TQA

Further to this post, dated 20 Apr. 2020, in which we described how these incompetents expected one of our readers to wait on the phone for more than an hour if he wanted help that might enable him to start viewing things on Foxtel again, explaining that the Coronavirus had left them short of staff!!!!!!!! our reader reports further that on 9 Apr. 2o20, i.e. 20 days later, he received a text from Foxtel complaining that they hadn’t received a payment which was due on 31 Mar. 2020, when, by now, he hadn’t been able access anything on Foxtel for nearly a month, but adding, “Pleased be advised that if you need to call us we are experiencing longer than normal wait times currently.” STILL???!!! So it would seem reasonable to expect that nothing has changed in nearly 3 weeks! And another week has now gone by, without him making any further attempts to get their help – he says that he’s got better things to do with his time.

But wait! In the middle of typing this, we got a phone call from 0490 240 000 – probably Foxtel – which we missed accepting by just a couple of seconds, and when we rang straight back we were told, “We are unable to take your call at present!”

Presumably things will eventually be sorted out for our reader and others and they will be viewing things on Foxtel again, even if it takes 6 months – we can all live without Foxtel.

But what makes us burst out laughing is they have been claiming recently that Foxtel would be a good way to connect to the NBN??????!!!!!!!!

Readers, wouldn’t you agree that anyone who thinks this might be the case must be stark raving mad!

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Something we’ve come across recently – a poor Doctor trying to deal with them!

One wonders how he fell into the hands of these incompetents, who so obviously don’t know and don’t care!

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We continue to be flabbergasted with the fact that improvements in technology are, almost daily, making it easier and easier to deal with people and organisations, while, at the same time, it seems to be getting harder and harder!

Longtime users report that it’s now definitely more difficult to deal with Foxtel than it was 5 years ago!!!???

One of our readers reports that, as at midday on Fri. 20 Mar. 2020, if you want to speak to a Foxtel person on the phone about an urgent problem,  your best option is to hang on for over an hour!!!???

And guess who or what they blame for this? – the coronavirus, of course? What low grade people Foxtel people seem to be.

What’s wrong with providing an ordinary email address people can use to get help?

Is that the only way to get help from Foxtel at present? – to hang on on the phone for over an hour? It seems like it.

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Anyone who works in technology for a while develops areas with which they’re completely familiar, they never need any help and information from others while working in these area. But everyone, and we mean everyone, it doesn’t matter how experienced they are, needs help and information from time to time, on matters that are outside the areas with which they are completely familiar.

We ourselves, have been working in technology for at least 25 years, and yet, probably, we could easily come up with 25 matters on which we need help and information right now, and not getting this help and information is holding us back, both in our work and personal lives, limiting our success. Not to mention the progress we’re missing out on we don’t even know about.

(In all probability, we could research out the help and information we need ourselves, but that would take time which we haven’t got.)

And, something that fascinates us is that, when that happens, it’s incredibly unlikely that there isn’t someone somewhere in the world, (and with modern technology, they CAN be anywhere in the whole world world,) who can provide the help and information we need “off the top of their heads,” so to speak, because they’re about areas with which they’re completely familiar.

So the hunt is on for such people.

Of course, we would expect to pay for such help and information – but it would be worth it in terms of the time it saved us.

It’s a typical chicken and egg, which comes first, situation. There need to be people who find it worthwhile to provide help and information – it may be something that they do only, say, 20% of their day, but it supplements their income. And people need to know of the existence of such people, and how to contact them.

(One of the things we find interesting, almost bizarre, is that we’ve been having our websites and blogs hosted by Tiger Technologies for at least 12 years, after we were recommended to them by one of our technology advisers – we only know about them as hosting organisations, we’ve never felt the need to consider any other organisation. And so often, when we’ve needed help and information, even on matters that we didn’t necessarily expect would be within their areas of expertise, we’ve emailed their support, and they have been SO helpful. Recently we got more help from one of their responses, which we were able to apply within 2 or 3 minutes, than we had got in 25 minutes from one of the consultants at an Apple Genius Bar.)

For instance, here’s a problem we need help on – simple, but annoying.

If someone we email from time to time gets a new email address, and the old one stops working, how do we delete the old one? We’ve tried all different things, but no matter what we do, when we go to send them an email, both email addresses come up, and we forget which is the old one, and which is the new one – so, of course, we end up sending the email to both, but there must be a better way than this.

We’d be grateful to hear from someone who could help us with this, for a reasonable fee. And if anyone was able to help us with this, we publicise them at no cost, and so on and so on.

To make a comment, ask a question, or to join our mailing lists, email us at info@questionsmisc.info.

If you have a technology question, send it to us, using this email address – info@questionsmisc.info.

We may be able to help you, or, far more likely, we may be able to direct you to organisations who have people who can provide high quality help and information. We are constantly searching for such organisations who may be able to provide help for our readers and ourselves – we often still need high quality help and information ourselves!

To us the organisations that are most likely to have such people are those that have chat facilities – use this link to go to a list we have started putting together of such organisations.

It fascinates us – with each area of technology, often we may only need 2 or 3 people to help us, and, with modern technology, they can be anywhere in the whole wide world, yet finding people who are truly helpful can often seem SO difficult.

By the way, it’s guaranteed that, under no circumstances will your identity be disclosed or that you will be expected to pay a cent for any help WE provide, although those to whom we refer you may have fees and charges.

Use this link to go to post 2, dated 7 Feb. 2020.

Use this link to go to post 1, dated 8 Jan. 2020.

Use this link to go to post 1, dated 4 Jun. 2018.

Use this link to go to post 2, dated 22 Jan. 2020.

As we’ve often reported, we read once – “What technology enables, happens.”

