Tech Support Told Her To Break the PC

[Shahrad]

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Welcome back to Secret Shopper Part 3, where we call up tech support to see if we can get some help “fixing” our computers. Some knocked it out of the park! Some didn’t…

 

Check out where we shopped!

 

Dell: https://lmg.gg/biUia

CyberPowerPC: https://lmg.gg/vbaVv

HP: https://lmg.gg/yaMa5

iBUYPOWER: https://lmg.gg/9bTM8

MAINGEAR: https://lmg.gg/BnQRA

NZXT: https://lmg.gg/ZgAhD

OriginPC: https://lmg.gg/cwz5d

Starforge Systems: https://lmg.gg/1HwMI

 

Purchases made through some store links may provide some compensation to Linus Media Group.

[Lurick]

Ah, so you spent so long getting us the video because you were waiting on hold

 

 

Overall some of that was super frustrating to watch but overall I'm surprised with a few of the support reps!

[Uttamattamakin]

At some point the official tech support script is going to have to be "Are you a member or employee of the  Linus Media group?"   Having bought from HP and similar that sounds about like what they do.  They seem to operate on the idea that the user got a working system that they then broke by downloading something stupid.   

 

As for why not use post codes.  Most people, including young people one would assume are more savy have no idea how any of this works.  They would not know it's a code, and wouldn't understand that well enough to describe it usefully.  This is borne of having to give tech support to my students in college who would not be able to figure out their email, how to upload a file, or know what makes a chromebook different from most other computers, what CPU their macbook has etc.   A lot of tech support time could be saved if they just RMA'd any device that didn't work after a power cycle. 

[Soukamoshirenai]

god heavens, props to NZXT.

[Cavalry Canuck]

So, Starforge was decent for tech support? Shame about their logo though, not very child-friendly.

[Silent Node]

Fun video, some of them did a lot better than I would have expected.

I spent the whole thing wondering what thrift store (?) you filmed it in. 

[swimtome]

 

21 hours ago, Shahrad said:

Tech Support told Her to Break it

I don’t consider  myself the “angry at clickbait titles” crowd, but I legitimately am not sure what the title is referencing…. 
 

I assume on second pass it’s the GPU unscrewing/almost breaking?  If so then imho that’s really pushing it. 
 

I expected an agent telling Shea to break something specific so the agent could RMA it easier or something along those lines…

 

 

That said I appreciate making it 'even' with calling iBP about the RAM also.  (Linus wouldve given A+++ if they then said 'Hey we helped you get to Windows how is it not booting')

[silentdragon95]

2 hours ago, swimtome said:

I don’t consider  myself the “angry at clickbait titles” crowd, but I legitimately am not sure what the title is referencing…. 

Yeah, the title is dumb. At the very least they should have included "Secret Shopper 3 Part 3" in the title, like they did with parts 1 and 2. Nothing is more annoying than trying to find the next part in a series of videos when every video has an unrelated clickbait title.

[Uttamattamakin]

5 hours ago, silentdragon95 said:

Yeah, the title is dumb. At the very least they should have included "Secret Shopper 3 Part 3" in the title, like they did with parts 1 and 2. Nothing is more annoying than trying to find the next part in a series of videos when every video has an unrelated clickbait title.

It's dumb but it is a dumbness born of our behavior.   Another youtuber who makes long series about WWII Battles stated that the series gets less and less views as time goes on.  He names the videos in series as you say.   He has a strong base of Patreon support but still adsense matters and ... you know they want people to watch.  

[Agall]

5 hours ago, silentdragon95 said:

Yeah, the title is dumb. At the very least they should have included "Secret Shopper 3 Part 3" in the title, like they did with parts 1 and 2. Nothing is more annoying than trying to find the next part in a series of videos when every video has an unrelated clickbait title.

There's plenty of videos I end up watching because of Autoplay that I wouldn't have clicked on because of the clickbait title. I don't know how many views on LTT videos are new viewers, but I imagine they've reached a peak by now and potentially losing your long term viewers over cringey titles might not be worth the clickbait.

[MarkPol88]

38 minutes ago, Agall said:

but I imagine they've reached a peak by now and potentially losing your long term viewers over cringey titles might not be worth the clickbait.

Believe it or not - LMG "know them numbers". If "clickbaity" and "cringy" titles stop working for them, they will dump them almost instantly.

[Agall]

1 minute ago, MarkPol88 said:

Believe it or not - LMG "know them numbers". If "clickbaity" and "cringy" titles stop working for them, they will dump them almost instantly.

They spent a long time releasing so many uncorrected factual errors in their videos that it took GN making a video for them to stop and try to fix it. Historically, not an accurate assumption in my opinion.

[Middcore]

13 minutes ago, Agall said:

They spent a long time releasing so many uncorrected factual errors in their videos that it took GN making a video for them to stop and try to fix it. Historically, not an accurate assumption in my opinion.

It doesn't make any sense to argue that if they made factual errors in videos they don't know what makes videos perform well. The two things have nothing to do with each other, really.

