Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I do support for a major brand of network print server cards. Sometimes these cards go dead. It's immediately obvious that the cards are dead, there's very limited troubleshooting to be done on it, and a call to our company can be as quick as five minutes to get it replaced.

Today I got a call from a guy who first of all just talks and talks without listening, and he complains that he's been working on this dead network card issue for seven hours (probably cause he doesn't listen to people). He's got a relatively new printer there with a dead network card, but the problem is the card is four years old, therefore it's technically out of warranty. We can still replace it though if we can verify that the actual card was purchased within the warranty period.

Me: Did that card come with the printer?

Him: I don't know, it must have.

M: Well, it could have, or it could be an old card your company has. Where did you purchase the printer from?

H: My purchasing department does that, it must have been from your website.

M: Well, not if the card came with the printer, because that card has been out of production for several years. Either it's an old card you've had for a long time or it was bought from a reseller. Either way we're going to need more information about the card and where it came from.

H: Listen, I'm doing you a favour here by letting you do the cheapest troubleshooting, I could ask for a new formatter or a new printer.

M: I understand, but we can only replace what we have determined to be faulty, and in this case the card is 99% likely at fault. So all we need now is your purchasing information.

H: I don't need to get that, I've spent enough time on this (blah blah blah)...

... So we argued about this for a long time, he didn't want to spend the time getting the invoice, and I couldn't do anything without it. Eventually he was getting quite upset and started saying if I wouldn't replace the card he would want the entire printer replaced, and started asking for "customer service..."

M: Well, I can send you to our shopping customer service department, but they will require you to have the purchasing information there, and it's best if you're certain that you actually purchased it from our website, otherwise they won't be able to help you.

H: Just send me to customer service.

M: OK, I'll need to remind you that they will need your purchasing information, which is exactly what I need to be able to replace the card for you.

H: Just send me to customer service.

M: Have a great day and thanks for calling **

(PUNT)

I thought this one deserved to be shared...

Not very long ago, while troubleshooting a man's internet connection. I had determined he had replaced his ethernet with a normal phone wire... while that in itself isn't very uncommon for someone to do apparently, what he told me after that was...

in all his cleverness, he managed to plug the ethernet cord into a phone socket... Apparently he could not tell the size difference, and the fact that it didn't exactly fit into the socket easily left him clueless. I assume he used a hammer or some such to actually get it in there... I couldn't bring myself to ask how he did it. I do know he attempted to remove it... which went very unsuccessfully.

poor guy was upset he couldn't get his internet to work...

I used to do phone support for a nationwide chain of retail stores. One day I get a call from a guy who tells me his tag printer has melted.

I've had a few calls like this before; the stores have small portable tag printers for printing barcode labels. Sometimes the fusers overheat and then the glue on the labels gets cooked and gums everything up.

This call was different. The tag printer was melted, he says, by a blowtorch. He was messing around and all of a sudden the whole side of the printer was gone.

Needless to say, that one wasn't covered by the warranty.

I knew it was going to be a long day when the first ID10T showed up with his system. He was a previous customer - last time he had deliberately installed spyware (AFTER I had warned him not to) and then wondered why his system wouldn't run correctly... This time he showed up with a brand new Dell and a "technical" friend. Oh yeah - customer is a lawyer.

C=customer, F=friend, ME=me

C:"Hey I just bought an expensive Dell, and I wanted a new video card so I talked to my friend..."

F:"Uh, we got a new ATI card for $400 and it won't fit. It's AGP."

ME:"Okay, the high end Dells are usually PCI Express."

F:"No, this one's AGP. We called Dell."

C:"You guys are experts, you can make it fit"(opens case)

ME:(Looks)"That's PCI Express."

F:"Are you sure? It's only a couple of centimeters off?"

ME:"Yes"

C:"Can you make it fit?"

ME:"No. You need to buy a PCI Express video card."

C:"Oh!"

F:"Oh... Hey are you guys hiring?"

ME:"!!?"

The next incident was even funnier, if forgivable. He was a new customer, and apparently quite a novice.

C:(Brings in *monitor* and sets it on counter)

ME:"Yes sir, can I help you?"

