Why do people fight with and lie to tech support?

Depends on the person.

SOME OF THEM WANT TO ABUSE YOUUUUUUUU
SOME OF THEM WANT TO BE ABUSED BY YOU!

lol sorry I couldn’t resist, I would assume most do it because they are too overwhelmed by frustration and are too impatient to cooperate logically and civilly. Being a man who has been around computers awhile I have gained a good knowledge of how it works and how they, as well as IT workers should be treated. So I can say I am one of the few, proud people who do not treat the IT guy like the “magic box repair wizard who is also my slave”.

Why do tech support people stick to a script instead of listening to what the person is telling them?

For example, our high speed connection was slow. We called tech support. The guy insisted it was our computer. We told him no, it was not our computer. He kept insisting.

Finally, we asked if there was any way to actually test the connection speed. So he did that and then said (this was after 45 minutes on the phone), “Hmm, it is your modem.”

He then told us how to reset the modem, and the problem was resolved.

My point is there are two sides to every story.

Maybe they’re just bad people. I’ve never lied to or argued with tech support personnel although I would just like to talk to someone once in a while who didn’t have a very heavy Indian accent and who I could understand and follow their directions.

@marinelife I think it depends on the company. I’ve never had access to a script myself (sometimes I wish I did).

Not to defend the guy, but often times with a slow connection it is PC related. However, restarting the modem is so basic he definitely should have had you do that regardless of his initial impressions. Why he didn’t run the test at the beginning of the call is beyond me.

@RocketSquid Thanks for seeing my side of things.

For all who are interested, here is a blog post I made some time ago. @Bluefreedom You will see it involves Indian tech support. Here it is.

I think maybe they are so frustrated by the time they call that you have become the personification of whatever they’re mad at. And they want you to know they’re not stupid.

I don’t actually know. I always try rebooting first, unless something is active that I am desperately hoping to salvage, and I am always grateful to the nice IT people except when they get all condescending and speak to me as if I were an idiot. There’s a difference between not knowing something and just being dumb.

Because the user calling in is a Joe-the-Plumber salt-of-the-earth common man from Main Street who is confused by all this Intarweb Technogoogle. And because the tech support guru is one of those liberal intellectual elites who wouldn’t know how to do real work like hoe potatoes or fix an engine if his life depended on it, all up on Wall Street with that metrosexual hair gel and all that.~

@marinelife I have a natural bias against tech support people for that very reason, one time I called MS premium support which runs something like $300 / incident. Got the rep told him what the problem was and what I had tried to do to resolve it, he proceeded walk me through all of the stuff I had already done for the next 2 hours and then he decided that I needed to be escalated to a more experienced tech.

I also think that the levels of agent maybe necessary for the company, are absolutely infuriating to deal/wade through.

Although the majority of tech support issues that I end up with are along the lines of:

User: IT DOESNT WORK HELP!!! I HAVE 5 mn BEFORE I MUST LEAVE!!!
Me: Is it plugged in?
User: YES!, oh wait, umm, looks like it works now thanks!

@marinelife Whenever I use live chat I always ask if the representative can pass the turing test. I’ve gotten quite a few interesting replies from that

@rottenit I actually wrote a public apology to everyone who does know what they’re doing before they call tech support on an old website of mine. Granted, it’s the people who lie to me that makes me force even the guys who sound like they may know what they’re doing go through the same routine.

I have to resist the urge to lie if I have done something really dumb, like not having rebooted. That is just to avoid embarrassment on my part. I just tell the tech support person the truth because I am sure they have seen it all.

Being argumentative just seems stupid to me because that is not going to fix the problem. I would think that some people are just angry people and take it out on the person on the other end of the line.

I would not make a good tech support person because after the first insult I would hang up…

… and lose my job.

I try my hardest to have done everything I can and have all of the information at hand before I call tech support.

@laureth Good one!

I too have used that line “already rebooted (multiple times, even, usually close to a million), ” and not once was it a lie. Do you ask your customers names? Do you begin each sentence with Name, may I call you name? Do you interrupt or give the dismissive yes, well name, if you could just restart the computer again I’m sure it will fix your problem? No? . Is your English fluent? Must only be the techs I’ve had the misfortune of running into. In each case when all was said and done the delivery speed was set too low on their end. I only threw a tantrum once when I lost my cool with some guy who wouldn’t shut his trap and listen, he had it all figured out. In fact, I’m very surprised he didn’t call me and tell me my internet was down. I called him a kotex muncher, not my finest moment but it felt good at the time. I canceled with that carrier and haven’t had any trouble since.

I never lie to tech support. You think you wanna get off the phone? At least you’re getting paid for the time. I’m not, and I’d like to resolve the problem pronto. If I can tell the person on the phone is from a different country, sometimes I ask them questions about the country, though.

@Silhouette Er, um.. wow. I guess I’ll go ahead with your questions in a quick list

1. I give a standard greeting, I usually don’t give them much harassment about their name (sometimes because I’m really worried about how badly I’ll screw it up)
2. I have to ask for their name to make sure I’ve got the right account, but I don’t start each sentence with a name. I’d punch me if I ever talked to me like that.
3. I tend not to interrupt, because I’m trying to avoid a fight, and every so often once the person has blown off a little steam they’re a little more cooperative.
4. I think my english is spot on. I’ve watched a lot of American TV and think I the midwestern American accent down pat. A lot of people are surprised when I tell them I’m in Bangladesh.

