I get my tech support mostly from the Linux Users Group of Victoria. If anything happened to Andrew, I would have to become a proper member in order to justify the help for which I would be asking! (I've mostly justified my hanger-on status by regularly giving talks about how I have used open-source to run my theatre shows.)

Too tired to think about horror stories, but I did switch from Microsoft to Linux after MSs operating system irredeemably ate the first couple chapters of my PhD thesis!

My horror story ---- I run a website for a historical preservation group (ctrc.org). We signed up for Google AdSense and started posting ads.

At first we got paper checks, then direct deposit, and then silence ...years of silence except for an occasional email from google that said nothing.

So I began to wonder - I tried to sign into our account. I could not log on. Google had screwed up the credentials. But how to fix it? You had to log in in order to fix the broken login - Full blown Catch 22.

It took me three years to get it fixed. Finally via private channels I got someone to walk the halls of Google and knock on doors. They had combined databases and managed to totally screw up my account - all the time collecting our money.

Well, let’s see there was the time (well two times) I broke Amazon. Took them six months to fix the first problem and maybe four or five the second time (but that wasn't as severe).

And they would contact me, but I couldn't get directly in touch with the people in the right place. So each time they responded, I had to call or email and go through the whole thing all over again. Finally sent Jeff Bezos an invoice for my time. Didn't expect them to pay, but it got their attention.

I am the tech support. But there's plenty I still need to call in for that I can't do myself. But having spent time on the other end of the phone I'm probably more patient than most, but I also know what to say and how to say it to get what I want. Or knowing when to hang up and call back to get someone else on the line.

Oprah, years ago, told all her audience that if you call customer service and you aren't getting what you want that you should yell louder, which was terrible advice then and it still is now. She started the whole Karen movement. Trust me when I tell you that acting like a decent human being who is talking to another human being who does actually want to help you where they can... you'll get a lot more out of it. Would you want to go out of your way to help someone, even suggesting discounts and perks, if that person is yelling at you, calling you stupid, and hurling slurs? Well the person on the other end of the line doesn't want to either. I've gotten so many discounts, free add-ons, and going the extra mile over the years because I was able to be decent. Now I've raised my voice before, when the person wasn't listening or was trying to dick me around, but it that parent firm tone, not a raving banshee. And if it's really bad, just hang up and get someone else. You never know if the person you are talking to is their first week or they've been there 10 years, if they know what they are doing or just riding a desk for a paycheck. Don't feel like you are stuck with the first person to answer the phone if you really aren't getting anywhere with them.

Drawing a blank on tech support rn, but there was that time that a huge tree took down the power line to our house—and multiple people in different departments at the utility (who clearly did not communicate with each other＊) kept telling us they were going to take care of the tree work—til one week after the deadline for us to put in for govt cleanup assistance, when they finally said womp womp, we don't own any trees, that's on you. WHY STRING ME ALONG??

＊omitted: lots of speed bumps like phone tag/multiple transfers, "that number is not supposed to be on voicemail"/"oh wow it is on voicemail", etc.

Our power line is still tied to a palm tree, and the pole it used to live on is still laying flat in our yard. That was 2.5 yrs ago.

That was also the incident where I had to go out in the Mad Max hellscape to buy an entire-ass phone on a different service because we were completely incommunicado—our cell carrier had taken a massive crap, and obviously we didn't have our VoIP. (One intersection was so badly flooded, I wasn't sure the big truck was going to make it through without stalling. I later saw on the news that officials had used canoes there for a while.) So after going through all that to get the phone to stay in touch with FPL... 😒

I miss POTS. It just worked.

one of the people stuck in a long line at the airport was Bill Barr.

I can't remember if I posted it or not, but the NTSB people trying to get to LaGuardia to do the investigation and get the airport back open were stuck in TSA lines—multiplying the problem on a meta level?