C:"Yeah, I talked to (boss's name) and he said to bring in my computer, cause I'm getting an error message"

ME:(knows where this is going) "Do you have the rest of the computer?"

C:"No... Do you need it?" (faint glimmer of understanding in his eyes...)

ME:"Yes, sir. (trying not to laugh) We need the *tower* to work on it."

C:"Aw, man, hey I'm not a computer person..." (he starts chuckling)

ME:(chuckles) "That's OK, sir - that's why we are here. Just bring us back the tower."

C:"I'm really not a computer person..."

I can forgive the second guy for not knowing too much about PCs, but the "technical" friend in the first incident had some real chutzpah, being such an idiot and then asking for a job!

I wonder what the ID10Ts will have for me today...

Some years ago I was working Help Desk at a college. I get a phone call.

The guy on the end started with "Hi, my computer won't start. I keep hitting the power button and nothing happens."

I was speechless for a moment, then was able to reply "Um, is there any power in your room? Try turning on the light."

A pause. Then "Oh my God, your right! There's no power! What time is it?".

I told him the time and told him that the entire city had been without power for about an hour.

In fairness, he had been taking a nap. But I just couldn't believe that he would just try to start up his computer without noticing that there was no power anywhere around.

I used to do application support for an application service provider specializing in web tools for non-profits. The tools operate entirely by browser.

Non-profits typically have high turnover, low pay and volunteers handle even important tasks. Most workers are rather non-technical people.

One day, my coworker behind me was handling a case where someone had difficulty generating a report. The information had to be had that day, so the ticket was opened at 8 AM. The first response was the standard copy-and-paste from the manual. The second response was the usual "Are you getting any error messages? What do you see?" It was sent at around 11 AM.

The customer then called, as suggested. She was getting panicky. The report criteria was filled out, but the resulting page diddn't have the information, even though the green success message said "See Results Below". My coworker got the desired results without problem. She hung up and waited for me to return from lunch.

In the meantime, the user had complained to her boss, and to that person's boss, too. All three got on the phone to our place. They contacted the Customer Support Manager, the salesperson, the VP of Sales, the CEO, their account manager and even had two conversations with the receptionist. All but the receptionist were at lunch.

When I got back from lunch, 12 people were standing around my desk. The tension was palpable. Level 3 was expected to perform some miracle diagnosis and fix the problem before 3 PM. After reviewing the ticket, I turned on the speaker phone and asked the original support person to talk the woman through steps to get the report. The end went like this:

Support: Ok, you got the success message?

Customer: Yes, there it is, but no list of names. (murmuring and complaining in the background)

Support: Hmmm...I see the success message, and scroll down, there are the names.

Customer: Wait. What did you do again?

Support: I saw the success message and scrolled down.

Customer: Oh my god! Please don't tell anyone that was the problem! I didn't know to scroll down. (laughter in the background)

I muted the speakerphone and the room exploded in laughter. The woman was fired a week later.

Okay, I am a moderatly skilled person when it comes to computers. I can Build PC's, create software and fix most of my hardware problems. I create software and websites freelance. After receiving an e-mail I phoned a potential customer this was some time ago.

M-Me

C-Customer

M- Hello, this is M calling to ask you about the software you wanted me to build.

C- Oh hello.

M- I'd like to know what you want the software to do?

C- Oh yes well I'd like you to create something that will remind me of everything.

M- So would a calender with reminders be suitable. I could set it up so that the program will run silently in the background of your computer and alert you when you need to do something.

C- Oh that sounds marvelous, just one thing, I don't own a computer.

M- How did you e-mail me.

C- Well I go to the cyber cafe once a week!

I'm over at a friend's house. Since I'm the techie of the bunch, naturally they wanted me to help with their computer.

Well, it was a simple thing, for a change: She had gotten the computer from her brother about a year or two ago..

and she wanted me to remove the full-screen vagina photo that was the desktop picture. Right-click-gone!

It had been like that since she got the computer.

No, I don't think it was hers..

Bonus story: as the family tech, again my superhuman skills were called into action. A relative had gotten a new DVD player to replace their VCR. I hooked it up, and jokingly said that DVD's didn't have to be rewound.

