Tech support remotely delete stuff.

[bloodbob]

Yeah my software vendor tech support using remote admin software "so they can see what I'm doing" goes off and start deletes shit from the registry without saying a word.

So he can do a fresh install. At the same time he breaks all stuff so he run the real uninstaller. I wanted to upgrade specifical SO I COULD RETAIN MY SETTINGS which are now nuked by the level one tech support.

Seriously should level one tech support delete files or registry settings without you asking first?

Unforunatly this was a production server too so he managed to reboot it by some of his action too then we decided its best done after hours. His solution was basicly to try reinstalling it lots and then making reinstalling from the orginal media ( and I had a broke cd drive of course ) funnily enough didn't work. In the end he finished his shift so we are able to resume it the next day at 11am. However I've since identified the problem if I had hours of time to waste I would have left it broken so I could my monies worth of service.

 

[Albuquerque]

When I co-managed the 1st and 2nd level helpdesks for my particular campus, we did not allow anyone on the 1st level helpdesk to perform any registry functions. 2nd level also was not allowed to whack at registry entries unless the machine was physically in their grasp.

This was in response to much earlier situations not dissimilar to your own -- an overzealous n00b tech would start nuking registry entries in an attempt to fix something, and ultimately make it worse than it really was.

The sad thing is, we had 1st level techs that were more than competent to make take those kinds of actions without being stupid. Unfortunately, in order to make it "fair" we needed to apply the rule to everyone on the 1st level, which knocked down our first-call-closure volume for those techs who could have realistically solved the problem without escalation.

 

[hoom]

Ugh, I actually had a customer call me after having been told he needed to format his HDD & reinstall Windows by a level 1.

Needless to say, the customer had not made backups of all those priceless wedding/baby photos & was not impressed

 

[Maintank]

He reminds me of this situation we had at a former employer. We had a security computer that needed to be upgraded. It ran our camera's and stored the camera shots for x amount of months.
Anyways the tech they sent out was a real doozy. This guy first blewup the server we setup for him. Then managed to do it again for good measure. ON the 3rd attempt he wanted admin rights to our domain. We didnt think so and told him to figure it out. We granted him admin rights on the local box. After 2 weeks of this guy coming out and not knowing what the f**k he was doing and us complaining they finally sent somebody else out. It truely was an amazing display of idiocy. The bottom line is in this industry the quality of work can vary greatly between people.