Commentary: In the 8 years I've worked in IT, I've probably called tech support more than 50 times. That doesn't seem like such a large number considering the timespan, but the primary reason for the low number of support calls compared with the number of mysterious problems I've had is because phone support is a joke. After a while I gave up asking for help and just turned to Google and reliable message forums for assistance. My experiences with "corporate" support have been just as fruitless. Staffing phone centers with script-readers seems to be a big, billowing cloud of smoke blown at me from the companies that I buy hardware and software from. Do we really need to continue this charade? There are better methods of end-user support than this.

You need support... or do you?

No corporation should buy software or hardware that its IT staff does not know how to set up, use, maintain, and fix. If they don't know how, send them to training seminars to learn. If your business is relying on the manufacturer's "support" over the phone, unless you're paying big bucks for top-tier support, you're in for a surprise when something goes wrong.

When I attended the Solaris 10 launch last fall, one of the questions I posed to Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was to compare Solaris 10 with anything but Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Bashing Red Hat seemed to be a significant focus for him, despite the fact that the GNU/Linux world is bigger than Red Hat. How does Solaris stand up to other commercial distributions like SUSE and Mandriva, which have features similar to Solaris 10's?

That question didn't parse for him. Ignoring what I'd asked, he launched into a diatribe about how Red Hat will not support Debian and other community-developed GNU/Linux distributions. The impression I got from him was, the universe would grind to a halt if production operating systems do not have corporate support from big software companies.

I wanted to stand up and tell him how much of a disaster the "support" is for Java Desktop System 2, but I was there to report, not to reform the world of tech support. JDS2 support really was that bad. The installer would not partition my hard drive, so I called the standard tech support phone number. The line was answered by a voice mail system, recorded by someone with a too-thick UK accent asking me to leave a message. Someone would get back to me shortly, I was assured. Someone did get back to me within a half hour -- someone whose first language was not English. We had so much trouble understanding each other that the length of the call was more than doubled due to communication issues. Eventually I was told that I had to file a support request through Sun's Web site before anyone could help me. When, a few days later, I received an answer to my online support request, the support technician didn't know how to fix the problem -- he'd never heard of it. The best he could do was tell me that my hardware was probably unsupported. He gave me The Mantra. Eventually I got JDS2 working on an old Dell laptop system which, astonishingly, was also not supported.

Good thing I don't have a business that depends on Java Desktop System 2. Not that I would have ever bought it, considering how lean the hardware compatibility list apparently is. Is this what I can expect from Sun Microsystems for operating system support, Mr. McNealy? Why is this so much better than whatever Red Hat does? Why is this so much better than community-staffed mailing lists and message forums?

We don't support that

The above-linked Salon article is no joke; it is the reality of tech support. If they can't fix it by reformatting the drive and reinstalling Windows or by reading the manual to you, then they search for something unsupported in your computer that they can blame it on.

When you call the standard tech support number, you're not getting an expert on the phone. You're getting someone who has a precompiled list of problems and solutions, and if your problem isn't in the list, they usually can't help you. If you're lucky they will transfer you to someone who knows more, but first you'll have to face trial by fire. They have a lot of tricks to get you off the phone, but the most common one is finding some element of the equation that involves something "unsupported," regardless of its relation to the problem you're calling about.

Heaven forbid you should use an operating system other than Windows, or occasionally OS X. The other day I called Comcast tech support because my Internet connection kept going out. The support technician first insisted that Comcast's network was operating normally and that the problem was likely on my end. "Go ahead and click on the Start button for me," she began.

I've been down this road before. If I tell them that I'm using GNU/Linux, I'll get the standard "I'm sorry, but we don't support... whatever it is that you said you're using." And that's the end of the call. So now I play along and tell them that I'm clicking on Start, uh-huh, click on Properties, select this and that, restart my computer and... nope, still not working!

"Are you using a router?" the technician asked. I'm wise to this trick, too. If I say yes, the problem will be blamed on the router and not on the connection. It doesn't matter that I have tried another router, or that I have tried connecting the cable modem directly to the computer. If I say I have a router, I will be informed of Comcast's lack of support for it. So no, I do not have a router as far as they know.

