Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

When I was working computer operations, we had a user come in and ask us to print a job that she had sitting on the queue. We located it awaiting execution in the queue, and informed her that we would "execute it." She replied in a frightened tone, "Oh no, don't do that! I only want you to print it!"

My roommate was finally ready to get online with his old computer, and so we went out and bought a network card, as part of the set of requirements for DSL. After installing it, I encountered a problem, and so I called the technical support line of the manufacturer.

Me: "Yes, I seem to have a problem with the XYZ Network Card."

Tech Support: "What is the serial please?"

Me: [I read the serial number from the box]

Tech Support: "That product is not registered."

Me: "All right, let us register it, then. What information do you need?"

Tech Support: "You must go online and register your XYZ Network Card on our website."

Me: "The lack of a functional network card prevents me from getting online in order to do this."

Tech Support: "You must register it online."

Me: "Ma'am, I am calling about your network card, which would enable me to use the DSL connection, to get online, if there were no problems with it. If I were able to get online in order to register it, so that you would talk to me, I would not be calling you, as I would not have a problem with the network card."

Tech Support: "You must register it online."

Argh.

While I was doing my undergrad work I got a part-time job in my university s media center/secondary computer lab. The lab was shared by the college of education and the college of nursing, but was in a wing of the college of nursing. Lab assistants were expected to troubleshoot the computers, copy machines, take media equipment, etc., to and from classrooms, as well as oversee the supplies such as construction paper and rubber cement that were available for student s use. On Saturdays, there was only one lab assistant on duty -usually me... which was fine until the day the lab caught fire.

It was a typical Saturday, and I was in the back room (again) trying to find a video that a student needed to watch, when I heard shrieking and a girl ran in and screamed, It s on FIRE! I dashed into the lab to find a small crowd of students standing and staring at copious amounts of blue smoke pouring from the back of one of the copiers. I calmly shouldered my way through the crowd, unplugged the machine, and pulled it off the carpeting into the tiled hallway. The entire upper back of the copier was melted and the innards exposed, but there wasn t any flames, so I just left the thing in the hall. After I had assured everyone that there was no need to call 911 and opened all the windows and doors to get rid of the fumes of melted plastic, I called (as per emergency instructions) my boss at home as well as campus security (in case the smoke alarms went off) to tell them there had been a copier meltdown, but not to worry as it was all under control.

About two weeks later as I was coming in to work, I saw the dean of the college of nursing stalking out of my boss office in a high dudgeon. I hid out and waited till the dean had gone (complete with slamming door), and then stuck my head in my boss door. She was red faced and shaking, and asked me quietly, Is she gone? When I said yes, she fell into her chair and howled with laughter.

Apparently the dean had come barging into my boss office and demanded to know why she hadn t been told there had been a fire in the lab. The kicker is that the dean had sign signed off on the requisition for the replacement copier the week before, which had been carefully typed by ME with a full explanation of why said replacement was needed.

On my first call of the night I helped a gentleman get his dsl installed. After going through everything and getting him online I asked if there was anything else I could help him with. His reply was yes, would you marry me? I had to tell him sorry. He had to ask.

this is a short call i had while working as tech support at a US based computer company(largest in the world)(hope the hint helps)

Cust and me

Me:- Thank you for calling technical support how may i help you?

Cust(she):- i have a new out of box computer. i have worked with computers for 21 years. cyrix to servers.

i opened the computer and when i try and place a cd in both the cdrom drives they dont fit it. they have an ENGINEERING PROBLEM. its like the plastic on the drives are protuding upwards. the cd wont fit in. ya all sold me a lemon.

Me(confused):- both the drives have the same problem?

Cust:- Hell Yeah. i need a new computer.Send me one fast before i decide to ship this back.

Me:- maam just a minute i will talk to my manager on this issue.CUST ON HOLD.

Me an my manager decide to send a service technician to replace both the drives though still confused.

went back to customer after hold.

ME:- MAAM?

Cust:- hey dear i am sorry there was no light in the room

and my girlfriend took the computer out of the box.

THE COMPUTER WAS ACUTALLY UPSIDE DOWN.

i am sorry. talk to you later.

Start: Eternal hold for half and hour.

Me to Really big cable ISP: You seem to be having a problem with your DNS servers.

Them: Let's start from the beginning: Now a million idiotic questionsm culminating in: "Oh, you have a Macintosh. DNS doesn't work with Macs."

So I hang up.

Soem time ago i got a bluetooth usb stick from a big computer store in my town. At that time i had installed windows 2003 on my laptop.

As i tried to install the stick the driver install routine asked for a serial number, but there wasn't any suplied within the box. So i took it back to the store an the employe told me he don't have any serial numbers and if it doesn't work i should download some ohter version of windows from the internet. :/

Some time ago the girlfrind of a frind of mine came to my room and saw a 14" crt standing on the table and asked if she can have that computer.

3 weeks ago i orderd 25 new cpu's. as they arrived my boss came to my office and saw the huge tray with cpu's. so first thing he had to du is touching everyone of them and then saying "and whats on the bottom?" with this words he turned the tray over and al CPU's fall on the floor. It took 1 week to bend the pins straight.

