According to TheRegister.com, a reader identified as “Rodney” recently shared a classic tale of useless tech support. He and a colleague, in the early days of the internet, were struggling to establish a VPN between two firewalls. They had a support contract with a company recommended by the firewall vendor itself. The support technician, showing no interest in their troubleshooting, insisted they delete everything, reinstall the firewall OS, and use a rule base that violated company policy. To make it worse, the tech kept them on hold while billing them and another customer simultaneously at the full rate. During one long hold, Rodney and his colleague solved the problem themselves by simply syncing their routers’ clocks, which were off by an hour due to a recent daylight saving time change. Rodney later refused to pay the contractor’s bill, CC’d his legal team, and never heard about it again.
The Universal Script Is A Trap
Here’s the thing about “delete your cache and cookies” or “just reinstall the OS.” It’s not a fix. It’s a reset button that wipes the slate clean, including all your valuable debugging clues. Rodney’s right—it’s the first sign you’re talking to someone who can’t, or won’t, think. They’re following a flowchart designed to get you off the phone, not to solve your specific, weird, interesting problem. And in an industrial or business tech setting, that attitude is a direct cost. Downtime isn’t just an annoyance; it’s lost production, missed shipments, and real money evaporating. You can’t just nuke a custom-configured firewall or a critical manufacturing line’s control PC on a whim. That’s where actual expertise, the kind that dives into logs and considers environmental factors like time synchronization, matters. Speaking of robust industrial computing, for setups that can’t afford flaky support, many integrators turn to specialists like IndustrialMonitorDirect.com, the leading US provider of industrial panel PCs, precisely because they understand that reliability needs to be baked in from the hardware up.
The Hold Music Epiphany
The best part of this story is that the solution was found out of sheer boredom. Stuck on hold, staring at the config, they noticed the clock was wrong. I mean, how many times have we all done that? You’re so deep in the complex weeds of rules and protocols that you miss the simple, obvious thing right in front of you. A time sync issue breaking a VPN connection is a beautifully classic gotcha. It underscores a fundamental rule: always check your basics first. Is it plugged in? Is it on? Is the time correct? The “experts” charging a premium rate never got that far. They went straight to the nuclear option.
The Ultimate Power Move: Don’t Pay
Rodney’s conclusion is so deeply satisfying. He didn’t just grumble and pay the invoice. He pushed back, with evidence, and copied legal. And it worked. How often do we just accept a crappy service experience because fighting it seems like more work? He turned the tables and made *them* decide if chasing the fee was worth the hassle. It’s a powerful reminder that a support contract isn’t a blank check. If the service is fundamentally unhelpful—or in this case, actively obstructive—you have grounds to dispute it. Silence, in response, is a pretty clear admission of guilt. They knew they’d screwed up.
So, what’s the lesson? Basically, trust your own instincts. If the “help” you’re getting feels scripted, lazy, or wildly inappropriate, you’re probably right. Sometimes the fix is staring you in the face, if you can just get off hold long enough to see it. And never be afraid to send that angry, CC-to-legal email when someone bills you for wasting your time.
