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20041117 Wednesday November 17, 2004

Getting past front-line support

I am at a Starbucks in Chicago right now, right down the street from where I went to high school (I told you nostalgia runs in my veins). I had some serious problems getting DNS to resolve anything. Time to call T-Mobile hotspot support.

After my explaining the basic DNS problem is completely ignored, here comes the questions:
Support: OK, what operating system are your running?
John: I am running Linux (Note that,Mr. Fink)
Support: OK, please open up Internet Explorer
Bubble over John's head: Internet Explorer is not a native Linux application [as I am sure you all know]. I do have CrossoverOffice and have IE installed there. I could explain all this, but trying to get past first-line support with this explanation ... resistance is futile. Instead of launching IE on crossover office, how about a game of GTali (Yahtzee clone)? Yeah, good idea.
John: Uh ... yeah, it's open.
Support: What is your home page?
John: http://www.sprint.com (It's not, but I was waiting for a reaction ... none.)
Support: OK, go to Start, then control panel ...
John's head: Roll. Damn, 5,2,1,3,1.
John: OK, I'm there
Support: OK, now click on ...
John's head: OK, I'll keep the 1's. Roll ....
Support: Do you see ...
John: Yeah
Support: Now click on ...
John's head: Great! Two two's. I have two pair! Oh yeah, this is gtali. Come-on full house.
Support: What happens now when you type http://www.yahoo.com?
John: Resolving host http://www.yahoo.com. Still resolving. Still resolving ...
Support: OK, please hold
John's head: Great! Now I can (click the 5 die ... Roll) check if .... WHOO-HOO! I got a full house! 25 Points.. Click ... click ... 3 3's .... Click ... click ... 4 5's
Support: The site looks ok from here, let me pass you on to another person
John's head: Whew. I passed maze level one.

Level two support guy knew his stuff. "Yeah, we have been having a problem not resolving DNS with those two DNS servers today. Thought we had it fixed. Try this one ...

That did the trick. Awesome. Kudos to level two guy, and T-Mobile hotspot support has been reliable for me in situations like this. I am a happy customer in that I got up-and-running. I completly understand the support model, but since I am on vacation and insanely tired, I thought I would start my vacation off with a humorous bang.

I am a bit ticked that Human (me) only got 187 points in GTali and was beaten by a computer generated player named Wilbur. Getting past first line support is simple. GTali. Hopefully you get a better score than I do. And will you beat Wilbur for me? Thanks.

(2004-11-17 15:26:24.0) Permalink Comments [4]

Comments:

Good job in minimizing your interaction with tier 1. It's sad that a simple bit of communication from Tier 2 would have allowed the Tier 1 person to solve your problem.

Posted by Kelly Jones on November 17, 2004 at 03:50 PM PST #

You know, people from Tech support are usually kids studying subjects like history, law and stuff like that. Most of them only follow an application and don't even know what a DNS "thing" is.
My favorite way to pass to second line of support is to ask the first line "What is the balancer of your POTS server". They may search for "balancer" or "POTS" but, i never hited any result so far (so they forward me to second line right away.
Because the phone talks are recorded, the first liner doesn't get in trouble for forwarding a call to second line that he was supposed to have answered.

Posted by Jaime Cardoso on November 17, 2004 at 04:04 PM PST #

Gtali is fun... I play it a lot on the train; but under Solaris. I'm currently spending train time on the freeciv I downloaded from our friends at blastwave.

Alan.

Posted by Alan Hargreaves on November 17, 2004 at 07:32 PM PST #

I have spilled my cappuccino on my desk, laughing.

Posted by Davide Inglima - limaCAT on November 18, 2004 at 05:10 AM PST #

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