I found this in email support this morning. Sometimes you just want to give them a big hug and tell them it will be ok. ;)

I am trying to transfer 2005 individual files to the 2004 (UnNamed Professional Income Tax Program :) I have transferred several individuals successfully. However, I have tried to transfer data from 2003 to 2004 and get an error message that indicates there's a "sharing violation." I do not want to share files and am not sure why this message comes up. Please send me a response that gives me direction on how to transfer the files without having to make them shared files.

being a tech at a DSL support center does make it difficult not to laugh at times....

cx: I cannot get online, I just got the Vontage phone system and cancelled my phone service because it was cheaper to go with Vontage.

me: well maam, that is why the DSL doesn't work, it needs the phone service to be on for it to work.

cx: you mean I will have to get the phone service on in order to use the DSL??

me:yes maam

cx: do you know how expensive that is going to be??

me: yes maam, I do know but you can get the basic local only package for the DSL.

cx: click..

beating my head against the desk.

I used to work for a small retailer who sold pc's, printers, scanners etc. I got the short straw job of "fixing" customer problems.

This one sticks out in my mind.

Woman comes into shop, collars salesman and just tears into the poor guy.

Woman: You sold me this scanner and it won't work. It's under warranty and I want a new one. I want one that actually works this time.

Salesman: If its faulty then of course we'll replace it. We need to check it to make sure that it really is broken.

Woman: It's not working.I've already told you that.

I get the scanner, load it onto the test pc, lo and behold....PERFECT scan. Colour, OCR, copy, everything crisp and clear.

When she comes back to get her "new" scanner she's told that there's nothing wrong with her original one.

Salesman: We can't find anything wrong with the scanner.

Me: What were you scanning?

Woman: A letter from a Spanish friend. I scanned it in and it came out on the screen in Spanish. I can't read it.

A little more judicious questioning brings the revelation that she believed that the scanner would scan and translate the letter for her!!

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Recently one of our employees quit, and before he did he left a few "presents" on our network. Namely, certain files showing up at the startup of our computers. Naturally I thought it was the startup folder. My supervisor searches the whole hardrive and thinks it's in the systems scripts. So he's trying to get around admin privelages all day. I figure that if he can't, neither can our employee. So I go into our trumws/startup folder, and guess what's there? All the programs. Took all of two seconds to fix the problem that he spent all day on. No need to call in tech support, and no need for an employee to get in trouble for a small, simple fix. So much for common sense...

My fun involves an incident with our local telephone company here in the heartland of the U.S.: Qwest. They have a bit of a reputation for cocking up just about everything they touch.

I work at a two man tech support company, providing computer services for small and medium sized firms that the big consulting companies don t want to touch. There s not enough money there for them, but plenty for us to make a decent living. Earlier this year (2005) we decided to get out of our respective basements and hit the big time by renting some office space. Hot dang, we re really somebody now!

One detail to take care of was our phone and fax lines. Our main line was with a different telco, so we decided to switch it over to Qwest, who held our fax line. With billing on the two lines paired up we d get a small discount every month. I knew the process was going to be a challenge when I talked to the tech about the switchover and he told me I d have to call back after all the work was done and make a special request to have the two bills combined. As I hung up the phone I swear I heard storm clouds rumbling on the horizon.

Several weeks later we were all moved in, both lines were working nicely, and our DSL was turned up on the fax line. The office was freshly painted and we were busy setting up our racks and servers. For some reason I decided to spoil the feeling of euphoria and make that fateful call to Qwest. I called them up, provided my account number, and explained that I d just like the two bills combined. The tech knew exactly what I was talking about as it s a standard package Qwest offers. He said it would all be taken care of in a few days.

I go back to work thinking well, that wasn t so bad after all. Maybe all my past experiences with Qwest were just a fluke. Yeah, and pigs have suddenly started flying, too. (large pig-like balloons over the Battersea Power Station not withstanding)

A couple of days later my partner calls me at home. He d been working late into the night when all of a sudden our internet connection went down. He was tired and ready to head home, so I looked into it the next morning. I reboot the modem, check the settings, ping the router, and try a trace route. The packets get as far as Qwest s network and then stop. I call up tech support and explain the issue and my troubleshooting steps to the lady on the other end. I also explain that I think the problem may have stemmed from the request to combine the bills. She s a pretty sharp cookie and quickly realizes that someone has deleted the routing tables. She puts in an emergency request to get them restored and within 15 minutes we re up and running again. It seems some bright bulb has interpreted a simple administrative function (combine the bills) to mean these guys don t want DSL anymore. Go figure.

All was well for a couple of days until our DSL went down again. Someone had looked at the ticket again, decided (again) that we didn t want DSL, and had disabled our account. A half hour of troubleshooting nailed that one down and got us restored. Again. I pleaded with the techie to put a note in our file saying do not do ANYTHING with this account without having the customer on the phone while you re doing it. I already had a flat spot on my forehead from banging my head against the desk and I didn t think my cranium could take much more punishment. I don t think she took me seriously though. (who does?) Since then our connection has been pretty stable though, so maybe my anguished cries helped.

I work as a lecturer in an IT educational center. We have lot of different people coming with various questions and problems. This is my last anegdote.

In our teaching room every student has its own computer and I, off course, have mine. I was standing by my computer and teaching while others were working on theirs. In one moment I said something like ".....on the left side of the screen you will see a tool...." when one of the students interrupted me and asked: "Excuse me. Whose left side? Yours or ours?"

This will probably be a familiar litany from anyone who has worked in any ISP company..

There was this caller once, who called in reported an error (no dial Tone)..

The issue was fairly simple and straight forward, but for the customer..

Having tried all methods to coax the modem into dialling, for a good 30 minutes

with the slower than snail customer, the techie adviced the

guy to contact his vendor, which the customer wouldn't agree.. . Next he adviced

the customer to check the line which goes into the computer, from the wall jack.

(customer had a line splitter, one which goes to the phone and the other to the

computer)

Well ofcourse it was fine.. Then the guy asked the customer, "do you see the line

that goes from the walljack to the telephone?"

