Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I work at an office supply store. The name of this store does not contain any reference to any part of any word that might lead someone to believe computers or technology are our primary focus. Unlike the electronics store next door, we have no repair or service center. I get paid less than eight dollars an hour to help people buy printers. Nevertheless, we seem to have a more knowledgeable staff than just about any computer or electronics store in the city. This, coupled with our "fanatical" customer service practices, has doomed us to forever be the unofficial free technical support center of choice. Calls generally begin with such statements as, "I didn't buy this computer from you, but ..."

We had a particularly pleasing customer the last few days, who bought a cheap inkjet printer which was more than enough for his needs. He returned a day or two later, figuring for some reason that a laser printer must be better since it costs more, and we were happy to return his inkjet in favor of a more expensive solution. So the next day he called in to check up on the price of the laser printer, and this was the first contact I had with him. He rapidly explained something about a printer and threw out a couple of prices before I told him I hadn't caught was he was talking about.

"You guys have a printer," he replies, "Is that much clear? Do you know what a printer is?"

"Yes, sir. I know what a printer is."

Anyway, after a bunch of trouble, he bought the printer. But as it turns out, he didn't have any USB ports. To make a very long story short, I ended up with his computer open in the middle of the store to try to give him a USB upgrade. The computer was ancient, and home-built; the CPU fan was precariously attached to the floor of the case with mounting tape, in some sort of proximity to the actual CPU. Although he was running Windows 98, the keyboard didn't have a Windows button. So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised when it didn't accept a USB add-on. He ended

up returning the laser and getting the old inkjet he'd bought in the first place.

One last hitch, though: Apparently he'd returned his printer cable (the one that didn't come with the printer) when he'd returned the first printer. So we gave him a $25 cable, too--all in the name of fanatical customer service. Whatever.

As a web developer, I recently had to explain to a customer why I couldn't fulfill his requirements.

On their site they wanted login inputs: "Nickname" and "Password". Of course the password input would be of HTML type "password", i.e.: ****. They thought it'd look cooler if the inputs were not labeled outside but inside the fields, and on entering them the labels would go away.

But do you see if you assign a value "Password" to a password box? Right ... ******** Label shmabel!

I work as an IT intern.

My boss called me in his office one day to help a colleague who was trying to connect his computer onto the network using a network point in the office.

He'd plugged in a cable and was fiddling around with the IPConfig settings in Dos:

Me: Have you tried restarting your machine?

Him: (arrogantly) yes, yes, yes, done that twice before

[he's now trying to renew his IP address in DOS]

Me: what about loading up a web browser, maybe you have a connection already?

Him: Well I haven't tried that but I don't think this network port is working.

[at this point I get a sniffer and test the port is working - it is]

Me: Try checking cable your -interrupted-

Him: These bloody machines, they never work, I've been using it for years and they always cock up in some way or another.

Me: Lets have a look at the network cable

[I have a look and see what cable he's used]

Sir, this is a modem cable, you can't connect a computer using this cable which doesn't even fit properly into your network port.

Him: [fuming with embarassment] well it worked in Germany when I was there last week...

----

I just wanted to comment on all the stories about people who have programs installed on their computer and how they swear that they did not install them.

If you install a program like gozilla, a bunch of screens pop up asking you if you want to install (for ex) top text, and other small programs. There are three or four windows and if you are not carefull you end up installing one or more of these unwanted programs.(I'm not event mentioning the gain trickler spyware program that gozilla installs.

A lot of times Im surfing the net and something starts downloading automaticly (without those do you want to save windows). You know those dialer programs, that use your modem to connect you to an international call.

A lot of these so called freeware programs now install additional programs without user permission. So the next time you talk to a user who swears that he did not install a program, make sure he/she DID knowingly install before calling him/her a liar and/or idiot.

I had to say something, I'v read about two years worth and I keep seeing this same preconception.

Anyway that is my two cents

I am a network administrator in a Local Authority School. We run an NT Network with just 0ver 1000 users and 136 w/stations. We’ve had the network for 4 years now.

So this member of staff walks in and tells me that when she clicks on the Internet icon she gets a white page with writing on it instead of the home page. So as there is a computer suite next to my office I ask her to go through so I can watch her log on just to make sure the white screen is indeed what I think it is (page not found). So she sits down at the log on screen and gets out her diary. She mumbles about never being able to remember her log-in name. So she looks it up in the diary and types it in with one finger letter by letter. We’re in and sure enough white screen with writing on it. I log her off and try to access the Internet through my user account. No problem. Well at least I know the Internet isn’t down (we access it through a proxy server.) I get her to log on again just in case it was down and has now been restored. Out comes the diary again she mumbles about not being able to remember her log-in name, she’s happy with remembering her password, it’s just the log-in name. So she types it in letter by letter with one finger. Nope, no home page. Then I remember that I had changed some permissions to allow access to our local council Intranet for staff only. I check her permissions and sure enough they were wrong. I sorted that out (takes about 30 seconds) and got her to log-in again. You’ve guessed it out comes the diary, this is the third time she’s checked her diary in the space of about two minutes. Again she mentions not being able to remember her log-in name etc. Unfortunately the permissions change hasn’t taken effect yet so I ask her to log-off and log-in again. Unbelievably, out comes the diary so she can check her log-in name (the one she typed in 30 seconds ago for the fourth time.) Nope no joy yet, log-off, log-in again. Yup! Out comes the diary

etc etc. YES, success home page and a happy customer, yippee. Now what amazes me is that this woman could not remember her log-in name even after typing it in five times within the space of 2 -–3 minutes. What amazes me more is that her log-in name is her first initial followed by her surname with 05 (zero-five) followed by the letter s. How on earth this woman finds her way home at night defies belief.

I work for a software company which produces a client-server based software for running your complete company including production, Orders, invoices, etc.

One day I received a call at 8:00 am on a monday morning, from one of our customers.

Cust: Hello, we have a problem. None of our workers can login into your software.

Me: Ok, i will give it a look. Please go to your server, and activate PCAnywhere, so I can dial your server and check whats wrong.

Cust: Ok, that will last a while, I call you back in 10 Minutes.

She called back after 5 minutes.

Cust: No more need to help us, we found the problem ourselves.

Me: Just interest, what has it been?

Cust: The server has gone.

Me : Gone? (I thought the server had disappeared from the net, of some reason)

Cust: Yes, gone. There are only imprints in the carpet, where the server used to be.

A few phonecalls later I had found, that thursday evening an external technician had a hardware problem with the server (it ate the backup-tape) and decided to take the server to his company to solve the problem, without telling anyone.

The only thing i don't know until today is: What has our customer done on friday all day long with 80 employees without his one, central server???

-- hello, Super Duper Internet informational sevice for peaple all over the world, i am alex porter! how may I help you?

- well my computer doesnt work any more!

-- has anything happened to it, have you done anything to it lately?

- no!

-- are u sure?

- well it was in da living room i moved it in da kitchen now

-- yes well have u tryed plugin it in and everything like that?

- mmmmmmmmmmmmm oh yea plug it!

I work for a large ISP and have been doing DSL tech support for a year and half. I don't know everything about DSL but I understand a fair amount and at least enough to do my job effeciently. Just like most ISP's we have a 'ladder' starting with T1; the troubleshooting techs, moving up to T2 who takes escalations up to T3. I work on T2 and so I get to deal with T1 agents, customers, AND T3.

So this morning we have been seeing an unusual number of PPP DOWN issues in Longmont, Colorado.

A T1 tech escalates a call to me where the customer is using an older DSL Network Adapter that uses Dial Up Networking and is getting Error 721: Remote PPP Peer is Not Responding. I made the T1 rebuild the manual connection then I took it up.

In the ticket I clearly state the name of the tech I took the call from, the customer's name right next to their DSL #, Then I list their ILEC (phone company), Their Operating System, The modem they have, and their software version. Then I take detailed notes of the issue and any stats I get from our server tool.

I get on the phone with T3 tech and here is how the converstation went.

T3: This is Floyed with T3 can I get your ticket #?

ME: {Gave him ticket # with ALL my notes in it}

T3: Okay, while I pull up that ticket, what is going on?

ME: This customer can not connect with their (type of modem) since yesterday, is getting an error 721. We have seen a lot of PPP DOWN issues in Longmont today and since this is a PPP error as well, and this customer is on the Longmont server, I think it is related. I had the T1 tech create a new manual connection but did not think it necessary to uninstall and reinstall the modem drivers.

