Using the example of two calls I was just on in the last couple of hours, I hope to provide advice to none techies
who might read this and are calling in for support. To clarify, I work tier one support for dsl and dial up tech.
The first call was a middle aged man who, short of outright swearing at me, did everything to make my call
miserable. I won't really go into details, suffice to say the man was a moron. Regardless, the call ended up with me
not really giving a damn and sending him off to get his problem fixed at a dealership, something that will likely
cost him quite a bit. It would have been fairly simple for me to do, but we don't do it and I "neglected" to mention
several key points about the issue to the caller.
Compared to the second call. This was a nice lady who had
no idea what she was doing. Key word, nice. She was exceedingly happy about the support I provided and I was willing
to oblige, despite my time in tech support dulling me to the needs of others, I still enjoy helping people. Over the
course of the call I bent over backwards to help her out, supporting things I shouldn't, giving advice I shouldn't
and genuinely making everything work better. I ended up saving her money.
My advice, be nice to the tech
support, especially when you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. They know what's going on and will
happily screw you over if you annoy them. And the funny part? You're still a clueless Id10T and will probably never
even realize it.
In an old career as a workstation support tech for a (large international firm which shall remain nameless), we
received an early Monday morning "Pri-One" service call.
The caller was in the same building as our
substation and I drew the short straw. This user averaged about six or eight calls a month, usually for something
trivial or related to the operating system's idiosyncracies, nothing really wrong.
This time, she had been
relocated within the complex and didn't trust the moving crew to relocate the computer safely, so she moved it
herself over the weekend. Now she had to print a meeting agenda for her Director to carry to a meeting that morning
and she couldn't get any response from the computer. It wouldn't start at all: no POST codes, no power lights,
nothing. She did admit in the initial call that she had moved it herself.
I drew the short straw, walked up
the corridor to the cube farm and started checking things. Double-checked the power cables; the monitor cable; all
the usual things. Then I crawled under the desk to check the other end of the power cables. This was when I noted
something really interesting.
"You moved this yourself, right?" I asked, getting the expected response.
Then I held out the power strip, saying I'd found the problem. She'd plugged the strip back into itself. We had even
asked her on the phone if she'd checked the power strip switch. (It was in the "ON" position.)
We waited
about six months for another call from this user. She went from one of our frequent callers to someone who never
even spoke to us. Of course, the $500 charge for an emergency call might have had something to do with this.
I work tier one tech support for an internet provider in the states, doing support for dialup and DSL.
I've just
had this one caller, horrible stuff. He's one of those guys who call up and say "My internet isn't working." and
expect you to instantly be able to figure out what's wrong and fix it. You know, the kind of guy that makes you want
to scream at him that tech support isn't telepathic.
So, after twenty agonizing minutes trying to get this
guy to tell me exactly what is wrong I figure out that he is able to connect, just not get webpages. Keep in mind
that this was twenty minutes where I couldn't actually do any troubleshooting.
Now, there's a few easy
things I can do at this point to try to get things to work, the problem is, he's using a software dialing program
provided by us, so half the options I'd usually have just don't exist. This thing is a junk program, it's so bad
that you can't even access the options for it.
So I figure, well, I'll try messing with the DNS, might fix
it up. So I go to flush the cache, not thinking it'll work but hoping it'll make him go away while he tests it. He's
using XP, so a simple ipconfig /flushdns in the run window will do it. But he keeps getting errors when he tries to
get it to run. I have him spell everything back out, slowly. It's correct. I double check everything, making sure he
had every last symbol in correct. He does. Still isn't working. Puzzled, I decide to check once more. It turns out
that this is what he had entered:
ipconfig-/flushdns
He had been reading off the dash as a space the
entire time. He seriously thought that's what I was asking him for when I said space. When I told him to hit the
space bar instead, he had no clue what I was talking about. This guy had had service with us for over two years.
After that I had the fun of explaining what the enter key was...
