Technology Support Services

Is there anything more boring than other people's stories of their domestic IT disasters, and their desperate struggle to get an answer out of tech support? No, but I've suffered plenty of these tales in my time - and now it's your turn. Hopefully this will be brief and to the point - and for a technology correspondent to spend some time in tech hell can be instructive for both him and his audience.

So, 10 days ago my wife's e-mail - connected to a domain she bought from our ISP seven years ago - just gave up the ghost. She's a reasonable woman but this left her close to despair. I was deputed to fix things - replacing our 17-year-old director of IT who was out with his mates.

First call was to the ISP. I've no wish to inflict public humiliation in them so let's call this company "Tunnelvision". We've been with them for 12 years but I've grown more and more unhappy with their prices, broadband speeds and service - especially since they were taken over by a larger company who we shall call "Monteverdi". I had suggested moving - but my wife was reluctant, fearing that moving her website and e-mail would be a nightmare.

But the nightmare did indeed begin with a call to Tunnelvision's outsourced call centre somewhere in the Far East. They could only tell me there were no general problems with the network and our issue would be addressed by a "second-line engineer" within a day. When we grew impatient and called back 24 hours later, the story had changed. There was an issue affecting a number of customers - and we should not expect to hear a result for 48 hours.

My patience snapped - and I decided on swift executive action. We were going to switch ISPs - but that would take around 10 days, and in the meantime we would move my wife's domain to another hosting company. She was impressed by my new-found decisiveness.

I contacted a hosting company - this one had 24/7 UK-based support - to get the domain to a safer place. They told me this could happen in a couple of days and then the e-mail would be up and running again. All we had to do was forward an e-mail to Tunnelvision asking them to change the name servers on the domain. So we sent off the e-mail, along with a letter sent by registered post, and we waited. And waited.

Three days on, with nothing happening, I began an extraordinary series of phone calls all around the Tunnelvision - or rather Monteverdi - empire. First, customer service. "Not us, speak to our domains registration business." "Nothing to do with us," said the next lot, "speak to the hosting company, Tunnelvision Solutions." No solution there either: "Never heard of your domain, go back to customer service." "Sorry, we know nothing about domains," said customer service, "speak to technical support in the Far East."

Then a long, long call to technical support (interspersed with much Vivaldi while on hold) which ended with the message that the only option was to e-mail domains@tunnelvision.net. "But that's where we started three days ago," I screamed. "Is there no phone number for the domains department?" No.

In desperation, I started posting messages on the Twitter micro-blogging service about our problem. Within minutes, lots of kind Twitters were proffering advice, much of it very learned. But without a response from Tunnel vision, we could do nothing. Then a few hours later came a call from the company itself. Their PR people had spotted my anguished Twittering and wondered if they could help. Yes, yes, yes, please! But that was Thursday. Friday brought no advance - except for an request to resend the original e-mail detailing the required change in name servers.

On Monday morning I'm still awaiting the call to say the domain has been successfully moved. And if it isn't done today, I will be sleeping on a park bench tonight - there's only so many excuses I can make for my failure to get the domestic IT set-up running smoothly again.

So a typically boring tale - but with some lessons informing my future purchasing.

1. Customer service, not just price or speed, should be a major factor when choosing a supplier.

2. I want to be able to speak to my supplier, night and day - and get a clear response. In future I will test companies' call centres before I sign up.

3. I will be wary if a supplier is taken over by another firm. "Hosting is no longer a core part of Monteverdi's offering," was what one person at the firm told me. In other words we may have taken your supplier but don't expect us to care about all that tedious stuff you bought from them years ago.

4. Shouting about bad customer service can work. I was lucky this time - my ravings were spotted by a PR person who recognised my name. All anyone can do is make as much noise as possible.

5. Err, I'm sure you too have a long tale to tell about your domestic IT nightmare - but can it wait a few days? I'm still getting over mine.