Internet Provider Support

[Adelsa]

Hello to all from Australia,
The main reason i have posted to this Forum is to give two responses, firstly i would like to thank the developers and of course the community for such a good distribution. i have used Linux Mint on and off over the past 3yrs, mostly the experience has been positive. I guess being a relative newcomer to Linux and the amount of Distro's out there, i have spent a lot of time trialling other Distributions to make comparison's. Always, Mint comes up close. or if not on top of what i have experienced in the use of Linux, thus, due to my requiring the use of a portable system (3G mobile modem) for work purpose, ii decided to return to Mint. So far its all good!
Secondly, i would like to advise a disappointment that was encountered during the exercise. That is, that the service provider refused to give any assistance as to details required to be entered in the Network Connection Tabs (Virgin Mobile Australia). It was with much disappointment to learn that, STILL, only support is given for Microsoft os and Mac os, Obviously, they are still making too much money! Hasn[t anyone told them there are more than 30,000 million Linux users? What the hell is wrong with them? Surly in this day and age, and the security and stability of Linux, one would think they would break their necks to get Linux on board! Needless to say i was very disappointed! And yes, i did voice my feelings on the matter, but i felt upon deaf ears. What is wrong with them? Are they being paid by Microsoft and Mac? One can only wonder!

[viking777]

I wouldn't say your experiences are anything unusual adelsa. I don't use it myself, but having read reviews of Virgin Media Broadband, you deserve some degree of congratulation for managing to talk to their customer services department at all Customer service in general is largely a thing of the past these days, the internet has made scrapping this service easy - a couple of hours on hold listening to piped music interspersed with a cheerful voice saying something like "Our website contains the answers to many frequently asked questions" is usually enough to make even the most hardened soul give up.

But a word of warning to you. If you are persistent enough to get through to someone then mentioning the dreaded "L" word is the worst thing you can do. The minute they hear this word you have lost them, because they have the answer to every question you can ever ask - "We don't support it". You have to be a bit canny (OK you have to lie). Tell them that their setup software won't run - you don't know why of course, but you do know how to set up your connection manually if they give you the information you require. Something like that anyway, but never ever mention Linux.

You have to look at it from the point of view of the customer service representative, they are probably paid a pittance for what they do and probably that payment is linked or supplemented in some way to the volume of calls they handle, so their main interest is in getting you off the phone and onto the next call. In terms of the time taken to do that far and away the shortest answer is "We don't support Linux", and the longest is trying to work through why their setup software won't run on you 'windows' computer. So if you don't give them the first option and they have to choose between the second one or giving you the information you want, it is a fair bet which choice they will make.

Yes it is sad that you have to resort to such subterfuge, and yes I am a old cynic, but I think this is a reality in today's world.

BTW glad you are happy with Mint.

[hemimaniac]

I do agree, to even call it customer support in itself should be false advertisement, I unfortunately had the opportunity to work in such a place, and to tell the truth, most of it is 'outsorced' we handled Verizon, Charter, and roadrunner in one place. From a personal perspective, you are told on hire "You're first and foremost responsibility is to the customer!". This changes to "You're average call time this week was over 3.5 minutes so we are pulling you're request for overtime and any shift swaps you may have." As soon as you roll out of "training" and hit the floor, it all changes dramatically. Actually it became such a joke we compared it to the C.F.L. Pass - Pass - Punt. I will let you in on a little secret though, as it was explained to me when i got crap for helping a Mac user (I was in a M$ support center) because the average que was 5 hours in Mac support "You cannot do that, we have 2 kinds of support, Mac and Windows, the Mac center has different support levels then we do, Windows users are easy as most don't know what they are doing anyway so anything above basic settings and rebooting the modem and identifying lights we can kick to another center and as for linux users, they are supposed to know what they are doing anyway so we can opt-out of that support all together, hence or numbers stay high, our que stays low, and everyone stays happy."

After a month of this I didn't feel the support was there like they preached on the website or on TV, so I went "off script" and helped a cx (customer as they note them) with a router/modem combo that wasn't listed on the Site and I was actually walked out the door for it.

It sucks, I know, thats why from that day forward, i use smaller 3rd party isp's where if need be i can go directly to their office with a piece of equipment or shake their hand for a good job done

[tdockery97]

Welcome Adelsa. It is indeed incredible that in this day and age support managers still believe that the only "real" OS is Windows. It is glaringly obvious they have no idea of the power of Linux as compared to Windows.

[jesica]

hallo

welcome to the forum

[Oscar799]

Hello Adelsa,
Welcome to Mint Forum
There is a lot of useful information for new and not-so-new users here -> http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 58#p302358
We have a Community site http://community.linuxmint.com/
For real-time help and discussion there are IRC channels,open MintMenu>Internet>XChat and you will be automatically connected to #linuxmint-help and #linuxmint-chat
Have fun with Mint