Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Hello, technical support, how may I assist you?

Your software has done something really weird to my computer!

May I ask what that is sir?

Well, everytime I try to use it to dial out with my modem

I hear the computer speaking at me and well I am starting to

worry about my sanity?

Well sir - do you hear the modem actually dial?

Oh yes but then there is this muffled female voice

And what does this voice say to you sir?

"The number you have dialed is not in service,please

hang up and try your call again"

I am a doctor who now works for a PR agency and also handles their IT problems.

Recently, I have introduced the company to the Internet, but some of our machines had puny

hard drives and we were unable to install Internet Explorer.

One particularly demanding Swiss girl came to me and said "Clinton, I want you to put the

internet on my computer."

"No."

"WHY NOT?"

"It's not big enough"

"But" she says while making a wide motion with her arms, "it's as big as the others."

I hurried to a secretary who complained that a floppy was stuck

in her Thinkpad. I arrived with a replacement floppy drive and

she pointed to her portable PC. I approached the Thinkpad and

took a closer look at the floppy drive.. Pressed the eject button -

nothing..

Me: "Ehhh, lady.. There's no disk in this drive!!"

Her: "Oh, that's why I couldn't get it out"

DUH!

Whilst working for a diddy little ISP in Britain had a call from a customer:

'Good Morning customer services how can I help'

'Yeah hope you can. Right I've got my computer, modem, and account set up with yourselves

now how do I get on-line'

Nice easy one I thought, 'Ok then load up your Internet Software and click on connect and

enter the relevant log on details'

'Well yeh, I've done all that but nothing happens'

'Ok then, I take it that you've connected your modem to the phone line?'

'Well how do I do that then?'

'Take the phone cable from the modem and connect it to your phone socket, it'll be somewhere

near a power point'

'Right, How do I get the phone cable to stretch to the call box?'

???????

Whilst working in tech support for a major Teco in Australia

a colleague of mine took a call from a rather confussed

customer whose grasp of the English language was less than

ideal.

" Hello Sir, I understand you are experiencing difficulties

with your mobile phone "

" Yes my phone he sings to me "

" I am sorry sir how do you mean your phone sings to you "

" Whenever I try to dial out he sing a song to me "

My colleague now very confussed pressed on.

" Perhaps you could sing the song to me sir "

" Yes, he sing DO DO DO, DO DO DO "

A very good impression of an engaged tone. This call became

legend very quickly.

I work on a helpdesk dept, one day a lady calls and says my

printer is not working, i asked her what operating system she

was using, i said are you using Microsoft Windows, she said

I dont know..i said have you got a mouse on your desk.

Thank god now, this is a very clean office...she replied.

Being in the technical industry, and having done tech support, I have seen and heard

a lot.

One tale I fondly recall came from a friend in the LAN support department about "solar

panels." One day, a client ordered a bunch of SGI Mainframes for his new site in Northern

Virginia. He didn’t give us a delay date, so when we called to tell him when delivery was,

he informed us that the computer room had been changed, but he didn’t know where yet. He

instructed us to install the equipment in the current computer room, and then when they

moved, they would simply unplug everything and move it. We left strict instructions on how

to do this, how to reboot the EPS (the backup power supply in case the power fails), and so

on. The client fancied himself the computer guru in the office, and despite his arrogant

self-boasting without much know-how to back it up, he agreed to do what we asked.

Weeks later, this man calls back, furious. He told us they moved the computers, and the EPS

won’t power up, and the mainframes are hooked in such a way that they will not work unless

the EPS is running. We went through the usual questions, "Are you sure it’s plugged in?"

and so on. The man was livid we asked him that question, demanding to know how stupid we

thought he was. "I am looking right at them right now, and they are plugged in, but when I

flip the switch, nothing, nada, nothing works!!!" After explaining we’d have to charge him

for a tech person to come look at it and found it wasn’t our fault, he said he knew it

wasn’t his fault.

The tech drove down, and they were plugged in, all right… to a power strip that was… not

plugged in. The man felt silly, and apologized, but lost his grace the second he got the

$300 bill for a tech to show up. After complaining to the boss about us ripping him off, we

hoped we’d heard the last of him. But you know we didn’t, or I wouldn’t be sending this.