T3: Okaaaay, and who is their phone company?

ME: (?? only one phone company uses the type of modem the customer has..)*sigh* (tell him the phone company)

T3: And what windows version?

ME: Windows 98

T3: And do they use the software?

ME: Yes they have version x.x...Did you get my ticket # up okay??

T3: *snappy tone* YES.

ME: Okay, sorry.

T3: Alright, so what did you say we have to do with this guy again? Uninstall and Reinstall TCP/IP?

ME: ..........?? Noooooo...We need to tell (phone company) that we have a server issue in Longmont, CO because this is the 6th PPP DOWN error from there that I have escalated since 6 am. And on all of them the server tool shows the same issues.

T3: Well you don't have to get all edgy about it. I was just asking because I thought I heard you say we needed to do TCP/IP!

ME: *competely dumbfounded* (and these people get paid MORE than I do?!)

So there I was, 10 years ago or so, answering a fax from one of our biggest clients.

We had a small programming shop and I was in the help desk when this fax came in. The CFO was very mad that the phones had been busy all day, so she wrote "!!!*** ERGENT***!!!" all over the fax.

Here is the gest of the fax....

"PLEASE HELP ASAP!!!!!

As we do business in West Virginia we need you to increase the state field in the database from two letters to three letters."

Signed by the head accountant and CFO.

Well, after we got up off the floor, we could not figure out a way to call A CFO and explaine the WVA DOES have a two letter abr. its WV. We did not want to embariss her.

So, we sent them a price quote on the requested modification with a sugestion that WV would work for most post offices. We never got a response back.

on this three day weekend computer converson, the last computer to be replaced was the CEO...

So tews. morn we await his arrival and commence the testing.

" first thing to do sir is to login to the network"

Well what is my password???

"Sir, dont you type it in every day????"

After about 15 tries and 5 "lockout-resets"

We verified that his password has not changed in 1 yr.

NEVER !!!!! EVER!!! say to the CEO....

" How can you forget the password you've been using for over a year... in just three days????

can you say " un-employment??"

hey everyone, i work tech support for a certain 2 letter computer manufaturer, and have for the last 5 months. any way this is not really a tech story so much as a pet peev.

i hate it when you tell a l-user to click "OK" and they say there is no "OK" there is only "YES and NO" it seems small i know but hear that several times an hour...several times a call and it begins to bug a person. ^_^" well gotta go back to work now...

this is a call im on right now...

this person called in because at random intervals while surfing the net working offline and or booting, her screen would go blank and then she would get a "windows cannont start the following files are either missing or currupt "

why this ould happen while she is logged in i am clueless but hey.

1) first we shut down and try to reboot to get the exact message

2) then we try safe mode to do a sys restore back to before this started

3) while trying to boot into safe mode the computer froze so we had to do a hard shutdown

4) load into the bios to check for HDD, its there

5) try to access the special reinstall section of our computers but the damn thing lista OS not found

time 20 minutes

6) back to the bios to check for the HDD- NOPE

7) you try to tell a 50 year old lady how to go into a tower and switch the IDE cables.... she gets her husband...now i have to relay nistructions through her to her husband... first things first he switches the wrong IDE cables -.-"

time 45 minutes

8) next we try to explain to the guy that he has two IDE cables and not one

9)now we try to help him find the IDE for his HDD and his CD-RW

Time 50 minutes

BTW my lunch started 30 minutes ago

10) convince him that the switch is temporary and that he wont lose use of his cd-rw and dvd perminantly... (what good are they without the HDD????)

finally get the cables switched... in the bios the HDD is.................drum roll....................this had better be worth my time.............................NOT LISTED...%&#@.....now to go through this again to see if its the connecters or the IDE....

This story isn't really all that funny, but it goes to show that many companies have horrible technicians. I honestly think that most techs from the larger companies such as HP and Compaq (well...I guess it's the same now) are straight out of high school with no advanced training at all. Anyway, here's my story:

My uncle went out and bought a new Compaq computer. Since it was one of the better Presario models, (hah...better and Presario...and oxymoron if I've ever heard one) and was quite expensive, he decided to purchase the extended warranty with in-home service. After having his computer for about a month, his modem completely stopped working. Whenever he tried to connect to the internet, he got an error message stating that the modem could not be initialized. Without calling me first, he contacted Compaq customer service, who sent a tech to his house to fix his problem. The tech, without even turning the computer one, opened up the case and switched the modem with a new one of the same model. He had my uncle turn the computer on and try to connect to the internet, but he had the same problem. Without checking to see if something else was causing the problem, the tech told my uncle he needed a new motherboard. The tech told my uncle that the motherboard would be replaced ASAP. When my uncle told me what he learned, I was very skeptical. I decided to check it out myself, since it didn't sound like a motherboard problem. After 2-3 minutes sitting at his computer desk, I told him to try to connect to the internet. He sat down and did exactly what he did when the tech was there...within seconds, we heard the familiar sound of a modem dialing. What happened, was that something got a bit corrupted somewhere along the line. I simply uninstalled and reinstalled the modem driver. My uncle and I had a good laugh over that one, since I was only 16 at the time (I'm 19 now) and knew more than a trained technician. Since then, he has come to me for all of his computer needs, including building hi

s latest computer.

This isn't really a tech-support story, but I find it interesting none the less.

Several months ago, I went to a school auction and won approximately 40 used computers, along with at least twice as many monitors, keyboards, and mice. That isn't even counting all the various loose parts I managed to get...including several hard drives (I actually managed to get a couple of 10Gb drives and several 4Gb drives), CD-ROM drives, three SCSI drives (one of which is a 4.6Gb Seagate Barracuda), a SCSI card, and an APC Back-UPS 600. All of this for under $300. Anyway, back to the story. Since I had all of this stuff, I was advertising my used computers at school (ironically enough), when I had a guy I knew tell me he wanted one. My jaw hit the floor. Not because I was actually selling one of my computers...no, that wasn't it at all. The reason is because this particular guy is quite unusual. This is the same guy who told me that he had a computer once, but it was very slow and he hated it...so he took it into his back yard and blew it to pieces with his double-barrel 12-guage shotgun (which he really does have, btw). He told me that from that point on, he hated computers and wouldn't touch one unless he absolutely had to. This person also struck me as somewhat slow, and I didn't think he would know what to do with a decent computer. I thought that it would be a nightmare teaching him how to use the computer and the various software packages I installed for him. I was very wrong about him. Upon arriving at his house, setting up his computer, and receiving payment, I asked him if he knew much about computers. He turned the computer on and amazed me with his skills. He had skills beyond the basic everyday skills that any computer user is expected to know. He knew what everything in the control panel did, and how to use it. He also knew quite a bit about DOS. On top of all of that, he set up his own internet connection on the spot, using settings he had memorized from his parents' computer. Wow...mo

re than I expected. After playing around with his new toy, he told me that he wanted to put a bit more money into it. He told me to get him a new hard drive, a better video card, and more RAM off of eBay for him and he would pay me for it. I was amazed that he knew what those things were. Anyway, the point of this is that you see some very intelligent people perplexed by everyday tasks on their computer...and then the people who you expect to be the least intelligent can surprise you. It turns out that he is very intelligent...a tech's (or wannabe tech in my case) dream come true. He didn't need help with anything!

· 96.3235 percent of all callers refer to **L as Am****an O****e, not A*****a O****e.

· Woman wants to send faxes through her modem, and doesn t know if we are responsible for it not working.

· Man calls up with a virus that changes his home page and blames us for promoting it.

· Woman insists that typing g should ensure that google opens up and blames us for promoting **L search (which itself is powered by google, co-incidentally), because it opens up instead of google when she types g (instead of http://www.google.com). I asked her to set google as her home page and use IE to open google with a single click. She also doesn t want to use IE because she hates Microsoft (why does she use Windows? I informed her that **L uses IE internally, though that made no difference.) I asked her to add google to her favorites so she could open up without typing the whole thing. No, she says, because that would require two or three mouse clicks. Well, how about clicking on the drop down list on the address bar to see recent WebPages typed? No. I wanna type g and get google, she insists. How about typing the first few letters instead of just g? How about go ? No. I wanna type g and get google, she insists again... It took me close to 50 minutes to get her to hang up. She was very, very frustrated that auto complete wouldn t bring up google. No other solution was acceptable to her. Crazy, Methinks. On some sort of dope?

