Todays Customer Support

I went to one of my neighbors house the other day, he was in distress because his PC would not boot. He told me that he had been on the phone with technical support for hours. The tech support people came to the grand conclusion that the only recourse was to re-format the hard drive and re-install the OS. He did not want to lose all his data, so he asked myself and another neighbor to take a look. At the very least, he wanted to save his data before he re-formatted. When I arrived a few minutes later, the other neighbor had beat me to the punch and the system was booting into Windows just fine! All my neighbor did was read the error message about a corrupt C:\windows\system32\config\system file and he restored the file from a backup copy and the system seemed to be just fine!

I find it amazing that the tech support people cannot at least attempt to troubleshoot a simple error message! The solution that most home users get is "re-format and re-install the OS". This of course is the easiest way to get the customer off the phone! And that does not even take into account why the file got corrupted! Bad sector on the hard drive, memory, motherboard etc.

It is too bad that the customer support in the US (that we have outsourced) does not do a better job troubleshooting simple computer issues. Many users will lose their data unnecessarily due to a quick rush to re-install. Further, the root of the problem does not seem to be addressed. How long will the system last with files mysteriously corrupting? Shouldn't we at least run a simple disk and memory check? And yes I suggested backing up your PC to an external hard drive for disaster recovery purposes....like this....

I find it equally frustrating at work, because the issues are more complex and the support is not much better. It is only when you get escalated a level of two before you get someone that can really help. Then when you do get the right person, the problem is addressed quickly and efficiently.

I guess that computer companies do not have the resources to support time consuming efficient help desks. As long as we demand low prices for complex PC's, the support will languish behind...........