These are people who, one way or another, would disrupt your Net-surfing when you've been online so long that your spouse and kids are about to leave you. After they'd succeeded in disconnecting you and physically hauling you and your clutching hands away from the keyboard, ISDs would also act as deprogrammers (no pun intended), like those people hired to convince runaway teens to renounce their cults.-- Ander, Oct 13 2000 FlexNet's signup policy http://www.flex.com/sign_up/Anti-tech support at it's best."If you sign up for a FlexNet account, you will only have three things to work with: Username, Password and Modem phone number. If you have questions after this such as: "Huh? ...What's the next step? ...Where's the Internet Menu, Anyhow? ...I just got my computer last week! Can I call you, and have you walk me thru the setup?", then PLEASE DON'T SIGN UP. " <grin> And no, I don't work for them. [StarChaser, Oct 13 2000, last modified Oct 05 2004] They're called Mother-In-Laws I believe...-- Alcin, Oct 14 2000 Actually, I believe they're called mothers-in-law.-- bookworm, Oct 14 2000 [jutta]- Actually, the entire @Home service seems to be very skilled at being ISDs, and Tech Support Deprivers (TSDs) as well.
Great idea, Ander, but there may be a huge group you left out that would benefit from ISDs. They're called 'ignorant users'. Not to be confused with newbies, these are people who refuse to learn anything on their own but rely on tech support people to teach them everything there is to know about computers- usually because they're too lazy to read a Dummies guide as well. In addition, such users are usually very ungrateful and often hostile and belligerent.
Newbies that are willing to learn basic computing are OK, however.
Ignorant users: the reason why Microsoft charges $45 a call for most tech support calls as well, and why tech support is largely an exercise in hand-holding and nose-wiping instead of fixing legitimate problems.....-- BigThor, Oct 17 2000 Tinylimp charges users ignorant of the fact that 45$ a call is too much...
Some of us make our living on idiot users, but having to do the training their company should be doing irritates me. I generally make it as miserable as possible for them so they'll whine at their managers, the people who are SUPPOSED to do the training...
StarChaser the Tech Support Tyger-- StarChaser, Oct 18 2000 I'm usually doing tech support calls for an ISP most of the time I'm on this site. As a matter of fact, I'm doing a tech support call while I'm writing this.
New users are one thing- we can refer them to one of the many tutorial websites. Idiot users are the true ISDs, however. They waste everyone's time and generally add to the costs of Internet services- as I noticed from the link (thanks, StarChaser, and I don't work for them either!).
Incidentally, $45 is pennies for a tech support call. Dial up the help desk of a company that does high-end server support, and you're likely to wind up paying $250 or more for the call.
StarChaser, I do the same thing for idiot users as you do, but I also remind them that there are a lot of books around with their name on it.-- BigThor, Oct 18 2000 I'm not allowed to do that. I'd LOVE to be able to tell some of these people to OTB:IF, but I have to do it myself.
Often, this involves reading the help file to them. I heard one call where the woman had bought a laptop, couldn't figure out how to turn it on, and called us. The tech asked did she read the manual, and she said 'I just spent two thousand dollars on this, I'm not going to read some damn book!'.
No, she's going to pay us 3.99$ a minute to read it to her...-- StarChaser, Oct 19 2000 Or get Prodigy Internet! and average about 3 readials per HTML page.-- LoriZ, Jul 24 2001 Some, but those of us left wouldn't be nearly as prone to burnout from having to drag someone by their teeth through 'mash on the thingy'...-- StarChaser, Jul 27 2001 random, halfbakery