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Robin Cornelius wrote: > why is it these days that gross incompentence seems to be part of the > business model for the vast majority of companies. I can't speak for Demon but in the case of other large companies in my work environment, the problems are simply a lack of staff, typically support staff. Everything is fine when things work well, but as soon as someone has a problem the resulting query has a knock-on effect on the rest of the workload and the whole thing descends into anarchy. Efficiency drives have gone too far, there's no slack in the system so that when someone is ill or is simply diverted into an unexpected task, there is nobody free to take over the work that person would have been doing, generating a backlog. It makes my work much more frustrating than ever before because problems with our suppliers cause problems for the customers that cause queries and problems that prevent the staff having time to fix the original problems! (I need a holiday!) It's multi-skilling gone mad. Now, instead of having helldesk on hand, queries are handed to front-line operators who have multiple ongoing jobs to do (to keep them busy between support calls). The helldesk operators themselves rotate through the jobs quicker because they get constant aggro and no satisfaction, which means that each operator has less and less experience leading to more queries needing to be referred up to the more experienced staff who don't really have time to answer the query. I'm saying all this but I get just as mad when my queries are not resolved because I'm getting it in the neck from those who want me to solve *their* problems and so it goes on. > I am also fed up of > these call centers in other countries as when things really go wrong the > people there are no use at all as it is not in their traning, its the > old problem of trying to speak to someone with a clue! A problem getting worse as the workforce shrinks. (birthrate down, life expectancy up, etc.) I wish I could recommend an alternative company for your situation, Robin, but although I've had no problems with Eclipse this has not been the case for others on this list. I guess I've been lucky (and long may it continue). It seems to make little difference whether you go for a "big name" (where you have to share with a lot of others and may see problems more often) or a little name (who have less support staff so your call goes into a queue leading to less problems with each taking longer to solve). Whichever, a backup plan seems a worthwhile investment. I always keep a dial-up account available - just in case. If there's no redundancy at the staff level, there needs to be some at the technology level. -- Neil Williams ============= http://www.data-freedom.org/ http://www.nosoftwarepatents.com/ http://www.linux.codehelp.co.uk/
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