EU : "Yes I do".

Techie : "Why don't we try connecting with that cable?"

EU : "Yeah, why not!",

Techie : "Just try pull out that line from the telephone and hook it onto the computer", techie.

... DISCONNECT!! (NO DIALTONE for real now)

Every once in a while, as the IT support department in the school, we have a BOFH moment.

One such moment came about today when a tutor informed us of a website set up by a group of the students proclaiming their "possy" was "hard" and "drugs were kewl" along with pictures of their stash. Even though the guestbook they'd set up to receive "compliments" was full of "get a life you looser" entried, the overall content of the site was not the kind of message we want our students to see.

So instead of adding a rule to our proxy server banning access outright as we would do to hundreds of flash games sites etc.., we decided to tell said students what we thought of their website - by redirecting accesses to it to somewhere else.

The final destination was hit upon by my junior tech - a website dedicated to cheese of all types and varieties.

Once we'd stopped laughing about that, we decided to randomly redirect some games sites the students were accessing illicitly to this website too.

Having identified a group of students in the library playing flash games, a quick check of the proxy logs revealed where they were connected to, and one swift edit of the redirect rules later, we all stood around as casually as possible waiting for the effect.

Five or six minutes of unbearable tension passes, during which we quietly suggest things like dialling into workstations using SMS to kindly refresh the web pages for the users.

Then, a student sits forward in his chair and mutters loudly to himself whilst prodding F5 somewhat rapidly: "Hmmmmmmmmmm. Cheese"

We had to leave the room, and the junior tech had to put his coffee down for fear of scalding himself whilst trying not to laugh so hard.

So although I usually don't condone practical jokes on this scale, every once in a while it has to be done.

It certainly lifted the tension in the office, the day having been particularly fraught for some members of my staff.

So I suppose if your internet connection ever goes screwy, and you don't get the pages you are expecting, you perhaps should wonder if your IT department is having a bit of "humour time" to lift the tension of a heavy day.

I don't know if this one takes the cake, but I think it comes close.

I work in tech support for ANALOG audio at a broadcasting network. Even though computers are not really my forte, I have been playing around with them since 1982 (TRS-80 Co-co, I swear!), and know a few things.

The younger of my two daughters (age 25) decides to get cable TV for her new apartment and get a cable modem while she's at it. She had been using dial-up to access the Internet, but when she moved to the apartment she didn't want the expense of a phone line when all of her telephone activity is on her cell phone. The cable company comes out and hooks up the cable to the TV and sets up the cable modem. The only problem is, daughter's rather aged computer doesn't have an NIC (at least she didn't try to cram the RJ-45 on the cat-5 cable into the RJ-11 port in her internal modem).

No problem, says I. I have an old Dell OptiPlex G1 at home in a closet. The HDD bit the dust awhile back and since I have an identical machine up and running, I use the fossil for spare parts. I pop it open and extract the NIC. I tell daughter I'll be over after she gets off work Saturday with an NIC. I check the type of card in the working computer (3Com EtherLink XL) and download the proper driver from 3Com's web site. Of course, I asked daughter before I did that what Windows OS she's running. "95," she assured me.

She also says her monitor is getting too dark to be useful even though she's turned the brightness up all the way. I figure the CRT is going south. No problem there, either, since I have an old monitor that does 800x600 16-bit color that I can give her. She'll have to learn to live with the lower resolution.

Also knowing daughter does TONS of surfing (especially downloading from KAZAA -- sheesh!), and has no clue what spy-ware is, I come Saturday armed not only the monitor, the NIC and its driver, but also Search and Destroy. Heaven only knows what she's got on that machine!

My first clue that something is amiss is the fact her computer takes 10 minutes to boot up! Having been previously shut downimproperly, it comes up checking for disk errors -- nearly FOREVER! I ask, "Do you know how to properly shut down a computer? You know, using 'Shut down'?" "Yes," she says, "but sometimes I get impatient and just hit the power button when it

doesn't shutdown in a few seconds."

I bang my head on her computer desk. The Lord Himself only knows how many corrupted files may be in this thing. Then, when the splash screen comes up, it's 98, NOT 95. I call this to her attention. She says, "I thought I told you Windows 98." Well, she didn't but not wanting to argue about it, I say, "well, no problem. The driver I have for the NIC covers both 95 and 98 (Got lucky on that one!)."

Before installing the new monitor, I run S&D. On the first run I get over 100 pieces of spyware in the first 600 bots, andthen S&D crashes. I try again -- five times! In the subsequent attempts I can't check more than 70 bots. I remove the 100 piecesof crap and give up on S&D. By now, I'm one hour into the job.

Next I migrate to the monitor issue. The only part of the job that goes off without a hitch, if you don't count all the Jet Li and Garrett Wang photos she's got taped to the old monitor that she's gonna have to peel off (she's got this thing for Asians actors). The monitor I brought is now up and running. She takes a look at the screen and decides she actually likes 800x600 better. Go figure.

Now I'm ready to open the box and put in the NIC. I shut down her computer. Another two minutes. While waiting, I discover there's a user's guide for Norton Antivirus 2002 (its now 2005) sitting on a shelf of her computer table. I ask her if she has kept up with the subscriptions in the past three years. She says her brother (my son) gave her the NAV and she "hasn't gotten around to updating it." She's probably got every virus known to man other than HIV itself! (More head banging!)