He calls back a week later, so angry, he didn’t make sense for the first few minutes. He

cursed a tech out, demanded to speak to the president of our company (who was in the room at

the time, and after heard a recording of the call said, "I’m not speaking to that man! He

insulted one of our best techs, and I’m sure not going to make anything any better if I have

anything to say with him!"). After dealing with a suddenly-appointed "tech director," he

said that the solar panels on the computers were faulty, and demanded all new mainframes at

no cost to him. These were special order items, and took months for SGI to make them, and

so we asked for a tech to come down and look at it. He agreed, but would not let us try and

fix the problem over the phone, he wanted the tech and the "tech director" to come down in

person right now! So, we packed two people together in a company van, and they went down to

the site.

After speaking with this person for over an hour, he explained the "solar panels" (the

smoked glass in the computer cabinets) were running out of power in the dark. They would

work from three hours, and then die. When the tech explained to the man that there was no

such thing, he said he’d been in the business for 30 years… blah blah blah… The tech looked

at the computers, logs, and sure enough, at about 10pm, they shut down due to "EPS halt"

errors. That error only occurs when the power has been out for so long, the EPS ran out of

backup power. It turns out that the mainframes were plugged into the light switch in the

computer room. When the last employee left at 7pm, he shut off the lights. The EPS would

go on, but could only supply 3 hours worth of power before shutting down. This gave the

illusion that the computers ran out of power in a dark room.

For about a year, we had a cartoon of the man with a solar panel on his head (connected to a

lightbulb in his brain) and a cloud over the sun with the caption, "Does not work in low

light."

Years ago, I heard this little tale from a friend who worked for a major office

systems company.

A company ordered Dell mainframes, and had about a year of trouble-free service. Then, one

day, his mail server went down. He called us, because his package was supposed to boot

itself back up in case of failure, but this time, it didn’t. You’d reboot it, and it would

ask for a systems disk.

We suspected corrupt software, and reinstalled Windows NT and the mail programs, and that

fixed the problem. Then, another went down, same problem. We did a "D&R", fixed. Then it

happened again. And again. The problem seemed to spread, and after a lot of site visits,

the pattern was 2 or 3 would go down a night, all in the same general area. We tried

replacing hardware, trying newer software, and the only thing that seemed to work was

actually moving the machines to a different area. But the machines we put it their place

would go down. The area was a locked room that the only people that had access was two

techs, both who swore on their honor they weren’t doing anything. This company, fearing a

virus or a break-in, launched an investigation that ended up being a massive inconvenience

to everyone in their office. The problem kept happening. Dell tried their best to help us,

and finally the customer was speaking to Dell directly. We feared losing the account, but

Dell pulled a rabbit out of their hat.

One of their techs, on a hunch, searched for a file called something like QKENTFIX.DLL.

Sure enough, they were always on the machines that went down during the night. He suggested

buying a Quick Cam, and leaving it on pointed at the machines. Sure enough, around

midnight, it captured two people at machines that went down the next morning.

What was it hunch? This was a file that allowed people to play Quake over the type of

network this client had. Only due to the specific configuration we had, it actually

overwrote an obscure Windows DLL file that the mail program needed at bootup. The two

strangers would install Quake, install the "fix", reboot the machine, play Quake, delete all

evidence (so they thought), and then reboot the machine again. But the uninstaller for the

"fix" would leave that one file, and since it corrupted the system software, NT would

reboot, looking for the correct file (which I think as needed to boot the mail server

software).

Who were the two strangers? Two tech-wanna be guards for the building our client leased

from. It turns out they have a full set of keys for every office, and was using our

client’s computer room to play Quake from midnight to 4am.

Dell told us the problem was not as uncommon as they’d like.

I work for as a tech and we had a call from some woman

who said that the disks that we sent her did not work any more,

when I asked her had she left them near anything hot? etc..

She replied no, they stoped working after I put some labels

on them.

Labels I said.

Yes, She replied, I put the labels on the disk

and then put the disks in to my typewriter!!!!!

Doh!!!!!

I'm a senior tech for an ISP's Tech Support, but when I started this job

I got my "baptism of fire" with this call...

Me: Technical Support, can I help you?

Caller (Irate!!!): Yeah, how come you guys keep turning my computer on and off??!!

Me (boggle): "Turning it on and off?" Do you mean your modem is disconnecting?

Caller: No, I'm saying you guys are shutting my computer down and then turning it back on!

