I feel you, and are spot on and with me too I think the term Telcos applies accurately.

Some time last year, I was doing some RnD on some GSM product that required the APN of mobile networks. On contacting Zain (twas still 'Zain' at the start of last year) I was told to wait 48 hours for my request to be processed and they took down my email address and all. Yeah 48 hours to get the APN for a GSM device!!
Three days later still no response, I call customer care:
- Idiot no 1: it takes 48 working hours; that's at least 8 days since these traverse at least one weekend. 'That cannot be the case, What''s your name?.... You are wasting my time I'll get help elsewhere....'
- Idiot no 2: We sent you the settings. Of course they had not been sent.
By then I realized no one knew what I needed and there had been no escalation. As you pointed out, I had to go behind the scenes and get help from a friend.

Wananchi support at the end of last year.
- Troubleshoot -> Call support ->.....
Can you please restart your router? Now this one must have been an intern. 'Mr X, I know that's the manual that you guys have there for troubleshooting but tell me something different from that, you can do better than that....'

Two months ago; Xtrannet support.
Phone goes unanswered for 20 or so mins; An ISP, it takes 20 mins for a call to get through during business hours!! Eventually it's picked and I'm transferred to support. 'Currently we have no internet connectivity.....' 'Let us check and get back at you' By the time I next hear from them, I have been happily online for half an hour. The problem was probably temporary, 'Thanks for nothing....' 
I am sure the contact did nothing to fix the situation; was still confused even when calling me back

And here goes the winner....My current link provider (Fibertel)....
After two hours of unanswered calls, support calls back and says... 'We are working on it, plus you whine too much; I have clients who have been down for two weeks' JC of Nazareth!!!

That's to mention some but a few of my experiences.

Regards,
Mugo.

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 1:06 PM, Odhiambo Washington <odhiambo@gmail.com> wrote:
Apologies in advance for cross-posting.

I'm somehow very appalled at the level of technical support we get from our Telcos. What surprises me is the fact they they have some of the best brains in the market, yet they simply cannot get these brains to address the consumer problems. A simple problem can take you ages to get solved -- unless you go behind the scenes and contact these techies at a personal level.
I've come to the point of thinking that either there is too much bureaucracy introduced between the people we talk to (the CSEs) and the engineers who work in the background or the escalation process simply isn't streamlined. The process of getting a solution from the engineers can take ages (to me, a week is ages!). Then again, the Customer-facing teams simply seem to be robots who don't want to try and reason out. Is thinking out of the box not acceptable for CSEs working in these Telcos??

Take one such problem that I'm facing currently with one these Telcos - ORANGE: I bought their much touted 21Mbps modem. The issue at hand is that I need to share the Internet connectivity with other residents of my house via a WiFi router. My router, a D-Link DIR-825, has a USB port that supports a 3G modem. There is one obstacle that I must overcome with the ZTE modem for me to be able to use it with my D-Link router -- I must find a way to disable the virtual CDROM and card reader from the USB stick/modem. The problem is no technician at ORANGE knows how to do this. Probably there is a technician (I have a feeling Orange must have gotten ZTE to train some technicians, or in the daftest form, ZTE must have seconded some techies to Orange!) but it's not possible to reach him/her/them!

My router already works with the Safaricom's Huawei E1820, because I was able to go-ogle and find the AT Command to use to disable the virtual CDROM (AT^U2DIAG=0 does the disabling; AT^U2DIAG=1 re-enables it if I need to), which then enabled my router to recognize the USB modem. Fortunately, after installing the drivers on a computer, I really do not require the virtual CDROM interface anymore.
I have not been able to find an equivalent command for ZTE-MF192 USB stick and has called Orange Customer Support (Data+Internet) so many times and they simply don't have a clue as to what I am asking for. I'd have thought they are trained to know that some clients are more demanding than others and as such they are allowed to go the extra mile and reason outside the box to help such customers.

I am not sure  if I am expecting too much, but because I paid money to get this modem, I'd expect Orange to help me in any way that I'd like to use the modem. They still make their money by allowing me to use it.
What I don't seem to be able to wrap my head around is why there is no technician at Orange (whether native or Chinese) who can help me with this problem? Aren't we supposed to expect a better quality support from these Telcos than we are getting now??
 
I started by generalizing on "Telcos". I have only detailed my problem with Orange, but such problems are not exclusive to Orange. I remember Robert Yawe has detailed his own tribulations with other Telcos on this very forum.


--
Best regards,
Odhiambo WASHINGTON,
Nairobi,KE
+254733744121/+254722743223
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