That seems self defeating to call tech support and proceed to lie to them.

Agreed, @Captain_Fantasy – it’s like lying to your doctor. “No, I don’t smoke..”

In most companies I have worked for, I have found technical support to be very hard to get hold of. Plus you are busy, often you get rerouted to several different departments and have to say the same thing over fifty three times. By which time you have gone bonkers.

You realize concurrently that life was actually faster without computers and you could just “do it” with a pen and a piece of paper. But instead you are all back logged because this “thing” has ground to a halt and you’ve had to explain it fifty eight times. by now. Most people I know, know what routers are, how to switch it on, how to proxy, re boot and also how to fiddle with settings before they call technical.

Me: Hi, I’m having a problem with my router. It isn’t seeing the DSL signal. I have tested this already with another router.
Tech Support: Okay, first, let’s restart your computer.
Me: I’ve already done that. I have done the troubleshooting, and have isolated the problem. It’s the router.
Tech Suport: Well, let’s try rebooting your computer first.

This can go on for 30 minutes, and when TS has determined the problem is the router, I want to kill them in a messy, bloody, firey way that will leave lots of blood evidence, but no intact DNA.

By the time that you call tech support, you’re already frustrated. And it doesn’t help when the tech support people tell you to restart the ****ing computer.

@RocketSquid Cool, you’re an exception to what I thought was the rule. :o)

Why lie to tech support? Because often it is the smartest thing to do. Usually the first tier of tech support has no technical ability or hands on experience with the support issue at all. They are simply a live MS “wizard” reading from a set script. If you do have system experience and can already discount all of the obvious, you need to shorten the process.

An instance. Several weeks ago our broadband supplier had a local issue with bandwidth and drop-outs not something that I can fix from my end. I am sure that the problem is theirs for several reasons, one if I switch to a backup ISP everything works, Two, it is affecting all of the lans in the building. Three, a quick phone call to a business a block or so away determines that they are also experiencing the same problem.

That first tier of tech support still wants to insist that it is a computer/modem problem at our end and start running through a list of mundane nonsense procedures. Unless I firmly stop him and say that all of that had been done, he will argue and insist on going through the whole dauntingly pointless company protocol. (I haven’t done it of course – I am, already way past that point.)

I just insist on speaking to a supervisor. If that fails, I stop dealing with technical support and call the ISP’s sales office then threaten to take a very large chunk of business to a competitor if I don’t get real support. In many cases I have been given a different – local – number to use to get real support from a tech employed at the ISPs premises. A state sales manager will trump a help desk jockey every time.

Because IT think they’re sooo smart and they think that the person calling is so stupid and sure sometimes the person calling is but sometimes it is true that I rebooted and tried all the things you’re telling me, obviously. Yet you don’t hear me, for f’s sake and you think taking two days to finally come down to my computer is an appropriate amount of time…screw you, without my damn computer, I can’t work, patients need my help, you’re causing people to lose days when they can’t afford it…and then of course, lo and behold, when someone finally saunters in from IT, the damn internet and the computer work when before the whole system couldn’t be booted up and they look at you like you’re crazy but you’re not yet you have no proof.

@DarkScribe Sounds like you’re the type of guy I wrote the apology for. You probably know far more about computers than I do, but sadly any tech support agent is going to make you go through the same process.

The reason being that a lot of people who don’t want to touch the problem and don’t honestly know what they’re doing will simply lie and say they’ve either done everything already and throw around terms like network engineer or IT guy thinking the computer company will send out someone to fix it for them for free on the same day (trust me, that will never be the case. Even if it is just to power cycle a modem, the company will gladly charge an arm and a leg).

Thanks to people like Bubba and Candy telling the helpdesk that they’ve “gone done set erp the webbox, been doin’ it fer fiddy years”, tech support is always going make someone reset their computer and their modem, even if they really are the IT Guy for Techworld Tech.

The best way around troubleshooting steps you’ve already done is to ask for exactly what you think will fix the problem. Those are the guys I always knew weren’t lying because they not only could name things like router and computer, they could name some of the internal workings as well. Those calls always lasted about 2 minutes.

Me: “Blah blah blah techworld tech tech support, How can I blah blah”
Customer: “Hey there, blah blah blah account info blah blah
Me: “How can I help you today?”
Customer: “Yo, having a bit of trouble connecting here, I was hoping you could send a clear patch command to my tech box”
Me: “Yessir. There ya go”
Customer: “Awesome. That got it. Thanks.”

Obviously censored tech talk, internet and all, you understand.

I do it out of boredom. I invent some bizarre symptom, call tech support and lie about already having hit the cpu with a defibrillator, etc. When I get tired, I pretend to be irate, shout obscenities about the tech’s mother, and assure him that I will lodge a complaint with his employer.

I get both ends of the spectrum. I am an IT consultant, and have to both provide tech support to clients and deal with tech support for their providers. Mostly, my clients don’t want to deal with the the warranty replacement team based out of <insert cheaper labor country here>. They make me do it. Honestly, I have had more frustrations dealing with ISPs and warranty care than with my clients. I understand why people can get frustrated and lie to get something fixed.

Pride.