· Woman says that because her computer is not powering up, Am****a O****e is not working and vice versa.

· Keyboard is not working and she wants to sign on without one??? Say what? How is she gonna type the password? Why not call up and ask **L tech support if they can come up with something?

· Person s mouse is not working. Maybe the friendly **L staff will help me use **L without one. I can save a few dollars on a new mouse . Yeah wake up!!!

· PS: I did get a case before this where the mouse was one of them new fangled optical mice that n

eed spe

cial XP drivers. Unfortunately this woman upgraded without downloading them. All I helped her do was to tell her the keyboard shortcuts she could use to choose the appropriate options while installing **L. She knew about TAB to switch between options, all she needed to know was that SPACE selects the current item.

· Person thinks the start button is the power button and restarts the pc.

· Woman couldn t locate the CDROM drive. She has one, because it shows up in My Computer. But since she s never used it, she just cant find it. I help her locate the Drive Bay. But she cant locate the eject button. (there are so many buttons on the front panel, you know). I ejected the tray by right clicking on the D:\ icon and choosing eject. Now she puts the **L CD into the drive. When she takes a minute to do this, I get worried. Turns out the drive is vertically oriented, the CD gets stuck and the tray comes out without it. Of course the drive can t read the dislocated disk!

· Person thinks **L is malicious spreading viruses and sending their friends porn mail. Ain t he never heard of virus scanners?

· Father blames us for people writing sleazy IMS to his innocent daughter whom he gifted an **L account to. Why are y'all corrupting my daughter? Mister, those IM are not sent by **L employees, but by your daughter s friends.

· A Woman whose daughter signed on at her office, her mother s house and her own PC says that she can see every incoming and outgoing IM and boy, what a dirty mouth she has! The things she writes to those perverted boyfriends of hers! Terminate her account NOW! My poor old mom is so petrified .

· Thousands of people whose modems have been damaged by lightning. But I have a surge protector don t I? And my PC was off at the time too! But the line was still connected to the modem, wasn t it?

· This woman troubleshooted for 6 hours at a stretch, and reached me, frustrated. Turns out it was a damaged modem. Whew. Why had no one asked her

about lig

htning?

· Guy pirated a game from who knows where and expects us to help him. Why? Well, for one thing he doesn t know which company makes this game, and even if he did know, he hasn t got a registration no, so they wont help him, and thirdly, his comp manufacturer isn t a 24hr service and we re supposed to be TOLL FREE! So isn t there any one else with you at your office who can tell me how to get a faster frame rate? C mon!

· Woman calls us thinking we are Compaq. Even though I specifically state in the opening line that we are **L. And when I ask for her screen name, it still doesn t ring a bell??? Now the weird part is that when I inform her that we are **L, she asks me to confirm that statement over 5 times before she actually disconnects, saying she doesn t believe us.

· I got a call from a guy who thought we were AT&T

· Woman s daughter is in the room with the door locked and refuses to listen to her demands to go offline and go to bed. Wants us to delete her account.

· Man pulls out the Ethernet wire instead of his phone wire.

· Everything works fine. Except for this message: A network cable is unplugged. And she doesn t have an Ethernet card.

· Woman calls up with help on solitaire and hearts. I tell her we don t support **L s O****e games via tech support. She says, no, the good part about these games is that I don t have to go to **L, they re on my start menu! It takes me a couple of minutes to get it through to her that those games are Windows games, not **L s, and that the nice friendly selfless people at MS would be thrilled to help her out.

· How do I install 7.0 on a 486 with 4 MB Ram and even less free hard drive space? I cant? Well, why do you make such bloated software? Huh?

· This one is even worse. What happens to people who think they have a cutting edge PC. Actually they have a 386 running Windows 3.1 with 2 MB ram. And they get irate because 7.0 wont run. You know, you re not supposed to trou

bleshoot Windo

ws 3.1. Incase you re considering it remember that there is NO start button, and I don t think there is auto running. Goodness knows where the system info is. Sheesh. People who still stick to Windows 3.1 should be ashamed of themselves!

· I installed 8.0 BETA and it doesn t work. Its not supported then why did you release it? It s a BETA? Oh! For Testing! I thought it meant something else!

· No operating system found at boot up (must be a virus). Why is **L not working?

· Add or remove programs is EMPTY? Virus, says me.

· Lady insists on keeping me on line for 60 minutes while she restarts five times., uninstalls and reinstalls, before she agrees that she should call Toshiba. She was also getting a synchronization error when she booted into windows.

· Struck by lightning. All phones are DEAD! Now she wants us to get her connected somehow!

· Doesn t know how to right click, how to click sign on, how to click expert setup, or how to click the start button. She s never used computers till she bought a laptop three months ago, just for the heck of it! Wow. Wish I had a laptop.

· Similar case Demanding and irate, this woman wants me to just fix it anyhow. Refuses to give me any info about her PC. What Windows version, what **L version? I don t know and don t care. Just fix the problem. I ask her to click the Start button. Where? On the left hand side, at the bottom of the screen. With scathing contempt, she tells me that her start button is on the top of her window. So there. I ask her what error message she gets. At this point she blows up. Get me someone who can solve this problem without asking me stupid questions about my damned computer! Just fix it She rants for a few minutes. When I see no end in sight, I warn her that I cant give this call to anyone else and that I can solve the problem as well as any one else, if she could just provide me with more information about the problem. She yells even louder, saying that she pays the mon

ey arou

nd here. I tell her that I am going to release the call if she doesn t co-operate, and I do that too.

· Person who speaks at the rate of ten words per minute and sounds like the turtle in Bugs Bunny, is half deaf in one ear and three fourths deaf in the other! Presumably very old. Keeps getting astonished at how many windows he s got open (will my computer explode?). He had set the open in new window option, and we were doing the PFC routine. Very difficult call. Had to speak V-E-R-R-Y-Y SLOWLY.

· I love enthuastic, intelligent and polite callers. I can handle neutral customers. Once their job is done, they promptly hang up, leaving you feeling better for it. I hate Irate customers and get frustrated with demanding customers. What s worse than anything are apprehensive customers.

Me: Click on Start.

He: Click on Start?

Me: Yes please. Move your mouse to settings.

He: Settings? Settings, you said?

Me: Yes, please.

He: Sure?

Me: Yes.

And so on

These guys make it a point to read every word on the screen to make sure that they are not goofing up. They take the longest because they tend to over-explain simple situations. They also need constant reassurance that they are doing the right thing. They cling to you like barnacles and suck the life force outta you. They usually come equipped with separate lines, so you cant get them off the call easily.

· Girl s computer is very unstable. **L crashes a lot, and she gets the B.S.O.D. every few minutes. First thing I ask is: when did the problem first occur. Two weeks ago she says. I ask her if she s installed any new programs just before that. Yes. KAZAA, she says. On retrospect, she realizes that her whole computer starts and runs very sluggishly now, (because KAZAA opens on startup and remains running even when she is offline). Why didn t you tell me this earlier I tell her that KAZAA is a p2p program that is memory intensive, and that the latest version is a t

ad unstable. I also

warn her that KAZAA officially comes bundled with certain spy ware that could potentially invade her privacy. Since KAZAA needs Internet access to be of any use, she decides to go ahead and uninstall the whole thing, which should solve her stability problem.

· PS on this: I get about one KAZAA case per day. Actually you aren t supposed to say KAZAA is bad for your privacy or your computer You CAN say that it causes unstability with **L and that you should try disabling it while you use **L, because it does use a lot of resources (yeah, for the spyware!)

· This chappie has been turning his computer off just by putting off the main switch for two years. It can t be bad for his computer because all his friends do it that way too! He wonders if this could be the reason why his computer is giving problems. His computer tells him that its better to shut down using the Start button, but he doesn t believe it. He says that he doesn t want to wait for the **L updates to finish each time he signs off, and that, during signoff, the start shutdown routine doesn t seem to respond. I explain that when you interrupt the update, the Files in the TOD directory could get corrupted, resulting in the program trying to update repeatedly. Besides this, I said, windows likes it better when you use the start button than when you turn of the power from the mains. I had to repeat this explanation at least six times before he was convinced that I was not kidding.

· Woman wants to get AT&T cable. She has XP. The guys come over and install a DLINK 528 TX Ethernet card, but don t have XP drivers. It shows up as a conflict in the control panel. **L wont work with her modem now. Somehow it is supposed to be **Ls fault that the AT&T guys couldn t get her the right drivers.

