Why are "professional service techs so clueless? MOD/Net/Cable?

Life Technology
1

OK… I’m not the brightest bulb. That I know. But I’ve become the “lay tech” of the family and friends who don’t want to be bothered with tech. I can walk into a situation, ask key questions… like "what were you doing before your files disappeared, see an internet system and know in a few minutes… Oh, cable bad, power not connected, reset system, you’re connecting to the wrong hotspot…

So, you would think professionals who see these problems and more could help me with an apparently simple problem that, you’d think those with the power to fix it would know… I’m about to embark on a painful experience with the phone company trying to fix an apparently simple problem with MOD. It happened about three times in six years…

MOD carries two audio channels. You know that! They know that. Here is the problem…
I use channel 2 which carries usually carries the English programming. After about ten to 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour, the signal does a “hiccup”. It freezes for a millisecond and goes back to audio channel 1.

They’re going to come. The channels I’m sure will be broadcasting shows either in all Chinese or all English on both channels. They’ll say… what’s the problem. Then It won’t hiccup. The man will get on his mobile phone. But there won’t be a signal so he will step out on the balcony. As he is on the balcony it will do this “hiccup” thing twice. (I’ll set it back to audio channel two).

Tech Junior, who came with the boss saw it happening. Even acknowledged to me that he understood what was happening becomes mute (can’t say dumb anymore) when boss tech comes back into the room. Boss Tech will fiddle around and look away each time the hiccup occurs and decides that there is no problem. He leaves. I make a second call. They comeback again at later date. Do something and the problem goes away.

Before I call the service center, I’m going to a techie friend of mine who fixes computers for a living and ask him to write a clear note explaining exactly what happens. 1. Watching TV using audio channel 2 (second language channel). 2. After some time, the audio channel switches back to Channel 1 (Chinese) all by it self.

I’ll do it this afternoon… Still I don’t really think this note will change my situation. What i described above actually happened. Why didn’t junior speak up. I guess… Junior was only sent there to observe the master. It was not his job to speak up. Great! Train them well…

2

[quote=“Taiwan_Student”]OK… I’m not the brightest bulb. That I know. But I’ve become the “lay tech” of the family and friends who don’t want to be bothered with tech. I can walk into a situation, ask key questions… like "what were you doing before your files disappeared, see an internet system and know in a few minutes… Oh, cable bad, power not connected, reset system, you’re connecting to the wrong hotspot…

So, you would think professionals who see these problems and more could help me with an apparently simple problem that, you’d think those with the power to fix it would know… I’m about to embark on a painful experience with the phone company trying to fix an apparently simple problem with MOD. It happened about three times in six years…

MOD carries two audio channels. You know that! They know that. Here is the problem…
I use channel 2 which carries usually carries the English programming. After about ten to 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour, the signal does a “hiccup”. It freezes for a millisecond and goes back to audio channel 1.

They’re going to come. The channels I’m sure will be broadcasting shows either in all Chinese or all English on both channels. They’ll say… what’s the problem. Then It won’t hiccup. The man will get on his mobile phone. But there won’t be a signal so he will step out on the balcony. As he is on the balcony it will do this “hiccup” thing twice. (I’ll set it back to audio channel two).

Tech Junior, who came with the boss saw it happening. Even acknowledged to me that he understood what was happening becomes mute (can’t say dumb anymore) when boss tech comes back into the room. Boss Tech will fiddle around and look away each time the hiccup occurs and decides that there is no problem. He leaves. I make a second call. They comeback again at later date. Do something and the problem goes away.

Before I call the service center, I’m going to a techie friend of mine who fixes computers for a living and ask him to write a clear note explaining exactly what happens. 1. Watching TV using audio channel 2 (second language channel). 2. After some time, the audio channel switches back to Channel 1 (Chinese) all by it self.

I’ll do it this afternoon… Still I don’t really think this note will change my situation. What i described above actually happened. Why didn’t junior speak up. I guess… Junior was only sent there to observe the master. It was not his job to speak up. Great! Train them well…[/quote]

I had this with K-bro. Connection kept dropping. It took 4 engineers to fix the issue. Each engineer “fixed” a different thing, including switching out the modem. Finally the boss engineer came, did some diagnostics and said the new modem was faulty. Gave me a new, new one, problem sorted. Its this mentality here of “fix anything, then fix something else”. Doctors are the same. Go to a urologist; why bother doing urine and blood tests? Just prescribe the strongest drugs you can.

3

Ok, firstly, you realize these guys are not Engineers, if they were they wouldn’t be on their hands and knees installing MOD boxes in peoples bedrooms. They didn’t design it, and probably have little to no knowledge of what goes on inside, and almost certainly dont know anything about the inner workings or software that had to be designed to make the box.

