For Starters I’m annoyed and ranting. I’m going to pick on some particular companies, but this problem applies to the WHOLE support industry.Stop using generic scripted answers for problems where they obviously don’t apply. I’ve used them myself in the support industry, but where they apply.Examples are paraphrasedExample1: Amazon.com and there poorly worded emailsMe> I received an email saying that I had recently bought or viewed lawnmowers, I haven’t. Has my account been compromised?amazon> this email is phishing…(generic phishing email reply here)(I received another similar)Me> Hi I received an email that says I’ve bought or viewed power tools. Here are the headers, they pass spamassassin and googles filters. Plus I’ve checked it myself. Maybe, you could fix the emails to not to suggest that I’ve purchased or viewed something I haven’t.amazon> this email is phishing…(generic phishing email reply here)Solution: disable amazon from sending me emails on products… and it worked. I guess amazon’s support should have paid attention?Example2: safari.oreilly.comMe> I can’t get this book to load… I’m not sure why. The ‘spinner’ keeps going round and round but it doesn’t load. I don’t have problems with anything else.(ok so I could have been clearer on ‘anything else’ what I meant to say was ‘any other books’.)Safari> I tested the book and do not experience any issues. Here’s How to enable scripting in IE.Me> I’m sorry wouldn’t I have had problems with ‘anything else’ if I didn’t have scripting enabled? Also I’m not using IE and it’s not on my OS (I don’t use windows).Solution: this seemed to resolve itself overnight… I didn’t change anything.Stop telling me that it isn’t an issue when it is. because you are too lazy to do simple checking.Example3: bugs.gentoo.orgMe> new PackageA Stabilized can’t be used by packageB version…Gentoo> PackageB version is unstable marking invalid(I poke around)Me> This is a problem on the stable version as wellGentoo> Oh…Solution: I mask packageA to keep it from being pulled… as they seem to refuse de-stabilizing a package that causes problems.There are always other support problems. But the 2 worst I think are not actually paying attention to a support request, and not doing more than a cursory check, for the validity of a problem.EDIT: If your company/whatever has this problem, you aren’t alone, the almighty google has this problem too.– This work by Caleb Cushing is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.