· This question will stump you. Man gets a porn splash screen instead of his welcome screen. He has a message on his desktop: Don t open **L again, or your computer will be screwed for life. I tell him straight off that it must be so

me h

orrendous virus, and nothing short of a virus scan can help him right now. I say go ahead and sign on, let s see what happens. He screams in fright when an ominous message pops up: I TOLD you not to open **L. Now your computer will be destroyed. I insist that it is a virus. Now he says: Whats your name? How does it feel to be on 97.1 FM (which city in the US, I dunno ). I say Great and hangup. My first prank call in this call center. Mind you, other processes are apt to get more prank calls than this, possibly because here, a valid **L account is required, and also the queue is so long that any casual prankster would get bored to death, thus taking all the fun outta it.

· Our accents (even with VAST in full effect) must slip through. About once a day, I get a caller (mostly Spanish), who is convinced that I answered his or her call three hours ago, even though I just came in.

· You are supposed to call customers by their last names. How do you pronounce names like Hubobaloochubbwaba? (I get names that seem to look that way, mind you.) What about people with names like Little John. What about Mr. Bean. Can you say that five times in a call with a straight face? What about people whose names sound obscene? When people have names like Bates, doesn t it remind you of some joke some guy told you?

· Don t overuse the EXCELLENT and VERY GOODs in a call. Some people can t get enough of it, others think you re being patronizing. Use it only when the person needs encouragement. Oh! You finally located the Start Button. Hurrah! One of my feedback comments suggested that the member was very flattered by my use of these words. One woman asked me if I was a schoolteacher

· Windows XP starts VERY fast. ME and 200 start the slowest. XP is the most finicky as far as drivers go, while 98 is the most compatible. XP is the most stable, ME is the most unstable piece of code to ever come out of Microsoft. In fact, if you have ME and KAZAA together, you can use it to time minutes with the

prec

ision of an atomic clock, based on how often the PC will crash!!!

· If they are unsure if they have XP, ask them if the start button is green, and the task bar is blue. See if they have a My Computer icon on the desktop. Its absence indicates XP.

· People think that Windows ME is 2000. So they often say I have Windows Me, 2000 Edition, or simply Windows 2000.

· The Governor of California calls up Sukhjeev and asks for tech support (yeah, right!)

· Woman discovers that her pet cat has chewed up her telephone wire It s a new 50-foot wire.

· Lady can t see her main **L screen. Julian asks her to look behind the sign on screen. So she looks behind her monitor. (And still can t find it, I suppose!)

· Person misplaced his laptop. So he asks Julian if the find computer search in the network neighborhood will help him locate his lost laptop!

· Julian gets this call where this wiseass dude wants to bypass the **L software because it runs to slowly on his machine, so he adds the number, his screen name and password to Dial Up Networking and expects it to connect!!!

· Einstein here decides to get the benefits of a blazing fast connection to **L. So she buys an Ethernet Card from the local store and puts it in. Unfortunately, as she tells Julian, its still slow How about paying for it and getting it connected?

· I solve this guy s problem, so he s in a real good mood. So he tells me this joke: What do fish say when they hit their head on a concrete wall? Ans: Dam!

My company make and support a range of PC driven imstrumentation. Some networked others stand alone.

This call came one day and stretched our "be patient and understanding customer policy a "Little".

Cust "We have several of you machines Mk4 and Mk6's normally all work well but should they stop measuring when the electricity is tuned off?"

Me " may I suggest a UPS sir" Turned out they were sufering mains supply brown outs.....

Worry this guy was their technical director!!

I am almost fourteen years old, and consider myself one of my class's three computer geeks. I was sitting in art class one day, talking about computers to my friends. I asked the girl sitting next to me what processor her computer had, because I was asking around the table (there are five of us at each table, twenty per practical class, and the three computer geeks or IBM experts are seated at this one), interested to find out who had what on their computers (I have a relatively slow processor, a Pentium 2). She answered "Microsoft Word". Enough said.

A customer called us complaining that he couldn't dial up to the internet. The tech that was speaking with him tried everything he could think of to get this guy online. He recreated the dialer several times, verified the username/password endlessly, and even remove and re added the different networking protocols.

Finally after growing fed up, he told the customer to bring the comptuer in to us and have us take a look at it. He again tried everything he could think of, same as on the phone to get the computer online.

Eventually he tried hooking it up to our broadband internet line to see if he could pull a signal down from that and get online, it would not work there either.

The customer was standing by at the time:

Customer: Do you think it would matter that my computer got hit by lightning in the storm the other night?

I work dial-up tech support for a major ISP. While we get stupid people all the time, this one took the case.

M: Thank you for calling tech support, how may I help you?

C: I can't connect to the internet.

(something about this guy made me suspect he was a little deficient in the sanity department, so I asked. . . )

M: Sir, is your computer plugged into the phone line?

C: It has to be plugged into the phone line?

(No, I think, the magical Internet rays will connect you automatically)

M: Yes, sir, there should be a jack on the back of your computer labeled "line." Is there a phone jack near your computer?

C: Yeah, there's one about ten feet away. Hang on.

(I count down in my head. . . 3. . . 2. . . 1. . . )

*click*

Yes, folks. He disconnected the phone he was talking on.

Something which always drove me *nuts* in my helpdesk days, was the customers who couldn't get words right, and who persisted in getting them wrong, no matter how ofter you used the correct term.

It wouldn't have been so bad if they all got something different, but they somehow seemed to have a sort of communal dislexia, meaning they would share the same error.

We supplied Lexmark printers. A good percentage of the customers would call them Lemmex.

If you were trying to do anything in System Configuration Manager, the customers' response to "What's on the screen at the moment?" Would almost always be "System Conflagration Manager"

"OK, how's your printer connected to the computer?" "UBS."

Then again, there's the group stupidity...

When asked to type an ampersand - or, if you had one you just *knew* couldn't say it let alone find it, the and symbol - most of them would type an asterisk, even if you'd told them which key combination they needed. Or a plus. Or completely fail to use the shift key and end up with a 7.

Nearly all of them called their tower the modem.

"OK if you look down the list, can you see LoadPowerProfile?"

"No."

"OK read out the list to me."

"Realplayer, Bonzi Buddy, LoadPower...oh."

So. Anyone else got any common misreads, mispronounciations, and things that send you off into autopilot mode because so many people get them wrong?

So I get a call from this guy. Aparently he cannot register our software. So I ask him for the key he's using, to which he replied that he has tried several and none of them work. Now I know that there is no way a licensed customer has more than 1 key. So I ask him if he's a owns a license. His exact response: "No. I got the program from a buddy of mine and he gave me this keygen. But I keep generating keys and they don't work". My reply: "That's good to know. We have designed our new version not to accept keys from 3rd party key generators". What did he expect? Replacement keys? Yesh!

The other day I was working at my desk, when the CEO of our organisation calls out "..uh..I don't mean to alarm you, but my computer is flickering, and I can't do anything! Nothing works - I can't even shut down!"

Thinking to myself that maybe Windows had frozen, I wasn't too worried, until I went in and saw that the screen was indeed flickering wildly whenever she tried to access the start menu, or any desktop icons etc. I thought maybe a hard restart was in order, and that she might have picked up a bug (as kazaa is a well-utilized program on her machine). This was until I looked a little closer at the folder that she had been working from...I moved it slightly to the left - just enough to stop the corner from resting on the 'esc' key - and walked away from a rather embarrased CEO.

While working as a computer tech in a secondary college (12-18year olds) in Australia I came across quite a few odd things (Yes... Swear words on keyboards, whiteout on monitors..) However, this is one that actually hurts to think about.

Teacher X approaches me in a semi-distraught manner.

Inquiring as to what the problem was she showed me a 3.5" floppy. There was something wrong with, took me a moment to realise...... THERE WERE 5 STAPLES IN THE THING!

Enter the twilight zone...

I asked her what had happened and she explained in thus:

Last night I was working on some marking on this disk. I managed to spill coffee on it. So I took it into the kitchen, opened it, washed it with warm (Not hot I confirmed with her) water and put it back together. Now it wont open this file.

Ok.. I was hurting, I'm not the person to laugh in someones face, but this was close.

I decided to humour the teacher and see what I could "get" off the disk. Chucking it in the drive, it whiirrrreeed, clicked and well.... it showed there were 13 files on the disk. I was stunned beyond belief, not only had this been washed and stapled, but it was still in a working state!

