[plug] A new modem needed?

[Ben New]

James Devenish wrote:
> In message <3F87A39D.4010600 at postnewspapers.com.au>
> on Sat, Oct 11, 2003 at 02:30:53PM +0800, Craig Ringer wrote:
> 
>>The main thing to remember is that the ISP will say "you can't use that" 
>>or "it won't work" when they mean "we don't know if it works, don't know 
>>how to do it, and don't want to talk to you about it."
> 
> 
> While a lot of us would recognise "to do that you'll need to buy a new
> $GADGET" as a generic "this is not supported" response, doesn't it
> sound like a particularly wasteful response to be giving to people?
> 

It comes down to staff training.  The tech who said that "you can't do 
that with Linux" obviously has never used Linux before.  Also they have 
not properly learned the essential information that the customer is 
always right (except when they are recalcitrant non-payers, then they 
are never right ;) )

The operating procedure seems a bit out of step here as well - if s/he 
hasn't been trained to deal with customers, why was s/he talking to one?

Instead of saying "we don't support Linux" with a big fullstop, a better 
way of putting it would have been something like, "while we don't offer 
explicit support for that configuration, we can try to answer your 
questions as best we can.  With the help of your hardware manufacturer 
and online Linux support, hopefully we can come up with a solution for 
you."

Not having done something before is a reason to do it, not a reason not 
to do it, IMHO.

But I've found that in most cases, the bigger the company, the less 
willing they are to do things that aren't exactly the same as what they 
did yesterday.  It's just not "fiscally viable" to let the staff run 
around trying to actually *look after* the customers!  That's just not 
what they're there for, is it?

However, Linux, and OS technology in general, is becoming a lot more 
popular these days in all sorts of areas, so more and more of the IT 
industry are going to have to start offering support for it...  like the 
ATO would be a good one, as mentioned on this thread.  One day we might 
even find Linux device driver modules shipped with the device itself... 
*gasp*!


Ben @ Leftclick
http://www.leftclick.com.au/

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