Tech Support Rant

So, I had to call Bellsouth AT&T DSL support this morning - something I very rarely do. I hate telephones so much that I'd usually rather slog through on my own until I figure it out, no help needed thankyouverymuch, but I was desperate today. Shockingly, it went well. The guy knew his stuff, and I could understand his accent well enough. However, that doesn't change the fact that it was a simple problem that shouldn't have required a support call to fix. I had changed my account password away from the default via web (as they instruct you to do in the intro packet) but didn't have a clue* how to update it on my end. The solution was super simple and would have definitely been covered in the modem manual, but of course Bellsouth AT&T didn't provide one of those, just an shiny welcome guide full of nice fonts and pictures of smiling DSL users**. Personally, I'd rather take a solid, if dull, ink and paper user manual over online databases (rather useless if your DSL isn't working!) or overseas call center workers, but I suppose I'm in the minority..

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*Usually I also prefer to install stuff on my own instead of using handy guided CD-ROMs, but this was one computer topic that I will own to complete ignorance of. At Christmas I tried to 'help' my uncle fix his wireless network and made a complete mess of it.

**One photo shows a family of three - one of which is a child - all gathered in the living room, each working at their own laptop. The family that computes together stays together, I suppose.