Copying files off the floppy on to a new one... 12 files copied!?!?! The one that didn't wasn't one she needed.

She walked off with her new disk quite happily..

Mean while, I'm still sitting in my office chair with a rather stunned look on my face. Then it kinda snapped and I yelled out "Hey boss! You gotta get a load of this!"

To this day, I still can't believe that a floppy disk survived a washing and stapling and that the teacher was surprised she lost a file.

The company was combining two regional offices to allow for more efficient 24 hour coverage of the phones (and Internet Help Desk).

I was the only person on day shift and the one who had set up the "model" program when my regional office still handled all seven regions (we forwarded a LOT of messages to the other regions until the website was re-programmed to do it by state of residence).

So - I sent out a message asking everyone on the night and weekend shifts to place handled messages in the "Archive" folder so that they could be referenced if someone sent another message and saved to diskette at the end of the month. Simple instructions on how to DRAG & DROP the e-mail to the Archives folder (hint - below Inbox) were included.

So - why did everyone else start FORWARDING the handled messages to ARCHIVES@company.com??????

I support Broadband in the uk, some of our customers have cable modems, and others get their broadband via a Tv set top box.

I had a customer just now, who has just had her cableing installed from her set top box to her Pc, she said that she had the rj45 to usb adaptor, but couldn't find the modem.....

I said, you have a set top box?!?

she said Yes.

I replied it is in the set top box!

I mean she just had the cable run from the box to her pc, and the install engineer had told her how to connect, and she would have had the choice of getting a cable modem or using her set top box !!!

And to top it all my manager was listening to the call & I got told off for not following the script!

Some of these people are denser than diamond!

I once ask a customer to send me a copy of his data disk and the next day I recieved a XEROX of a 5 1/4" floppy disk.

Circa 1991, I used to work sales at a computer parts distribution company. They also had techs in the back who would build "custom" PCs for our customers. One day a tech comes in saying she destroyed all the floppy disks in the work area because they were near a computer with a software virus. She went on to explain that the virus may have "spread through the air" from the computer to disks -- infecting them.

I went over to the house where a couple of my friends lived one afternoon to network their computers, since they are both computer clueless. As I was setting up stuff on one of their computers, I noticed the mouse was sticking and needed to be cleaned. So I flipped it over and took out the ball. It was obvious it had never been cleaned in all the years that she had owned her computer, so I began to clean it out. My friend freaked out and wanted to know what I was doing to her mouse.

"I'm cleaning it," I said. "Didn't you realize it was sticking and not moving the cursor well?"

"Oh," she said, peering down at what I'm doing. "I didn't know you could clean it. I didn't even know the ball came out. I thought it was just my mousepad." With that, she pulls the mousepad out from a drawer and replaces it on her desk, still with a look of awe.

I was selling subscriptions for an internetprovider by phone. People already had a free subscription and i had to motivate them to get a paid one.

I always started with the question if they were pleased with there product. So the conversation always started with the problems they had with the internet ore the computer. Once a day i spoke a man who told me that he'd just installed the software the other day. But the problem was that he couldn't connect to internet. I suggested that we could run through the program together. So we did. We passed everything, but it wouldn't connect. The man:'I see the program searching... no it can't make a connection.'

Finally i asked him if the plug and the wire from the computer to the telephoneline were alright.

The man:'Plug?' 'Wire?'. I told him that the modem of the computer has to be connected with a telephoneline bij wire. It showed that he didn't have a wire, plug and a telephoneline! Pffff!

Had a user call the other day to ask if the mouse server was down because her mouse had stoped working. It was unplugged.

...does not mean you are the end-all, be-all.

I've been working with computers for about 20 years (At the point of this story). I was working for a radio station, main system was 2 Windows 95 PC's, networked via coax and standard ethernet cards. One computer in the production studio, and one in the on-air studio. The commercials and songs (obviously) were moved back and forth via the coax cable.

Lightning strike. Lost the ethernet card in the main studio, and some other equipment, knocked us off the air for about an hour. Me being smart, I thought I'd go ahead and swap out the ethernet cards, so I wouldn't have to take the on-air machine down again, since the one in the production room seemed to have survived, and it would be the next day (It was about 11:30pm at that point) before I could lay hands on a coax ethernet card. Besides, we were off the air anyway.

Big dummy me, the next day, or rather night - since you usually don't do anything to a radio station until evening - walks into the on-air studio, throws the switch into satellite programming, and proceeds to dismantle the on-air computer - again. I forgot I had already swapped NICs.

90 minutes later, I'm beating my head against the desk, I've run through every trick I could think of, but that new NIC was not talking to the production room computer (of course not - The production room computer had no NIC in it).

Finally call tech support for these computers (custom job, small company, their main programmer/engineer/tech support was the play by play man for the local high-school football team. I paged him, and he left the broadcast booth to help talk me through this.

30 minutes later, the shock hit me when I realized what I had done. I owe him a major apology, because I finally lied and said "It works!" when it seemed feasable to say that. Hung up with him, put the computer back on the air, and went to the production room to install the new old NIC. Plug and play, I was done in 10 minutes.

Th

e moral of today's story, kids: "Double check, and use a Sharpie. Label everything, and take notes. Saves much time heartache, and Friday evenings."

I was working for a computer support team a few years ago and had an interesting call.

Customer called in stating that his computer has no power. I asked the customer when did he notice the problem. (Looking for a possible power failure.) Customer then stated he just bought the computer and didn't want to take it out of the box until he was sure the computer worked fine......

Confused and hoping I heard him wrong I asked how was the computer plugged in if it was still in the box? I heard the famous OH YEAH and then noticed the customer hung up. Crazy how those electronic devices need power to work

I was troubleshooting network connectivity with an end user in one of our NY sales offices and the questions I asked were all pertaining to the end users latop, when I later asked "are you in a docking station" the salesperson stated "no...I'm in my office". I almost fell off my chair laughing and my cohorts had a laugh with this one

I just did a field service call for a non working keyboard on a server. Got to the site typed 2 commands and found no problem....Monitor was up high and the last line of text on a command line interface was not visible to the drone reporting the problem.

Drive time = 1 hour 30 minutes

Time on site = 10 minutes including paperwork

Seeing a dumb $%# get fired for making a stupid service

call = priceless

Oneday I came across a very Intellectual Customer.

Me: Thanks for calling.......My name is......May i have ur name pl?

User:...........

.

.

.

Me: So which version of windows you are using.

User: Windows 98-99-2000-XP

So it starts like this another basic printer tech support call working for the wonderful company that goes by two letters and recently merged with another wonderful company so this older lady calls in and she is saying her printer isn't working. Start with the basics is the printer power plugged in: no // Ok lets plug in the power can't find power cord ok find it "oh here it is" plug it in "well it won't fit" well it should its a standard 3 prong power cable "well this one must be European because it won't fit in my outlet" well it should describe it to me "well its about 3 inches long and it has teeth in it." (I think to myself what this lady is trying to plug her parallel cable into her outlet) I tell the lady no thats your parallel cable you need to have a power cable this is the only cable I have I think its the European kind " I explain to the lady that is your data cable it connects from the pc to your printer she says "whats a pc" I then start pulling my hair out. I explain the data cable connects into your computer she then says "oh I think I found the power cable eventually we get her printer working.

Two tales.. one where i had to actually have a cust put her hands out in front of her and had her look at them. I asked her to notice which fingers made the "L" with the thumb and forefinger... after she noticed that I informed her that that hand was her left hand... and we proceeded with our LONG call..

the other incident was when the cust said she couldnt click on her start button cause there was glass in front of it on the screen and where was the cookie jar to put her cookies....

I work for my school's tech team (basically, they don't have the budget to hire techs so they let qualified students do tech support and get a grade for it), and last week got a real ringer. My guidance counselor called the tech lab complaining that her computer (Apple G3) had crashed and that the reset button on her keyboard wasn't working. I could have helped her over the phone, but someone else picked it up and had already hung up when I heard about it. So I walked over to her office (other side of campus; 10-minute walk), unplugged the computer, plugged it back in, smiled at her, and walked out.

HI

You gotto hear this, at the end of this tale you will either be tearing out your hair and crying or atleast have the greatest sympathy for us.

