Tips for PC support for college students
Readers beware! What follows is a cautionary tale. It involves you, your child, their higher education and the central role the proper care and feeding of their PC play in all of this.
It is my sincere hope that what I learned the hard way will enable you to ask the right questions so you and your family can avoid a lot of time and money lost, stress and anguish. And while nobody is likely to say, “I got accepted into Harvard, but am not going because they have lousy IT support for student PCs,” the reality is that forewarned is forearmed.
Have you had problems getting technical support? Share your story in our forum.
Before your prodigy goes far from home, or moves into a dorm around the corner, you should know that what happened to me and my son, a freshman at the University of Florida (Go Gators!), can and likely will happen to you during your child’s college years. You absolutely need to know, at a basic level, what to do, who to question, what to ask, and how to escalate your child’s computer problems.
Here’s why:
* At the risk of demonstrating a keen grasp of the obvious, on today’s campuses, being without a PC for a nanosecond should be grounds for justifiable homicide. Our kids not only live in the moment and in the ether with their friends (FYI, if you don’t know what Facebook is and how it works you’d best find out), but much of their curricula, including classes, is done online. Plus, virtually all communication – with professors, TA’s, etc. – is most efficiently and effectively done via e-mail. To be successful in college, from a technology perspective, students need always-on, all-ways/always available connectivity and processing power.
* Like it or not, once the “geek down the hall” can’t fix it when they have a chance, and the school’s IT support shop can’t give your child an appointment for two days in the middle of midterms, the next call – before the call to Microsoft, or to the vendor of their PC – will be to you.
* You are mom or dad. And despite being the village idiot for most of their teen years, you actually are expected to be experts on just about everything. If you are reading this page, you (like me) are an IT professional. This means you are either smart enough to be incredibly dangerous but not necessarily helpful, or really know what to do but are too far away to be of physical value.
* Who else is going to pick up a phone and be really sympathetic (and mean it) at 2:00 a.m. with a young person who just watched their term paper that is due in six hours disappear, possibly never to be seen again?
My son joined the ranks of the now football and men’s basketball national champion Gator Nation this past September. Because he needed a new PC, we ended up getting ding-donged by Dell. The experience taught us a lot about what we should have done before we bought his PC, and what everyone should know before they go.
This is all based on what could/should have been a relatively benign call in mid-November.
“Dad, my laptop has a blue screen and won’t boot. What should I do?” I asked what he had done. “Our IT people took a look and said I had a fatal hard drive crash – not the first Dell Inspiron on campus to do so – they told me to call Dell… so I called you!”
Knowing the hassle and time it takes to get a PC fixed or replaced under the best of circumstances, I sent him my ThinkPad via FedEx. Fortunately, we had copies of most of his papers since he asks that we check them for grammar and spelling – not perfect remote storage, but a lifesaver in this case. A week later, I went to a football game at UFL and brought back the offending/offensive PC.
I will not bore you with the details. They are almost too painful and outrageous to recite. Hence, a summary:
* 60-plus e-mails.
* 15 hours of technical support (what an oxymoron). Most was during my business hours where I was forced to be their remote technician or oversee an outsourced one. And I opted not to even attempt to reload all of my applications on a potentially defective new hard drive which could have added many more hours to getting back to a safe and static state.
* Two new hard drives, a new disk drive, brand new memory, a new motherboard, and when all of that failed a new computer (which did not ship according to specification as promised by the staff of Dell’s VP of Customer Experience and arrived without a WLAN card).
* Stupidly following the letter of Dell’s packing slips for returning damaged goods, and waiting half a day for an overnight express company of Dell’s choosing to show up so I could have the driver sign the packing slip thereby absolving me of liability. It turns out this is not Dell company policy despite it being clearly printed on the labels they supplied.
* One botched attempt to get a refund credited on the credit card used to originally pay for the PC.
* Numerous conversations with sympathetic executives and staff about my plight, and a promise to fix a few flawed business practices I had uncovered as a result of little things like getting shipped defective software to reboot the hard drive, and being shipped a refurbished hard drive from a second source of Dell’s which did not work with my software even though it was supposed to be a tested and validated alternative.
* Engagement with the University of Florida’s IT supervisors that resulted in an invitation to consider coming down and presenting my experience as a case study for them on how to work with inflexible vendors.
* And a mea culpa from the VP of Customer Experience who ever so politely rejected my offer to use my professional expertise (at a fee of course) to help them fix their broken processes. Interestingly, despite the delta change between Dell and HP’s stock the past year and recent Dell financials, the response I got back was, “We are already employing several consultants in different aspects of our business and are working on improving in many areas where we know we are deficient. Adding another consultant to the mix would cause more confusion.” Sounded to me like maybe they need to reevaluate who is advising them.
Remember this started in mid-November and I’ve only provided the (pardon the expression) highlights. On Dec. 24, after significant negotiation on transactional specifics, I got a full credit for the original purchase price and extended warranty I had bought as part of a special discount Dell offered via an exclusive arrangement with the University of Florida. The refund basically covered the cost of the new ThinkPad I bought for my business to replace the one I’d shipped to my son when the Dell challenges dragged on.
Ah! Nothing like prompt, professional, and courteous service! Or, should I say, this was nothing like prompt and professional service, although they were usually very courteous. I remain deeply disappointed in Dell’s failure to appreciate the cost to me of dealing with them instead of my customers, and their attitude that they were doing me a favor by giving me a credit.
So how I can help you avoid, or at least mitigate against, such a mess? See my frequently asked questions.
I close with a few thoughts.
1. There is a business out there in providing 24/7/365 support for college kids with a substantial opportunity in hosting.
2. You get what you pay for. Beware of bargains.
3. It is worth repeating: Do your homework before you buy.
4. Check out if there is an Apple retail store in the town your child is going to school at. Over the holidays I had an iPod issue, went online and made an appointment to talk it over with a technician at the “Genius Bar.” I was not only taken on time, but also walked out with a perfectly functioning iPod. Remote is nice, but Apple has it right, in that it is transforming the customer experience by letting the customer meet face-to-face with somebody who can provide solutions on the spot.
Peter Bernstein is President of Peter A. Bernstein Associates.