Amazed, they thought that was pretty neat. I suppose if I hadn't advised them of this, they would have tried to rewind them..

(there actually is a joke photo of a dvd rewinder on the net somewhere, it reminded me of this story.)

I work for a small colo, and we often swap out parts and do RMAs for them. One day I called our usual number for Maxtor for an Atlas IV that went bad.

Me: [after being on hold for 10 minutes] Hello, I need an RMA for an Atlas IV 10krpm 73gb scsi please.

Tech: What seems to the the problem?

Me: It was part of a RAID array and failed. It won't even power up, and the RAID controller says there is no drive. We swapped it with a new drive, so it's not the controller.

Tech: Did you try our floppy diagnostic disk?

Me: Your floppy diagnostic disk does not work with our SCSI card, and we don't have a floppy drive on this server anyway.

Tech: Okay, well, you need to give me the code that comes off that disk.

Me: It won't even power on and spin up.

Tech: I cannot process the array until I get the 10-digit code that comes from that disk.

Me: Your own web site states the floppy diagnostic does not work with our model of SCSI card.

Tech: Then you will have to attach a USB floppy and boot the system from there.

Me: No no... you are not listening. This is a failed drive from an RAID--

Tech: I cannot process this claim without that 10 digit code.

Me: Do you understand that the drive does not power up? That your diagnoistic software does not work with our SCSI card, as claimed by your own web site? It will not yield any results. We had done this dozens of times before, and never been challenged before.

Tech: If you cannot get a floppy disk, you might want to ask a system administrator for your comp--

Me: *I* am a system administrator, get off your laminated script and LISTEN TO ME!

Tech: I will not process an RMA without that code. You must reboot the system with that floppy.

Me: I can't even shut the system down, it's a production system. And that won't work because it doesn't have a floppy drive. And even IF it did, the floppy does not have drivers for our SCSI card. I *KNOW* you have a code for "drive failed - no power" on that drop down box in front of you.

Tech: I cannot process this RMA without that 10-digit code. Now if you get someone who knows computers...

Me: I find you attitude unacceptable, and demand to speak with a supervisor.

Tech: Ooookay... but she'll say the same thing, sir. [on hold for another minute, where another syadmin said, "look at a previous ticket, see if you can steal a code from there"] I spoke to my supervisor, and she said the same thing.

Me: What did she say?

Tech: [pause] You... you need to use the floppy disk as provided on our website.

Me: And what is this supervisor's name?

Tech: ...Jjjjane. Jane Smm-smith.

Me: Uh huh [got an ID] Try this: 10-2345-0012

Tech: There. That's all I needed. Was that so hard?

Me: [thinking, "I faked that number you dumb bitch"] So, tell me, why do you need that number?

Tech: To prove the drive is bad, sir.

Me: Who would return a working drive?

Tech: People do all the time, sir.

Me: Really. People return perfectly good drives. For no reason? They pay shipping and everything for a warrantee exchange the exact same model.

Tech: Yes, all the time.

Me: And how do you know?

Tech: [long pause] Your RMA is xxx-xxxx-xxxx...

Idiots.

came into work one morning to find this on my desk;

http://homepages.nildram.co.uk/~aguess/images/DSC01384.JPG

even if i did figure out of a way of accomplishing this request i still had no idea who i'd email it to.

I work as a system engineer for a major health insurance company. Today I got a woman on the phone who complained about a program which stalled on her pc, she couldn't do anything anymore. I then asked her to go to her taskmanager and kill the process. The answer I got was: "Who is my taskmanager?" After some ROFLMFAO i took over her pc and killed the process with help of the almighty taskmanager.

I am currently working for pretty much the largest Cable Co at least on the eastern shore doing tech support for the TV side of things.

Me: -Greeting-

Cust: Hi, my cable went out about an hour ago and hasn t come back on yet.

Me: Okay, is there any chance you may have a TV that is not running on Digital?

Cust: Yes.

Me: Could you go see if you have a picture on any of those sets?

Cust: Sure.

(As the customer sets the phone down to go check, because no one believes in cordless phones, I check my alert screen for any possible known outages. There is a power outage in the area)

Cust: No, there is nothing on those either. Why cant you people keep your service running??? I pay ___/mo for your service and it NEVER works!!!!