When I get her computer open I think "thank goodness she actually has an available PCI slot." Then the big problem:

It's time to get some voltage going to the NIC but the only pins she has available in her computer (Gateway) are larger that the Dell plug. I suppose I could find a larger Gateway plug somewhere and make a splice, but by this time I'm losing heart. After realizing there's no way I can make it fit and even bend the pins a couple of time (I know, I know), I throw in the towel.

I say to daughter, "The only way you're going to get on the Internet with this machine is to cancel the cable modem deal and get a phone line and use the internal modem." She replies, "Oh, I can't do that. That's why I have a cell phone...so I won't have to get a phone line." (Bang head again!)

"Well then," says I, "you're out of the Internet business, at least as far as this computer is concerned."

...And then she lays it on me: "OH, THAT'S OKAY, DADDY. I'M GETTING MY INCOME TAX REFUND CHECK NEXT

WEEK AND BUYING A NEW COMPUTER ANYWAY!!!!!!"

Aarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggghhh!!!!!!!

Was working in a computer store once as a tech when we had a little old lady come in.

"how much does it cost to send an email to germany"

OK, I had to learn how to work on computers pretty much on my own and have gotten pretty good at them, I build all my own computers now as well as maintain a few networks, and after a while eventually took a few courses but have yet to recieve a degree.

Once while looking for a job I decided heck with it and tried to get a job at this business maintaining thier windows based network. At this time i had taken a N+ course.

The guy they interviewed after me I spent a few mins talking to and found out he had A+/N+ certification and a bachalors degree in computer science. Yet he had no experience actually working on many computers as compared with my 3yrs experience working in comp shops repairing computers and doing network layouts.

Needless to say he got the position and I didnt.

Now fast forward 6 months

I was co-owner small computer store, and one day this company I had interviewed with calls. I decide ill go out and inspect thier computer systems because all they know is that none of the computers are working, the network is down, and thier tech (who they hired over me) quit.

I get there to find every computer fried, routers shot, and a manager near the point of crying. Also he recognized me and acting all defensively says "Uh Oh..."

I was nice to them, got them replacement computers (100), setup thier network, And got thier proprietary software working again over one weekend.

I also only charged them $100/hr since It WAS the weekend.

They tried to hire me but i declined.

Some of the problems with thier comps that the "tech" they had hired had done.

*alliminum foil wrapped around heatsinks

*all fans removed from cases (to cut down on noise)

*wires spliced together then left bare inside comps

*each comp was missing MANY screws

*some comps were missing sides

*coupla routers were melted (never figured that one out)

Figured was cheaper for the customer, and less time constrictive for me to just replace everything.

To this day I still dont hold any actual certifications, and prob never will. But i am getting tired of cleaning up messes that poeple who are "certified" tend to create.

I work as a network admin for a large insurance broker, one day one of our remote users phoned at 9am to complain about a site connectivity problem.

I spent best part of the morning talking to this user, as having a remote site out of action for us is a pretty serious problem.

Using a network diagram, I talked the user through various tests, including pinging other network devices, to no avail.

I asked the user to tell me if there were "any lights on the hub", after explaining what the hub was I was assured that there were. I then asked her to check that the various ethernet cables were plugged in tightly.

Again she assured me that they were fine.

I was puzzled, and after identifying that the problem wasn't just isolated to the one desktop, I set the user to checking (ipconfig) and pinging various pc's round the office, all to no avail.

By this time, I had gone away to think and come back to the problem several times to try out other options. And three hours had passed with no luck.

Everything was pointing at the hub, but that seemed fine, I asked her again to check it, and thinking maybe someone had mistakenly switched the uplink cable on it, I asked her to tell me the colour of the lights on the hub.

"colour? I don't know, I think they are green" What do you mean you think they're green I asked her, their either green or they aren't. "Well it's hard to tell, cos they aren't lit up".

It transpired that the hub had been switched off at the wall by someone, and the user misunderstood my question thinking I just wanted to know if there were lights on the hub, not thinking I meant were they switched on.

When I was working for HP/Compaq we used to get a ton of stupid people calling in.

ME: What model of computer do you have?

Them: It's a Compaq

Me: Ok, but what model? It should say right on the front or top...

Them: It's a "Compaq Disk"

Me: .....you mean Compact Disk?

Them: Right

After some more probing it would usually end up being a Dell.

You get to listen to tons and tons of calls, listen to customer service, tech support, sales, supervisor escalations, and more. It is just amaze me that how some customer think that, this is not a tech issue. Or the customer saying "Yes, I know my power supply is smoking, yet it is a cusotmer service issue not tech" Or the customer going "I want my $50 rebate on my HDD from tech support". Or that when an agent says "My supervisor will tell you the same thing" and then the customer gets the supervisor tells the customer the exact same thing and the customer is so much relieve to hear it from a supervisor. Like the word of an agent who works their ass off for the customer is wrong.

Words to the customers, your calls do get listen to.

Watch what you say, and think. If you really want to know more about them, their address or info to complain. Just google them, saves you time. And if the internet is the problem, goto your stinking library.

No one is perfect, so don't expect your next customer service or tech rep to have a Doctrine's Degree, or be the world's smartest person.

If the rep does good, give them kudo's, you will help the make their day and it will help them do better for other calls.

Do not be rude, being rude will get you nowhere. Be as nice as possible to the reps. They take much as 40 to 50 calls per a day. So after about the 30th rude call, the rep might not care for you if you are being utterly rude to them. They just might not do anything at all.

Don't freak out by anything they say. A lot of reps speak opened minded. And if anything is in question. Think this. Fedral Trade Commission, - Read about the privacy laws and Trade Laws. You will understand why they can not say. "Oh yes Mr. IDIOT, you will receive you stupid computer by tomorrow at 10 am." And if you want to bitch, please mail us at 555 nowhere / notown, nostate 00000-0000.