"Hold one moment please," said the technician. A few minutes later she came back on the line and told me that Comcast had been having trouble with their DNS servers over the past few days, and that it should be cleared up shortly.

The exceptions

The best tech support I have ever seen came from two distinctly different sources. The first was when I was installing a small network for a veterinary office. They were using some kind of proprietary invoicing and customer management software specially made for equine veterinarians. It used MSSQL for its database, and that had to be on a dedicated server along with some other files that determined licensing rights. I had never seen the program before, and there was no paper manual or support Web site to get installation instructions from. With all of my usual trick responses in mind, I called the tech support line and had to leave a message. I was called back within twenty minutes. The man on the other end of the phone was a one-man support machine. He knew every problem, every bug and glitch, every workaround, and had seen it all. He raced me through setting up the database server and connecting the client software to it. It was the best commercial support experience of my life. The company -- the name of which I do not remember -- was small enough that I could have been speaking directly with one of the developers. The entire company may have even been a one-man operation.

The other case of outstanding support? The Gentoo Linux forums. Every problem I have, no matter how technical and complicated, has been addressed there. In nearly every case it is a known issue and by the time I experience it, someone has already posted a procedure to fix it. I run a production server and my home office workstation on Gentoo Linux, and I honestly don't think I could buy better support from any company.

I'm not sure how much the veterinarian paid for that proprietary software, but I'm guessing it was in the tens of thousands of dollars. I suppose when you pay that much, you're entitled to competent support. Ironically, I paid nothing for Gentoo Linux and also get world-class support. It's not a matter of "you get what you pay for," it's a matter of a company or project's dedication to their customers or users. Call centers are focused on getting the user off the phone; Gentoo's forums are focused on solving the problem. The forum participants are not being paid -- they're helping the community because it's fun and challenging to solve problems.

When big companies pay lots of extra money for support, they usually also expect more than just experts on the other end of the phone. They may expect their well-paid vendor to listen to them when it's time to develop the next version, and to fix software bugs in a timely manner (or upon request). I've heard rumors to the effect that Microsoft makes custom patches for Office and Windows for big-ticket customers. Again, without paying lots of money, it's far easier to get the software you need by choosing an open source project over a proprietary commercial product. If you need a change made, a feature added, or a bug fixed, you can contract a programmer to do it for you. You can offer a bounty on that job. You can even hire a full-time developer to maintain your own personal version of that program.

Let's call a truce

I don't expect commercial tech support to improve; I expect it to get worse. Someday I believe we will be talking to voice menus entirely, with no option to speak with a support representative. Executives like Scott McNealy, who have never had to deal with phone support in their entire lives, will still claim that this pitiful support offering provides an advantage over open source alternatives. The reality of the matter is that I got better support from the same community-developed distributions that Sun's CEO was scoffing at, yet I was left stranded by his own $100 per year GNU/Linux distribution and the big multibillion-dollar corporation that was supposed to stand behind it.

How much money would I have to have spent as a customer to be treated like my sale meant something? Would I have to have a business with 15 computers? 50? 1000? At what point is it cost-effective for vendors to take my support request seriously? Not that I'm going to pay it -- I'm just curious.

Maybe it would be better to end the charade of end-user support. We users know you're faking it, you corporations know you're faking it, so let's just try to help each other. Instead of investing money in an overseas call center, put up a Web site with forums, ask your developers to peruse them now and then, and hire some moderators to make sure everyone plays nice. Put that support Web address everywhere -- in the documentation, on your main Web site, in press releases, everything. Users will get better support, the vendors will save money, and we can go back to using our computers instead of cursing at them. Learn from open source projects like Gentoo -- give your user community a place to help one another, foster a positive environment for communication, and watch the magic of great tech support take care of your customer service troubles.

If the bad tech support continues, The Mantra will still be "we don't support that," but it will not be the vendors who are saying it.

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Copyright 2005 Jem Matzan. Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire article are permitted without royalty in any medium provided this notice is preserved.