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Comment by LeoPanthera | Hacker News Reader

Why would you even try? Surely "my card number doesn't work" is the simple and sane response. They don't need to know, or care, why.

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If you are a software dev, you should know that devs love to expend relatively extravagant effort and time to figure out an issue, explain it precisely, and fix it to avoid the possibility of it happening again.

In general, and for my job especially, I am absolutely this person. However, as soon as I'm talking to any form of customer support I pretend to know nearly nothing about tech and try to stop myself from diagnosing the problem (at least out loud). Often the person I'm talking to has no real agency to make changes to the organization and me explaining what is wrong or trying to give them more details just confuses them. I'll still guide the conversation gently if I feel they are veering off into something wrong/unrelated but I've been "trained" by multiple experiences to just play dumb and try to move through the system as quickly as possible.

Yup. I can count on one closed fist how many times the phrase, "trust me, I'm a computer person" has gotten me anywhere with a technical issue at any company I've been a customer of.

This has actually worked for me once. I called my ISP to explain I had no internet access and where exactly in the protocol stack the issue seemed to be. They checked and fixed something on their end and two minutes later it was working again.

Did you say "shibboleet"?

Heh, I didn't have to, I wasn't even transferred to another employee. This is a small-ish local ISP which probably doesn't have ten levels of tech support. A bit more expensive than offers from other providers, but absolutely no regrets.

Since we're talking about good support here, I have another story involving them:

When we started the contract with them 6Mb/s was the fastest available speed, a few years later it suddenly went to 70Mb/s for a week and then down again (which is fair, we had a 6Mb/s plan after all). I called them and asked if we could upgrade to a faster plan. They said they could now offer us a 50Mb/s plan and asked when I would be home. One hour later they sent a representative with a new contract, we signed, and the next day speeds went up to 50Mb/s again.

Oh yeah, the people at the branch no doubt pulled down the latest git repo and checked in the changes.

I've renewed cards only to get a new card with the same number (with a later expiration date and different CVV).

Renewing is different than replacing.

Tell them your card was lost - problem solved.

That's how it's been for every card I've renewed.

This was after a replacement card also didn't work.

sadly most bug reports just say "it doesn't work" - which is not helpful at all. Why would they not need to know!? Maybe they had this problem for a long time, and affecting other customers too.

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