Next: •Indian IT help v Shortwave Radio


Posted On: Monday - August 29th 2022 6:33PM MST
In Topics: 
  Curmudgeonry  Big-Biz Stupidity  Customer Care

"Hello! Whiskey niner whiskey tango foxtrot, is this India password control? How do you read? Over."



It's been over 2 weeks since I've had a password to a particular business intranet site that I normally look at nearly daily. Now, Peak Stupidity has ranted about our issues with passwords, and the forced composition and changes thereof, before*. This post is slightly different.

It started with the usual type of headaches, being forced to change the PW every few months - normally that's no big deal, as I have my pattern, but this time it didn't take. A colleague figured I'd not been paying attention typing my new one in twice, but nope, haha, it happened to him and someone else too. He got thing straight with a 10 minute call to India. This didn't work nearly so "smoothly" for me.

It's the communications, stupid! (Not you, the reader, of course. It's the communications that are stupid!) First of all, though the •Indian girl SOUNDED like she knew English well from her speech, that usually does not correspond to much understanding of it - unless you stay EXACTLY on the script. I had to throw way the script because she kept giving me passwords to use that I entered into the web site, which promptly told me to enter twice my NEW PW. "Which one did you give me, the 'old' one, or the new one?" "Enter the one I gave you." But, nah, I could not explain the problem to a foreigner on a script.

What made it so much worse was the terrible, terrible quality of the voice-over-IP or whatever voice communication system the company was using to save EVEN MOAR MONEY! There was something close to a 3 second delay between my finishing a sentence and the beginning of anything coming back. It was like Simplex in ham radio communication. Additionally, the sound was in and out - I'd miss every 4th or 5th syllable.

I got so frustrated with this call that more than once I talked to this •Indian lady about my long-passed uncle. Why would she want to know about this particular uncle, you ask? (And she would the same,) After her trying to get simple 8 digit passwords and my trying to ask simple questions, across the sham of an internet we were on - or was it a deep-sea-creature-bitten 160 year-old undersea cable - I exclaimed "man, my uncle used to have better communications with India with a 50 foot high antenna he had in his back hard! This was in the 1960s, dammit!"

This is tech support. You're coming in 2 by 4 - like a 2 by 4 upside the head. Over.

.


Seriously, this uncle, when I knew him in the 1970's had that tall antenna in the back yard. He loved ham radio, and this hobby had him talking to people all over the world. (He probably got into this due to his having been a radio operator in the Korean War.) Before the internet, when even long-distance calls across the country were 5 bucks a minute in today's money, this was pretty cool.

"You'll have to repeat the first part again. They had better reception in Korea, ma'am, in the middle of a freaking war, in the nineteen-freaking-fifties!" I don't think this woman knows what ham radio is, and how was she to understand me, at that?

I don't exaggerate as I write here that it took over a minute for her to get me a 10 digit "help-ticket" code, because I could not stand to stay on that phone call any longer. I had her read back the ticket code numbers and then letters phonetically, a few times over.

The help ticket, I was told in an email (I can still get emails, unfortunately), was resolved the very same day. I guess it was ... if resolution means you got me off the phone... it does have the minor drawback of my still not having any working password!

Really, how does this save money, when you look at any kind of bigger picture than the one communications bill .. that you wouldn't have if you didn't outsource all this? Let's see, just the time on the phone is higher by a factor of 2 or 3. Then, there's the fact that your employees don't get IT problems fixed so fast, as they hate being on the phone to even very nice •Indian "IT" script follower, made worse by a signal so poor that my uncle would have gotten information more quickly on the short-wave radio.

If I don't get my ticket resolved this next time, at least it would be nice to get a QSL card in the mail.


* See also Password Proliferation and, way prior to these 2 posts, Password-related stupidity

Comments:
Moderator
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 7:46PM MST
PS: From your first article link, Adam:

"
HAM radio operators are jealous of the hobby and the limited frequencies that the FCC allocates to their use. By and large, HAM operators guard their privileges enthusiastically. If you begin earnestly using your radio equipment without a license or valid callsign, eventually, the HAM community will report you to the FCC.

The FCC enforcement division has the manpower and the technical capability to find you. Using sophisticated equipment and techniques, the enforcement agents will triangulate your position and you will receive a visit."

Regarding that last paragraph, this assumes a competent FCC workforce. Ha. I don't know about that in the present, much less in the SHTF
Moderator
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 7:39PM MST
PS: Mr. Smith, I looked through those transactions. I hope they stick! I had no idea you were into High Frequency Trading, or your phone is. You both done good! I'd get out of that market now. ;-}

I usually ask where the call-center employee is, in the world or in this country. Normally, I get an answer, but I'd gotten some pretty weird, cagey stuff during the really low-energy COVID summers - even in '21. One time the guy would not tell me directly, so I had to play 20 Questions. I started with continents even. Got it in 3!

If the person on the other end is in the US, I always make remarks to the effect that I appreciate it, as it's much easier to communicate this way. I don't know if any of that would get to a higher-up or not. I hope so.
The Alarmist
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 4:48PM MST
PS

Good evening, Mr. Smith. The basic advice would be to set the channels on both to be the same. They came that way from the factory, but you could always reprogram them to change things up. I can’t recall if the 82s tell you by the chinese voice what channel you are on, but normally you would tell your counterpart to go to channel X and he/she would twist the knob and the chinese lady would tell you what channel you are on. Push to talk, and you’re good to go.
Adam Smith
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 3:21PM MST
PS: Good evening again, Mr. Alarmist, Mr. Moderator,

Sorry to hear you're having IT and/or password problems. I hope you can resolve them soon and without hassle. Here's a happy customer service story to brighten your day...

