December 11, 2005
Technical Difficulties
The hotel I am presently staying at in Charlotte, NC is having a “jump” problem with their ISP, and having just lost a lengthy post as a result, I will be temporarily refraining from blogging while Level 2 technicians at the outsourced(as usual) Internet service company attempt to correct the problem.
http://hardastarboard.mu.nu/wp-trackback.php?p=223
December 11th, 2005 at 9:16 pm
Outsourcing is not a bad thing unless the service sucks.
the hotels should outsource to me…
December 12th, 2005 at 12:08 am
There is almost always something amiss with hotel internet access, though there are ways to work around it, in most cases, if you are dead set on posting. I say in most cases because some are really screwed up, like the access from Doubletree Suites in New York or the Comfort Inn, Chicago, to name a couple. The jury’s still out on this one.
The problems are a) the responsibility of the outsourced company ends at the hotel’s server, and few hotels seem to have anyone competent in IT on the payroll because they don’t want to pay them what they can easily get elsewhere and b) the same generally applies to the outsourced company, LOL.
Most of the tech support people you get when you call the toll-free number will try to blame it on the ethernet cable you are using if it’s wired, then go back to their newspaper, and that failing, wired or wi-fi, on your firewall. If you disable your firewall and the problem persists, they will walk you through a set of useless steps via the “run” or “connections” menus and the problem will remain long after they have assigned you a “case number” and are back into the “Style” section, the comics or the hold ‘em game they’re playing over there.
Once in a blue moon, you get the 1% of tech support people who hasn’t yet moved on to a job that pays more than coolie wages, and the problem is solved, more often from their end than not. Michael, if you got into the business, recruited, trained and adequately compensated your tech support people, you’d do quite well. A lot of hotels seem oblivious to the amount of repeat business they lose from guests who need decent www access for business purposes.
The fun part{I used to have this experience when I still tried talking to the hotels themselves about their access problems} is when the hotel sends a maintenance “engineer” to solve your problem. The guy who turns up is ALWAYS a foreigner who has no effin’ idea what a computer is, let alone any sort of usable command of the English language. He stands there looking important for a few seconds, then when that solves nothing, he begins to look like he wishes he was elsewhere. Finally, he tells you that you need to call the toll-free tech support number, smiles uneasily and sidles from the room.
The only absolutely flawless hotel web access I’ve ever encountered was the wi-fi set-up at the Lenox, in Boston. They have a wireless hub on every floor and it works like it does at home.
December 12th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
LOL I never get to read the paper, maybe that is because the people that are doing the reading all work for me…nah.
end user support is very hard to deal with because there is no base level of knowledge.
December 13th, 2005 at 8:34 am
By base level of knowledge, I assume you mean what’s going on inside the hotel and inside the “complainant’s” computer.
What these companies need to do is invest a little money in field techs who can provide in-house service(to the hotel server, etc).
In my case, if the ISP or the server has no problems, neither do I. My Inspiron is a tough little SOB, it’s adaptable to all but the worst access conditions.