I've been a long-long-long-time Rogers customer. Their support, for me, usually gets to the point not of desperation, but of joy. Admittedly it usually takes several attempts to reach someone who isn't a complete idiot reading from a script, but I've always been satisfied in the end. Satisfied enough to remain a customer, at least! This event in the mid 00's, though, taxed the limits I'm willing to reach for bad tech support while still managing to leave me as a customer. (Lesser of evils and whatnot.)
I'm a sysop. I need access to my boxen from anywhere and everywhere, and while GSM speeds are pretty suck compared to modern LTE it was more than enough for an SSH connection, or some light-weight HTTP or VNC/RDP over a VPN. The VPN turned out to be a sticking point, as no matter which technology (PPTP, L2TP/IPsec, etc.) I tried my phone would never connect and/or authenticate.
For literally six months the pattern was this: on a drive out to a client a town over I'd call up Rogers and dutifully key in for technical support. I'd ask, "Hey, I can't connect to a VPN on my phone. What's up with that?" Most of the time the support agent was reasonable, but clueless. They'd admit to not knowing what a VPN is and not knowing if Rogers even does that. They'd try to helpfully suggest using a WiFi connection and I would resist the temptation to impact my head against the wheel each time.
An agent I reached one trip, on a nice scenic British Columbia highway, utterly took the cake by comparison, however. After the usual preface question of "What's up with that?" the agent on the other end of the line asked, after some expected discussion, a wholly unexpected question: "Well, what do you use your phone for?"
So I told him. In detail. It was a long trip, you see…
This was an unwise decision.
After enumerating the list of standard things that people do on cellphones (browse the web, check e-mail, etc.) and a few sysop-level things (SSH, VNC, RDP, etc.) the agent interrupted me with:
Uhm, we don't support e-mail. What you're trying to do is impossible, and I don't know how you're doing any of the things you just said you are doing.
Wat. Being at a stoplight, I didn't hesitate to brain myself. After recovering, I said, precisely and calmly, "You, sir, are a complete fucking moron. Now that we have this understanding, give me your supervisor."
After a few minutes on hold, the call ended; not wholly unexpected. I spent those few minutes trying to find the corporate headquarters phone number. I dialled my way through a brief IVR (Integrated Voice Response) menu and reached the "secretary of the office of the president".
The roles had been reversed. The poor woman was very non-technical, but I managed to explain my situation. There's something I can't do with my phone, that I know Rogers is actively preventing me from doing; the techs have no idea what I'm talking about, and I'm at my wits end.
She was sympathetic. So she got the CIO on the line. A 30 second summary later the CIO said, "Yeah, we can do that. You just need a dedicated IP, it costs $5/mo." I responded, "DO IT," with more words and an even tone, of course. After the CIO left the call the secretary asked me if there was anything else I needed.
I mentioned my frustration at "this taking six months to resolve" and her tone instantly changed. Where she was polite and patient before, she now apologized profusely for the inconvenience, assured me that the support agents would be trained on this particular feature, and offered me a three-year $10/mo credit for my pain.
I stayed a customer… because of her.
Good job!
Of course, requiring a static IP for a VPN client connection is basically complete bullshit, the switch the CIO flipped actually just disabled the firewall rules that actively prevented outbound VPN connections, but whatever. I was happy enough to have it working, and having the paid feature pre-paid for six years was icing on the cake of finally being able to do something I'd ordinarily be able to do without difficulty.
Yes, corporate line-item-ification of arbitrary and inherent capability, when combined with shitty support, can make you glad to pay for something that is free. It's quite a testament to how bad the tech support is, though.