This happens whenever I surf the Net

Me: Describe exactly what happens

Caller: Well, I could be sitting here reading a page on Netscape when all the sudden my

screen goes dead! Then, when I type a key, it comes back on!!

*At this point I shook my head, rolled my eyes heavenward, and explained to the gentleman

the concept of a screen saver that was set to "Blank Screen"

About a week ago, I talked to this lady that was literally in tears because she

couldn't connect to our internet service. I don't understand, she wept, my computer keeps

telling me "PPP timout". Me thinking that it had to do with the way MacPPP was configured,

had her tell me all of the settings to make sure everything was configured OK. It was.

The i I asked her if she had her Modem plugged in to her phone jack. "Modem????...Hmmmmm I

don't think I have one of those out here in my car. I thought the whold idea of buying my

self a laptop, was to get rid of all of these dang plugs. She later canceled her services,

saying she'd find another ISP, that didn't require the use of a "modem".

Good Luck :?)

When I was working as the lead Macintosh support person for a very well known

computer & software retailer.

We sometimes gave the customer the term "ID ten T error"

to much our dismay

knowone ever understood what it meant. If you write it down it looks something like this

"ID10T ERROR". We

always had a good laugh and then proceeded to help the customer any way we could!

A new user rings up - claims to be fully clued up on networks and PCs. "my printer

isn't working."

Is it switched on?, I say, not discounting the obvious.

Course it is, he replies.

I go to investigate, as the user is near the coffee machine.

"They go better with paper in them" I tell the user sarcastically.

"What do you mean", he says, "its a network printer - all the prints come from the

server..."

A few years back, I was a Support Engineer for a major spreadsheet app, and got a call from a nice gentleman, who

introduced himself as the parish priest from a local church. He explained his problem in a calm and thorough manner, and

after asking him a few questions, I knew exactly how to handle his problem, a common one for this app.

As with many Tech Support departments, we had documents identifed by numbers from 100 to over 1000 on a fax service, and I

instantly knew which one he would need.

"Sir, we have detailed instructions on a macro which will solve this problem for you, you need merely call our 800 number,

enter the document number, and follow the instructions."

"Very well." He said. "What is the document number?"

"That would be Tech Info Document number six hundred-sixty-uh-six."

"Oh my!" He said.

"Eeyeah." I said.

He thanked me for my time, and hung up. As far as I know, he never called back, his problem solved one way or another...

I support a DOS program, but we have (obviously) a lot of

Windows 95 clients, many of whom are very new to computers.

While setting up a Windows 95 desktop shortcut for our

program, the following occurred :

Tech : "Move the mouse to the position on the screen where

you want the icon to be, then right-click on the

screen. A menu will appear."

Client : "I don't see any menu."

Tech : "Did you right-click the screen?"

Client : "I'll try again"

(sounds of keys being hit on other side of phone)

"Still no menu"

Tech : "OK, instead of TYPING THE WORD CLICK, why don't

you press the right mouse button....."

I had a user who said " I can't get the web to work!"

What he was doing clicking on was an email address.

"But all I want do is see what is there!"

He could not under stand that an email address

has nothing behind it, no links.

I'm not officially a "tech" but more or less the computer guru

of our family. Last week my uncle asked me, in a completely

serious tone, "If I get a mouse and plug it into the cable box

can I access the internet?"

A customer had a problem reading a diskette with some very

important information on it, of which this was her only

copy. After determining that the drive itself was ok, we

suggested that she make a copy of it and send it to us, and

we would recover what we could from it.

Several days later, in the mail, came a Xerox copy of her

diskette!.

I received a call from a customer who was told to download a file

from our Bulletin Board System. He called and complained that there

was something wrong with the BBS. I asked him what the problem was,

if he was able to connect. He said, I dial the number but it sounds

like a modem or something...

Cust: There is a failure while running on Windows NT.

Support: Sir, would that be NT Server or NT WorkStation ?

Customer: Well ... it is a big box ...

I work for an ISP, and we got this call...

"Hello, Tech Support, can I help you?"

"Yeah, this thing won't connect."

"Is it Windows 95?"

"Yes."

"What error message did you get when trying to connect?"

"Incompatible set of Network Protocols, I believe,"

"Great. That should be an easy one to fix..."

Oh, how little we know. Our standard procedure for fixing that

particular error was to reinstall Dial-Up Networking,

reconfigure the TCP/IP stack, and go. 99 percent of the

time, it works. Not today.