I am working as a Software engg for this call center and i code applications for our intranet. we moved to our new call center recently and and the facilities were great top of the line hardware CCDS biometric devices etc,but alas the people looking after them are so ignorant, heres an example

we had to implement a groupware project, Since coding in ASP and hosting on IIS was such a pain (i dont know,asp dont want to either) i started coding this application on php and mysql, hosted it on apache on a test machine it ran like a charm. when the time for implementation came,i ask for this software to be installed on a linux machine and the the ridiculous circus starts instead of just denying permission

one IT manager says "we cant afford the licenses for linux"

(bet this guy thinks linux is some kind of exotic bird in the rain forest)

THe second one says"linux is not secure,what about intruder detection"

(bet this guy never heard of a firewall or tripwire or iptables all his life its a wonder he knows how to spell linux)

at the end of it all we end up recoding the entire thing in asp with hired help and host it on a windowze 2000 machine running IIS5

moral of the story like mama IT team knows whats best

LOL

cheers

thanks for tolerating such a long post

bye

:(

I work on a help desk providing software support, and one day after talking someone thru upgrading their software, they called back in a panic saying the software had killed their computer. Apparently after they restarted it, it started bleeping and hadn't stopped for 10 mins, once I'd calmed the customer down, I started running thru possible problems, and when I asked if any of the keys on the keyboard were stuck down, she told me that some were sticky where she'd knocked over a mug of coffee. She felt sure that the problem was more to do with the software than the keyboard full of coffee. Like the professional I am, I told her to switch keyborads with someone else in the office and deny all knowledge!

I get a call from this woman who is having trouble updating her software

from our floppy disk.

Me: xxx, this is xxx, can I help you?

Her: I'm having trouble updating my program.

Me: Ok, can I have your phone number please?

Her: xxx-xxx-xxxx

(This is where I bring up her acct and see if there are any tech notes from

the past etc. There are none)

Me: Ok, is it giving you an error message?

Her: It says the device is not ready.

(keep in mind that this is from the command prompt)

Me: Is this when you're just trying to access the disk?

Her: Yes.

Me: Did you type A:?

Her: Yes, that's when it gives me the error.

Me: Is the floppy disk in the drive?

Her: No, does it need to be?

Me: Oh my God.

While assigned to the US Special Operations Command on active duty with the US Army, I was ordered to Bosnia in 1998 for nine months. The powers that be quickly found out that I knew computers, and althought we did have tech support, I have my share of people asking me questions.

One day I was awaked from my sleep (after working a night shift) to be told that my help was needed. No one could solve this problem. I was told that a high ranking stateman had to brief the President and could not get PowerPoint to work on his personal laptop. The Army techs and phone company network dudes could not help. And he was due to give a briefing in 15 minutes to President Clinton!

I rushed over, wondering what I could possibly offer than no other tech could do. I stepped on to the podium and looked at the laptop. The speaker explained to me that he clicked on File, Open, and the powerpoint show was not there.

I disconnected the video cable so no one would see what I did next. He was in Word, which only searched for .doc files. I closed Word, opened PowerPoint, and now his slide show file displayed as an file to open. I reconnected his video cable, saved the day for the group and saves the speaker from severe embarassment.

He looked at my military rank and said, "Would you stay here and work for me? I'll pay you more than you are making now." You should have seen his face. He was desperate for personal tech support. I had to turn him down since if I volunteered to stay in Bosnia my wife would have pulverized me. I sure hope he got a full time tech, learned a bit more about computers, or just retired.

Bill Clinton never knew how close he came to seeing a shadow puppet show.

I'm a senior tech at a major ISP (#2 worldwide... the only one without a 3 letter acronym). Quite often, I get calls sent to me by the "regular techs" that say something like this.

Problem: Can't connect

Resolution: Changed DNS servers

Still won't connect. Escalating to level 2

Wow, and I was sure that would work, too... :)

Yet another "stupid tech" story...

I'm a level 2 tech for Earthlink. Level 1 techs are CONSTANTLY shotgun teching problems where someone says "I can't browse" and they go and reinstall TCP/IP without any further questions asked. Or they recreate the Dial up Networking dialer (when just checking the settings of the old one is sufficient usually).

I had an interesting case where by luck of the draw, this lady called in and got me (I wasn't doing "level 2 tech stuff" at the time and was just taking normal inbound calls).

I pull up her account and it says "7 cases in the past 7 days." Uh oh... :) The lady states that she STILL can't get web pages! The conversation goes something like this.

EU: I can't browse.

ME: What sites are you trying to go to?

EU: I don't know, I just can't get to web pages!

ME: Well, which web pages are you trying to go to? Like Yahoo? Ebay etc?

EU: I don't know! I just can't GET to them!

ME: Okay... do you know what their addresses are? What are you typing into the address line of your browser?

EU: I don't know what you mean. I just can't click on any links!

(Meanwhile I'm skimming through the 7 cases from the past week... wherein her TCP/IP was reinstalled TWICE, and the dialer was recreated TWICE, among other thing...)

ME: AHHHH... I see... let's check something really quick. Right click on your internet explorer icon and go to "properties". (Luckily she knows what right clicking is)

EU: Okay, I'm there.

ME: What does it say at the top there where it says "Address"?

EU: Okay, it says: H-T-T-P-COLON-SLASH-SLASH-H-T-T-P-DOT-EARTHLINK-DOT-NET

(that's http://http.earthlink.net)

ME: Could you please change that to "start.earthlink.net"?

EU: Okay.

ME: That should fix ya right up!

Turns out she was a "link hopper"... she gets to the start page, uses the google search, or just clicks from one link to another until she gets where she's going. Never once typed an address

into the address bar on her browser. :)

I'm not saying SHE is a bad user or an idiot or anything... it's just that the previous techs didn't take the time to really ask the questions and understand the problem...

Me: Tech support this is Joey, how can I help you?

Him: Yeah, this is [Name] and I've got the [service], and I need a little bit of help.

Me: okay

Him: I've got a 21 inch monitor because I've only got one eye. And I can't tell left from right either, so I might be a little slow. It's a medical condition. I know it sounds stupid, but I'm not a stupid man. I'm quick as a whip, just can't tell left from right.

Me: ...

Me: alright.

I then went on to fix his ability to send e-mail. To verify it was working, he insisted on sending me a test e-mail. I received it, and at the very bottom it said "gunsmoke."

Me: OK I got it, it's working.

Him (whispering): What's the code word?

Me: I'm sorry?

Him (whispering): The secret code word, I put in the e-mail

Me: Gunsmoke?

Him: It is working! thank you very much, and have a good evening!

I work as a network administrator in a school. I am sick to death of kids who have a grain of computer skills and think they are Bill Gates. This so-called computer know-all (an 17 year-old pupil) comes in telling me how he's got this $#@$-hot computer blah blah blah. However he wants to know how to format the hard drive. I give him the usual warnings that he will lose all his data etc. "Yeah Yeah!" says he, sounding as if he knows what I'm talking about. So I recommend he keeps the system files ie Format c: /s. I even give him a Win 98 Start-up disk incase ha can't get his CD-ROM working. "yeah-yeah!, I understand..." he says. Well the guy comes in the next day complaining that after formatting his HDD and re-installing Win 98, nothing works. Why, because He as wiped all his device drivers and does not have the disks to re-install them. Oh-dear, how sad, never mind, not my problem. You asked me how to format your HDD and I told you.

I worked for a large company supporting all of our remote sales technicians. Most of the time I was able to quickly resolve problems over the phone without having the sales reps send in their laptops (necessary for hardware repairs). This particular sales rep was complaining about a unresponsive keyboard. I tried my best to troubleshoot the problem over the phone, but concluded that it must be a hardware failure and asked him to overnight his laptop to me for repairs. The sales rep claimed the laptop had not been dropped or damaged and couldn't think of any reason why the keyboard might stop working. The next morning I received the laptop and was giving it an examination before I turned the laptop on. I decided to check for anyting that might be imbedded under the keyboard (paper clip, stray staple, popcorn, etc). When I turned the laptop upside down out came (you're gonna crack up laughing)......MILK!! Yes as MOOOO as in Cow! MILK! So there I sat with this amazed look on my staring at this puddle of milk on my desk, and nearly dropped the laptop while laughing my A** off. I mean how can this guy think that spilling a glass of milk on his keyboard would not cause it to malfunction, and he didn't even think to tell me on the phone what he had done. I couldn't belive that the laptop would still even power on, but it did. So I cleaned it up, installed a new keyboard, tested it thoroughly and everything seemed just dandy. When I was packaging the laptop up for an overnight return....I just couldn't resist. I printed out a large sign and taped it to the cover of the laptop saying "GOT MILK?," and shipped it back to him.

