the “saar method”

It is always a hit to the ego to call tech support (TS), isn’t it? In a fact, one is publicly admitting the need for help, and that is hard. Much like asking for directions.
Back in the day, when I called TS, I wanted to demonstrate that I knew more than them. I had the attitude of an expert that got into trouble with a very hard problem and that the TS guy/gal would be unlikely to be knowledgeable enough to help me, but I am giving them a shot at it. Well, in most cases I was the one with the red face at the end of the conversation. Most often it was just a check-box, or some other pedestrian setting.
After a while, I decided to take a different approach that proved to be much, much more effective: playing the newbie.
I call in and gracefully describe the problem and follow their instructions without resistance, sighs or “I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work!”I found that this way, you get the problem fixed faster. First, I call the TS sooner instead of trying to get it on my own (finding the right check-box is hardly a challenge I would be proud of, so I’d rather have the answer given to me) and second, they have the procedures to find the problem fast and they might know of issues that I will never find on my own.
Some time back, I’ve given this “secret recipe” to my neighbor. Yesterday he told me he used the “saar method” of tech support and was very satisfied. Another happy customer :)

In a related story: during my very first peer-to-peer LAN setup I ran into trouble; well, it just would not work. I labored for a whole weekend, called friends, tried every protocol, switched cables… no go. I finally gave up and called Netgear TS. They concluded that the problem is with the ethernet card (!) and gave me an RMA. This was valuable lesson in my greenhorn days: hardware may fail, even though I naturally assumed it was my lack of knowledge or the software setup.