| Updated 09/26/04 05:40 PM |
Tech Support Stories From The Mailbag - Vol. 5
Hi! It's wonderful to know you're not alone! I do support for a large ISP in Australia, and have a couple of stories regarding the uninformed and uneducated...
STARS IN HIS EYES: A guy rings me up and says he is having password problems...the usual drill, and it works fine our end when he blurts out "I'm having trouble typing my password, I'm hitting letters but all that appears are stars on the screen..."
SECURITY CONSCIOUS: Someone asks for tech help at the front counter, I goes out and a slightly agitated chap probes me as to why the server doesn't give you a second chance at your password, it just disconnects you and you have to spend money on another phone call retrying to get it right. I suggest he uses save password if he wasn't too good at remembering it, to which he replies "oh no that is too much of a security risk". Well Duh!
Thanks again for the effort in making the site, it's great to know it is a worldwide headache!
Feedback on "The Shit List"
I fully appreciated the Compaq entry on your "shit list" section of your web site. When I bought my Compaq, I was startled to find a "Quick Restore" CD that brings everything back to the starting point! Grrr...
Admittedly, I have never had to re-install the DUN. On my machine, Compaq installed CAB files in place of including the actual Win95 CD-ROM. When it asks for the Win95 CD, I automatically go to the CAB files - and I've always found what I need there.
Perhaps your users have different incarnations of the Compaq setup. Anytime I've needed to go to the Win95 CD, the CAB files have worked for me.
The cab files on the hard drive generally work great right up until the day you get a disk error that corrupts the cab files. Then you will need the CD. Remember, I work in Tech Support. We generally only hear from customer's when things go wrong, and not when they go right.
-Cornfed
Deja Mistake
Cornfed,
I work at Help Desk for <a company>.. I totally love your site. Some of the stories are crazy. Kudos to you for the great stories.
I have a story (well I don't know if it qualifies). User called me and said that she needed Desktop Support to come and retrieve her CD. She had her unit under her desk and instead of sliding it into her CD-ROM she slid it into a space above it into the CPU casing...... I thought it was humorous at the time.
Thanks,
#####
Internet Loony Support...This is God Speaking.
Resent-date: Thu, 25 Jun 1998 23:57:39 -0400 (EDT)
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 00:03:40 -0400
From: ####### <Tech Goddess@Internot.Not>
Subject: cmg: Really bizarre tech support calls.
I have got a few tech support stories
for you that *I'm* positive you haven't gotten before.
The first is a series of calls (and this is only to Internot.Not,
he also called several of the surrounding ISPs as I found out at
a party I gave). We will call this caller
"Ed". It is not his real name.
First time I get him, he asks "Can I find a wife on the Internet?" I told him "Certainly. You could use one of the official dating services, or you could just get on a BBS or newsgroup that interests you, and you are sure to meet someone eventually."
Loony: "Well, I need a wife now. I've been waiting a long time to have one."
Me: "Uh huh. Well, do you want a Internot.Not account?"
Loony: "Will it get me a wife? I need one."
Me: "Do you have a computer?"
Loony: "Yes. It has APL on it. APL is the greatest programming language. Do you program?"
Me: "I know C."
Loony: "What's that?"
Me: "So, anyway, what is the operating system?"
Loony: "APL"
Me: "I'm sorry, but we do not provide support for that."
Loony: "So, you're a server?"
Me: "<laugh> No, I'm a support technician." "A FEMALE technician" "That's right. Shocking, isn't it?"
Loony: "I guess I'm a little gender biased. Will you go out with me?"
Me: "No, I'm in fact living with someone"
Loony: "Are you married? You should get married."
Me: "No, I'm living in sin. <I chuckle>"
Loony: "How do you think God feels about that?"
Me: "Well, frankly sir, I don't believe in God."
At this point, he starts quoting genesis at me until I tell him that unless he wants an account he'll have to go. Finally, he makes a reference to one of our ads which features two girls. He asks if they will talk to him if he has a Internot.Not account. I tell him no, they're models from California and finally convince him to hang up.
He calls back five times that night, but no one else will talk to him.
A week later, I pick up the phone and it's him. He tells me "God lies. MY wife isn't here yet."
Me: "Ed, you know, if this isn't technically related, or unless you want to get a new account, I can't talk to you."
Loony: "But God lies!"
