognize the QueenʼsEnglish. I had the model number of my router ready, but I was surprised when theautomated voice asked me to press 1 if my router was this particular model.Either this is a really popular model, or Belkin has had some problems with it.

I finally got on the line with a live person, “Paula,” with a suspiciously eastAsian accent. Insert complaints about outsourcing technical support and customerservice phone centers here.

Actually, Paula knew what she was doing. She figured out my problem in aboutninety seconds and I was on my way. I felt really stupid. I even got a couponcode for 25% off my next purchase from the Belkin website.

Unfortunately, the coupon code expired three days after the phone call.