As a technical writer, I have been researching the existence of ethics as it pertains to technology in general for the past several years. This has led me to a few interesting places, but unfortunately most have been as I expected: Ethics doesn't have much of a home in the ivy halls of Tech U. However, the most blatant experience I've had that raised both my awareness of the dilemma and my blood pressure has been that of Customer Service specifically, the infamous world of technical support.

For years, we've all read the stories circulating through the web (and countless email servers) about people calling technical support to complain about their "cup holder" (aka CD drive door) being broken, or that they cannot find the "any" key on their keyboard. Snicker, snicker; chuckle, chuckle computer users say the darnedest things. But in the real world, Customer Service Representatives (CSRs) are the backbone of any technology provider. They are the professionals who have been trained to deal with the stark realities of everyday life when hard disks crash, monitors go blank, or motherboards give up the ghost. But, just how important is Customer Service to these corporate giants? And, more importantly, just how well-trained are these so-called professional CSRs?

Take a Number
The corporate world has an unwritten rule that states: If you want to get something done quickly, light a fire under someone's automatic sense of survival (you do the acronym.) Well, my spark was lit not too long ago when my wireless router decided to ignore the World Wide Web. Being the good little (former) tech head that I am, I ran the system through its paces to see if I could localize the source of the problem. After a few moments I was able to surmise that the router had somehow lost connectivity. But, before that could be confirmed, I needed to ensure that my service hadn't been interrupted, so I went ahead and contacted my service provider. After going though the motions at their end, the ISP's CSR was able to confirm that the wireless router was indeed the source of my problem. Of course, that meant a call to the OEM, and that's where the fun began.

Both my laptop and wireless broadband router were manufactured by Dell (or whomever they subcontract it to), and are relatively new. Given that I was still under warranty, I expected this to be a rather swift and painless process wrong on both points. The nerve fraying tally for this ordeal was five days lost, six phone calls

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