After reading a bunch of months of Tech Tales, I'm convinced that computer vendors need to do a couple of things:
1) Label mouse buttons (emboss in plastic) as '*' and '#'. We would then refer to "right click" as a "# click".
I was thinking of "2 click", but that might be confused with double click.
2) Emboss in the plastic of the
CD-Rom (or DVD-whatever) trays that slide out "THIS IS NOT A CUP HOLDER".
3) Label the front of the monitor with
big words "MONITOR" then the brand name and model.
4) Provide a mouse pad for idiots. It would have words like
"put your mouse here", and pictures of "right click".
5) Well labeled power indicators. Not just a small LED
that glows green when power is on.
6) The cord of the power strip (or UPS/surge protector) labeled "plug this
into the wall"
7) A nice BIG poster sized picture pinup that shows where the cables go. Maybe provide TWO.
8)
A DVD (or VHS tape) that shows all the 1D10T things you shouldn't do. This is an opportunity for a producer!!
9)
A 2x4, length about 1 foot. Complete with burned-in instructions for self inflicted "dope slaps". The tech could
then say "take item B and follow instructions".
While this might not solve any problems, it would make a
tech's life a bit easier! I'm sure we could think of others!
New cable modem installation, it won't pull an IP. The machine is a dual-boot 98SE/XP, both fresh off the disks.
*NOTHING* has been installed other than the config program for the firewall/router. I can talk to the router but the
router gets nothing. 98 and bypassing the router gets nothing.
I call their support. He's determined it
must be the machine's setup even though I can talk to the router. He's about to hang up on me for being
uncooperative because I won't try XP & no firewall--the concept of Blaster infection doesn't ring a bell with him.
(I wasn't given any AV for it and this was unpatched XP. I warned them that was something to remedy ASAP.)
Finally
I go out to my car and grab my laptop which I know works and which has good security, I'm not worried about
direct-connecting it. Of course the behavior is the same.
At this point he has me read off the #'s on the
modem. Sure enough, that's it, the cable installer couldn't tell the difference between an 8 and an A.
So
we have an installer who didn't check his work and a tech who spent 45 minutes going in circles before being willing
to consider it might be a network problem--not counting a reasonable length of time to see there was nothing
obviously wrong. Didn't the fact that he couldn't communicate with the modem mean anything??
This one isn't really a tech story per say, but I find it amusing regardless. As I've mentioned before, I do support
for dialup and DSL connections.
In my centers breakroom there is a phone so that we can make personal calls
during break or lunch, something we're not allowed to do on the phones at our desks. As well, there is a sign next
to it asking people to limit calls to 5 minutes.
These phones are notorious for not working and we usually get a
new one every few months. It's wall mounted and gets some rough treatment. Just to give you an idea how much, I
walked in today to use it and someone had written in pencil on the sign:
"Hit if giving 680"
I recently moved from an apartment building to a house. I had cable internet service and a brand new computer. I had
the internet service for a few months and the computer for a few days before moving. I had my cable and internet
tranfered over just after moving. I work about an hour to an hour and a half from where I live so my wife waited for
the cable guy to get our internet going. However, nothing he did could get our internet working with the ethernet
card on the new computer. He finally got it set up with a USB connection, tried to convince my wife that it was just
as fast as the ethernet connection (not even close) and that we would have to contact the computer manufacturer to
get the proper drivers and left it at that. Now we moved across town, not across the country. So I went home,
connected the ethernet cable, disconnected the USB cable, unplugged the cable modem for a few seconds, restarted the
computer, and everything worked fine. Now, I know you techs learn a lot and most of you are great at you jobs
despite the ingnorance of most of the people you deal with, but sometimes you get the tech that passed the school
with the D-.
Now, everybody knows you're better off doing a manual setup with a dial-up connection. This guy is perfectly capable
of doing so and I get an e-mail from him.
"...and tried to install the new Sympatico CD because I though it
would be cooler."
Don't know why I bother doing this.
