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Off topic rant: thinking pieces of silicon and human robots |
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Written by Sciurus
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Monday, 25 February 2008 |
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This post does not have much to do with chess aside from the fact
that I don't get to play chess and blog about it as I used to. Why?
Simple: my home Internet connection stopped working and all the
customer service has to offer is the same canned answers repeated over
and over again each time I call. It is unbelievable: we can build
computers that are "smart" enough to beat every single human chess
player and the Internet with its high speed data connections opens up
new ways to play chess and communicate about our favorite game. But
when a problem occurs, we still have to deal with humans. That
should be a good thing, right? Only too bad that the humans
working in the call centers are forced to behave like
robots.
I am not blaming all the tech support people I talked to. After
all, they are probably trained to only tell me what is written on
their script and might even lose their jobs otherwise. But I find it
very saddening that in a world that gets more technologically advanced
every day human interactions seem to get more primitive.
Anyway, what happened? I used to be a Verizon DSL
customer and called their tech support after my connection stopped
working. Over two calls I spend something like 1-2 hours being walked
through the usual reboot your computer, please wait, reset the modem,
please wait while we test your connection, etc. routine but my
connection was still dead and I was told that somebody would take care
of it and call me back. Of course, nobody ever called me back. In
contrary, every time I called customer support (I tried it 4 times),
they claimed that would be the first time they hear of my problem
(even though their phone robot claimed that my problem would have been
solved and made it extra hard to get connected with a human) and
started the whole procedure all over again, even though I made clear that I have been through that procedure without success several times before. I was stuck in an endless
loop, hearing the same script read to me over and over again. There
seemed to be no other way out than to switch my ISP. Interestingly,
terminating the account was pretty easy!? Sadly, I somehow don't
expect much better service from my new provider but at least I don't
have to start paying them before the new service starts working. Until
then, I will have to make the moves in my online chess games from my
office and have plenty of time for offline writing...
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Last Updated ( Monday, 25 February 2008 )
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Play chess in style -
new place I'm living in hasn't done their part in getting things set up, so it's not the ISP's
fault. Still, a number of times they have said they'd get back to me and never have. That's
the way it goes I guess. Large and impersonal call centers.
I worked in tech support for a few years, in a smaller call center. Liked it at times, but it's
not an easy job. Unless you're really good, or have a really good process supported by the
company, it's very difficult to keep up with many little requests and call backs.
I hope it works out for you. Having no internet for a month has been difficult and annoying,
but we've managed.
Sadly, I lost 3 chess games over the weekend on time. I don't have much time at the office
to put in moves, and 5 days goes by quickly. Too bad too, because I was at my highest