Tales From Technical Support Content
me: I have to ask a couple of stupid sounding questions, just to make sure we've covered all the bases. Are you using an Apple or Macintosh type computer?
her: No, it's a PC.
me: OK, and you're using Internet Explorer?
her:Yes.
me: OK, now open Internet Explorer.
her: OK
me: Lets check your security settings. On the top edge of Internet Explorer, click on "Tools"
her: OK
me: Now, click on the "Security" tab.
her: I don't have that.
me: Huh? You don't have that?
her: No. I'm using FireFox, does that make a difference?
me: (AARRRGH!) Yes, it makes a difference. Please close FireFox and open Internet Explorer.
her: OK. Hey! I can log in now!
me: Glad I could help. (grit teeth) Please call if you have any more trouble.
I got a call from an end user who typically annoys me on a daily basis. He said his hard drive kept on shutting down or rebooting after a few minutes (he couldn't tell the difference). I knew I couldn't walk him through normal troubleshooting questions so as usual I decided to take a trip down to his office.
The computer was powered on and working and then his monitor turned off. Naturally the computer went into standby so I hit the keyboard to resume. I checked the power settings and he set his computer to standby after 1 minute.
I asked why did he make the change. He told me that his computer needs to be in standby alot so it can sleep. Then he said "so it can work better when it wakes up".
I didn't have the patience to explain what the use of "standby" was, so I changed it to never and told him to never let his computer sleep.
As I walked away I realized, what if he finds the Hibernation tab? I haven't received a call about it yet but I guarantee it will happen sometime in the future.
As mentioned above, I work tech support. Yesterday I was reminded that I'm far from immune from the follies that I enjoy hearing about.
I was swapping out keyboards and the connection seemed loose so I was trying to adjust the plug. It was in a rather difficult place to reach, of course. I kept testing it by typing and seeing if the keyboard would work... no dice. I was baffled.
Until I realized that I should test on the NEW keyboard, the one I was trying to connect, and not the old one that I'd unplugged!
tech support hello , how can i help you?
hello im having some problems to connect..
ok lets see , what type of connection do you have ?
hmm cables ..
ok how many lights do you see on your cable modem?
1 only...
ok unplug the dc power please and then plug it back ... how many lights can you see now? (while i see on my system his modem is still online.)
just 1 again...
ok what type of cable modem do you have?
hmmm i see "HP".
I work level 2 technical support for a company that manufactures networking products (routers, switches, APs, etc). This call struck me as a bit funny. I got a call from an older gentleman, around 50 or so from the sound of his voice. He couldn't get internet access through his router, so I was going to run him through some basic troubleshooting that our L1 people can't handle for some reason...I'd been on the phone for over ten minutes already with this customer, but here's how the best (worst?) portion of the call went:
(M)e
(C)ustomer
M: Okay, now I need you to go to Start, then Run, and then once the box pops up, type in 'cmd' and hit enter.
(Wait for *literally* two minutes while he does this)
C: Okay, done.
M: Now, type 'ping 192.168.1.1' and hit enter.
C: (After having me repeat it four times) Okay...done. It says 'Destination Host Unreachable'.
M: Okay. Try typing 'ipconfig' and hitting enter.
C: Okay...
M: What's the IP address it lists?
C: (Reads off one of the usual 'can't see a DHCP' default IP addresses)
M: Hmm...okay, well, first let's just try power cycling the router. Unplug its power cord from the back for fifteen seconds, then plug it back in.
C: Oh, you mean it's supposed to be plugged in? I unplugged it because I thought the big phone plug (ethernet) gave it power!
M: (Mute) Oh my GOD, I went ten minutes into my lunch break over nothing!
M: (Unmute) Not a problem, sir. Let's plug it in and try again.
After that, it took me about five minutes to walk him through the router configuration, most of which worked automatically.
