Tips for Getting the Best from Tech Support

"I'm sure I can fix this myself" is probably what many people are thinking when they are told that calling tech support may be the best thing to do. The reputation "tech support" has received is less than glowing. There have been too many cases of people being completely confused, yelled at, or not helped by tech support. Cases where tech support has been helpful just don't seem to get mentioned.

I'd been noticing that the battery on my 12" PowerBook wasn't fitting in the battery bay correctly, and after a couple weeks noticed a brown area on the corner of the battery. Looking closer, I realized that it was part of the finish of my desk - the inner corner of the battery was actually touching the desk. I figured I'd probably be able to fix it if I reseated the battery. That didn't help, and I was faced with either living with it or calling tech support to see if I could somehow plead with them to replace the battery.

So I called them. After 10 minutes on hold, I was asked for the serial number of the computer and a description of the problem I was experiencing. They told me that it may not be the battery, but the battery bay instead, so bringing it down to an Apple service provider would be the best thing to isolate the issue. So I brought it down to the folks at TBI Computer, and it was determined that the battery was the only problem.

Great, I was thinking, now I'm going to have to spend an hour on the phone trying to get them to send me a battery. When I got home, I called Apple - there was no wait time this time, and after just a few minutes they said that they'd replace it. I told them that I was going away in two weeks and would like to have it before that. I was informed that it would take "3 to 5 days." They gave me no hassle about it whatsoever.

That was Tuesday. Wednesday afternoon the battery was sitting on my doorstep. Absolutely amazing how they got it to me so fast. The new battery was exactly what the PowerBook needed; and all I have to do is send the old battery back. I'm very impressed at the promptness of their service. It makes me wonder how Dell was rated higher in a recent survey - I don't know how much faster than next day delivery you can get.

Apple hasn't been the only excellent tech support I've come across. Once I called Linksys for help getting a PC laptop to access an Apple AirPort network. It took hours of trying various things, but we finally got it to work. The tech didn't hang up on me until it worked - and he certainly came up with some creative ways of trying to get it to work. It turned out that the software was corrupt. Reinstalling it fixed everything, and since then it's been working fine.

Of course, there have been bad experiences, like the time I called AOL when the then-new AOL 4.0 wouldn't let me browse the Web under OS 8.0 on a beige G3. "It's not a compatible configuration" seemed to be the best that they could come up with after a long while of "trying" different things. I think they actually may have been right; when I upgraded the OS to 8.5, the problem vanished.

Basically, I find that being polite to the tech support people - even the grouchiest of them - seems to make the whole thing go a bit faster. Of course, getting a tech support person who woke up on the wrong side of the bed isn't really helpful. If that's the case, calling back later is probably a good idea.

The same goes for when there's a long wait. I find it best to call in the evening, just before the phone lines close, or early in the morning, when they first open, to minimize the wait time.

Make sure you have the model and serial numbers available, too; they'll probably ask you for one or both of them.

Trying simple things to fix the issue yourself saves time - reinstalling software, reseating the component (whether it be a PCI card, battery, or a cable), and "turning it off and back on again" are some examples of things they will probably ask you to do, depending on the problem.

Calling tech support doesn't have to be something you dread; if you do a little bit of preparation work beforehand, in most cases it will go quickly and smoothly.