TechZilla Update

Sick on Monday so went to doctor and got antibiotics. Cancelled flight to Seattle. Boss had me go to work in Sacramento on Tuesday to fix printers Spent the day at DMV. Huge building! Couldn't find anybody that knew how to fix parking tickets (info incase I get one LOL). Was expecting to be there Weds. also but he saw I was sick and told me to go home.

Meds are helping but ....too much work to be sick.

DivX is now doing a good job scrunching down the filesize of my movies. I'm seeing around 350mb/hour of video per file now which is a vast improvement. Now I can just go about doing the job and not having to play around tweaking things which speeds up the process considerably. Quality is definately acceptible.

ok time for work almost

bye!

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8 responses
Why did you boss force you to work when you were sick? What the hell was he thinking?
— PhoneBoy
I traded working in SAC for a day as opposed to flying to Seattle coughing all over all the people on the plane. We recently lost a major contract that caused several employees to leave the company and while adjusting to that we get another contract and need more people in certain areas due to call volume.
I was also asked by the district manager if I wanted to move to Seattle, my supervisor asked me if I want to move to San Jose. This was just last week when they wanted me to go to Seattle.
Now they are complaining about overtime being high.
What they need to do is hire a floater and pay him/her more than the regular techs to travel around to cover emergencies or call volume fluctuations until a more permanent solution can be achieved.
Industrywide there is a problem caused by the $300 computer. People aren't buying the extended warranty so there is less money in the pool. So basically the money to do what I do sucks unless you have some seniority and skills like I do.
What they want are professionals but all they pay for are part changers. So we are constantly scrambling to put fires out. While we are expected to close a certain number of calls/day, in my position, I get payed for 8 hours even if I don't have any calls.
I'm one of the few that can do that because of a low call volume in my area. And when they call me out of town, it has less impact on the numbers when calls are delayed and have to come back an put out the fires.
— TechZilla
Back in the old days, computers were so expensive, they included support as part of the price. There was enough margin to actually do that.Now of course with the $200 and $300 computers, there is absolutely no margin. The true cost of support--hidden by high margins-are coming out. Nobody wants to pay those costs. There's also a question in many people's minds about how good "extended warranty" programs are thanks to the shysters who run Best Buy and the like. I won't buy them for that very reason, period.The one exception to this is AppleCare, mostly because I know exactly how it works. My step-father used to do AppleCare repairs back in the 80s. I also know from others that AppleCare is still a relatively high-quality experience. I was smart and paid for AppleCare on my MacBook. I have already gotten my money's worth on it, given the number of times I've had to send it back to get the flickering laptop screen fixed. They are insanely quick and efficient at getting me a shipping box and turning the repair around. I would not think twice about paying for AppleCare on any Mac I purchase in the future, given this experience. Now the question is: does Dell have as good of a service reputation with consumers as Apple does?
— PhoneBoy
Considering all the factors, I think Dell does a pretty fair job. Here's how the process works...
Client calls Dell Support and they do some troubleshooting. If it is software and they are able to log in remotely they help them that way. I believe thatat part is fee based. If it is hardware, the hardware drone reads through the script and determines what part(s) should be sent Usually they get it right. If the user calls in before 5pm local time, the parts are shipped that evening.
Dell has a warehouse in Wilmington OH just down the runway fro DHL main hub in the US. Parts arrive usually at my DHL by 9am the following morning. At that point I scedule the appt with the client.
For depot warrany, they have a deal with DHL. They bring you a box and take the system. The turn-around is usually 3-5 business days.
Most manufacturers offer depot-warranty. From what I have gleamed from end users over the years is that the tech fixing the problem...didn't really fix the problem, just changed the part that caused the problem.
The fact of the matter is minimum wage employees rarely possess the skills required to achieve customer sastisfaction like a qualified season professional. At least in the field service area, the techs get daily hands on in your face experience that adds up and pays offf over time.
Best Buy offered us a contract to handle thier onsite warrany service prior to the Geek Squad. They cancelled the contract and Geek Squad appeared. Pretty magical how they pulled that one off huh? Thier techs are more into selling than actually fixing...not to mention misdiagnose to accomplish that. I'll post a vid I found a while back on it if I can.
Circuit City has All Advantage handle the warranty work. I do repairs under that contract with another service company as an independent contractor.
HP tried onsite warranty but they wanted people to pay for it and eventually went back to depot warranty. So unless you buy a warranty that provides onsite service from one of the retailers...you won't get it.
I could probably go on for hours on this topic after almost 6 years of this crap.
— TechZilla
Given how small most of the parts are these days, I wouldn't expect much more than a parts replacement with any kind of service work on computers. Back when computers were several thousand dollars and parts were expensive, repairing the part made more economical sense. Nowadays, it's MUCH cheaper to replace the defective part than to spend any time repairing it. The only way I would consider buying extended warranty would be direct through the manufacturer, e.g. Apple and AppleCare. The "indirects" like Worst Buy are just rip-offs waiting to happen.
— PhoneBoy
I encountered a situation Saturday. I'm an independent contractor for a company who does warranty service for All Advantage which is the warranty people for Circuit City. I recieved a hard drive to replace. The EU had had RedDog (Circuit City Technicians) work on it first. We are supposed to provide home service and not "in a shop" service but the client was allways out of town and no way to reach her during regular hours.
Before doing anything, I am supposed to diagnose and verify the problem with these guys, not just change parts. After attaching a monitor, keyboard, power and mouse, the system wasn't posting. I called my Tech Support and informed them what was going on.
Since I was there, I troubleshot the system and the results get forwared back to the warranty company. No parts were replaced. I left it exactly as I found it.
RedDog either messed up the sytem or didn't actually troubleshoot the system. The EU likey told everybody her hard drive had gone out. Her diagnosis could have not been correct and obviously somebody didn't either ask the right questions or actually check it out themselves. Some people call thier tower the hard drive, some even call it a modem.
I did see the workorder and the tech said he tested the hard drive and said it was bad. The power and data cable were removed when I opened the case. The question remains if they just told the client she needed a hard drive and tried to sell her one without actually turning on the system or not.
— TechZillaNews
I'm tech support's worst nightmare--because I know what the hell I'm doing and can prove to the poor tech their crap is broken and they need to send me a new part. :)
— PhoneBoy
That's because your just a SON-OF-A-TECHZILLA!
LOL
— TechZilla