Consumer devices have bugs. With a bit of luck they get ironed out in the design stage, but, all too often a boss is eager to start earning returns on a product that has in his opinion been in design too long and ships it before it has been properly tested. The bug you are talking about could well be an example of that. Something that doesn’t happen very often, it’s on a secondary channel. There may be other contributing factors, such as your signal strength may be less than the perfect testing conditions they thought were all that were necessary during testing (and Im guessing here) the system gets out of sync and internally the software runs through a re-sync routine, which defaults back to channel one audio.

So how is this handled? If this is common, the tech guys find out about it pretty quickly, send a report back to the company that makes the box and demand its fixed. At which point the boss of the company that tried to make a quick dollar looses big time in shipping and fixing the problem. When you call they will come out and change the box, and problem solved.

Or that was a defective unit, and they replace with a new one, and problem solved.

Sometimes, if they haven’t heard of the problem, which may be the case with you, they come and have a look. After all, how many of their customers are listening in English on channel2 instead of channel 1 Chinese? So they see the problem and report back. There is not much else they can do, at least in the case you describe, until a fix comes from the company that designed the box, either a software update or a new box or a different brand of box.

No need to get upset with these folk, I find they are generally as helpful as they can be and you will get much better results with an understanding attitude than you will rolling your eyes at their perceived inept ability to fix something that probably is way beyond their control.

Edit/ I suppose one thing they might be able to do, if they conclude the problem is caused by a shitty reception is to put a repeater in to increase the signal closer to your home.

4

It’s possible satellite signal weakens, or any signal as said and it resets … I’ve had it on the old box, then the new came and the problem wasn’t there, now I’ve even a newer one … but on how many channels do they offer it, some I don’t even use. For a long time voice/image sync was way out of fase on a news channel, how does that happen?
Yesterday after 13 hours or so being down MOD was up again, this morning they called me to ask if everything was OK now … they explained they had a fire in a server room. I don’t think in the west they’d do that, screw the customer, take his money and give a terrible service. At least that’s what happens in Europe with many phone, cable and internet companies because they contracted third party install/repair companies and call rooms.

5

For whatever it’s worth, one thing I know about Сhunghwa Telecom is that the service people who install your phone, Internet and MOD are not employees of the company. Rather, that has been outsourced, most likely to the lowest bidder who then proceeds to drive wages down as far as possible. That said, my experience with the service people has been mostly positive - at least they’re friendly. Whether or not they’re well-trained or able to devote sufficient time to solving a problem before heading off to the next customer is something I can’t say much about. The pressure on them is to get the job done fast and do the next one to keep costs low.

A part of the problem that forces Сhunghwa Telecom to cut costs to the bone has been the bandwidth auctions for 3G and 4G licenses. This is a bad idea that Taiwan has adopted from the West. It’s touted as being “good for the taxpayers” since it brings in revenue for the government. The downside is that what’s good for the taxpayers is bad for the customers of the telecom companies, since ultimately it’s the customer pays for those licenses.

6

They came today! I made an afternoon call. And they came!!! I expected them no earlier than monday. Well, I got a young service tech this time who spoke some English.
This is actually part three of an on going service call… Last week, I got a "gate way problem after more than a year of good service, they came, he fixed it by giving me a new box. But the problem came back again… Gateway problem means… The box freezes. I reset the system, it goes through its checks… Cable connected “pass”, Gateway… fail… count down, reset… trying again.

Then the young service tech that came today arrived and set up the parameters properly. And it worked for about a couple days. Then… my audio problem started.

Again… yeah… it was working. They just sat there and stared at the TV and there was no sign of it hiccuping. Now, I’m not so sure it if his English is that good, or he doesn’t understand the facts of multichannel . Judge for yourself… Try and follow me while attempt to describe what happened. …

Because the problem that happened ten times today when I tried to watch TV but refused to happen while he was here, I demoed it. I told him that I usually turn to this Channel (22), then I switch on the English Sound like this. Then after a few minutes to an hour it switches back like this. I do nothing.

He asks me if it happens on all channels. I said yes, this one. This happened to be broadcasting in English only at the moment. I tried to tell him that it is not the language. It’s the stream. There are two Channels of audio there… regardless if there are two languages or not. It happens on all channels. I drew a picture on my white board.
He still acted a little fuzzy. Gave a “But Tai Dong”
I turned on the digital TV tuner and tuned to an HD channel. My TV displays the two possible channels . I showed him… If this were tthe MOD box… I want to listen to Channel two. See, but then it switches back to channel one. He took pity on my and gave me a new box. That should fix the problem. He was about to leave and have a consultation with the bosses, but due to it being a holiday weekend and he being such a nice guy… He gave me a new box. Hopefully it will have fixed the problem.
He also gave me his direct cell phone number in case the problem returns.