(checking cust hist, no calls since she was installed)

Me: Mam, do you have a power back-up system?

(this is me trying to find an excuse for this lady.)

Cust: What s that?

Me: A piece of equipment that supplies your home with power when the power goes out.

Cust: No.

Me: Mam, did your lights also go out when your cable went out?

Cust: YES, I told you my service was out!!!

Me: Mam, will any of your TV's power on?

Cust: No.

Me: You can't watch TV unless they will turn on.

Cust: Oh. Okay, When will it be fixed?

Me: Well, our techs have to wait until the power company gets off of the pole before we can get up there to fix our service.

(I thought about trying to explain to her that when the commercial power is out, we have nothing to power our amp's with but I decided it best not to even get into that.)

Cust: Okay, thank you.

I had to disco the call at that point. My ability to refrain from commenting on the sheer stupitity was running low. How dumb can ppl get?

Phone Rings:

User: ARE YOU EVER GOING TOO GET AROUND TO HOOKING UP MY EMAIL?!?!?!

Me: Are you at your desk?

User: Yes!

Me: Click Start, Programs, Outlook.... Thanks.

User: oh.... thanks... click.

pebkac

As part of my duties as customer service at a small dial-up ISP, I had to answer questions about our service from prospective clients and then run them through basic connection and e-mail setups. This happened about a month before I got fired for "lacking customer service skills".

P: Prospective client

M: Me

M: Hi, this is Me from blahblahblah, what can I do for you?

P: I'm looking to set up an account and get connected to the internet, can you help me with that?

M: Sure! (give P the rundown on the services we provide, costs, etc)

P: What do you have in place as far as parental controls?

M: We don't really offer anything in the way of parental controls, however, I can suggest (numerous PC companies, Net-nanny, etc).

P: So, you can't restrict the websites my children can go to?

M: No sir. Although I can show you how to set up your own set of restrictions on your browser; most browsers support that sort of thing.

P: Can you tell me what sites my children look at?

M: No sir. We don't monitor our users' activities except in a very macro-numerical way. How many hours you connect, how much information is transferred, etc.

P: So, if you see my children looking at a bad site, you can't disconnect them?

M: No sir, like I said, we don't monitor our users' activity, and we certainly wouldn't disconnect a customer of ours without their express consent, except in the case of non-payment, of course.

P: So, if, for instance, my wife and I go out to eat, and leave my 14-year old son home, you can't stop him from looking at nudity?

M: That's correct sir. I can, of course, show you how to establish some restrictions on your own, using programs on your own personal computer. And, of course, there are 3rd-party companies that offer that kind of service.

P: But, it wouldn't be something you could keep track of, right? I'd have to do it? And my son could change it if he found out about it? or one of his friends could?

M: Yes sir, that's right.

P: Well, how am I supposed to keep my son from looking at bad sites if you guys can't control it?

M: Perhaps sir, you should have raised him correctly, then you wouldn't have to worry about him disobeying you.

The really strange part is, he still signed up for service, and never reported me, although the office manager was in the room at the time, and heard the whole conversation. He never held me at fault, but I have the feeling it got back to the owners in casual conversation, leading to my being fired a month later.

Ah,

It's great fun when you recieve a call, and they inform you that they're half blind (or completely visually impared). you know you're in for some fun there! but it gets better! the half blind leading the stupid!

I'm on the phone trying to fix an email problem, I have one man, who's nearly blind (literally). on the phone relaying instructions to his wife (who I assume has good vision) who knows nothing about computers... *sigh*

that said. we look near 20 minutes or so to figure out they were misspelling the server name for the SMTP server.

When I used to support Dial-Up internet I once had an old granny on the line who could not make a connection. She was using Windows 98 with a Lucent Winmodem - so things didn't loom promising, however I wanted to make a go of this as she was such a moanre when she came through I just had to prove to her that we could fix her problem.

After nearly half an hour of teching I still couldn't tell if she was making any attempt at connecting or not, so I asked her if there were "2 little computers down by the clock in the bottom right hand corner of the screen?".

Her relpy was "I haven't got a clock".

