Everyone, at some point in their lives, has to ring up a support line for an issue they have. I have only ever once had a good experience with a support person, the other half a dozen times have been mediocre or horrible.

Yesterday I rang up Compaq support, you listen to the voice and it gives you options. That’s fine if you are ringing once, but if you ring multiple times, it gets a little irritating. Anyway, once you have been through that, they put you on hold and play the shittiest tunes ever. Who would listen to the crap they play, honestly? And what makes it worse is that you have to listen to it while you wait for a human to answer.

So back to the story, I rang them up. I gave my details. A told the support person my issue. All I want is a recovery disc so I can reinstall my operation system and an expresscard blank. The reason I don’t have either of these things are because when I sent my computer away for repair a couple of months ago, they never gave them back to me. This is thier problem and I should be entitled to them.

It shouldn’t be too much trouble to just get these two things sent to me, but no, they don’t send recovery cds, you have to use the recovery partition. After trying to explain my situation multiple times, she ended up telling me that my hard drive will have to be completely reimaged. Screw doing that, its much more convenient for me to pirate the operating system than having it sent away for a few days.

The second part was even more horrible because the person wouldn’t give me one unless I had the case number from the last support call. Like I kept that information! It would have been thrown out with all the rest of the random papers in the house. I had proof of the case on the job report, but the person wouldn’t listen. After about ten minutes, I found the first case number and also read out the job report. After being put for hold again for ten minutes or so, she said she can’t get the records and will ring me back.

Now that didn’t happen did it. I have no fucking idea what is going on, but at this point I am pissed off and want nothing to do with them. I’m just going to download it. Screw them! Then this morning, I get a phone call from the repair centre telling me they got a case sent through and wanted to know if they were getting any parts or what not. Now I might know what is going on if the support person rang back to tell me what was going on, but no, I am left in the dark.

Eventually I said that I will just buy a Vista Upgrade disc and install that so I don’t need the recovery stuff. I still have no idea on what is going on with the expresscard slot, that just so happens to be filling up with dust. I don’t think dust is good for it and it is their fault that it is doing that because they never returned my expresscard blank. They should really do something about it.

Why does support suck? I have only once got good support, at it just so happened to be on a public holiday. I got through fast, the person understood that I knew what I was doing and quickly pushed me through to getting it fixed. I was happy with the support I got there. Why can’t they treat me like a normal computer user, not some dumbass that got a virus or uninstalled a driver or some shit like that? Can you get good support anywhere???

I am a little pissed of at the moment. Things aren’t working how they should be, people aren’t doing what they should be, things should be happening that should be and people are doing stupid things they shouldn’t be. Sounds complicated, well really its simple, my wireless adapter isn’t working, hp online support didn’t help me, hp call support works only in business hours and some asshole decided to rar a bunch of rars, all these things have pissed me off.

I was using the wireless in my bedroom about two hours ago, it was going fine. All of a sudden the connection dies. I try to reconnect to my home network. Oh god! BSOD! An error message about a driver or something. I let it do its thing and restart. I don’t see my network, for a matter of fact, it doesn’t find any networks, none of the random ones in the neighbourhood (default and linksys.) Something is not right. I do to device manager to have a look at the network adapters and my wireless adapter is not on the list.

I decide to communicate to HP support. I took the online support rather than the phone support due to the fact that there could be a possibility of talking so a foreigner with an accent hard to understand. I though I would skip the pain and frustration of that if I could. I talked to a support guy, gary was his name. He was kinda helpful in the sence of not asking stupid questions and skipping straight to the part where my options are to take it out and put it back in or ring NZ support to figure out how to get it fixed.

I decided to call the HP support number but later realize that I need the Compaq support number.I don’t get why HP support doesn’t give the the option to redirect to Compaq support or at least use the same support center. I ring the right number after getting it off the internet. I am greeted by a familiar voice, the guy from HP Support Line. The hours of Compaq support are between 8:30am and 6:00pm. I don’t get why, chances are they use an international support center because its cheaper, if this is the case, I should be able to call anytime of day. This is stupid and means I am going to have to fit them in between 4:30pm and 6:00pm, else I will have to wait till a few days.

Not having wireless is very inconvenient. You don’t realize how great it is until you are reduced to using wired. Its great being able to ly in bed with the internet on your lap. Its wonderful. I decided that I will connect to a wired connection to download some TV shows to watch in my bed since I won’t have any internet. The first show I download, the fool rared a folder full of rars. Why couldn’t he have un-rared it and re-rared just the individual file. People are stupid, things are stupid! I am having a shit day! Things shouldn’t just randomly break, support should be 24/7, and people shouldn’t do asshat things. If all these though could happen, the world would be a better place!