Guy orders a brand new computer in 2001 from eBay seller. He turns it on and sees 1992 on the BIOS screen. He accuses the seller of selling him a "reused" computer with "old parts". His proof? "BIOS doesn't lie!!!"
I'm a tech support rep for a couple of large, complex websites. And when it comes to sheer stupidity, my customers take the cake. Now, I understand not everybody is a computer genius, nor do I expect them to be. In fact, it's often easier if they aren't, because the sysadmins and software engineers always think they know everything and often refuse troubleshooting and thus make it impossible for us to fix their problems. What gives me fits, however, is a person who apparently can't see what is right in front of them, even though they have no apparent handicap... other than true stupidity!
Here's a couple of Tales from the Tech Side. This first one has happened many times in a number of ways.
Me: "I'd like you to click on your Start button, please."
Customer: "What's that?"
M: "Okay, just look at the lower left-hand side of your screen. What do you see there?"
C: (names off some part of the screen that it obviously a webpage)
M: "We're not looking at a website here. We're looking under that. What do you see down on the BOTTOM LEFT SIDE? Does it say START?"
C: "Nothing."
M: "Do you see a picture of a flag with four colors on it?"
C: "Yeah."
M: "Can you read the word on that button please?"
C: "Start..."
M: "Click on that, please."
C: "Turn off my computer?"
M: "Just click on it please."
C: "Click on it?"
M: (grinding teeth) "YES... that's right."
The pain continues, all the way through basic trouble shooting... tech reps in this situation should get either hazard pay, or a medal, or both.
This one happened only once, thankfully.
C: "I'm having trouble getting to the online."
M: "What is happening when you try to do that?"
C: "I don't know. I just can't get to the email page."
M: (I don't troubleshoot email, just a big website, and I'm hoping that maybe it's just an ISP problem and they can call Yahoo or whoever and bug them) "All right, how do you try to get to your email, and what happens when you do?"
C: "I can't remember. I don't know much about this computer stuff. Let me get my wife on, she's the expert."
M: "No problem, I completely understand."
C2: "I can't get to the email site. What do I type in?"
M: "We aren't an email service provider. Are you trying to get to your banking?"
C: "Yes. But I don't know what to put in to get there."
M (wondering why she was ever told to do this online in the first place, and wondering why she even has a computer) "Do you have a user name and password?"
C: "I don't think so..."
M: "Are you attempting to register, or log in?"
C2: "Register, I think."
M: (shortened for sanity's sake) "Well, you are going to need an email address..."
C2: "What's that?"
This whole exchange lasted about a half hour and has been vastly shortened, anyone in tech support can fill in the gaps.
And then there is the time I finally reset a guy's password after a half hour of troubleshooting and got him logged in... only to have him say "now what was that password? I can't remember it." Note: in my area we shoot for call times of six or seven minutes or less.
When I worked for a paging I would get calls from customers wanting new pagers because the batteries were dead in the ones thay had. I had to tell them how to change the battery in the unit (standard AA), or I could send them a replacement pager for $99.
Then there were the customers who wanted to know why they could not receive messages when the pager was turned off (DUUHHH!)
Several years ago, I worked for a paging company (remember those?).
I lived in Miami. We had auxiliary offices in Tampa and Orlando, both of which are several hours away from my base.
We had incoming POTS lines to each office, for which we provided dial tone to the phone company. The phone company would disconnect us if the dial tone wasn't there.
I got a phone call around midnight from my boss stating that Orlando customers were calling cust svc because they couldn't get through on the local numbers.
So I climb in my truck and drive to Orlando. Four hours later I get to the site, and find all the equipment turned off (!). I got everything back up, spending 90 minutes on the phone with Telco to get all our lines cleared, including the T1 to Miami. I am not a happy camper.
I went and got a Large coffee and sat in the Sales Manager's office till he wandered in.
Seems they had a training session in the equipment room, and he had turned off the power strip to the overhead projector, not noticing that the equipment cabinet was also connected to the same power strip. Never dawned on him to turn off the projector with it's own power switch....