Another favourite quote when somebody calls me.
"So-and-so took a look at my computer, and...."
If you haven't read or can't remember the "Plugged-in" and "Unplugged Cable" stories from November 2005, go back and
read those first. They're prequels to this one.
So, now that you've read those (you did do what I just told
you to do, didn't you?), on with the story...
I am innocently going about my business a few days ago when I
receive a phone call. Guess what? Their main printer has mysteriously stopped working!
So I swing by. Well
apparently the printer isn't totally busted, because some PCs can print to it but others can't. I quickly discover
that this printer is connected to the network via a Netgear print server. I mess with the computer, the print
server, and the printer for a while before I discover that the computer is misconfigured and is printing to the
WRONG print server. They apparently have THREE of the exact same type on three different printers.
The real
problem, however, was the id10t that configured the print servers. S/he let them get an IP by DHCP, then, because
the PSes need static IPs so the computers can be configured accordingly, set the IPs to the one the PS got by DHCP!
So you can imagine what happened next: the PS assumes it is IP address w.x.y.z, while the router doesn't know that
and hands it out to another device! Straightened the mess out by changing the IPs of the PSes to ones outside the
range the router assigns and reconfiguring the computers accordingly.
The story doesn't end there though!
They hired a new guy and, not having set him up with his own username in Active Directory, let him start work using
the ADMINISTRATOR account! Then he got his account, but by that time all of his email and reminders and such were in
Outlook under the admin account, so he didn't use it, and changed the password of the admin account too! Fortunately
they hadn't rebooted their server and W2K3 apparently requires you to lock the server and log back in with the new
credentials, which he hadn't, so I managed to reset the password and gain access to the account.
I moved
all his crap over to his own account, at which point he tells me that he has a problem: he can receive email but
can't send any! So after poking through that problem for a while, complicated by the fact that I had no knowledge of
the setup (seems they moved their email service over to 1&1, who was also their website service), I manage to
reconfigure Outlook correctly. Didn't even know I had at first, because Micro$hit Outtolunch's configuration tester
doesn't work right apparently.
Now we're at the end, right?!? WRONG!
I get called back the next
day. More printer problems, localized to one PC this time though. User reports that printing to the main networked
printer doesn't work (makes the usual "I'm about to print" noises then doesn't) and that printing to a USB MFC
printer results in a one page Word doc coming out scrunched in about size 2 font, taking up about one square inch on
an 8.5x11 sheet of paper.
It looked like Windows barfed on the network printer or something, so I delete
and reinstall. Test page comes out fine. I do ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to the other printer and try a test page. It comes
out perfect. Have user try the Word doc from before. Comes out perfect on both printers. Go figure.
DEATH
TO ALL PSEUDO-TECHS!!!
When I was doing a little work at a computer shop, fixing, making and servicing this and that I had an older man
enter and request that I take a look at his printer. He insists that it was not printing and that I should fix it.
Not particularly liking printers, I did my best. I plugged it in, installed the drivers and all and then printed a
test page. It worked. Well that was much easier then I thought, so I returned to the man and showed him the printed
page. To my horror(and later delight) he refused to believe that it printed that page. I showed the man around the
back, and he printed the page himself, and saw it print. Again, he insisted that there was something wrong with the
printer, seeing nothing wrong with it I pointed out to him that there was nothing further I could do. At this stage
he was getting upset with the whole day, so he demanded that I sell him a new printer. Always being in the Market
for some money, I did so(against better judgment). After the sale, I asked what should be done with the old(still
working) printer, he told me that I don t care! You have the damn thing!
So at then end of a day, I walked
out with 250$ pay and a new, working, printer!
