Day of a Mad Remote Support Tech

[callthatgirl]

/rant

All my calls today = drama.



HP Bullcrap
First of all, a bad HP printer install/bad drivers installed by user--wrong disk/wrong printer!. Took forever to fix with the long as HP install process and she opted for a network connect and had it plugged into the wrong plug-in (if that is possible???) USB and Ethernet...do not look alike!!!



Time, 2 hours. Billed, 1 hour. Time loss to HP $75

Whitesmoke Virus
holy crap!!!! Worst I have seen, doing a manual removal.
Time loss, so far none.

ALOT Toolbar/AVG Removal
User with ALOT toolbar irritated, walked him through removal without me needing to go in via LMIR. Then he decided to get an Xpress cleaning (my new service) for $45 and it we couldn't get connected, seemed like a firewall issue. Got in via SM. YAY! Boo...AVG removal knocked me out, had user manually remove it and it was like doing battle. GOOD GRAVY. Got in regular and now I am off with the xpress cleaning again.

Time loss....$full hour probably due to that stupid AVG free 9.0!

Computer cleaning
THEN, the worst. Client on Firefox (which I detest), can't get remoted in because she has a very slow computer and drama behind finding the downloads section of Firefox. Had her go to IE, 28 minutes loss. -$37.50!

Rescheduled the Whitesmoke for tomorrow.

Closing up, going home for the day. . Not sad about the day, just am glad these don't happen everyday.

 

[Lone99star]

Had a Whitesmoke issue today myself.
After manual removal, bsod, repair install.
Updated drivers, another bsod.
On my way out the door to teach a class for immigrants.
I will kick this thing in the butt in the am.

Lone99star

 

[stro]

/rant

Computer cleaning
THEN, the worst. Client on Firefox (which I detest), can't get remoted in because she has a very slow computer and drama behind finding the downloads section of Firefox. Had her go to IE, 28 minutes loss. -$37.50!

Just think, when IE 9 comes out, it will also have a detached windows download manager for people to lose their downloads in like FF

 

[pcpickup]

HP has become such a huge problem with their bloated printer software. I am not sure what they were thinking when they starting making their HUGE download printer drivers.

 

[callthatgirl]

Yeah, and if you don't watch, half of these big box software programs add in crap like the McAfee security scanner. WTF!

 

[pcpickup]

I generally suggest that my clients spend just a few more dollars on the business model Laser printers. The price on those printers is in the $150 range making them affordable and they are over all pretty trouble free and most of the drivers are normal / simple without crapware.

 

[Ccomp5950]

HP has become such a huge problem with their bloated printer software. I am not sure what they were thinking when they starting making their HUGE download printer drivers.

It does not take 530 MB to have a functioning printer.

So I just assume they have some peering agreements where they have to maintain so much upload (download for us) to keep their price, so they started padding the files with blank space.

 

[ljtechservices]

okay, i'm dense.
you lost money due to fixing this crap?

drama finding firefox downloads?

 

[TLE]

HP Bullcrap
First of all, a bad HP printer install/bad drivers installed by user--wrong disk/wrong printer!. Took forever to fix with the long as HP install process and she opted for a network connect and had it plugged into the wrong plug-in (if that is possible???) USB and Ethernet...do not look alike!!!

All HP printer drivers appear to be like that now Lisa, they really are a pain. I have had them take 40 minutes by the time they have completed. They bundle in so much crap it's beyond a joke. They seem to offer very little in the way of custom installs. It's frustrating as it's the customer who ultimately pays.

 

[callthatgirl]

TLE, yeah, I'm aware of the huge downloads for HP. When you are doing remote support, I cannot charge a client for 40 minutes to hit next a few times every 10 minutes. Luckily, I am usually doing other things though in the meanwhile for that client. It's rare that I get a printer install stand alone.

ljtechservices, when I do remote support, there is a lot of talking the clients through every step of getting me connected. Many do not know of the FF downloads. We also had other drama, it's part of the job. I have a lot of patience.

 

[Over the Moon IT]

Just out of curiosity, why do you hate firefox? I'd much prefer to see my users on that over IE anyway, but I find myself recommending Chrome lately.

 

[JRDtechnet]

FYI on whitesmoke, tdsskiller couldn't remove it for me...came right back in after a few reboots (and yes I did fixmbr). fixtdss from symantec did the trick though found an infected driver that tdsskiller missed.

 

[JRDtechnet]

TLE, yeah, I'm aware of the huge downloads for HP. When you are doing remote support, I cannot charge a client for 40 minutes to hit next a few times every 10 minutes. Luckily, I am usually doing other things though in the meanwhile for that client. It's rare that I get a printer install stand alone.

Why the hell not? The client couldn't fix it themselves so they called you, if your connected to their computer for 2hrs then charge for 2hrs....not one hour. While your connected remotely you can't service another computer with the same remote license until you're finished.

I view remote repair like on-site repair(but with slightly lower rates since I don't have to leave my home office) since the majority of my attention has to be directed to fixing their computer and if it takes an hour to remove old HP drivers and then another hour to download/upload the driver too their computer and install it then so be it, charge 2hrs. Don't be afraid to charge for your time.

 

[callthatgirl]

I hate Firefox for many reasons, mostly because it's an annoyance with my remote tools. Secondly, doesn't play nice with some things I have personally needed in the past, but I have as a secondary.

While your connected remotely you can't service another computer with the same remote license until you're finished.

We can remote into 10 computers with LMIR. I work with 2 other techs and we flip machines constantly to share the work. We are remoted into 3-5 at one time. We charge per job for the most part, not the time because of how long things can take to do, such as the HP driver.

We are a computer helpdesk company more than a repair shop, so for us to charge folks 2 hours for a driver issue would not keep the clients happy and not keep us in business.

Would I enjoy an easy 10 minute driver install? Yes!!! But we do charge appropriately for the work. I go off and do other things while the drivers install, make phone calls, get into another machine, go smoke, get lunch, etc.

FYI on whitesmoke, tdsskiller couldn't remove it for me...came right back in after a few reboots (and yes I did fixmbr). fixtdss from symantec did the trick though found an infected driver that tdsskiller missed.

My whitesmoke kicked my ass for the first time remotely, worked on it for awhile and due to time, the client had no data and I talked her through a factory reset and she was off playing her solitaire an hour later. I hate to do that, but she didn't want to take her computer out of her house, so she was happy, I was ****** I didn't get enough time to kick that whitesmoke a$$. Owell!

 

[wimwauters]

I started out with lynx on Minix and then Netscape and Mosaic on Sun Solaris ,
but tend to use Firefox these days. Never used IE as my primary browser, got a bad taste in my mouth after Microsoft used this buggy app to kill Netscape. They got Google to deal with now, so good luck to them

The default settings for downloads in Firefox are a nightmare with endusers: the default settings with IE are much better because it will dump the download on their desktop so they can't miss it (well, works for most of them...), or it shows further options during the download.

But with the default settings in Firefox it just shows a download window, but never the folder where it saves to, nor a desktop link to the download folder: this means ordinary endusers do not have a clue to even begin looking where they saved things
This is a major timewaster to try get the remote customer to run the remote desktop app.