Yes, we are under the dredfull words of policy, proceedure and FTC. Some agents might do it, and they would get charge about a 10 thousand dollar fine for a FTC viloation. Would you like this bill, for us to promise a date for you. It is not hard for you to call your phone company and ask for directory assistance for an address, or for you to accept an Estimated Date for a delivery date.

Rebates - Do not get rid of your box, keep it. And do wait a few days for the invoice to show. If you have an e-mail confirmation, that should be good enough. Check the manufacture website for a rebate. You will need a printer. Don't expect the rebate form to come with the blasted thing. If you want it, it is your responsiblity to get everyting for it. Don't call up crying that you can't do it because you were to stupid, that you threw away the box that had the UPC code. Or that you are to lazy to goto a library, or a local computer store to have the rebate printed.

Go ahead and tell all your friends not to buy a particular item from a particular company. If thats the way you feel, so be it. Just that over a million other will, and we will get new customers. If we lose you, yes that is a lost, yet lost of a complete idiot.

If you want to return items, be smart about it. Don't wait more that the Limited Money Back Garruntee. It won't work. And do not bitch about the restocking or shipping fees. It is a resonable charge that you should pay. Don't think that the LMBG start when you open it. It starts when you receive it. 15, 30, 45, 90 days, depends on what item, where it was bought from. Software is different, if you opened it, you better kept it, or hope to GOD green earth that your computer is not compatible or even have a compatible computer for it. We can find out, and if you do, your stuck with it. The Priacy laws on that with the software are harsh, and taking back open software, we would be an helping customer commit software priacy, so your requrest to return opened software will be denied.

Warranty, I won't touch this with a 10,000 foot pole so sorry.

Ways to get help.

Stay Calm and Professional

Have a pen and paper ready

Have all info ready, phone #, serial, name on account, billing address, ship to address if different, other numbers (ones given by reps, service #, order #'s, documentation #, ect)

Do not cuss, some call centers have the authority to terminate a call if you cuss. For ones that don't, still do not cuss, you could cause that agent to release your call which would probably make you more upset. So don't cuss

And the real truth is,

The customer is not always right.

The saying (A customer is always right) refers to all customers, and if one lies, then that statement is then false. Since I heard hundreds lie, that statement is more than false, yet should be a crime to say it.

A cusomter will lie to get what they want. Sometimes they won't know that they are lying. Customers will make up false info, or say that they have a degree in some field, or give some bogus idea that we should do. Or say some crape that if a customer went in to their fast food place an bitch, that they would get free food.

Like I said, tell the truth and don't lie to us, and do not say (customer is alway right).

I put some more up later, until them, we are still listening.

And for all reps, keep up the good work, I know how hard it is to deal with the customers.

when I got DSL a few months ago, it had a rough time getting on the their server, but that got fixed after 3 days of support and 50 migrane headaches. a month later my connection gets cut off so after I do the basic steps I call tech support.

s: support lady

m: me

s(in an impossible to understand accent): soandso internet support, how may I help you

m: hi, I cant connect, I went through all the basic steps and it still wont work.(I give here the long lost of what I did)

s: ok, I need you to do....

I am lead through the 1hr of steps I went through already, then some dial-up specific stuff....

s: I am going to connect you to the level 2 technition.

level 2 tech: there seems to be an outage in your area, it will be fixed within the next hour.

from then on I want traigt to the level 2 techs

I work for a major wireless company and we have some of the "best" prepaid customers around. I mean you can seriously tell these customers JUST by the way they talk. Anyway I work the night shift and I just happened to get this one call I will never forget.

Me: Thank you for call *wireless phone company* my name is *the chic that gets tired of stupid people* how may I assist you this evening?

Cust: I lost my cell phone and need to look at getting a new one.

Me: I apologize about that, lets see what options we have for getting a replacement for you and stopping service on this phone, may I have your number?

Cust: XXX-XXX-X7894

Me: Ok I have suspended service on that line, I see you are one of our prepaid cst. The standard fee for phone replacement is $$.$$

Cust: Well let me tell you what happened, my banana ate my phone.

Me: *snicker* excuse me?

Cust: My phone was sitting was sitting on my truck seat next to my banana and now its not there I looked under the seat and on the floor. I swear I am serious the banana ate the phone.

*customer is DEADLY SERIOUS AT THIS POINT*

Me: OK sir I really do apologize, if you go into one of our stores I am sure they will be able to assist you in getting a new phone set up.

*what I really wanted to say was OK, PEEL THE DAMN THING AND TAKE THE PHONE BACK!!*

Here are the case notes on this cst acct

"cst exclaiming that bannana ate his phone and that is why he has to change phones"

This is why I continue to come to work people like this who make my day just that much more amusing

I used to work in remote server support, and naturally we rely on field service engineers to be our helping hands on site when power, hardware or RIB/DRAC/ERA fails.

Backups being vital as ever, a recurrent backup failure (every Friday) at one of our remote sites was causing a little concern. I couldn't work out why, but luckily a resourceful FS engineer at site was on the case.

"I think I know why the Friday backup is failing," he tells me down the phone.

"Oh yeah? Why?" I'll be glad for any insights at this time.

"Well, I checked the storage area that the tapes are in, and Friday's tape is stored vertically instead of horizontally."

That'll explain everything, then...

Is there a justification for bullying in the workplace? Absolutely...

Working in a remote server admin role, we somehow ended up with one guy handling backups who was absolutely clueless. I kid you not, I've seen amoeba with higher IQs. We referred to him as Jackass. He reported successful backups on servers that had been decommissioned years previously.