I'm not in tech support but I do all of the media projection at our church so I'm usually the go-to gal for all
computer related questions. One day while working at the church the pastor comes to me and says he's having problems
copying some pictures to a disk. I figure it's gotta be something simple so I go to his office to see what the
problem is. I watch as he tries to write a disk with his photos and he continues to get a error saying it could not
be completed. I try several things to no avail and decide to ask a dumb question. "Are you sure you are using a
blank cd?" To which he answers yes and opens the cd drive to show me. That's when I realize he's trying to write to
a DVD-R! I explain to him that he will need to get some CD-Rs or CD-RWs and he should have no further problems. :-)
The world of computer illiteracy never ceases to amaze me:
M = Me
W = Some woman who is very computer
illiterate.
W: Can you help me?
M: Sure, what's up?
W: I want to write an e-mail.
M: OK, just go to Internet Explorer.
W
[moving mouse around, going past icon several times]: OK, uh, where is it.
M
[pointing to icon]: Right here. Double-click it.
W
[double clicking the mouse wheel]: Uh, OK.
M
[taking mouse and double-clicking it]: Here. Now you want to write an e-mail?
W: Yes. I want to
e-mail a radio station that I like.
M: OK, you need to go to your e-mail account-
W: I
don't have an e-mail account!
While trying to figure out what to tell her, I see her fooling
around with the computer in ways she shouldn't be.
M: Now now, let me help-
W: I don't
know what I did. Oh, my name is
[suchandsuch.]
M: My name is Rob. I'll help you.
I proceed to help her get set up. She
tries using several common words and seems surprised when she can't get them to work. I finally
figure something out, and then she tries setting up her password. She's a very slow typist, and it
seems to take forever. At one point she's got one character on the screen, and thinks there's six
characters.
I finally manage to get her set up with her password. Only to find out she
needs to have another e-mail for password resetting purposes. So we have to start over, this time
with a different service. Again, the slowness ensues.
Finally, we get set up, and then I
teach her how to type in an e-mail address, and then she asks me what kind of subject to put in!
Get the aspirin, because I'm about to BANG HEAD HERE!
I work for a IT Helpdesk for a well known British company that sells Gas for
domestic and business use. I sort out computer problems! I was working on the
business side at the time!
I once recieved and email from a manager of a
field engineer (they are the guys that go to people houses to set up the gas
fittings like cookers etc, domestic side)
Well it went like this:
Could
you please advise
One of my engineers has been out to a Rangemaster cooker
hood on 7 occasions and even with advice and technical information, have been unable
to effect a repair. This job will need to be passed back to Rangemaster to deal with
as we have exhausted all avenues to find a solution.
i was very polite with
the answer and told he needs to contact someone elsewhere and that we were the IT
helpdesk, but i did want to ask him if i could take the asset tag of the machine to
see if i could remote on and take a look! lol
This was a manager!?! what is
the world coming too?
Now its an office joke, and they still ask if i was ever
able to fix the cooker
I got a call from a customer that called in all the time (in fact 174 times in one
year!).. So I knew there would be trouble.
He could not get to the
internet. I tried the normal stuff, cant ping anything, rebuild the tcp/ip stack,
etc etc. Now we got down to checking cables. Everything seemed hooked up fine, so I
asked what lights where on, on the cable modem.
He said power, pc light,
and thats it. The Cable link light was off.
Knowing this guy was not the
brightest person out there, I said, "Did you happen to pay your cable bill this
month?"
He goes "Oh S**t!!" *click*
Back before Al Gore invented the internet, Unix boxes were pretty much the norm. I
was working at a company that needed more space, and they expanded to the place next
door that a previous company had just vacated. As we were moving in, I looked at the
"computer room" and noted that there were a few telephone jacks on the wall, nicely
labeled with phone numbers. Being the curious one, I plugged a phone into one and
(of course) found no dial tone. So, being even more curious, I decided to call one
of the numbers. Oh, modem answer tone. So, I connect up a modem with a terminal, and
cal the line. Nice, a Unix login. OK, now what. Time to play. What to use as a user
name. Let's try "root", every unix box has that. Now what for password. Well, duh,
try p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d. No, they can't be THAT dumb. Next line is a root prompt. I
decide that I should be a good guy, and depart. I guess they had it setup for
"maximum security". I guess the guy who setup the box was a future MSCE or some
such.