Tech: "I'm sorry, Ed, I'm not qualified to give relationship or religious advice."
Loony: Okay, he says, and hangs up.
He calls back and another tech gets him.
Loony: He opens with "Hello, can I please speak with God? It's very important."
Come to think of it, anything else I have would pale by comparison and be on your page already. But I'm getting a real kick out of your page.
Tech Goddess
On the last request I would have been tempted to say; "God is on his lunch break right now, but he said he'd be back in time for Armageddon." - Cornfed
Hi, I love your page - it gave me some good laughs. I've got a few stories of my own, please remove my name and the name of the ISP I work for (my boss is a cool guy, but he wouldn't like this =])
--- start stories ---
Tying in to another story I saw on this page, I got this call just a few minutes ago:
Me: <grumblesmurf> Internet, how can I help you?
Him: Umm, yes.. well, I was wondering, I just saw your subscription form and I saw you could get on the Internet by making a local call?
Me: That's correct...
Him: And, umm, if I want to send e-mail to England, do I still make a local call?
Me: .......... ehr.... Yes?!
Him: Oh.. oh, so um.. I always make a local call?
Me: Yes, you always make a local call.
Him: Oh, and what if I want to get files from the USA?
Me: You *still* *make* *a* *local* *call* .oO( what part of "always" didn't you understand.. dumbass )
Him: Oh, okay.. and umm.. it says here I need a.. a.. mohduhm?
Me: That's correct.
Him: So.. um.. what does a mohduhm do anyway and why would I need one?
Me: You have to use a modem to dial the number so you can get on the Internet. .oO( You wanna talk TCP/IP thru yer mouth then? )
Him: Oh... well.. that's all too difficult for me, I'm gonna go to another ISP!
Me: .... ehr.... Sir? All ISP's require that you have a modem.
Him: oh.. oh.. okay.. bye <click>
--- nother one ---
Me: <grumblesmurf> Internet, how can I help you?
Her: Yes, I have some problems logging in! I want it fixed! NOW!
Me: Okay, please hold while I check some things. I check the log files (we use Radius, we can see the logs), and I see that she tries to log in with her password in uppercase, while it should be lowercase. Always fun. So I thought.
Me: Ma'am? I see you are trying to log in with the wrong password.
Her: NO! That's impossible! I've typed my password correctly!
Me: No ma'am, I can see in the log files...
Her: YOU CAN SEE WHAT I DO CAN'T YOU?!
Me: No, we can only see the login attempts
Her: NO! YOU CAN SEE EVERYTHING CAN'T YOU?! LIAR!
At this point, we are allowed to tell them to get lost, since our helpdesk is effectively 2 people and unofficially I'm lead tech :)
Me: Ma'am, if you don't calm down I'll have to end this call. I'm telling you again, we *can not* see anything, except login attempts. We don't *want* to see anything else.
Her: What have you seen so far?!?! You've read my email right?! And you've changed my password as well! You're spying on me! (*&^W#)$^#)^#@
Well.. no sense in trying to be polite now.
Me: <sarcasm>Yes ma'am, we've seen everything. Even that you wear tin foil hats.</sarcasm>
Her: ......
Me: And now, since we apparently can't discuss this in a normal fashion - Good *BYE*. <SLAM>
Luckily, we are allowed to do these things, at our own judgement.
--- end stories ---
Hope they get a place =]
This isn't an actual tech support call...but I was called at home for help:
My grandfather had just purchased a new computer under my guidance...I set it up, got him going, and started an internet account. I spent over 2 hours trying to get him semi-literate in computers with no avail. When I left I urged him to e-mail me and tell me how it was going. 4 days later, no e-mail, however, I got a phone message from him. (quoted as close as possible)
"Ben, I tried to e-mail you this morning but I don't know if it worked, I don't think I should do it again because I got a message from the MAIL DEMON, and it said I couldn't send my mail!"
**What happened was he typed in my e-mail address with
terrible errors in it...as a result he received a message from
the mail DAEMON letting him know the format and address was
incorrect***
I'm still laughing over that one!
There was a customer we had that thought we were watching her through her VCR and her computer screen. She would call us up and say all that she wanted the computer for was to play solitaire! When that didn't work, she would call us up. She would end up crying and telling us that her daughter was locked up at a mental hospital, or would say she would commit suicide if we didn't help her! She finally stopped calling and we wondered if she ended up in a mental hospital or ended up dead! (I know that sounds mean, but it might be true!)