Last summer, I was taking a course working with networks, not for certification or anything just general knowledge. We set up a network of computers running different services, some Linux some Windows, with one acting as a router.

We had some interesting host names for our computers, GOD was the DNS, Jesus was the Router, ThePenguin a linux machine, situated as far from GOD as possiable was HellFire (a windows machine) Our workgroup was named Universe

While working on my machine (named underscore changed to the work instead of the character after some threats from GOD) I found that I could no longer ping hostnames, but had to use IPs. The first troubleshooting question:

Is GOD in the Universe?

I work as a tech support rep for a large cable internet company and after reading all of these stories I had to share one of mine.

M=Me

I=Idiot on the phone

M: Thank you for calling _____, this is ____ speaking, how can I help you?

I: I'm working on my wife's laptop and when I hook it up to her docking station all I get is a black screen with a blue box in the middle that says "no signal."

M: Uh, sir, that means the monitor isn't getting any signal.

I: Well, I KNOW that. I need you to help me with it.

M: Sir, this is Internet Tech Support; I can't help you with your monitor.

I: But this is what I use to access the Internet with!

M: I'm sorry, sir, but you'll have to contact the manufacturer of your pc or the monitor manufacturer.

I: Well, thanks for nothing! ::click::

And a similar call:

M=Me

FI=Female Idiot on the phone

M: Thank you for calling _____, this is ____ speaking, how can I help you?

FI: My screen is all black with a blue box in the middle that says "no signal."

M: That might mean your computer isn't turned on.

FI: I didn't turn off my computer.

M: Try it anyway.

FI silent for a few moments then: Oh, there it is. I guess the computer was turned off. ::giggling::

::while I nearly punch my own monitor::

And yet another along those lines:

M=Me

FI=Female Idiot on the phone

M: Thank you for calling _____, this is ____ speaking, how can I help you?

FI: My computer keeps going to safe mode.

M: I'm sorry, but you'll have to contact your computer's manufacturer or Microsoft for assistance. I'm just Internet Technical Support.

FI : But this is what I use to get on the Internet with!

M: I'm sorry, ma'am, but I really can't help you.

FI: ::click::

Life is truly good in Tech Support!

Okay, so I work at a computer shop. Mostly repairing things, but occassionally building and selling them.

So a guy comes in, see? And he's got a computer. A Compaq. And he needs the CD-ROM drive replaced. We carry it to the back to fix it (we try to have an in-and-out in 30 minutes policy for jobs like this) and he comments, "They really should make these things tougher."

The CD-Cage had been completely snapped off. So naturally, I ask, "What happened, kid grab it and break it off?"

The response was an urban legend come true.

"No. I put my water jug in it and it broke."

So this guy buts a Pentium 4, 3 GHz in our 'Hot Sale'. The next day, the guy comes back and asks for us to pay for his computer.

Him: I put the processor in my computer and it burned the damned thing up!

He then hoisted the machine onto the counter, where one could clearly see the processor. Burnt and charred. Lacking a heatsink.

Me: Sir, you need to apply a certified heatsink and fan to a processor, or else it will burn.

Him: I have a case fan, that's good enough. Now give me my money.

The next hour consisted of a lot of yelling, and eventually the police being called to drag a rather violently angry, and not-so-bright fellow from the store.

So a friend brings his PC to me, claiming it doesn't work. The power supply didn't even switch on.

Turns out, he switched the '115 volt' switch to '230' thinking that was overclocking.

When we get inside the PC, I ask about a large, sticky mess and several shards of glass inside the case. He told me he had dropped a glass of tea inside and it broke. And never cleaned it up.

Okay...

After buying a new power supply, we discovered his HDD to be bad. So I sell him a new HDD, and to save money, he opts to do the installation himself, against our advisement.

A couple hours later, he calls saying his floppy drive is broke. It doesn't work, and the light never turns off. It's a clear indication he plugged the FDD cable in backwards. We tell him, but he says he tried all possible combinations.

He >denies< any possibility of plugging it in backwards.

So he comes back, and in five minutes we switch the cable once, and it works. "Well, it didn't when I did it!"

He then buys a new CD-RW drive, and goes home. Again to install it himself against our pleas.

The next day, he brings it in, saying it won't turn on, giving a memory error.

We open the case to see the RAM chips bent over in the DIMMs. SD-RAM does not go in sideways...

So, after some pliars and difficult removal, new RAM, a dusting, scrubbing, and installing his CD-ROM, we give it to him to go back with.

Two days later, he comes back, saying his PC is too slow and makes wierd grindy noises.

We open the case to find a fan that wasn't there before...

Glued on top of the CPU fan that was already installed. They're flowing in opposite directions.

We pry the superglued fan off, and replace the now damaged CPU fan, and give him a stern warning not to open his case again. Ever.

He trots off, quite angry, and hasn't returned since.

So we get this PC that looks like it's from a bunch of hippies, judging by the wallpaper and such. Nonetheless, this isn't much of a story as much as a wonder.

The PC came in with the power supply crunched up like it had frickin' imploded. We'd NEVER seen anything like this before.

Everything else in the PC worked, and was unharmed. They still refuse to tell us what, and how, that happened.

The case was even untouched. Just the power supply's back, around the plug, was crunched right in...

I'm not exactly a tech person, but my company requires it's employees to take yearly CD-Rom tests to assess their safety knowledge and customer service "attitudes". I'm the person responsible for getting them logged onto the computer and making sure that they understand the test procedure. As this is a yearly requirement, some of these people have taken the test for the last 5 years (and the test NEVER changes!).

It's usually the older employees that have the most problems; especially with the mouse. Everything is done with a right click and it seems that right click is quite a difficult concept to master. I've seen the two handed mouse users, the left handed people that don't understand why they don't have a mouse for left handed people, and then there was the guy that didn't understand that if the arrow moved off the screen, he could just pick the mouse up and and put it back down in a different place on the mouse pad. When I went into the room to see if everything was going all right, I found him as far away from the computer as the mouse cord and headphones would permit, mumbling under his breath about the cheap effing computers that the company bought! (He was 30 and refuses to accept that computers are here to stay!).

Client calls, says his D*ll laptop is going crazy ... as soon as he clicks the Start button, it closes. ALT-TAB works but he can't do anything in any applications. He can crash the machine with the power button but it makes horrible beeping noises while booting, then returns to the same behavior.

So I arrive and note that he's completely correct ... as soon as you click the Start button, the Start Menu flashes and is gone. I saw & heard the remarkable bootup beeping & flashing too. I took it out of the docking station ... booted up perfectly. Back in the dock ... chaos!

So I'm thinking "problem with docking station". I fold down the screen and start looking at the connections. Hmm, let's see ... power, printer, external monitor, USB scanner, USB mouse, external keyboard ...

External keyboard?

I follow the cord down to a pile of papers by his desk ... under which was the external keyboard, which he didn't use & had forgotten about. He'd been piling up papers on it ... and that day there'd finally been enough weight to keep the ESC key pressed. Removed the papers, removed the keyboard, client's happy, all's well.

I work for a local ISP in tech support. While helping a customer create a dial-up connection in Windows XP, I had quite a time getting him to delete the previous connections he had incorrectly created. I told him to right click on the connection icon, scroll down to delete and then left click on it. After he displayed some frustration, I thought to make sure I described the whole "Left button/ right button" layout of his mouse. In the past, we have had customers incorrectly assume that when we say "right click" that we mean "correct" so they click the left button as it is the "correct" button, so to speak.

After describing this layout to him, he continually got frustrated and exclaimed, "It won't let me right on it!!!"

I calmly expained the right click function again and he said "OK, I got the word click in there. What now?"

I said "What do you mean, sir?" He said "I typed in the word click, like you said. You said write click on the icon and that's what I did!" I said, "No sir, right click - click the button on the starboard side of the mouse!"

He says, "Ohhhh....you should have said that to begin with. I know what starboard means !!"

Sheesh !!!!!

I have an employee who refused to work in his cubical because the serial number on his scanner had the numbers 666 in it. He believed the scanner was possessed and that is why he was having bad luck all week. I had my IT guy exchange it with another in different cubical. I also had the serials numbers taped over so no one can see them.