[Agall]

18 minutes ago, Middcore said:

It doesn't make any sense to argue that if they made factual errors in videos they don't know what makes videos perform well. The two things have nothing to do with each other, really.

They're both decisions that can shed light on the inner workings of an organization. I don't see any particular reason they wouldn't include "$1500 PC Secret Shopper 3 Part x" like they did in part 1 or 2 unless they either made a mistake or intentionally left it out to try to get more clicks on what would likely otherwise be a less popular video than parts 1 or 2.

 

 

So its either a mistake and they forgot to include that in the title, or they're experimenting or simply trying to increase view counts by not having "Part 3" in the title (which would likely drive people away who didn't fully watch parts 1 and 2).

[MarkPol88]

5 minutes ago, Agall said:

unless they either made a mistake or intentionally left it out to try to get more clicks on what would likely otherwise be a less popular video than parts 1 or 2.

And you probably answered yourself - they changed titles of the released videos many times in the past, after the initial wave of views.

 

As I said earlier: "Would I believe in everything that LMG says in their videos as facts?" No, and I did not need self imposed tech jesus to tell me that. I knew that long time before he needed to put that of his chest.

Would I believe that LMG knows what works at the algorithm at the moment? Of course not, Linus himself admits that they do not know why some videos perform better than others.

But would I believe that they know a thing or two about YouTube with 15+ million subscribers, after they almost regained all that was lost to that drama few month ago? Yes, yes i would.

[Needfuldoer]

Bread!

 

[wanderingfool2]

These are some of the few videos I am still willing to watch...and honestly it's pretty bad how inconsistent LTT is in regards to general fairness to brands.

 

I get that they have this as tech support, but it should be overall customer support; and Starforge should be docked for double charging on the taxes.

 

Aside from that, no mention of how long it took from the email to getting a phone call or how that process went.  If LMG is going to judge based on time spent on hold, then there needs to be at least disclosures on things like Starforge in terms the general process itself.

 

Like, when they sent the email how long did it take to get a response.  Was there multiple emails sent before the call was scheduled, what times were available to be scheduled.  As an example, I'd rather wait 50 minutes on hold than have to email customer service, wait for the email to come back, schedule a call with them and then actually be there for the call.

 

Why wasn't the RMA done, and then attempt the RAM.  Even with that said, the time listed was just the removal of the part without the replacement of it.  It's removing the steps of trying to explain how to reinstall it.

 

Dell, it wasn't clear...but it seemed the automated system didn't get the service code.  Having dealt with a Dell before if you get the service code right their call tree automatically forwarded me to the correct department.  I am assuming the live person they got was because the system didn't get it correct or couldn't find it so they put it to a human to best identify which tier they are put on.

[starsmine]

12 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

These are some of the few videos I am still willing to watch...and honestly it's pretty bad how inconsistent LTT is in regards to general fairness to brands.

 

I get that they have this as tech support, but it should be overall customer support; and Starforge should be docked for double charging on the taxes.

 

Aside from that, no mention of how long it took from the email to getting a phone call or how that process went.  If LMG is going to judge based on time spent on hold, then there needs to be at least disclosures on things like Starforge in terms the general process itself.

 

Like, when they sent the email how long did it take to get a response.  Was there multiple emails sent before the call was scheduled, what times were available to be scheduled.  As an example, I'd rather wait 50 minutes on hold than have to email customer service, wait for the email to come back, schedule a call with them and then actually be there for the call.

 

Why wasn't the RMA done, and then attempt the RAM.  Even with that said, the time listed was just the removal of the part without the replacement of it.  It's removing the steps of trying to explain how to reinstall it.

 

Dell, it wasn't clear...but it seemed the automated system didn't get the service code.  Having dealt with a Dell before if you get the service code right their call tree automatically forwarded me to the correct department.  I am assuming the live person they got was because the system didn't get it correct or couldn't find it so they put it to a human to best identify which tier they are put on.

Its a fault of customs that has been rectified and payed back and is NOT indicative of future issues for Canadians. Its a literal nonissue for the majority of the audience. Customer service should be rated on how a solution was come to, not how a problem happened. Docking customer service for that is unhinged.

Dell can still find a better solution, AI voice recognition (or hell even person-to-person) with a long string of numbers like a serial number is a shit solution over the phone. 

[wanderingfool2]

35 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Its a fault of customs that has been rectified and payed back and is NOT indicative of future issues for Canadians. Its a literal nonissue for the majority of the audience. Customer service should be rated on how a solution was come to, not how a problem happened. Docking customer service for that is unhinged.

No, because shipping a PC and not doing things correctly that causes an issue is a customer service issue.  It's reasonable to judge a company for faulty billing; and it doesn't matter if it was fixed eventually...the fact is that it was still charged.  Adding 10% to the cost of the system by mistake is not a trivial amount either when the customer was specifying the need to remain within budget.  Adding that extra 10% (which if charged in US would add an extra 2.5% as well for most people) can create budgetary issues for some people.