"Yes you have", I said, "in the bottom right hand corner you have a clock"

"No, I haven't"

"Yes you have"

"No, I haven't got a clock"

"OK" I thought, let's just prove this to her. So I got her to start at the Start button and work her way across the bottom of the screen. We went through all open windows and then reached the Systray and still she didn't say she had a clock. So I was a little annoyed by now:

"And on the very right", I said, "you've got a clock"

"No I haven't", she was getting annoyed by now as well.

"Yes you have", I said. "If you haven't got a clock then what have you got?"

"I've got something that tells me the time", she replied!

... ***** Too shocked to speak ****

.... *** Still too shocked to speak ****

..... ** Struggling to work out what to say **

"Oh! I see what you mean now", she finally managed "I was expecting a clock with hands and things"

So we moved on and discovered that she really wasn't managing any form of connection. So I reset everything, again, and tied all the init strings I could - still no joy. I kept getting "No Dial Tone". So finally I asked her to crawl under the desk and check the cable really was connected - a bit of a hardship for her as she was rather athritic.

** lots of bumping and banging noises **

"Oh dear!", I suddenly heard her say.

"What?", I asked.

"You're not going to believe this", she said.

"Try me", was my reply.

"Well last time I called I was told I would have to call when at the computer. So I unplugged the cable from the computer so I could plug the phone in to talk to you."

So that would be why we kept getting No Dial Tone then. I never heard from her again, so I hope that she got connected and all was well. And I really hope she never had to call Tech Support again.

I work for a regional ISP out in the cornfields.

Got a call from a nice old lady one day asking to have her dialup service deactivated. I asked her why she wanted to cancel, and her response was that she didn't use it enough to justify keeping it. Valid reason. I send her over to customer service to take care of the particulars, and when the disconnect order was sent over to us I turned the account off.

Fast forward to 24 hours later. The lady called in again, saying her computer was telling her that the username/password were invalid when she tried to check her e-mail. I explain that her account was deactivated the day before by her request. Her response?

"Well yeah, I don't get on the internet much, but I use my e-mail quite a bit. I just wanted you to turn off my access to websites."

... :|

We were just working on our modems and sent an email out to all of our customers to change their phone number to xxx-1230 the xxx meaning thier local exchange. I had three people call in who actually put x's.

I work for a pay tv help desk. Not surprisingly, the people I speak to everyday are those strange people in this country who pay for pay tv, own a tv & yet still do not know how to use it

This is one of the calls I had on my first day...

Tech: Can I help you?

MR: I want you to tell me why the pay tv isn t working

Tech: Well sir, can you please tell me whats on the tv screen?

MR: Nothing

Tech: Okay, what about on the decoder box?

MR: Nothing

Tech: Are there any lights? Channel numbers?

MR: No, nothing!

Tech: Okay, I want you to please go over to the decoder for me, and tell me exactly what is on the box

MR Disappears for about 2 minutes .

MR: Okay there is one to nine.

Tech: Sorry? What do you mean one to nine?

MR: There are the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 .

Tech: Uh okay, and can you tell me what else is on the box???

MR: Medium High, Medium Low, High

Tech: Okay Sir, I need you to go to the decoder box. It should be near your TV.

MR: You told me to go to the microwave!!!

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

My grandmother told me this story when I was young, and I didn't really think much of it then.

She was having trouble with her washer in the basement. It wouldn't completely start, barely vibrated, and gave off the clunking metallic sound, like a metal ball hitting a metal wall over and over again. She called in a mechanic and he, with one skilled stroke... hit it with a hammer. And there you go, good as new.

When she recieved her bill, she had a charge of 30$, a mighty hammer hit. There was a $15 survey charge, but what about the other 15? Mechanics, after all, are charged for how much they work, not what they did, right? And either way, a hammer stroke isn't exactly torturous physical labor. When she called up an asked about the charge, the company sent her an itemized bill, containing 3 "items" (keep in mind that I am writing the words as I was spoken to)

--Survey Fee:$15.00

--Hitting Subject With Hammer:$1:00

--Hitting Subject with Hammer and knowing where to hit it:$14.00 (Labor, maybe?)

Life is so Itemized :D