Here are some tips that benefit you, data center employees, and indirectly - fellow customers:

1) Don't create duplicate tickets. Making 10 tickets for the same server, for the same problem, doesn't make your server 10 times more important, or place it ahead of other tickets in the queue. It slows technicians down because they have more tickets to wade through. Furthermore, it causes complications such as having two or more techs accidentally address the same server, for the same problem. A server could theoretically get rebooted not just once, but multiple times, for example.

2) Don't make frequent updates to the same ticket over and over, every few minutes. It doesn't make techs work harder, faster, or more effectively. Unless you are posting new or important information that might help resolve the problem, additional posts to prod someone to work on your issue, or to update you on it, just make the ticket larger - and give the technicians more to sort through when they can read and update the ticket. Large and unwieldy tickets benefit nobody.

3) Don't rely on ALL CAPS to bring home a point. If a technician somehow cannot understand you without ALL CAPS, switching to it will not somehow break through a communication barrier. Nobody likes reading several sentences or paragraphs of such messages. It's just not effective.

4) Don't take your frustration out on data center employees. Or on anyone else for that matter. While it shouldn't effect how your ticket is handled, ultimately there are people on the other end, and they are only human, limited by time, and the nature of the situation.

#4 should be #1 :-)

Pinned topic! Good job - Couldn't have said it better myself.

Wow, so you're basically saying that even if tech support doesn't bother to help you - even though you pay thousands of dollars for the company's services - you should just sit idle and hope that they will eventually find time for you? I wish our customers were that patient...

One more point that I would add: You should feel free to escalate your ticket. Asking for a supervisor or manager is one way, sending a message to any employees here on the forums is another way. You're always more than welcome to contact me, Brooke, James (Jhurani or Erickson), Aaron, Tomy ... anyone with "The Planet Staff" under their username here.

The hardest part about providing help and escalation is working against the assumption that no one cares.

lol. I think it's moreso stating not to overextend your attempts to get attention, and just give it some time or seek alternate contact methods to fix this issue faster.

With the way our ticket system works, each department typically works tickets from oldest to newest. The problem comes in when customers update the ticket multiple times, because it resets the modify date.

its easy to give advice when you're not on the receiving end of the TP ticket waiting hell. Here is what i've noticed new Techinal Support tickets are answered fairly quickly, sometimes within mins of being opened. If your ticket has to go to a mangage, accounting dept, top level tech support, data center, backup center, etc... be prepared to wait days if not weeks for an update and you might have to remind them you're ticket has gone unanswered.

- I'm still waiting on an account manager to review fees i'm disputing, its been a week now.
- Took TP 30days to cancel my disksync account, but they thought it was okay to charge me for those 30days

keep sticking it to the little guy TP

Hehe.... when I was a supervisor for EV1.net dial up techs. we had a user call in who was very upset and it was my job to fix their issue. This user was in Houston and made threats of kicking my ass, which actually made me smile. What did I do? Gave him the direct address to the office, (2600 Sw freeway, suite 500) and gave him directions to the office.

Why would I invite someone who wants to inflict harm to me? Simple.. I told him "the cops in the lobby will be instructed to let you pass, however, the 30-40 techs will be given this 1 shot of taking out their frustrations caused by idiot users on just him" well .... he never showed up...



In reality, when a TT is entered, just monitor it.... and be mindful of the SLA's

I do that at least three times a week. One night, someone showed up.

Damn kids. ;-)

I have to post this...

We occasionally post a ticket for something when important, such as an IP address with an old cache at the planet that needs to be flushed. We take the time to explain it and get a response from a very inexperienced tech support person (named Laura), but we won't name names, saying something like:

Please advise what you are trying to do. In other words, teach me what I should know so maybe I can help you - in the meantime, I will quickly respond to throw the ticket back to you so I can move on to another ticket and thereby waste your time...

Does any management of tech support actually review support people?? This has happened several times with this one person, yet despite complaints - it still happens.

How can one NOT submit duplicate tickets?

Is there a contact point at the planet for Tech Support management to file a complaint or request that a certain support tech be removed from accessing our account?

I'm less motivated to help run the planet operation than I am keeping certain inexperienced persons from accessing our server....

p.s. Where the operations at the planet run great, they are phenomenal. I neglect to point out the obvious, that overall the planet is the BEST. These quirks, if simply addressed by management during the first notifications, would improve the overall success rate with customers. But thanks to all those who are stellar at TP, we appreciate it!

I'll escalate your concerns up to the Technical Support Supervisors, but it seems the stumbles were more attributed to miscommunication rather than technical inexperience.

I typically read tickets from the top down and try to do some sort of recreation of the events, although sometimes in my head and based on assumptions. Following the ticket, I may have asked the same questions as Laura did to make a bit more sense of the issue you were having.

Having worked in a help desk myself I can't agree more with those points.

Duplicate tickets especially, are very annoying.