This just hapened to me today.
the building at the university i study at runs a volunteer network for number crunching on the normal user accesible machines. (free overhead on the weekends etc)
We had a problem with getting the host machine to confirm the pc's are there, and I end up calling main university techsupport, here's the conversation.
Me: annoyed caller (i'm 20 years old, it's important)
I: idiot
(me thinking)
Me: Hi, this is Me, calling from Building.
I: uhhh, wait a second......almost got it....(wtf?)....yeah hi there.
Me: hey, we've got a problem with our..
I: Woah stop stop stop! (WTF!?) no not you, sorry could you call back.
Me: uhh ok, *click* (this is going to be a looong day)
10 mins later
Me: same story
I: yeah, it's the seti@home thing right?
Me: erm, it IS distributed computing...sort of (not at all really, but who cares)
I: So what OS is your server running
Me: Windows 2003 R2
I: no, no. What Operating system does the server machine use?
Me: (he' still doing something else) Windows 2003 R2 edition
I: I mean the OS, like Linux, or Windows XP
Me: Yeah, i know. And i mean *talking slowly* Microsoft windows server 2003, with the R2 addon.
I: hehehe, there's no such thing as windows 2003, there's only 95,2000 and XP (well he's missing a few there) so which one is it.
Me: look here, I know for a fact that my OS exists, as we've been running it ever since, surprise, 2003....just fill in windows 2003 in google and look!
anyway I just wanted to know if you've changed anything in the network settings for these machines.
I: *getting angry* If you don't want to cooperate, that's fine by me, but don't think you can just make up some OS to trick me, you're wrong. I can still solve the problem if you would please put an adult on the phone (EXCUSE ME?!?!)
*I hang up*
I tell the story to the two other people in the server room, who have been laughing their asses off, and we dicede to go pay mr. techsupport a visit, bearing two boxes of windows server 2003. One 10-minute walk and 30 second talk later, the problem was solved.
I didn't call the tech support about that, wonder if they would have known what it was...
This happened to me several years ago. I had a standard ball mouse, which worked fine, but sometimes, in the morning, the x axis stopped working. After some time, it always started working again. No amount of cleaning was helping. Then I noticed it was always about the same time. I thought at first it was some kind of virus, but then (after a looong time), it hit me.
It was summer, and the window was usually open in the morning. Every morning, the sunlight hit the side of the TRANSPARENT mouse, and something inside was affected.
This is a tale that shows how a person's stupidity can go from bad to worse. My friend wants an iPod nano because her cousin has one. So she goes and buys one, then asks me to help set it up. I'm wondering why she needs help but I go over anyway. She takes the iPod out of the box and asks me, "Where's the battery compartment? How am I supposed to put batteries in this thing?" At that point I should have just shooed her out of the room, but being the patiens soul I am I told her that the iPod gets its power from a charger.
A few minutes later, I felt nature calling and told my friend to connect the iPod to the charger while I went to the bathroom. When I came out, my friend goes, "The charger's too small. It won't fit into the iPod." I told her that was impossible. How can it not fit? She still insists that the charger is too small. I ask her to show me what she's doing. She goes back to the iPod and takes her CELL PHONE charger and tries to put it into the iPod! You ever seen one of those Japanese anime cartoons where the character has a sweatdrop on their head and then falls over backwards in complete shock of the stupidity in front of them? I swear that's exactly what I did. I then proceed to show her the correct charger.
Now the iPod's all charged up. We go to the computer to download songs onto the iPod. My friend asks, "Where do we get the songs?" I told her we could do a search on the internet. She stares at me in shock and goes, "You mean the songs aren't already on my computer?" Again, I fell over anime style.
Ladies and gentlemen this is coming from a girl whom when told she needed to get a new mouse to fix her cursor problem replied, "A mouse?! Why do I have to go to the pet store to fix a computer problem?" I wonder how she managed to survive life this long.
Tales From Technical Support Index