A certian company that makes laptops started a recall on the batteries in the
laptops they produce.
Upon realing that one of my coworkers had a laptop
model that was affected in the recall, I let her know about it so she could get a
replacement.
Keep in mind this is a person that *thinks* they know
everything about computers, but they dont.
she replied: "I think my laptop
has a battery in it" - as she uses her laptop unplugged!
I am a tech in a K-12 school system, and it amazes me how much some teachers are
absolutely clueless when it comes to technology (and they're supposedly teaching
kids how to use this stuff). I have a few short quips I'd like to share:
--
A few teachers have moved into different rooms and the last teacher's username is
left in the login prompt. Twice I have been asked, "Would you please come down to my
room and remove so-and-so's name and enter my name so I can login". On both
occasions I have told them all they need to do is delete the old name and type in
their usernames and passwords. "Oh, it's that simple?" More simple than dealing with
you, yes. :/ Sheesh! *smacks forehead*
-- Another popular call is, "I can't
use such-and-such application. It says it's looking for the database. Is the
Internet down." WTF? Are you kidding me? Ok, users can bypass the login on Windoze
98 machines by clicking on Cancel or hitting Escape, and obviously that's what
happens. My answer usually is, "Our network apps don't work via the Internet. Seems
to me the computer wasn't logged onto the network or didn't catch the complete login
script (which tends to happen in the labs because 20-25 computers are calling for
the login script and sometimes all the drives don't map). Log off and log back into
the computer and the app will work." Amazing! Logging onto the network lets the
network apps work. What a concept!
-- At my school, there is a generic
login mainly for the labs, and the teachers will use this login as well as no
password is required (because they're either too damn lazy to type their password or
forgot it). I had a teacher come up to me and say, "I can't get to my files on the
'F drive', but I could last week. What did you do?" Excuse me? What did *I* do? What
the hell did *you* do, Einstein?
Me: Well, can you *see* the 'F drive'?
Teacher: Yes I can.
Me: Ok, can you see your folder?
Teacher: No. I
can't get to the Teacher folder (I have broken down my folders by user level and
only certain groups have access to certain folders, so I know this person with more
of a college education than I have has logged in with the lab login, which only has
Student credentials),
Me: Ok, then you're not logged in with the proper
credentials. Are you using the lab login?
Teacher: I dunno. How do I find out?
Me: *wondering how they made it through college* Click on start and if it says,
"Log Off Lab", then you're not logged in with the proper credentials. You'll need
log off and then log in with your with your username and password.
Teacher: Oh.
What's my password?
Me: *rambles off password because somehow I have managed to
remember it*
Teacher: Oh, ok. What's my username? (and these people are
educating our kids...brilliant!)
Me: *rambles off username*
Teacher: Oh, ok.
Well, if it doesn't work, I'll be back again.
Me: *Oh, I can't wait!* It'll work
- surefire.
It always amazes me how we, the techs, are so constantly blamed
for a user's lack of brainpower. I've got nothing better to do during my day than go
around to random computers and monkey with logins. As if I want to see *you* show up
at my office door complaining about your inability to log on to the network.
-- A support staff member's computer couldn't print (but, according to her, "it
worked last year" - but that was before the floor was stripped and waxed - duh!).
She had been complaining about the way it left lines and smeared when printing
before school let out before the summer (inkjet printer that doesn't get a lot of
use and needs cleaning every so often). I checked the problem - the power supply was
unplugged. The kicker of it was it was sitting right there on her desk!
--
Last one - short and sweet. Same one as above wants a new printer. I told her to
contact her department head and order a new laserjet. "Will it work with my
computer?" Uh, yeah, lady, it'll work just fine. Printers are kinda cool like that.
They're versitile. :/ Man, I should've went for an education degree. I could make
more than I do now and get away with being an idiot.
