My final (I promise!–Nah, I don’t :-)) post on the hosting/server “Internal Server Error” that made such a hash of the last two days here at twc…
So, an “engineer” (whatever that means in hosting service gobbledegook) finally addressed the CGI issue that I had repeatedly been told “is fixed” by others, and late last night, twc began working properly on my own, new, hosted account (thanks again for your generosity for the past year, Diane!).
So, what do I get from my [Unamed Hosting Service] this a.m.? Not one but two emails saying (in different words) the same thing, “We cannot find any problem loading your site. The problem must be on your end.”
Dumbasses.
1. The site is indeed working… now.
2. If the problem was ever on my end or “somewhere between your computer and our server” then it had to also be between their server and all the other computers I tried loading the site from, theri server and all the computers of other folks I had trying to load the site AND their server and the computers of all the people I talked to at their end who could not load the site either.
Pretty widespread to have been “somewhere between your computer and our server” dontcha think?
Dumbasses. Never even bothered to read the trouble ticket history. Never even bothered to simply check and see if it actually WAS the CGI reload fixing the problem.
Nope. No intellectual giants (or even midgets) or folks with decent work ethics sending me emails from that company…
Hmmm… I wonder if their customer service department is hired from the same pool that the TSA (Terminally Stupid Agency) hires from?
Nah. Can’t be. All these guys are in… Canada.
One more class of people deserving absolutely NO respect and absolutely NO polite response.
What aggravates me about SOME IT people is that it seems to me there are an awful lot of people out there who think they are computer experts because they like to play on the computer. And they DON’T NO NUTHIN!
I’m glad you finally got it fixed 🙂
Beth,
I think the issue is multi-level. First, of course, is the quality of people on phone/online tech support in general. Actual thought seems to be moderately to severely difficult for nearly every one of the support people I have talked to at most companies. Then there’s the apparent lack of any real work ethic (like, I dunno, reading trouble tickets?). Literacy skills may also be an issue. *sigh*
Then there’s the problem of knowledge. Most just have “monkey skills”–trained to parrot rote answers, but no real knowledge.
And EVERYONE plays CYA. *sigh* Point fingers, pass responsibility, anything but actually DO what’s necessary to fix an isue. Pretend to fix an issue, send confirmation emails saying the issue’s fixed. But not fix it, until the customer persists, becomes really, really tough, insistent, even edging to abusive JUST to get to an escalated level where someone (one of those rare “demi-gods” of the IT world who, urm, actually knows what they’re talking about) will listen and take appropriate action.
Yeh, it’s a problem, but at what first and second level support personnel are paid, often I’d imagine just getting semi-literate monkeys hired would be a problem. I’m just glad it wasn’t farmed out to some fifth world *heh* “support” personnel who speak English as their second almost language and know even less than dumbass tech support folks closer to home… *sigh*
Fortunately, at some level, there are competent IT people, otherwise, in this most recent case, the server CGI would still be screwed up, because I can do nothing to deal with that from my end.