I've been trying to get ahold of technical support through the new live chat feature. I put in my login information, my name, and my quesiton, and it says it's connecting me to the next available representative. Then, maybe 30 seconds later, a screen pops up that says no one is available.

Now, the program that RS is using for this live support is called PHPLive!, available from OSI Codes. I know, because I use this software. I also know what it means when a user has the experience that I've been having. It means that a support rep is seeing the call come in, and acknowledging its presence by swiftly clicking the "Ignore" button. If the department were actually closed, or all the reps unavailable, I would have never seen the screen telling me I was being connected. You're displayed that screen while the rep is actually being rung and while you're waiting for him to answer.

So, my quesiton is, why is the support rep clicking ignore? If they don't want to provide live support, the link shouldn't be on the main page. I don't see how they could be too busy to help, since there is a queue system that would allow me to wait on hold until someone is available to help me.

Has anyone else had this experience?

I always have got very good response using live support (well .. only used twice I think:) ). Maybe you/they got disconnected ... did you retry again?.

I really would not believe that they have expressely ignored you .. and I bet for a disconnection/error of the script.

Yeah. I tried at least 5 or 6 times over a 10 or 15 minute period.

It should also be noted that I have used the live support in the past with very good results. However, this experience was very discouraging, and I know I have seen people metion bad experiences with the new live support feature in other threads (such as connecting to an operator, asking their question, and then being "hung up" on while waiting for a response).

I know it's a new feature, and a promising one at that, but I'm just wondering how widespread the problems are, or if I'm the only one who's had a negative experience so far.

I have had the same thing happen a lot to me but it always goes for exactly a minute and then gives me the message. When I finally got through one time the last thing I said to the tech was that I was having that problem and he toldme that they have had reports of IE6 users having that problem.

that's all I know, but it is very frustrating.

Why they discontinued IRC help? I love that. Yes, and what the original poster said is true. He's not imagining it. When there are high volume of people in queue, they will just kick you out and won't let you stay in queue.

Now that's lame. I think everything about RS is great, except thing gets weird with support part.

And abuse dept

I had a similar live support problem like that.

Well, my experience was in the wee hours of the morning and there was no more than 2 people in the queue and sometimes none.

I tend to believe what they were saying about there being a problem with IE6 based on my other support experiences. By no means do I think that rackshack Support is lazy. They have proven that wrong many times over. So I rather believe in the technical explanation. I just hope they get it worked out soon.

Yah I hope so. They sometime give us special help (kind of) and suprize me. But other than that, it's been sooooo hard to reach support. Maybe I'll stick to TT until this problem gets solved.

I personally don't buy the IE6 explanation. I use the exact same piece of software on one of my sites to provide support. I'm active in OSI Code's (the company that makes PHPLive) forums, and I'm not aware (and therefore OSICodes probably isn't either) of any sort of IE6 related bug that would cause the same screen to pop up as would if the operator clicked ignore.

The other reason I don't buy this explanation is that I've gotten through before when there's been a queue. So saying that there's a problem with IE6 that prevents it from being able to wait in the queue doesn't make sense if this doesn't happen all the time.

I really didn't start this thread to bash RS support. They're definitely great, they've definitely bailed me out of huge messes on more than one occasion, and they are generally very prompt and well informed in their responses to my questions and requests. Just wanted to clear that up, so no one perceives this thread as a flame. I was just really excited by the prospect of live, one-on-one support from RS, and was disappointed to try it and find that, for whatever reason, it doesn't work. It's only my familiarity with PHPLive that led me to the conclusion that the ignore button is being pushed.