Given that he was dangerously useless, some of the more resourceful members of the team decided to occupy him in less hazardous ways. He left his machine unattended so we promptly added the entire EMEA domain to his local Administrators group. We then inserted a few simple VB scripts into his startup area that popped up message boxes claiming to be from something calling itself "the Lovebug".

We expected him to be suitably confused - however when we returned from lunch to find him on the phone to Symantec trying to report a new virus, we collapsed into hysterics. The fact that our antivirus products were provided by Computer Associates made it even more amusing. Needless to say Symantec told him to sling his hook.

He decided to rebuild his machine. Within a day of him doing this we had reactivated the Lovebug. His next bright idea was to install SpyBot to try and catch it. Needless to say a simple VB loop was not in the product's database of known pests.

Feeling sorry for him, Neil, the originator of the Lovebug, sent him the code in an email with the caption "these few lines have caused endless mirth". Did he get the hint? No. Another rebuild followed.

Within twelve hours of second rebuild the Lovebug was back but this time with reinforcements. We edited the Registry to provide pictures of Herbie (bug? Geddit?) on the desktop, ladybird-related screensavers and occasional BSODs through terminating his winlogon process. By now he could hardly do any work and was complaining loudly to most of the office's chiefs.

Needless to say our own boss was soon approached by his superior with regard to the situation.

"I am aware that there is a certain amount of bullying going on in your team," was the opener.

Uh-oh, our boss was thinking.

"What I can say is that I fully condone it, and I challenge your team to get a third rebuild out of him," his boss went on.

Hmmm, red rag to a field of bulls? Within a day we had achieved our goal. By this time his entire screen was waylaid by constant appearances of files claiming to be viruses, windows constantly shifting focus, unexpected shutdowns and crashes, strange messages - and all this through the use of simple scripting. Cue another reinstall!

Unfortunately due to the release of some critical MS patches, we were forced to temporarily abandon our project. The client, unfortunately, bore the brunt of this. A few days later he managed to talk a user into locking the keys to the comms room inside the server cabinet. A week afterwards, he misconfigured an ArcServe copy job and blew away 43GB of data. Coupled with the off-colour reporting, this sounded his death-knell. A damn shame, as every time I doubted my own technical abilities, a quick look at him made me feel like a true master.

We should have kept bullying him. He'd still have his job.

So, it's Monday morning and I am busy dealing with voicemails, emails and computers littered with spyware. A phone call comes through (note: talk to phone screener about letting calls through on a Monday morning) and I am the winner of a frantic secretary who can't type in Excel.

So I ask her to open MS Word and see if she can type in that program. Well, she informs me that she can't and then she figures out that she only opened a new workbook in Excel and finally starts up Word. Alas, she can't type in Word.

After a minute of talking she finally says: "Maybe I should tell you what I did earlier."

Me: ".....um, yeah, that would be important."

Low and behold a short conversation about what she did (trust me you don't want to expose your IQ to her explanation) and a reboot later and everything is fixed.

I gently put the phone back on the reciever, close my eyes, lean back and sigh. It is going to be a long week.

Question: When you talk to your mechanic, do you just walk in and tell them your car isn't working? I suspect that most people give the mechanic the important info, like make, model and the fact they ran into a telephone pole before the car stopped working.

Some people really need to buy some common sense. Oh by the way, she didn't want to tell me that she did something because she didn't want to admit to doing something "stupid on a Monday morning."

Good luck and God Bless.

i heard this over the weekend...

a health trust has a computer system which requires you to log in. Underneath the login box is a message informing you that your password is case sensitive. Underneath that is another message informing you that this does NOT mean that your password is "case sensitive"

Many months ago my sister started to call me saying that her computer was starting to make a buzzing noise. Her computer had been an old computer of mine and I had not put the best fans in there, so I pretty much knew the problem. I told her how to swap out the fans.

Forward 2 months or so and she starts calling me again saying her computer is overheating. I asked her if she replaced the fans, she said no. I tell her to bring it by Christmas and I'll have a look at it. I bring extra tools and parts.

It takes 3 people to open the case...I find the follwing: soda caked all over the inside of the case/motherboard/periferals, dust caked fans, and dust bunnies that could take your head off. I announce to her that she gets to learn first hand how to disassemble her computer and clean it. Nearly ever add-on card and the motherboard had some soda on it...I do not know how it did not short out. The soda had been on there so long, it had eaten the paint right off the case down to bare metal!

Several hours later and much grumbling, she had a PC that worked good as new.

A few years back, I was working part-time IT support in a school while studying.

One teacher, who was a really nice lady, wasn't too up to speed on the computer scene. But that was fine, she didn't bother me much, unless her email wasn't working.

One day, I got a call from her, and sure enough, her email wasn't working. I went downstairs to her office, and in about 10 seconds, realised that she had no network connectivity at all. I checked all the plugs, cables etc... and then walked to the switch room to see if anything had come unplugged there.

It still amazes me to this day, that I only got one report saying "my email doesn't work", when the entire 3rd floor (30+ teachers) had lost their network due to the power supply on the hub exploding (lovely scorch marks about 3ft up the wall).

One day I was monitoring one of the computer labs (Macs) at the school I was doing IT for. The was the main lab, and was available to students between classes.

An international student came in and sat down at one of the computers, and appeared to start working. I had encountered this student a number of times before, and knew that his computer skills were only slightly higher than those of a damp dishcloth.

A couple of minutes later, I saw him move to the next computer on the bench. At this point, I really should have investigated.

