[Sussex] Teasing the Vendors

[John Crowhurst]

> Nik
>
> On 11 March 2003 at 08:02 Nik Butler asked:
> <snip>
>
>> So what fun have you had with Sales guys who dont know their topic ?
>
> My favourite was not with a Sales guys but a Support guy from Demon (my
> ISP).

I remember the training session we had with Demon Support in Southend, we
were sent there because Demon HQ didn't have anything to do for 4 people.

If you are a techy in a support field, you'd be surprised on just how dumb
some of these guys were (and probably still are):

One session involved the showing of how to use the software on various
platforms: Mac, Windows, then DOS. This guy was told what he needed to do,
and type the word DIS on the dos prompt. He typed WIN *hand covers face,
eyes look skyward* It took the instructor many hours retraining them to
type what they are told :P

Oh and then we were piggybacked onto some 'experienced' tech support guys.
That was a joke, as my support guy was answering a mac question wrongly
and I had to hold my breath until he had finished his call to explain the
difference between macos 7.5 and 7.5.5 :P

> In those day's I wasn't running Linux but Solaris x68 (the Linux kernel
> didn't
> support the type of programming I was doing then).

I can sympathise with you on that one. I've only called tech support twice
(as a customer), the first time to get the password for the BBS to get the
software, and the second time to work out why my account was barred.

> "We don't support Unix," he replied very quickly.  "We don't have the
> ..." Fill in the rest yourself; I can't remember what he said but is was
> quite a rant. :-)

They don't have a big enough test area for everything. They had to drop
support for the Archemides when it broke and nobody knew how to fix it :P

The people who actually use Unix extensively at Demon are the sysadmins,
but they are shielded from the support guys by the DSOC (formerly NOC),
which was my job :P

24x7 exposure to BSD and Windows does warp the mind of the most sane
people ;)

--
John