 

Customer service isn't about how they solve an issue, it's about everything that also leads up to it...which includes the chances of events happening.

 

The whole double charging for the taxes IS 100% Starforge's responsibility and should count towards it because guess what; it was within their control...otherwise the other companies would have had the same issue; which they didn't.  As a note as well, it was Starforge who would have charged for that, so yea it's on them 100%; doesn't matter that they used a 3rd party system that messed up.

 

If you want an analogy, who has better customer service; a store that sells products where 50% of people end up needing to call in for support or one that only has a 1% defect rate (but takes twice the time to resolve an issue).  Customer service is very much about trying to prevent the calls in the first place.

 

50 minutes ago, starsmine said:

Dell can still find a better solution, AI voice recognition (or hell even person-to-person) with a long string of numbers like a serial number is a shit solution over the phone. 

You can use the keypad on your phone.  I suspect as well the call quality might not have been the best on the LTT end as well given how many different times with different calls they got disconnected on as well.

[starsmine]

9 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

No, because shipping a PC and not doing things correctly that causes an issue is a customer service issue.  It's reasonable to judge a company for faulty billing; and it doesn't matter if it was fixed eventually...the fact is that it was still charged.  Adding 10% to the cost of the system by mistake is not a trivial amount either when the customer was specifying the need to remain within budget.  Adding that extra 10% (which if charged in US would add an extra 2.5% as well for most people) can create budgetary issues for some people.

 

Customer service isn't about how they solve an issue, it's about everything that also leads up to it...which includes the chances of events happening.

 

The whole double charging for the taxes IS 100% Starforge's responsibility and should count towards it because guess what; it was within their control...otherwise the other companies would have had the same issue; which they didn't.  As a note as well, it was Starforge who would have charged for that, so yea it's on them 100%; doesn't matter that they used a 3rd party system that messed up.

 

If you want an analogy, who has better customer service; a store that sells products where 50% of people end up needing to call in for support or one that only has a 1% defect rate (but takes twice the time to resolve an issue).  Customer service is very much about trying to prevent the calls in the first place.

 

You can use the keypad on your phone.  I suspect as well the call quality might not have been the best on the LTT end as well given how many different times with different calls they got disconnected on as well.

Im not saying its trivial, im saying the mistake isn't as egregious as you keep arguing when that's on customs, not on customer service.  Again, its a customs issue, international shipping requires a lot of hands. 

Starforge's page goes, ok UPS or DHL or whoever told us it cost this much, so that's what we put up. And then blaming starforge for not automatically catching the deviation from expected is a bit much when its not something they (or apparently you the way you keep arguing about this) has run into. Stop bitching about this in this thread and the last one when you dont know how international shipping works. The sender or the receiver pays customs. which is 10%. If Canada goes, "I don't know if the sender paid, so to make sure ill charge the receiver" it doubles customs, and that double charge gets rolled into one line on the invoice. 

Customer service is 100% siloed in how to solve an issue. NOT what leads up to it. Yes, the issue never should have happened, but it did, and now customer service comes in to rectify it. They are not involved before hand. Your analogy doesn't apply. I dont know which store has better customer service, for all I know the store with 50% of customers calling in could have better CS if they more consistently rectify the situation in a satisfactory manor.

The keypad on the phone will not do letters. well it can, but it cant in this use. 
b1500f16 wont work with the touch pad. you can convert b to a number but going the other way cant be done without disambiguation. 
 

[wanderingfool2]

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

Im not saying its trivial, im saying the mistake isn't as egregious as you keep arguing when that's on customs, not on customer service.  Again, its a customs issue, international shipping requires a lot of hands. 

If you can't ship things internationally properly then don't offer it as a service.  You are acting like Starforge should be given a free pass because it's "customs".

 

Yet, based on the video and the email sent, Starforge's software (likely a 3rd party software) is the one that someone likely keyed in wrong.

 

Notice how the email explaining all that is from Customer Support.

 

It's like trying to give GM a pass for the bolt fires because "it's LG Chems' mistake".

 

The simple fact is, the email implies it wasn't an isolated case, and yes, OVERCHARGING  by like 10% IS an egregious error.

 

2 hours ago, starsmine said:

Customer service is 100% siloed in how to solve an issue. NOT what leads up to it. Yes, the issue never should have happened, but it did, and now customer service comes in to rectify it. They are not involved before hand. Your analogy doesn't apply. I dont know which store has better customer service, for all I know the store with 50% of customers calling in could have better CS if they more consistently rectify the situation in a satisfactory manor.

Go ahead and ask anyone, who has the better service.  The store that gets things right 99 out of 100, but the few times they mess up it takes a while to resolve, or the store that always messes up every other time but is twice as quick at fixing it.

 

Over charging the customer IS part of customer service and quite frankly when they were focused on not going over budget YES overcharging even with a refund IS very egregious; as from what they have at least shown so far implies they were charged more than what was shown at checkout.