I think most call centers have around 50 people or less so techs are always talking to someone. it is normal for them to be busy so I don't think it's a lie. Most of the time, anyway. I know there is at least one person per call center, per shift, who is just sitting on their ass, not doing anything.

aaah but it is a lie, they say "higher than normal call volume" not "We are too cheap to hire enough people for our usual call volume"

The call center can only hold so many people at once. Even if a center has 200 people, there is a possibility they are over whelmed. So, instead of saying they are just busy, they say they say they have a higher volume calling. The way it's worded is meant to calm people down when they realize their call isn't getting picked up right away.

It also depends on what time of day you call. The later the day, the more likely it will be you will be put on hold.

We are too cheap to hire enough people for our usual call volume, and really, we have your money already, so f-u...


Faster Cheaper Faster Cheaper... >Cracks Whip<

(Working on my management potential...)

You are half way there, NOW all you have to do is convince yourself its the right thing to do, and you would be true management!

I have a 3 Lb sledge hammer aimed at my cerebral cortex, should suffice!

I would say that the new way to run a business is to be retarded, but that is unfair... To the mentally retarded. They could never be so childish and greedy as big business leaders.

Of course it's the right thing to do! We're saving on costs and increasing profitability for our shareholders!

Wait, you meant for the customer? Pfft.

I fell out of my chair laughing at this.

I fucking love you Ham Ham.

This happens when I call tech support while already in a bad mood :)

I adore your <3

is that a bottom? :)

Yes because I want your bottom.

It's a default message for a lot of help centers now to excuse themselves for bad service, like how when you place an order for pizza the place will *always* say it's 10 minutes more than they expect it to be so they have a ten minute window in case something screws up or slows down.

They could try "Sorry for the wait, in the meantime.. Close your eyes, and allow us to transport you to the mystical land of India...." ^_^

Hey, I'll forgive much in exchange for being transported to the mystical land of India.

Later in the evenings the team I work for has maybe 3-4 people on shift at one time, literally. And while our call volume has been average (enough to keep four of us pretty busy) we do NOT have any sort of "higher than normal" call volume message. It may be something mostly prominent in larger operations, I'd imagine!

Though, we don't really have a phone system sophisticated enough to really hot-swap around messages without risking taking down the lines for a minute (it was made in house and is less than ideal) so that also may be part of it.

I remember when I was tech support for HP, we did stuff like that to people,... So they where already aggravated by the time we get to talk to them. I gotta tell you I hate those god damned Robo voice routing machines, sending you through a labyrinth of options only to disconnect you at the end.. This one literally when I got through all the options the final message said "If you are calling from the device in question please disconnect now and call from a different line" after all that crap it just disconnected me!!

so that may be one advantage the smaller operations have, they can not afford to inflict that kind of shit on their customers.

Yeah, we do surprisingly well for having a small team, and thanks to cool management, we can actually legitimately help folks even outside what is technically our "scope" - else I think the job would drain my soul. :D

Well if you have cool management, then its ENTIRELY different from the place I was at

It makes all the difference! When I started the job I was afraid of having a bunch of hard ass overseers who would prevent you from the simplest of assistance (one fellow tried real hard to send me money for simply changing his WinXp desktop theme to something that wasn't violently purple and green, for example) but is still technically outside our scope. I'd hate the job and have quit forever ago if that was the case, it'd just depress me to not be able to help! More power to you if you could stomach it..

Gotta have a job sometimes, we all know how that is :)

Hewlett packard said "keep call times under 7 minutes, it doesnt matter if you help them or not" think of what THAT says about customer service :)

Yeah, when I started some of the others had horror stories of their previous jobs, much like that - Be done within X time or just get rid of them, give up way early and tell them to "FFR" - fuck it, format, reinstall (in other terms, of course.) Just downright brutal. I like being able to spend -hours- if need be.. I think longest we worked on someone's PC was literally two days straight (a combination of downloads, slow connection, etc.)

Well, thats exactly it, for proper customer service first of all you need people who know computers, most of us where just schmucks out of high school who didnt know any more than the customers did, secondly you need more than 7 minutes, which means HP doesnt give a shit about their customers, the only reason these tech support departments exist at all is so the company can claim that htye technically have tech support.

And that is why it pays to have techie friends.

This is probably what Microsoft has on thier help lines every time someone wants thier 360 fixed, I wouldn't know however because I personally don't want my phone bill jacked up the wazoo.

Doesnt Microsoft charge a billion dollars a minute for support?

Most likley, they always find a way to get thier damn money, by any means (it's the reason I rarely use LIVE and always PSN, because at least most of the stuff thier is free).
I didn't bother calling them (having heard of the terrible service during the Red Ring incident)when my 360 broke a long time ago and did the obvious (and smart) thing and took it back to the shop where I got it to swap it for a new one.

