[ctdonath]

Funny the article never addresses "they don't ask for help because either there's nobody to talk to or nobody who isn't reading from an inapplicable script." After that becomes the dominant customer support experience, seems the only solution is fling bad vibes into the ether[net] and buy a different product.

You know the drill. My obligatory anecdote: bought a popular notebook from a big name computer company. Called tech support for the same problem six times. Five times was connected to someone who ran me through a pointless drill and refused to vary from the script, culminating in sending the machine in for replacement of random parts, which each time worked briefly then the device died again. The sixth time someone more conversant was willing to LISTEN to me, understood my job is designing such things, went off script, and informed me he was not allowed to tell me that complete exploded mechanical drawings were available online at http://www.bigcompco.com/foobar/product_X_disassembly.pdf ... I expressed my happy dismay that he couldn't tell me what he told me, hung up, took the machine apart (now knowing the secret sequencing), and proceeded to vacuum out the clogged heat sink which somehow nobody in the repair department managed to notice FIVE TIMES. Worked fine ever since.

Anecdote 2, short version: called MegaSoftware Corp about a non-booting OS. Was told to delete all 2GB of somebody else's data (a huge amount at the time) and reinstall everything - and was told this for $29. Unwilling to, 20 minutes later figured out copying one file solved the problem. Credit charges were soon reversed.

Upshot: we're now conditioned to assume there's nobody (or nobody competent) to talk to. The only hope to get attention is to leave scathing feedback and assume nobody will notice anyway. Quite a surprise when competent willing support appears.

[dman]

Sometimes doing things right means bumping the price up which for some reason companies are unwilling to do. Apple gets this very right in my opinion. Here is an anecdote about HP. If you buy HP elitebooks which cost > $1000 you get 3 years of warranty with shipping paid both ways for free. On top of that you get 24/7 access to enterprise level support. On a few occasions HP has overnighted me parts when I have needed them. On the other hand I have bought HP consumer line laptops which dont come with support or 3 year warranty by default and my experience has been horrible. In other words consumers need to stop buying the cheapest provider.

[kaybe]

Obligatory XKCD reference for you: http://xkcd.com/806/ :)