This happened a couple more times before I got up and went to see what the problem was. It was immediately obvious, as there was a string of 4 computers showing the Sad Mac icon.

I kicked him out of the lab, blocked his account and rebuilt the machines. To this day I don't know how he managed to kill 4 Macs, he certainly had very little access to the system, and should only have been allowed to run specific programs.

I guess it's time for me to share my experience with tech support.

First story, Standard angry old man screaming about how we ruined his computer. Was threatening to call the cops on me because I had broken into his house and broken his computer (is it me or does everyone get this man?). He wouldnt really tell me what was going on, just that his computer was dead.

After 20 minutes of questions and his responses filled with aspersions of my ancestory, I finally realized what is going on;

His computer hadn't worked since his Grandkids had visited the week before. He had run this computer for 4 months and never realized it had a seperate "off" switch than the one on the monitor. His Grandkids had just politely shut it down when they were done.

If a relatively inexpensive piece of office equipment dies, what do you do? Simple: you go to the store and get a replacement. For some people, solutions simply can't be that easy, we must make it more complicated...

I work in a small satellite office for a company of about 140 employees. Our fax machine died recently and my co-worker, who is always looking to save the company money, started looking for solutions. He found that we could buy an extended warrenty from the manufacturer and get the fax replaced. Great!

The extension cost about $60 and we would have to wait 2 months before we could even ask for a replacement, not to mention about another month waiting for the replacement to get here. And even then, it wouldn't be new, it would be a refurbished machine of the exact same model.

H:him

M:me

(my thoughts)

H: Doesn't that sound like a great deal!

M: (not really)Why don't we just go to the store and buy a new one?

H: This way, we'll get the exact same model as the old one

(So we can wait 3 months to get a two year old machine that will likely fail sooner, or we can go to the store, today, and get a brand new one for the same price.)

M: What do we do for a fax machine while we wait for the new one?

H: I have (an even older) fax machine at home that I'm not using. I'll bring it up here tomorrow.

M: (roll eyes, go back to work)

The next day, he brings in this monstrocity of a machine. The thing is at least 5 years old. Spends a bit of time setting it up, then realizes that, oops, it doesn't have ink cartridges. (I have trouble believing that he 'forgot' there was no ink in it.) So he goes to the store and spends another $30 of company money buying ink for this machine that we will only use for a few months! Incidentally, this is the same store where we could've bought a new fax for less than the $90 he has now spent to replace the broken one. And we could have had it the SAME DAY!

M: (ask again)Why don't we just go to the store and buy a new one?!

H: I already talked to the network admin (in the main office about 2,000 miles away who was also responsible for buying equipment) and he agreed that this was a good solution.

(Good for who? The admin, so he wouldn't have to deal with it? And did he agree before or after you bought the NEW ink for YOUR fax machine.)

That's OK. Once the replacement arrived, I removed the cartridges from his machine and threw them away. The way I see it, the company bought them, but will never be able to use them again, so, following the same kind of logic as my co-worker, throwing them away was a good solution.

Talk about taking the long way around a problem!

That co-worker has since left the company and, amazingly, noone really seems to have noticed.

This are good ones.... The mere joy of a floor agent calling to a supervisor so they can take the call from a ID-10-T customer that is experiencing PBCAK (Problem Between Chair and Keyboard)... This one call the customer is franticlly complaining about how it is such a inconvienant for her to drive to the FedEX location nearest her just to send back a package that she wants to return. This is really funny cause it reminded me of an ARMY saying (Whan whan whan, you want your milk and cookies). The customer just starts going off about it would be customer satisfaction for you people to do this. It would be customer satisfaction for me to get back twice as much. It would be customer satisfaction for you people to just start give money away to your customers. This B.S. went on for minutes. The supervisor, without getting canned or fired did tell the customer that even though she felt that way that she would still have to face policy and proceedure like every other custoemr and if she did not send back the product, that she would not be refunded the money. (I can't believe that there are so many stupid customer like this. They expect to much from large compainies. They don't know that large companies sub-contract aggreements from shipping centers, return centers, service centers, ect... That they part the customer order will ship in the order recieved and only go that overnight delivery from the time it is ship, not the day it is ordered. That most to all rebates are done by a completly different company. Yes we do expect you to follow the LMBG (Limited Money Back Garruntee) Meaning if you are one day late becuase you just came back from vacation just to test it. It is your damn fault not ours. And don't argue, it is agaisnt FTC law about LMBG, or warranties. Contact the company that make the product, not the oe that sold it. You return it to the one you bought it from thou. You expect any company to have powers of GOD. Get real and face reality. Think about when did I buy this, is it past my warranty expiration date. If your thinking (I never used it once and I want a full refund, even though it is a year past the warranty expiration date.) Gues what your SOL... So if you buy anthing from any company, make sure you know what you are paying for and what additional service come with and and the return policy is. No matter where you buy it from, you must know this info. Do respect restocking fees if they choice to put it on the bill. You choice to put it back in their inventory, not them. So respect it. Respect shipping fees. They should not have to pay you to have it sent back to them. And don't go about you not paying any more money. If you finaced it, they have a subcontract lender billing you. If you refuse to pay, collectors will be following you and you would have a damage credit report. Do not company a small company that would do anything, and I mean anything to please you to a very large company. Large companies have millions of customers. Not hundred, to thousands a small company will have. So think it before you speak it, and please listen, the rep that speaks to you is right, not you. (The customer is always right) is now considered B.S..... (They are infront of a computer that has all the policies and proceedures. If they told you that they can't do it, or it can not be done. Don't argue, they are right. Time after time I spent listening to calls being escallated to supervisors becuase the customer thinks that the agent is wrong and the manager can do something. 99.9 percent of the time, the manger can't do anything. .1 percent of the time the manager or supervisor might give a form of a credit back to the customer. Manager, supervisor, leader, TM, ect... All the same person, so be specific. There is not no one person that will solve all issue for you. Don't expect that you are the only person experincing this issue. If you want help that is something that, that one company can't do, google it. It is more likely that somebody else had the same issue and put it on the web.