I was working in the technical support area in a call centre for a multi-national
computer retailer. Someone had just bought a mouse and was having an issue:
(M) = ME
(C) = Caller
(M) Hello how can I help
(C) Hi I just
bought a mouse and wondered what port to plug it into
(M) Okay do you know where
the USB port
(C) Yea but it doesnt fit
(M) Okay have you tried the PS/2 port
(C) Yea it doesnt fit there either
(M) What does it say on the box you
bought the mouse in
(C) Name : Billy, Age : 2 weeks
(M) Thats a real mouse
you dingus
Lawl
I've been reading these posts for the past few days, and I have to say I'm in love
with this site! And I decided that I should join the ranks and share one of my
stories!
I work on a help desk for a web application. Our users call in
when they have trouble with our system, mostly due to forgotten passwords or
connectivity problems. A user called in to state that her password wasn't working.
We can't actually see the passwords on our end (save for the database group) so to
troubleshoot, we sometimes ask for the user's password before we reset the account
and issue a temporary password. The following is my favorite response:
M:
Me
U: User
M: Ok, before I reset I want to test your password first.
Would you mind if I logged into your account? (Standard protocol).
U: Oh, please
do...anything that will help me get into the system!
M: Ok, I just need your
login information. I have user name "Suchandsuch" under your account, is this
correct?
U: Yes.
M: Ok, now I just need your password.
U: It's
"ABCD123".
M: Is any of it capitalized?
U: The letters are, the numbers
aren't.
Needless to say, I had to hold back from laughing. And from
that point on, I always specifically ask if any of the LETTERS are capitalized!!
I work for a cable company and have seen quite a lot of "customer ed" calls for tv
and internet service. I received a call today that was worthy of writing in for. I
customer told me that she had sent out her resume 2 weeks ago and hadn't received
any replies or requests for interviews. So, I began the process of troubleshooting
her email in outlook express. I was able to send her several test messages and I
could receive them when I accessed her account. So then I had her strip her settings
in OE and rebuild the acct. We got as far as entering her email address when she
told she there was an error on the screen " The specified email address does not
appear to be valid". I told her that she must have made a typo and go back to make
sure that the email address was correct. She said yes it is correct and pressed
next, again the same message appeared. I had her go go back and read me what what
she had typed: ........... are you ready........
'myemailATxyz.net'
I had to hit the mute button so she wouldn't hear me chuckling. I explained that
she needed to delete the AT and hit shift 2 to get the @ symbol. After that faux pau
was corrected her email worked wonderful. The thing is she had sent out 30 resume's
with the incorrect email address. That might expalin why she never received
aresponse to her resume's.
It's truly amazing how many customer I have to deal with that hear only what they
want to hear:
Me: I want you to click on the Computer Name Tab and tell me
what it says next to "FULL COMPUTER NAME"
Them: Oh, you mean "COMPUTER
DESCRIPTION?"
Another instance:
Me: I need you to hit the ITEM
button until the middle column prints PAGE LENGTH CONTROL
Them: PAGE
LENGTH?
In both instances I feel like saying sarcastically "Oh you know,
you're right. You're so smart for figuring out what I wanted to really say."
I received a call from a customer who said they could not access the network from
one of their desktop.
I asked him the What happened or what changed?
question and he stated Nothing of course.
So after getting nowhere with the
normal rudimentary logon questions, I drive to his office for a look-see.
Sure
enough the computer can not communicate on the network. I check the cables in the
back of the computer and all looks well. I take the computer to another station and
of course it works.
I go back to the original desk and trace the cable to
the wall, where I find that it has been completely sheared off. I asked the customer
what happened here?
Oh yeah he says One of our secretaries pulled out too
many drawers from the file cabinet next to the wall and it fell on her. Almost broke
her leg and we had to send her home
So What happened or what changed? Just
might have been the file cabinet falling and cutting off the cable. You think that
might be something?