Hi,
I worked in Engineering tech support in the early days of disc-drives. 2 cases come to mind. Drive failed Final test and was sent back for rework, turns out the disks were gone and a half a grape fruit was in their place. This was in the days when we had many unhappy employees, but in the repair department we were surprise it pasted so many of the test before failing with to many hard errors. Till shortly after that I got one in for repair from Audit test which comes after final test and is the last test before being packed. It failed the R/W test with weak readings. I opened the unit to inspect and change the R/W heads and found the unit empty. No heads or discs. The unit had been "sealed" several test back and therefore had passed other test in this state.
Funny story, we provide ADSL here in Canada. I got a call one time from a member who said when they turned on their ADSL box the power light didn't come on. I sake the member of they had tried turning it off and on several time just in case the contacts were stuck. They proceeded to tell me that they weren't stupid enough not to try something that obvious. The member then went one to explain to me how good his troubleshooting skills were. He wanted to see if it was a problem with the AC adapter or the ADSL box. I asked him which one it was and he promptly told me it was the power adapter. I asked him how he knew that and he promptly replied because he unplugged the power cord from the back of the ADSL box and stuck the end in his mouth to see if he could feel the "TINGLE"!!!! ;)
Just thought you might like that one.
I am an advanced class amateur radio operator. I wonder if he would like to try that trick on my ham radio amplifier? The power supply is rated at 2600 volts at over an amp. He would never live to tell even if he survived , because his tongue and probably his lower jaw would be missing. ; )
- Cornfed
My wife works in the IS department for her company and one day gets a call from a new temp that goes something like this:
wife: Helpdesk, this is #$%#.
temp: my mother isn't getting my e-mail.
wife: Does your mother work here? (thinking there's a problem with their GroupWare)
temp: No, she works at xxx company. I sent her some e-mail over the internet 20 minutes ago and she still hasn't received it.
wife: Can you click on the message in your outbox and tell me what it says?
temp: <indicates that the message has been forwarded through the company's internet gateway and is out of their hands>
wife: Well, it's been delivered to their site -- if their local mailer hasn't delivered it to her yet, there's really nothing I can do.
temp: Yes there is I know all about internet. You need to call the internet guys and tell them they have mail that isn't being delivered..
wife: I don't know what you mean by "the internet guys".
temp: The people who support the internet. I know they have my message and they're just not sending it.
etc. My wife tried to explain to this woman that the company mail system would have delivered the message directly to the other company's mail system for local delivery, but the idiot insisted the "internet guys" were keeping her mail from being delivered. Eventually she hung up.
Also there was another story . Some guy in the actuarial department was bitching that his computer was too slow. He needed a new one. (This was when P-90s were the newest and best. His department wouldn't spring for it but he kept bitching to the tech support people anyway. so they did what we've always wanted to do -- they took a new P-90 (Dell XPS-90) destined for themselves, swapped the case with the one on his XPS-75 or whatever P-75 he had and gave him the old computer with the new case! A couple of days later they asked him how it was going he kept raving about how much faster his new computer was ! HAHAHA The really sad thing is that he later was hired onto the tech support team. Nobody has ever bothered to point out to him what they did.
Cheers. You have a great site, BTW.
Hi,
Wanted to let you know I really enjoyed your tech support site. What I liked most was the original stuff, as opposed to all the recycled stories you see at some other similar pages.
I used to do tech support for ############ in Israel, and we had our share of dummies. In some cases, our customers were not only computer illiterates but also their English was poor which made it even worse - imagine trying to help people who can't read the error messages on their screens and you have to ask them to spell them for you !
It's been long since I worked there, but a few incidents remained forever with me. For example, I once talked a user through configuring the dialup networking, and he was having trouble with even the most minor details, such as locating the buttons and check boxes I wanted him to click. Trying to be helpful, I asked him to just read aloud all the text on his screen. He laughed and confessed to be running the *Russian* language version of Windows 95. Have you ever tried configuring that!?
Keep on laughing !
No I can't say that I have seen the Russian version, but I do have a computer friend that regularly has to install the Japanese version of Windows 95 on one of his client's computers. - Cornfed
Hi There
I don't work for a tech support, but I did put together a bunch of computers a couple years ago for some people who wanted them.
I *still* get the occasional call and there was only ever 1 call that was actually a fault with a computer.
