A couple of weeks ago I was having issues with my satellite TV receiver, so I called my provider Dish Network. I got right in to a representative that was awesome. I explained to him up front the troubleshooting steps I had already done, and he thanked me for it! I couldn’t believe it, most of the time they say they need to walk through the steps in a specific order and make me go through it again. I thanked him for taking my word, and he said he’d never had someone call in that had gone through everything like that before. I explained I used to be an installer so I was used to going through it. He then had me walk through one more step that I didn’t think to do, and it still didn’t work. He shipped me a replacement receiver and that was the end of that.

When the replacement receiver arrived, the instructions said to plug it in, go through some setup, and once the demo channel is available to go online and activate the new receiver. “Great!” I thought, “I can do this on my own without having to wait on hold.” I hooked it up and turned it on, but it wouldn’t go past the “Please connect a valid phone line” error. I don’t have a landline, and there was no way to cancel the error without it validating the phone connection. I called support and was connected to what I’m pretty sure was an Indian call center. The lady on the other end of the phone had such a thick accent I could barely understand her. She spoke with very bad English grammar (“Please be on hold while I look this for you.”) She was obviously scripted as she wouldn’t use common sense and deviate away from any kind of questioning. She started to tell me that my bill would go up for not having the phone line, and I had to explain to her that I haven’t had a phone line connected for over a year. I finally convinced her that it was a replacement receiver so that nothing should be changing on my bill. Then she told me it should be activated in 15-20 minutes. I asked her what receiver serial number she was activating, and sure enough it was the old receiver! I gave her the new information and she removed my old one and put the new one in its place. I was so frustrated by the time I got off the phone that I was tempted to just call back and tell them to cancel my account and send me boxes to return my receivers.

20 minutes later, I still didn’t have my channels available, so I called back. I expected to go through the same horrible service, but this time a gentleman answered as “advanced technical support.” He was easy to understand and pleasant! I asked him if he was in an American call center and he said he was. I explained what I had been through and he looked up my account. He said the former rep entered in the information, but never “saved” it so the activation signal was never sent. He put me on hold for about 45 seconds, and I had picture before he was back on the line. Excellent! Talk about a night and day difference. That shows the difference between getting a representative who is knowledgeable and one that is scripted.

Don’t get me wrong, I have no problem with outsourced technical support, IF and ONLY IF they are properly trained and can do the same quality of job as the domestic call centers can do. I’ve reached Indian call centers for other companies before and while the thick accent is sometimes a problem, they have been very knowledgeable and knew how to get the job done. I can deal with an accent as long as I’m communicating with an intelligent and/or properly trained person behind the accent. This particular incident though is a perfect example of how badly outsourcing can go since it shows a stark contrast between domestic and outsourced call centers working at/for the same company.

Another pet peeve of mine is when a support representative doesn’t take the time to understand what the problem really is. In this case, I sent an e-mail support ticket to Microsoft Xbox Live support. With our 360 console we received the game Uno and we like to play online with other players rather than single-player against the computer. Since I pre-registered my gamertag I don’t qualify to get the normal 30 day free trial of Live Gold (way to drop the ball on that one, Microsoft!) however I was able to play Uno online with my free Silver account. We registered my wife for a Gold account on the free trial, and I hadn’t had a chance to play for a few days. I went to get on and it told me my account was not allowed to play online. I switched to her account and it worked fine. So I wrote an e-mail support request explaining that I had a silver account and was able to play, and all of a sudden I can no longer play. I included that it works fine on my wife’s Gold account, and I was concerned that it was a problem with my account and didn’t want to upgrade to Gold until I was sure the issue was resolved. I did some more searching online and discovered it was a holiday promotion that ended with the new year. Ok, problem solved, I now know why I was no longer able to play.

The next day I got a response back from a Microsoft representative that had a boiler-plate explanation of the differences between a Silver and Gold account. They didn’t even read the request! They skimmed for a couple of keywords and fired back a form letter. I replied back and (without trying to sound too much like a jerk, but I probably failed there) suggested that next time the representative should actually read the request in full before sending an incorrect response.  I re-iterated that I said I knew the difference, and was asking why it worked then all of a sudden failed.  I explained that the response he sent had nothing to do with answering my question. The response he sent me was a complete support failure. It wasn’t that I was requesting something that couldn’t (for whatever reason) be done, it was that they simply didn’t listen to (read in this case) what the customer was asking.

My brother would also like to get the software for his business, so he went to a local Staples store to buy us each a copy. He got in there and there was only an “out of stock” sticker on the shelf. He inquired and they refused to sell it on back-order or issue a rain check. He called me and let me know, so I called the store closer to me. They said they don’t have any, and they even called the other stores in our area (about a 50 mile radius) and none of them had any. I explained why we needed it today and he said there is no way to get it today since the offer is “while supplies last.” I even checked on the Staples.com website and it says “Out of Stock.”

Staples has always been one of the few big box retailers where I’ve never had any issues like this. They have been out of stock on items in the past in the store, but they’ve always offered to let me go ahead and purchase it, then they even shipped it to my house at no additional charge. Because of their willingness to do the right thing I’ve always tended to use Staples rather than Office Depot or Office Max.

Staples definitely dropped the ball on this one. If you’re going to advertise something that will have a huge acceptance rate, at least make sure your stores and/or rain check policy can handle it. They had plenty of the more expensive multi-user and add-on (website, etc.) versions, was this meant to be a legal form of bait and switch? I will definitely be considering the other local office supply stores when I reach the point that I need to purchase Quickbooks at full price, and probably for my office supplies in general.