For me the best solution was to not buy any consoles at all :)

Ah, a PC gamer I take it? I never really got on with a mouse/keyboard combination for most games personally, I use a pad any chance I get! XD

Well, I tend to play sigle-player games the 360 anyway. It's nice to have the option available without shelling out £30+ every month or so whenever you do fancy it on other systems (MP functions I only use on my PS3/Wii, they don't charge you anything).
I only use the LIVE service for demos of upcoming titles, the only function of it I find worthwhile.

nah not really a gamer at all. Though when I do play games, its usually unreal tournament, I've tried Halo with the little console controller thingy, and its pointless I dont understand how anyone can stand it.

I only play the Halo games for the story, Tried MP on the 3rd one, didn't like it.

Which controller are you referring to, the original XBOX one or the 360? I find the 360 controller too awkward and uncomfy for most games, which Is why I get most of my ganes on PS3, the controller on that just feels right.

It's also the hardware I preffer, the 360 makes an auful racket with it's disk drive and load times often drag on(you can optionally install games to reduce this, but my Hard Drive is very small so I mostly don't bother) wheras the PS3 is very silent and load times are quite fast for many games (thanks to many of them having required installs and the machine having more space).

Any controller that isnt a keyboard and mouse.. Trying to do a first person shooter with those little twiddly knob things is ridiculous, "Oh theres someone behind me! just give me about 5 minutes and ill turn around and then another 2 minutes to aim.. there we go" :D

My main gripe with KB controls is often remembering what button is what, even if I do remap them. A controller I just find more comfortable and convenient to me because all the buttons are in places you can remember them and you actually have something to grip onto when doing so.

A lot of first person games (eg: Half-Life 2) have a quick-turn option, where a press of a button will instantly turn you around to face the enemy, useful in situations like that. When I find find aiming and turnin too fiddly, I tend to set the sensitivity around medium so that I'm not spinning around constantly.

I jsut find it so unnatural, always trying to remember what knob does what, and then desperately trying to coordinate them while getting killed.. with the keyboard and mouse its totally natural I dont even have ot think about it.

Left stick is move, right stick is aim in pretty much every console FPS. You can swap them, but I just can't imagine moving with my aiming thumb personally. Also, the triggers on controllers (especially the PS3 ones with the extention add-ons, the 360 ones are too small and slippery) have that "springy" feeling that just seems to fit. I like mouse aiming too, but only for certain games (eg: Half Life 1), others not so much (e.g: Alone in the Dark: New Nightmare, aiming from a fixed perspective with a mouse should be outlawed).

I only play old PC games on my 98 machine, newer PC games (e.g; Sims 3) I don't bother with because my Vista is already an incompetant peice of crap. It's the main reason I opt for thier console alternatives. It's especially bad with modern Ubisoft games and thier supposedly broken Piracy Protection, where you HAVE to be online at all times even on single-player games (e.g: Assassin's Creed II) and if the connection goes down, you lose your current progress.

"THAT or its a lie!!!"

No more entries, please, we have a winner.

Of course it's a lie.

My best guess is that they're averaging in the time when they're closed, so their estimation of "normal" call volume is about 66% of their actual call volume. As such, it's not technically a lie, in the same way it's not technically a lie for me to say I was injured at work if I cut the inside of my mouth on a broken taco shell during lunch break.

"We are experiencing the usual volume of calls which is just too much for our two phone slaves to deal with so you'll have to wait."

Unlike others, I have rarely gotten the 'higher than normal call volume" bit. And the times I have have all been times that this makes sense, (once was a major problem before they got the recoding deployed, the others have all been during the early evening spike).

I get the "higher than normal call volume" when something is wrong....

I assume that this is averaged with the call volume when nothing is wrong and tech support is there twiddling their thumbs (well, actually trying to talk gramma through programming her ipod or fixing something on her computer)

Since I HATE calling tech support unless I have no other options...I wouldn't know. I have discovered a few times that the company only offers tech support from 8am to 10pm(which they tell you after you've started going through the phone tree), or something around those lines, which I find idiotic since you can tell they're not on the same continent.

I haven't called tech support for my new computer Toshiba but for Gateway my old computer they were quite fast and nice and made it simple yet not "is it plugged in" simple to bad the computer I bought was crap my fault not Gateway's

Wouldnt it be Gateways fault since they built it?

no it's my fault because I jumped the gun and bought a crappy computer because I was sick of waiting for a sale to buy a good one for what I could afford at the time.
that and I blame Best Buy for running out of the better one that was a much better computer more ram better processor etc for only a hundred bucks more I also blame my mom for having me wait and miss out on it.

I don't blame gateway I pulled on the cord and broke the board so it wouldn't charge and it needed a new battery too and they replaced it for free paid for shipping and everything luckily it was still under warranty

I pride myself on working for a company with quality staff that reside in the United States. That being said, we have a policy of picking up the phone on the first ring. If you can't get through, it actually is due to abnormal call volume. XD

Actually I have not gotten it before