Now I have a name for that SOB ad they stick on the comic section of my paper every Sunday, making it impossible to find in the piles of other ads, and can recommend its condemnation to hell with more specificity.

I do have some sympathy with the companies trying to handle tech support. What they're trying to do is come up with an effective way to filter out the easy questions by some form of automation, hence the many "if you are _____ push 2" interfaces.

It would be impossible to plug a human being on the other end of every connection, particularly one trained enough to know the intricate details of a technical problem. Most of the "overseas" tech help is working from scripts. They pretty much have to--if they were smart enough to know how to modify the firmware of a complex system and explain it over the phone, they wouldn't be taking phone calls for a living.

The objective is to use automation and unskilled labor to screen out all the people who've left the plug out of the wall without irritating the customer in the process, and keep winnowing the flow until only the real posers end up going to a limited staff of full-bore technical experts. There are probably entire industrial studies devoted to this subject.

Most companies, when it comes down to it, do a pretty good job. The first line of defense is usually a detailed "FAQ" online, which can field a lot of stuff. Kudos to the companies that put the user manuals and tech info online, too.

The automated chat thing is as good as its programming. Despite my annoyance, you have to admit that "spadea" did point me someplace useful.

Some companies even host their own customer forums, which is a double-edged sword--you can find your company's name being taken in vain a lot of times, but on the other hand there's nothing like a huge base of eager geeks to help solve problems on your website. For free, no less. I have found a lot of useful stuff on these.