What technology enables is for there to be an ordinary email address, just one for the whole world, which people can use when, in dealing with Apple, they need help or information on Apple generally, or any of it’s products, and when they use it to send an email, firstly, they get a email by return, acknowledging the exact email that’s been sent, – not an automated response acknowledging “an email,” and, secondly, that they get, in due course, (there’s seldom any real urgency,) what we like to describe as the “best information article in the whole wide world,” that provides a precise response to their email, not simply advice that they need to trawl through acres and acres of stuff in various locations scattered over the internet, to get an answer to their question, or, as an alternative, a suggestion as to another email address which might enable them to get the best possible outcome.

So why is this not happening? – it’s got us completely and utterly mystified!

(Perhaps our readers know of such an address or addresses already in existence – if so, we would be so grateful if they could provide us with their details, to help us, when we need help, which we could also share with our other readers.)

Is there no demand for such an ordinary email address? To us, that’s incredibly unlikely!

Doesn’t Apple realise that there’s a demand for such an ordinary email address? Again, to us, that’s incredibly unlikely!

Are there not enough people in the whole wide world, when it doesn’t matter where they are, who are capable of providing high quality answers? Again, to us, that’s incredibly unlikely!

Is Apple not prepared to pay people to provide high quality answers? To us, this is the most likely answer – they think they can be successful enough without being up for the expense involved in having people to provide answers? Our answer to this is – time will tell! In relation to this, we have become aware of people that believe that Apple’s best days are well and truly behind them. To us, they wouldn’t have to pay for people to answer questions, just pay people to locate the best people in the whole wide world to answer questions, and that paying people to do this, would, for Apple, be well and truly worthwhile. To the extent that they provide any help and information at all, everything is about making things easier and cheaper for Apple, not for those seeking help and information.

We, ourselves, often feel that not getting a good solution to a problem we’ve come up against in our dealing with Apple is holding us back in our technology experience, and we’re sure we’re not alone, and, if in those circumstances, we always knew of  good way to get a solution, we would be in the sort of world we dream of.

What’s needed to bring about the world we dream of, if Apple is not going bring it about, is incredibly simple – it’s that there are people who earn a living by, (1) providing high quality responses to requests for help and information on technology matters, (or any other matters for that matter,) or, (2) where they can’t provide them, details on other people who perhaps can. Anyone can do it, and they can be anywhere in the world.

We’re spending more and more time searching for such people. If any any of our readers need help or information, email us at info@questionsmisc.info – we may already be able to refer you to someone who can provide the help and information you need, ideally someone who’s helped us, and our referral won’t cost you a cent.

In our previous posts we’ve raved on about the extent to which we think Apple support is atrocious. But we’ve recently made a discovery that, as far as we’re concerned, changes everything. And that is that Apple has a chat facility – in just a few minutes we can be chatting with an Apple person, presumably an Apple expert! If you click on this link, you are taken to 8 simple steps, which, if you take them, you are ready to start a chat within 4 or 5 minutes.

(Of course, Apple COULD make this even easier. If you click on this link, you are taken to a website which has the chat facility on it’s home page. Such a luxury! – when you need help or information, you can start typing yourself immediately, and, on the 3 or 4 occasions when we’ve done this with this chat facility someone has starting typing things back within 3 or 4 minutes. And, with this chat facility, within 3 or 4 minutes of the chat concluding, you get an email providing a transcript of the chat which includes links that are ready to use – we’re yet to find out whether this happens with Apple chats.)

Admittedly, we’ve only had one Apple chat so far, but with this once, the outcome was highly satisfactory. As we have more Apple chats, we’ll know more – and we’d love to hear from readers how they’ve got on.

Of course, what’s best is if, when we need help and information, we can email our requests off, and get responses that provide that help and information precisely, but, it seems to us that being able to engage in chats is by far the next best thing.

We’re always talking about something we read once – that, “Whatever technology enables, happens.” And one of the things technology enables is for there to be people who earn a living by providing responses to requests for help and information, about anything, and when they themselves, don’t know answers, they can engage in chats – in other words paying people to do the chatting for us will be an alternative to us engaging in chatting ourselves.

In relation to this, it would appear to be madness for people to be using the consultants at Apple Genius bars when they can engage in chatting. Talking to people at Apple Genius bars involves making appointments, which isn’t always easy, travelling to and from the Apple stores, waiting around if the consultants are running late, dealing with consultants can lack courtesy and who often don’t seem to know what they’re talking about, and never ending up with anything in writing. Yet we’ve heard that, just with the Castle Hill genius bar, 400 people a day do it.

We’ve recently come across an organisation with a website that incorporates a chat facility enabling us to chat readily with one of it’s information technologyconsultants – www.itstrategic.com.au. If you click on it’s website, this appears on it’s home page,

enabling you to start chatting as soon as a consultant is available. So far we’ve found that, on the two occasions in which we’ve had a chat, a consultant became available within 5 minutes.

In our second chat, when we enquired as to the cost of chatting, we were provided with this link – https://itstrategic.com.au/s/IT-Strategic-Services-Products-Rates.pdf – which took us to at least 12 pages of stuff, which included the information that their basic hourly rate is $180, and that they have an ordinary email address – enquire@itstrategic.com.au.

One interesting aspect of dealing with IT Strategic, which we’ve not come across before, is that, within a few minutes of concluding a chat with them, you receive an email setting out the chat’s details, and including links. Shown below is what we received in relation to our second chat. (It would be so great if this happened when you had chats with Apple!)

Chatting obviously has it’s pros and cons. We’re still thinking about how much we’ll use IT Strategic’s chat facilities, and the chat facilities of any other organisations we come across.

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