Had a customer call me up a few days back, he reported having an issue with his Epson (Ribbon cartridge Printer). He said just put a new ribbon cartridge on, and the problem he was having was that when he printed it would cut off the bottom of the letters. It has been awhile since I've had to support ribbon cartridges. But I figured it could only be one of two things. Either it wasn't seeded down all the way, or I needed to tighen the ribbon. I pulled the ribbon out when the user procceded to tell me that he already cleaned the ribbon. I stopped, and thought to myself. He didn't just say he cleaned the ribbon. I asked him nicely to repeat what he had said. As he held up a now black cloth. YUP, thats what I had heard. OK, I turned the ribbon well past the point of were the user cleaned it. Then I reseeded the ribbon back into the printer. I printed off a test page with no issues. He asked what I had done that he didn't. I told him nothing your cleaning it must have done it. And off I went.

As a customer called me she immediatly asked if we do virus removal?

I respond of course but what i need you to do is bring it in as soon as possible.

She immediatly responded saying could this virus be deadly it's not contagious to me is it.

After that a bigg hahahahaha on the phone and then click.

I was working in Georgia and needed some files to be faxed to me from a lawyer on the West Coast. No access to the Internet from my workstation.

He'd call and say it had been sent that day - had I gotten it? I would explain that due to the LARGE number of faxes coming in to our company - it usually took at least one work day for something to get printed out and delivered - sometimes two work days.

Well - after two weeks and three phone calls, he was threatening a lawsuit because I had not replied to his repeated faxes. I asked what number they had been faxed to - he read off (915)xxx-xxxx......which is the area code for a large area of West Texas (as a matter of fact, my in-laws have that area code). I explained that the number for the fax machine at *OUR* office was (912). I was amazed that there was a fax machine on that exact number in that area code......wonder whose it was?

The files were faxed again within minutes to the correct area code and number. His volume level went down considerably.

My mum in law just got a new mobile. Her grandson made her get it and he chose a model that apart from having a long standby also has a lot of games he can play. So not exactly a model for an 70 year old lady dead scared of anything with buttons on it.

First thing she did was to enter a wrong pin three times and then get all her sons, daughthers-in-law and grandsons over to get the thing working again.

Which would have been fairly easy if she hadnt been screaming at us all the time: Help me! Why dont you help me! while we were calling support to get the mobile working again.

Then we taught her to make calls on it. She had one before and never had problems with that, but apparently entering a few numbers and pressing the green button is much more difficult if the phone has another logo on it. Anyway, we told her that she always has to prepend the area code even if its a local call.

Strange, when she dumped her old phone she seemed to have dumped all knowledge about how mobiles work at all.

Well, next morning she calls me up, crying. my phone wont let me in... sob sob. Come over quick, I need it now at home.

I walk over to her, sure enough, 3 wrong pins agains. While I enter the number to clear it I ask if she has trouble with the pin - it's her old one, too.

No she says, she entered it correctly three times, with the area code. The area code.... I can hardly suppress my laughter. Yes, she says. Anything on this phone has to be prepended by the area code.

I mananged to get her to understand that she does not need to enter the area code with the pin. But I don't think she understands the difference between entering a confidential number to authenticate oneself and dialing a phone number.

They do phones for kids which only allow certain numbers and all that - why don't they do one for old people that just allows you to enter a number to call and receive calls like a normal phone, with big buttons for preference.

I would save

a lot of hassle - and a lot of this - I am so smart, most people in my age dont even know how to use a mobile - talk. MIL, you don't know, either.

This one interrupted me all the time while writing my previous entry: Son of said Mother in law.

Him: I cannot post pictures on this forum. It must be broke. Its not my fault. (it never is....)

Me: Well, honey. You need to show me what you do. I cant tell without you showing me.

Him: I just do what I always do. It works with all the other forums. It's not my fault. I enter &lt;img src ".."&gt; like usual.

me: Hon, it's &lt;img src=".."&gt; like I showed you.

Him: No. I nerver have used a =.

Me: Yes, Honey. I have seen you do it.

Him: No, it works on all other forums.

Me: No, it does not. You have been using the = until now.

Him: Cannot be - the other forums must be better made.

Seems to run in the family. Pieces of information suddenly disappearing from memory and never having been there.

*Sigh*

I installed a cd-rw player and a dvd player in my computer on Saturday evening. When I plugged it all back up, the (cable) modem was acting very oddly. It started up, but once all the lights came on, every one of them, including the power light, died, leaving only the activity light. I had never seen this before. The only thing I could think of was that my ethernet cord just BARELY reaches, and that I'd pulled too hard, and snapped a wire, but why would the modem act like that? So I called tech support :S

The tech ran me through pings, etc., all the standard troubleshooting. Released and renewed the ip address, which kept coming up windows default. After a bit, he told me to bring them the modem for replacement on Monday.

I don't have a car, and can't get to their offices, so on Sunday, I called again to ask for someone to come down. The tech I talked to insisted that I hadn't reset the modem, and refused to listen to me. The telephone gods took over, and disconnected before there was any resolve to the issue. (No, I didn't do it)

I called back, and after hearing what I had to say, the new tech agreed that someone would bring a modem out on Monday, between 10 and 12.

Monday morning, 2 company trucks came. They sat in the driveway for a few minutes talking to each other, and left.

A few minutes later, they came back. I went outside to let them know they had the right house and to come on in. They wouldn't come in. They were there to work on the lines.

I do have a line issue, but that is not what I had been calling about (the modem goes offline, and needs reset 3-5 times a day between 10 and 3). I was calling about a broken modem, and no matter what they did with the lines, that wasn't going to fix the modem. It took 3 more calls before the person on the other end of the phone agreed to find out what was going on.

At 1:30, I was told I would receive a callback from a supervisor within the hour. At 2:30, I still hadn't gotten the call, so I called yet again

, explained everything for the 6th or 7th time, and the tech on the other end said he would sort everything out and call me back.

At 3, the line techs finished what they were doing, and one of them came in to tell me they were leaving. I showed him the modem. He said, that's not right. He called in, to tell them about it. Whoever he talked to said to press the standby button. He and I looked over the modem with a fine-tooth comb, and could find nothing that looked like a button. Finally he pressed what we both thought was a logo sticker, and the modem came online immediately.

Is there some reason that one of the 7 people I had spoken to couldn't say, there's a standby button, it looks like this, press it and see what happens?

My modem was going offline 3-5 times a day. The inside cord had been replaced, some of the outside equipment had been replaced, and they had boosted the signal to remove line noise. It was still happening.

They sent another tech out. He wanted to see how much downtime I had, and needed to connect to their tech pages. I don't like icons on my desktop, and have removed most of them. The tech sat there for at least a minute, looking for my big blue e. Finally he asked me how do I get on the internet. I told him i.e. was on the taskbar. He said, what taskbar. I said, where the start button is.

So this tech presses the start button and starts looking in my programs for i.e. Having customized my start menu, I knew he would never find it, and had to physically point to the icon on the taskbar. He said oh.

What's even more interesting is that I have an internet keyboard, with a key to open i.e.

Scary, huh?

I used to work for a small firm as my first IT posion. It was good to cut my teeth on, but it paid poorly, so I took a part time job selling computers at a local recycler on weekends. We got a new tech there, a nice gal but didn't have a lot of experience, and her people skills needed work.

One day shortly after Christmas, I was at my day job and things were fairly slow, I knew Tina was working days at the computer shop that day, so I decided to play a little joke on her. I called up the tech line direct and the conversation went something like this:

T:Technical service, Tina speaking. How can I help you?

M:Hi there. I bought one of those 700 athalon computers you had on sale last month and I need to ask you a question.

T: okay....

M:I got the CD burner with it and I was wondering how I could back up the internet.

T:Ummm, what do you mean back up the internet?

M: you know, put it on CD.

T: Do you want to make a copy of your internet software?

M: No, I want to back up the internet. The guy who sold it to me said CD's hold a lot of information. (stifle Laugh....)

T: So, ummm, do you want to make a copy of a specific URL, or website.

M: No,the whole thing.

T: The whole thing?

M: Yes, so it doesn't tie up my phone line. (mute button while laughing)

T: (Pause)But sir, you have to be connected to use the internet...

M: Yah, well, the guy who sold me this said CD's hold tons of stuff, and I need to keep my line clear, so I wanted to put the internet on a CD so I could browse and keep my line clear.

T: Oh. ahhh....ummm....

At about that time I burst out laughing and let her off the hook. We all had a hell of a good laugh about it later, and every once in a while someone would bring it up with her again. Great way to break in the new techs on the team.