The digitizer on my old cell phone stopped working about 6 weeks ago. Not a big deal as I have used this 12 year old dumb(ish) phone for several years and it was about to age out with the demise of 3g. (I'm glad it died before I had to upgrade it.)

After reading about new phones for a few days I decided on a new LG V40 because it supposedly has the best radio for reception in places with weak cell phone service. (I was curious what that meant as I work in a place with poor reception. Turns out it works well. I don't know if it's the “best” but it does work better than my co-workers phones.) I ordered my phone, sim card, screen proctor and case and after maybe a week of waiting on the mail it was time to hook my new phone up to my phone number. (Apparently this was on August 1.)

When I called page plus to talk to the customer service people I only had to wait a few minutes listening to the muzak until a person answered. I don't know where this call center is, but it sounded like it might have been in America! Maybe it was the Philippines? (who knows?) The girl was very nice, easy to understand and quite helpful. It only took a few minutes to read her my new IMEI and SIM numbers, reboot the phone and test it out by making a quick text and a quick phone call. “Thank you” said the nice girl, “have a nice day!” Everything went so smooth...

Then I decided to check the balance on my account. Sometimes the expiration date changes when making changes to the account so I wanted to check if things were still good. Also, I have built up quite a credit as I'm always rolling over my unused minutes from year to year. (I'm on the $80/year plan and have to re-up once a year.) Before I called my credit was ~$470. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that not only did my expiration date change from 10/28 to 11/29 but that my balance was now $949.64!

I feel like I won the cellphone lottery!

After testing how much data the GPS uses, accidentally using up some data while playing a card game with the 4g radio turned on (my new phone gets advertisements as I have not yet installed a hosts file) and using the phone as I normally would for the last month my balance is still $939.75!

I don't know what happened, but by looking at the “Replenishment History” for my account I can see that there were 62 transactions between 6:52:33 PM and 6:53:44 PM, most of them for a penny, several of them for $80 and a couple weird ones like $74.58 and (the last one for) $74.56.

Here are some screen shots...
(Not that they are that interesting.)

https://i.ibb.co/sqnrBhc/Balance.png
https://i.ibb.co/QfSbVdJ/Transactions.png
https://i.ibb.co/S7Tc7LL/Transactions2.png
https://i.ibb.co/m41ngW1/Transactions3.png
https://i.ibb.co/tb0yVtP/Transactions4.png
https://i.ibb.co/LngXZ9M/Transactions5.png
https://i.ibb.co/72XRY7f/Transactions6.png
https://i.ibb.co/YD7WKx7/Transactions7.png

That's my happy customer service story.
I hope you guys have a great evening!

Adam Smith
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 3:20PM MST
PS: Good evening, Mr. Alarmist, Mr. Moderator,

I bought a pair of 8w Baofeng UV-82 radios in case the SHTF. I don't really know how to use them, except as walkie talkies on the FRS and GMRS channels, weather radios and as FM receivers. They work well with my older license free family radios. I'd assume they have better range. They say in an emergency you don't need a license to use a ham radio, but I would like to learn more about how they work. They seem pretty nice for cheap radios.

https://survivalcache.com/can-you-operate-a-ham-radio-without-license/
https://baofengtech.com/product/uv-82hp/
https://baofengtech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/UV82HP_Manual_ReducedSize.pdf

The Alarmist
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 2:43PM MST
PS

There were many configurations, so as a Novice or Tech you could have WD9XYZ (there’s your six in a classic 2X3 format), and as you increased through the classes, you could shorten the sign to something like KC4AC or even K4AA. I think there are a few 1X1 calls like K4A, but I think they are special event or club stations.

I fell a couple wpm short the one time that I tried the 20wpm test when I was 14, so I settled for the next best thing, because life is too short to reach for 25khz of extra bandwidth here and there on HF. But I kept my original 2X3 format call sign because that was who I had been from the start.

I occasionally read a couple prepper sites that tell people to get ham licenses, but I would gently suggest that not having a license keeps one off the radar, but don’t think of transmitting if you don’t have a ticket during peacetime. But when TSHTF... well, you could probably get by with license-free family radios or PMRS for household or neighborhhood watch purposes, because LPI (low probability of intercept) is your friend when the bad guys are listening.
Moderator
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 1:27PM MST
PS: Alarmist, I got a ham license many years ago, but for the life of me couldn't remember my call sign completely. I had in my head that it was 6 chars. but you are right, as I remember it now finally. It starts with a W too.

Regarding that "WTF", there's a great movie scene that this reminded me to post sometime.

My friend tried to convince me to renew it about 5 years back, but I just didn't care enough to send it in. My feeling is also that, when things get to the point that I need to use shortwave radio to communicate, I won't even WANT to have a legit call sign, as I wouldn't want Fed listeners to know who I am by that point.

I only had to do 5 wpm Morse Code, but I listened to someone do the 13 wpm, and I could have done that. One month later I only knew half the letters anymore!
The Alarmist
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 6:16AM MST
PS

BTW, that call sign up top has one too many phonetic letters on the end to be a ham call.

Whiskey Niner Whiskey Tango Foxtrot might fit the storyline better.
The Alarmist
Tuesday - August 30th 2022 6:10AM MST
PS

Yes, that “job closed” ticket often arrives at the end of a fruitless call.

I had a crew chief in the AF who would occasionally close out tickets with “NTF-FM.” Our Group Maintenance Officer, having seen this in the morning briefing too many times finally asked “That equipment isn’t FM ... what’s the deal?” I just smiled and suggested it might mean “No trouble found - f***ing magic.” I had broken the code ages ago.

I’ve taken to asking our Eastern European IT people to remotely log in with admin privileges and then let me drive, but I guess it is different when the box is on their end. My condolences.
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