Where did customer service go?
I wrote the hosting company for my website’s domain when I was having a technical problem with the code for a page. I had already spent a number of hours figuring out the problem and the hosting company’s tech support page was of no use – unless you like chanting “zero results found” as a mantra. It turns out the hosting company had installed SSI but not XSSI. For those of you with productive lives who use real words, it’s like having a dog that only obeys two commands. Come. Stay. No rolling over. No sitting up. No fetch. It’s a dog, but it’s a boring dog.
Tech support closed their phone hours at 5pm. I waited until the next day and gave them a call. After 25 minutes worth of bad on-hold music I got through to a suspiciously happy tech support person. I rattled off what I was trying to do and gave him my theory that his company was not running the software I needed. Naturally, I asked how I could get this software installed. He said I needed to write to the requests department. Could I talk to them? Nope. They don’t use the phones. They’re either deaf or Amish, I surmised. I was hoping for Amish – they might at least have a work ethic.
I went back to the company website and looked for the online request form. No form. They did have a tech support request form though. Sigh. I filled out the tech support request form and received an e-mail that someone would be addressing my problem within the next 48 hours. Several days later I received a reply from tech support that I needed to send my request for additional software to the requests department. Tech support, however, was unable to forward my e-mail. Irony. They did, however, provide me with the e-mail address for the requests department. Finally.
I forwarded the tech support non-answer to the requests department and received an e-mail that someone would be addressing my problem within the next 48 hours. Several days later I received a reply from the requests department saying that if I could tell them exactly how to install the needed software on their computer system that they would consider doing the installation for me.
I felt horrible for putting them through so much effort.