I got an e-mail today about a fault in our voicemail system. In it we were told that "the problem has been escalated to the voicemail support company" who would do the repair.
Do you think this mean that the support company is upstairs?

Zed, what on earth do you think is the word they wanted to use? I am assuming the wanted to say that the problem was brought to the attention of the support company.

I have no idea. Elevated is just as bad and why would anyone mistake escalated for "passed on to" . Can anyone think of an e word that would fit??
I suppose the problem may have escalated until it had to go to the support company but that doesn't fit the rest of the message.

hopefully they'll take steps to get it fixed...

aw, quit staring...

When I worked in Customer Service for a large mail order company, we referred to "escalating a call" as sending one to a supervisor. The bank of supervisors' desks were called The Escalation Desk (but not to the customer).

As a matter of fact, one could get in trouble for "escalating too many calls." That is, just because a customer was difficult, didn't mean you gave up and sent them to a supervisor.

See, you learn something new every day. I'm sure Zed and I aren't the only ones who've never heard the word used that way. I wonder if it's gotten into the dictionaries.

hopefully they'll take steps to get it fixed...

aw, quit staring...

Touch o' the ol' Treppenwitz, eta?

I presume this is the old old story of a word slowly creeping into metaphor and then developing a new identity.

To escalate = to raise (originally by means of...?)
Ergo escalating violence = violence levels rising (on both sides in response to each other?)
Ergo escalate = taking action at progressively higher levels of command to deal with escalating violence etc

from which thermonuclear scenario we then achieve bathos

to escalate a customer service issue = to send 'upwards' to someone who knows what she's doing, since the poor bugger on the end of the phone has used up all his resources when he reaches the end of his laminated script.

What I want to know is, when will it escalate to defcon1?

when will it escalate to defcon1?

Defcon 1 is a wartime footing.

Treppenwitz

well, I tried to really go afterwit...