Why?

I'll start off my with my question so that I don't forget to ask it. Why do Lindens do this?
I had opened a support ticket because the mainland sim I live on was lagging badly. Sim FPS was dropping down into the 20s every 30 seconds or so and it had been going on for days. I could not even walk across my parcel without getting stuck and/or rubber-banding. My ticket was being ignored so I asked one of my neighbors to open a ticket too. (squeaky wheel). He also did a live chat. A Linden came right out to the sim, but he insisited to us that there was no lag. He did acknowledge that the Sim FPS was dropping but he said that was normal sim behavior. Now I don't walk around staring at the lag meter or the stats window, but I know that in a region that has just 1 or 2 avatars in it this is not normal sim behavior. His suggestion to us was... yes you guessed it... clear your cache and re-boot your modem. He also said he would re-start the sim which I think was just his way of getting rid of us.
So this morning I got an email saying my ticket was closed and I fully expected it to have no more info in it other than "resolution given". Well it turns out there was a message there from a different Linden. Apparently someone in the sim had an entire house on temp-rez and this is what was causing the repeated FPS dips. I can't believe I didn't think of that myself. How many threads have I read here about tep-rezzers? (a lot)
But more importantly... why didn't the first Linden think of it? I don't think he is new... I have seen his name around. Pffft.

Eli, I know you're frustrated, but most Lindens we're dealing with are just paid tech support people. Some are interested enough to hunt for solutions, like the one who answered your ticket, some just want to get it over with. I worked for tech support myself, about a year, and I can say from personal experience that the ones who really want to get to the bottom of a problem are a tiny, tiny percentage of the whole staff.

That said, yay! They found the problem!

I dunno. Why is it when I call my bank there are times when I get a well spoken individual with a snippy attitude that can't solve my problem worth bunk then other times get someone with a funny accent that knows my account like the back of his/her hand and and takes care of my problem like there's no tomorrow? (^_^)

Regular customer service woes to me. (^_^)y

Well, they're just people so they make mistakes or forget stuff sometimes. If he come out there and looked at it and rebooted the sim that's a pretty good result.

Personally I get frustrated when I'm faced with someone who refuses to do anything at all. That's a pretty common result for complaints about griefing for example.

The Lindens are well known for spotty customer support. If even a large customer like Desmond gets inconsistent customer service, what do you expect happens to little folks like us?

Sometimes you are in luck and get good, fast service and sometimes you encounter someone who just does not care and gives you a brief brush-off.

There are a couple of contributing factors. First, customer service is expensive. Second, LL is chasing after the corporate/educational market while disregarding the consumer market. Third, as long as there is no serious competitor, good customer service is just not that important to retain customers.

It's a bit like in the mobile phone industry: Bad customer service is sort of what you have to be prepared for. Always expect the worst, then quite often you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Why is the quality of customer service and tech support often variable.....?

I'm guessing you know the answer and are just venting your spleen, which is part of what these forums are about.

People are just people. They have good days and bad days.. some are motivated, some aren't, some are able and some are less able.

In my experience though, the way people treat you and how much they care is as dependant on your attitude as theirs.

I'm not saying there was anything wrong with yours.. just that it's always a factor,

I'm pretty sure however that thinking of anyone as "just" paid tech support is probably the first step on the road to frustration and terrible service.

Yes you are correct... this was a bit of a spleen vent.
And yes I was was very nice to the Linden. I'm not one of those crabby complainers.

I gotta confess though, lately the support team has been beyond excellent.

I'm a critic where criticism is due, but I've had nothing but good experiences with customer support for a good long time now.

It is a shame that Eli had the experience he did; I'm guessing that support staff guy was just kinda new. Temp on rez is the very first thing you look for when you see region FPS taking a regular, repeated, every coupla minutes hit like that.

Were I to call for help, I get whomever is on duty just like everyone else so I guess it's kind of a crapshoot for all of us. You get who you get. My guess is that the person you talked to will learn quickly, though.

because. =p

Your first Linden might've alerted the second Linden. Impossible to know, but your end result was good, so what's not to like?

Indeed, it's important to realise that not all Lindens are the same, or are similarly equipped to deal with all issues. Some Lindens are more "people" Lindens; and while they do understand how SL works, there is a limit to their technical knowledge and abilities beyond which they cannot help. Others are more technical and deal less with people up front unless required to by the first category.

It's possible Linden 1 was in the first group and contacted Linden 2 to assist you.

Be glad they fixed your problem! I had the same thing over a year ago - a neighbor temp rezzing multiple buildings, and I opened a support ticket and alerted them that I suspected the temp rez buildings as the problem, but when the Linden came out, they said it was my Butterflies, returned them to me and closed the ticket! The cyclic lag continued and they would not do anything more. Eventually, the neighbor and the problem went away...

i have to agree


.

i have rarely asked for support, but every time i have i have received prompt, outstanding service with satisfactory results. LL has always been very good to me.

As a matter of interest, do we know if all support staff are actually in-house employed Lindens? I've wondered about that lately.

I sometimes get the impression, from reading people's varying experiences of good versus just plain disinterested responses to their raised tickets, that maybe some of these are dealt with by outsourced staff.

--
Aes

I think it was outsourced.

Just an update to this story... when I got home last night I logged in at my SL home and found the sim to be just as laggy as it had been the previous day. I took a lag-filled flight around the sim and did not notice any houses that seemed to be missing so I put 2 and 2 togther and decided that whomever had the temp-rezz house discovered it had gone missing and just re-rezzed it. I reopened my support ticket and updated it with this info and then I imediatley went to live chat. I got the same Linden in live chat that had come out to the sim the previous day and tried to tell me there was no problem with the region. I asked him to take a look at the ticket and he did and then told me that my ticket had already been escalated to Consierge and he would transfer me to someone over there. I very quickly was connected to a Linden in that department and he informed me that he had just been out to the region and deleted the house again. I checked and yes the region was back to normal.
So after I got out of live chat I started wondering... Did they really just delete that person's house and not contact them and explain why? If that is so then I'm not surprised that they re-rezzed it. It will be interesting to see if the house is back again when I get home tonight.

pretty sure they would send notice ?

btw: anyone know if there's an official policy on temp rezzing houses, or has the sim come to a halt first ?



.

So sorry have to ask such a stupid question. What is 'temp rezzing'?

Quote from the wiki:

Objects set to "temporary on rez" (temp-on-rez) automatically die without triggering any events after a short time and do not count against the prim allotment for the land parcel beneath them. Otherwise, they're the same as an ordinary prim: visible to all, able to be scripted, interacted with, etc. Temp-on-rez objects do not make assets when they are deleted, so the deletion events are not a load on the asset server.

An object's temporary on rez property can be set with llSetPrimitiveParams, or by checking the "Temporary" checkbox in the building editor in the SL client. llGetPrimitiveParams can be used to determine if an object has been set to temporary on rez.

Source: http://rpgstats.com/wiki/index.php?title=TemporaryOnRez