March 23, 2010

Tech Non-Support

Last week, I noticed that my university email account was prompting me to come up with a new password.

"7 days until your password expires. Renew now?"

I watched the days tick away until it was down to one. I figured I had better get to it. Unfortunately, I was too late.

I logged onto the university website and found a tech support number for password lockout and called it. I was in the middle of helping Big I with homework and trying to get Lil C to quit whining. I was also making dinner and figured I had about 30 minutes of time before ju-jutsu to get some grading done.

I should have known better.

I described the problem to the tech support guy and he asked me to spell the name of the university where I work. I was pretty sure I had spoken clearly. I was pretty sure that if you're working as tech support for the university, then you should probably be able to spell it too.

I trudged on with the process, even after he put me on hold about 40 times. Sometimes he would have me on hold and only come back to tell me he needed to put me on hold for another two minutes. I wanted to ask him to just keep me on hold until he knew some actual information or something but I held my tongue. I figured my ordeal would soon be over.

Once again, I should have known better.

After 45 minutes of confirming my name, spelling the university name and being put on hold multiple times, the tech support guy says, "Ok, your new password has been emailed to you. You should be all set."

"Um, yeah, well there's just one little problem. . ." I said.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Which email did you send it to?" I asked him, knowing full well he only had one email address for me, the one I'm locked out of.

He read back the email address to me and I laughed.

"Yeah, you see, that's the email that I'm locked out of so it's all fine and good that you emailed me my new password, but I still can't log in to get it."

"Oh," he said. "I'm going to need to escalate this to a level 2. They'll call you."

At that point, my head almost exploded.

I went to ju-jutsu, returned hours later and I still didn't have a call.

I called a number I recognized from the actual university and got a familiar voice on the phone. Exactly two minutes later, my password was reset and I was back in my email. I learned my lesson. Local is better.