I ended up reinstalling DUN about four times, and each time,

I would get the same error message as before.

"OK, sir, let's try this."

"What, another one?"

"Yes, sir." I took him to the connection properties for

his DUN connectoid.

"OK, sir, let's try and slow it down, maybe we can get

the equipment to connect at a lower speed."

"Sound pretty good, let's try it."

45 minutes and ten call-backs (the guy only had one phone

line, so I had to hang up in between each try) later, we had

set his modem to 9600, no data compression, no error control,

terminal window upon login, no flow control, no FIFO buffers,

no ANYTHING. And still, the same message again and again.

I was pretty frustrated, and so was my customer. I mumbled,

"Sir, do you have a chainsaw or an axe handy?"

"Yes, I do, in fact. Do you think that might help?"

"OK, here's what you do. We'll set all the settings back

the way they were when we started, you go get the axe and

threaten the computer after we hang up. Make them good ones,

ones that would scare Saddam Hussein into a quivering puddle

of Jell-O."

"I can do that; I used to be a DI in the Army."

"Great. Let's give it a shot."

We set his DUN settings back to normal, he got the axe.

We hung up, he evidently said some nasty things to his

machine after he rebooted it, and lo and behold, it worked.

He connected at full speed, no problems.

He called back about ten minutes later after disconnecting.

"Sir?" I said, "Did it work?"

"Perfectly. I've never seen faster Internet service.

Thanks for the tip, I'll keep that one in mind."

"Glad we could help sir," and then we hung up.

Then I fell down on the floor laughing. :)

I was working at a trade show, providing information about our software. Part of our suppor included a bulletin

board system.

Support: So, with your phone and modem, you can call our BBS any time, day or night, and download updates, leave us

messages, send us problem files or download useful tools and shareware.

Customer: Gee, that's great. I don't have a modem--so how do I contact the BBS without one?

This happened a couple of years ago, while I was working at

a cellular phone company in upstate New York...

I received a call from a user in the customer support dept.

She said:

"My computer won't work....I think it's the mouse."

Amazed by this lady's problem resolution skills, I told her

"it is highly unlikely, that your mouse would cause your

whole computer to stop working", however, I said I would

drop by her desk to investigate the problem.

I got to her desk and sure enough, her computer was dead.

Turned on the power switch and nothing happens. Checked the

tangle of cords behind the computer to confirm that the

power cord was plugged in to the PC. It was.

Hmmm?

I visually traced the tangle of cords to the power strip

and it was plugged in there too.

I said: "I thought that perhaps you had inadvertently

turned off the power strip..." and she says "No. I know

about the power strip. I turn the machine off with it,

instead of turning off every part of the computer

individually. That was something (another techie) had

taught me a while ago....." "Very good!" I said, "You

see? Technology really does make our lives easier." ;}

With all power connections confirmed, my only thought was

her power supply had pooched, so I got on the phone to see

if we had a replacement unit in stock.

While I'm on the phone ordering her power supply, she's

in the background telling me she *really* thinks it's

the mouse. I finished ordering the part and

got off the phone, gently explaining to her "there

was no power to the PC even though it was correctly plugged

in everywhere.....it *wasn't* a mouse problem...I'll be

back in a couple of hours with a replacement power supply".

Two hours later, I came back with her replacement power

supply and began the work of liberating her PC from under

her desk. I pulled the PC out far enough that I could get

back behind it and disconnect all the cables. To my

surprise, I found the power cord attached to the PC, but

about 20" away from that the cord had been completely

severed!

So I'm sitting under her desk with this puzzled look on

my face, staring at the free end of her power cord.

She said:

"See! It was the mouse!"

I say:

"Huh?"

She says:

"That damn mouse! It's been chewing on everything here. It

even ruined a pair of shoes I leave under my desk!"

Upon closer inspection of the power cord, I find that the

woman was right. The severed end had been chewed by a

mouse (or rat, I'm not sure). The thing had the jaws to

chew completely through a power cord!

Well, I have to tell you that this one cost me lunch that

day, just to make it up to the woman. She was right. It

was the mouse. Go figure!

P.S:I ammended our call ticket app. as a result of this

call. When anyone calls saying they think it's a mouse

problem, we ask them "How many buttons does your mouse

have?" If they say "One" it's a MAC, if they say "Two" or

"Three" it's a PC. If they say "None, just four feet"

we call the exterminator :)