Newspaper firm
Few things get the bile going like work.

At the moment I'm working for a large local newspaper firm whose webadmin software is laughably poor, even to someone like me with no background in web mangling.

Their IT helpdesk is legendary for its complete lack of common sense, and covers almost every local newspaper in Britain. If the problem is dealt with by our diminishing team of IT staff here in the building then you know you're in good hands, but sadly the great majority of calls goes to head office.

This is where the problem starts. I should have known it'd be bad when I received my first call from our outsourced IT team.

One of my many many problems involved being unable to set news articles live on the website.

So three months later I finally get a call back from one of the dullest people I've ever had the misfortune to talk to.

Her: "Hi, I'm calling about your IT problem"

Me: "Which one? I've reported about five errors per day over the last three months?

Her: "It says here you're having trouble setting articles to . . . 'Liv' . . . ?

Me: " **sigh** I think you'll find it's pronounced 'LIVE', to rhyme with "HIVE, or St Ives"

Her: "No, it's pronounced 'liv'.

By now I'm actually banging my head on the desk.

Next day she calls again, this time it's a different problem, but AGAIN she royally fucks it up.

Her: "Hi, I see you're having problems accessing the . . .'arch-eyev'.

Me: "**sighs again** I know there's a 'ch' in it but it's pronounced arkive (archive)".

Her: "That's not what it says here."

Click.

I'm told she got the sack soon after.

But even after her departure I still get disturbing calls from our distant IT team.

One girl has a neat trick of just denying there's any problem, and asking so many pointless questions that eventually frustration takes over and you just tell them to forget it. They close the case, and their figures for solved cases suddenly looks rosier to the management.

If anyone else out there knows which company I'm talking about, or if you work there and have also had dealings with IT, please drop me a line. I'd love to hear your stories.
(Barry Subchimp, Wed 9 Sep 2009, 13:03, 5 replies)

Trinity Mirror?
Haven't had anything to do with them for a couple of years, but IT was appalling when I was there, if I remember.
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Wed 9 Sep 2009, 13:14, closed)

I work in first line
For a company that rhymes with Jujitsu- and even we aren't that bad.
( jim_bob can herd cats., Wed 9 Sep 2009, 13:14, closed)

we have our IT "managed" by Jujitsu-Semen
and they are pretty much that bad. the people on the phone are ok, once you get them to understand the problem, but the morons who come out to "fix" things?

completely worthless, every one of them.
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 9 Sep 2009, 15:51, closed)

I used to work for Trinity Mirror..
...infact my friend who wrote my post above pretty much runs the IT for the paper's website and he's meant to be doing important stuff like reporting! They are so cheap the site is run on Wordpress. We had to wait serval months for them to install a search function. Such a joke.
(photoben, Wed 9 Sep 2009, 14:03, closed)