[ILUG] sendmail with Esat?

[Niall O Broin]

On Tue, Oct 10, 2000 at 03:33:45PM +0100, Paul Scollon wrote:

> "My one objection is that their support line seems to be staffed with
> imbeciles who don't understand even the rudiments of TCP/IP networking,
> and always appear to be reading from a script, but that's a common
> complaint with all of the ISPs I've dealt with."
> 
> - I completely agree man! Bottom of the IT foodchain, some of these ppl!

It's very easy to complain about these tech. support people (and God knows
Esat in particular have got the rough end of my tongue and my keyboard
before now) but there's no easy answer, unfortunately. The vast majority of
the calls they receive are from fsckwits who are asking the most inane of
questions. Accordingly, this is what the support staff must be able to
answer. Not alone is it not cost effective to staff the help desk with
experts, said experts wouldn't stay long because the morons (unfair - I
should say "ordinary people who know fsck all about computers and who are
calling because their 'doze box just went into space again") calling them
would drive them mad. 

But what of those who need serious assistance ? Tough luck is the answer.
Most of the ISPs have consultancy departments which you can hire to solve
difficult problems (though I've no idea how good they are) but they've
simply adopted the policy that if your question is beyond their helpdesk
staff, it's a consultancy question (and when I last had the misfortune to
talk to Esat helpdesk staff, the mere mention of Linux elevated the question
into the relams of consultancy.) You can vote with your feet and go
elsewhere, but one's as bad as the next, really, and the ISPs have no
motivation to solve the problem because the numbers involved are tiny.

No, it's not fair, but as I'm always saying to my children "Where did you get
the idea that life is fair ?"




Regards,


Niall