The silliest call was from a fellow trying to run 'Encarta'. He rang me in the middle of the night and said that Encarta didn't work. I asked all the usual questions: Is the computer turned on, Is he in windows, etc...All of these were "yes". It was installed and I knew it worked when I last saw the computer. I told him to double click on the encarta icon. I could HEAR him clicking. He said "I'm clicking - can you hear me?". Well this had me stumped. I asked him "Have you got the CD in the drive?" and he replied that he did. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after about 45 minutes I discovered that he was not actually in Windows. He was in DOS - in the windows DIRECTORY. How the heck he was double clicking on "encarta" in DOS I will never know.
Here are a few that I have had from my customers, hope you
like them.. (yes they are real) .. the first one is my all-time
cloobie award winner :)
Tech Support: Click on the icon with the right mouse button
and select 'properties'. Customer: on the icon with what ?
Tech Support: your right mouse button. Customer: what is
that? Tech Support: your pointing device Customer: my
pointing device is an arrow on the screen Tech Support: .... the
thing under your right hand.... Customer: oh yea...
--
Customer: I just read the bulletin about the news server
being down... Tech Support: yes ? Customer: Well, I'm
trying to use free agent instead of outlook express to access the
newsgroups, and it is telling me that it can't connect to the
news server...
--
Customer: I just read your web page where is says that you
now support k56flex.... do you support it now ?
[calls back 3 mins later] Customer:
Hi... um... what is the phone number for the 56k ?
[gives phone number... customer calls back 3
mins later] Customer: Hi it's me again. This 56k
modem, what baud rate is it ?
--
Tech Support: What kind of modem do you have ?
Customer: One that plugs into my phone line.
--
Customer: Why is your service really slow when I'm trying
to download Netscape ? Tech Support: What speed is your
modem? Customer: it says it's a 'forty eight hundred K'
"Give us oh Lord our daily bitch-o-gram." Why is it that customer's go out, buy the cheapest piece of shit they can find, and then call up their ISP to insist that their current problem is the ISP's fault? Granted we (The ISPs) are certainly capable of screwing up and we sometimes do, but we don't buy $19.95 Atlas 33.6 modems at Best Buy for customer's to dial in to, and then scratch our heads when it does not work.
-Cornfed
Love your pages, Michael - never laughed so much!
I'm a sales person for a cable modem ISP. As a sales person, I yet a different kind of bizarro calls - those people who don't even have clue enough to make it through the sign-up process - those with brother word processors, XT machines, WebTV, playstations, "Oh, you need a computer for this?" etc. This one takes the cake, though:
About a month ago, I received a call from an elderly woman who wished to inquire about this "Intimate thing"
I : ?????
She"Yeah, the Intimate. It says here to call about the Intimate. What is it?"
I: "The internet is something you use when you have a computer"
She "What's a computer?"
I : <stumped - how do you explain that?> "Err, a computer is a machine that can be used to communicate with other people." (I really couldn't come up with something better)
She: "Oh - well, let me have you talk to "him" <"He" comes on the phone - raspy voice, also elderly>
He: "Yeah - I'm calling about the intimate"
I: "Ok, Sir - do you have a computer?"
He: "No" I: "Are you planning to buy one?"
He: "Heck, no!" I: "Well - we connect computers to the internet, is that what you were looking for?"
He: "No - I don't know - I just got this thing in the mail. It said to call this number. So I called"
This poor couple had no clue what all this was about - they just received a note in the mail that told him to "Call 888-############ Today!" - So that's what they did. A+ for obedience.
Also - I try not to be judgmental, but every time someone calls up and wants to find out about the "Innernet" (without a "t"), they drop a couple of notches on my smart-o-meter :)
Hope you can use this one, I got tons more! Please remove all references to my ISP and myself as you usually do.
-Cheers
- btw, the taped phone calls in Mp3 format rule! My colleagues and I were rolling on the floor laughing! we have that ability, too, I'll check if it's "legal" for us to do this, and if it is, you may see some sound files from me :)
Oh - almost forgot about the guy who called to inquire about our internet connection (cable modem - 1.5mbits download) - I explained to him that we download at T-1 speed - he proudly replied - Aha - well then I'm not interested - see, I have one of those new 56k modems - so I'm way ahead of you!
My manager at the time loved this one so much, she printed it in 72 point and hung it in her cubicle.