Actually I am tired of telling people on how to act or be cool. The agents and supervisors I speak to do great job and I comend them on it. A few less than 1 percent that I listen to, actually might fail. Yet they do good. Yet your calls do get listened to. Even thou you think the agent is totally butt #%@#%@$T^#$^ you. They are actually doing their job right and are getting 100% on their Quality Assurance Form. Quality Assurance does not mean every one be happy happy joy joy, it means everyone gets treated the same, with the same policies and laws that we so forth aggreed to when buying their product or in other cases I could consider the Consistution as well. So if you think you are above the law, your dead wrong. You and I are under the same consitution, and will be under the same such laws. So get over it and if you can't, stop bitching and buy a simular product from somewhere else.

I do internet and email phone support. Sometimes, if the situation warrants it, we'll do in-house support. One day there was a customer who we'd notified was sending out viruses. It was an older couple and they didn't feel comfortable taking the removal disk we made and cleaning up the virus themselves so we told them to bring it in and we'd clean it up for them. So we removed a couple of worms and a ton of spyware, got things set up as we'd discussed with the customer, and sent them on their way. Next day the lady calls all upset that her printer won't work. I explained that sometimes when you unhook the printer from the computer (as they did to bring it in for us to work on it) that you need to reinstall the printer. So even though it's not really what we're supposed to do I start troubleshooting the printer with her. I had her unplug the printer and then plug it back in and let the computer boot and see if it would detect new hardware. She says, "Which cable?" Turns out there were two. I said that's pretty unusual, generally there's only one, but she swore that her husband did it and that's how it always was. I suggested she find her manual and her installation cd and pretend like she just bought the printer and reinstall according to the book. Guess what, the computer wouldn't install the drivers from the disk. So we burned her a cd of the newest drivers we found from the manufacturer's website. Finally they get it reinstalled, but it still doesn't work. She's goes off telling me that it worked before she brought it in so it's my responsibility to fix it. I explained that the virus could've corrupted something, that it's the customer's responsibility to provide their own antivirus protection, etc... Finally I agreed to have them bring in the computer and the printer and we'd take a look at them (she wanted me to have someone who knows more about printers look at it!). It took me less than 2 minutes to see the problem. They had hooked the printer up to the computer using the parallel port as well as the usb port. The computer had detected it twice and created a conflict. So I removed the additional printer icon from the control panel and took the extra cable away and magically it worked. I know, I should never believe the customer when they say it was always like that!

Years ago when I started doing tech support before moving on to bigger and better paying things, the techs I worked with actually *knew* stuff. The idea was you learned about problems, worked with them and came up with solutions based on your own knowledge and past experience.

Sadly, this no longer seems to be the case. Tech support has changed to simply being a person on the phone telling you to reboot or to re-install your OS.

I was having trouble with my network connection for a while, it would cut out, send gibberish and generally not work properly so I swapped it out with one of the spares I had. It worked, but unfortunately I could no longer access the internet or even access the DHCP server to get an IP address. Doing all sorts of troubleshooting, I found that everything on my end was working. Trying to figure out what was going on on their end I figured it might have something to do with cached information. After all, if my network card was working properly, and nothing else on my end had changed, then maybe the server on the other end was refusing my connection because the MAC address was different.

So I call tech support, only to run into the following:

Tech Support: Thank you for calling __________________, my name is __________. How may I help you.

Me: Hi _________, I'm having a bit of a problem getting an IP address. Long story short, my network card wasn't working so I swapped it out for another one. It's working now, I've tested it and there appears to be communication going on with the modem. I'm thinking your server might be holding on to cached information, so if you could clear the ARP cache and allow my system to authenticate then everybody would be happy.

TS: Okay. Have you power cycled the modem?

Me: (*silence*) No, because it's not a modem issue. The modem has all the little flashing lights on it saying that it's communicating, but the issue is not with the modem and your network, it's between my NIC and your system. The modem is just the access point.

TS: I understand that sir, but I really need you to power cycle your modem.

Me: No, I don't think you do __________. Are you by any chance reading this off a script?

TS: (*a little frustrated*) Sir, this is standard troubleshooting proceedure.

Me: Fine. (*power cycles the modem*) There, it's done.

TS: Okay, now go to Start -> Run -> type "winipcfg"....

Me: I'm already at the command prompt and I've done the ipconfig release & renew thing. I'm still getting the autoconfig address.

TS: I need you to go to winipcfg.

Me: Listen. I'm a freaking network tech here alright? I know how to get an IP address, I know how to release and renew and I know that I'm not getting an IP address because you're holding onto cached information.

TS: That's nice sir. I still need you to go to winipcfg.

Me: Okay, you can't help me. I need to speak to second level support.

TS: I can't do that.

Me: Yes you can. I want to speak to somebody that can help me and that person is in second level.

TS: Please hold...

(*a few minutes later*)

2nd Level: Hi there, what seems to be the issue?

Me: I swapped out my NIC now I can't get an IP address. I'm thinking it's the ARP cache on your end. Can you clear it.

2nd: Hold on (*clicka-clicka*). Can you release /renew?

Me: It's working now, thank you.