Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I'm a cable television service tech, who occasionally has to perform installs as well. I am constantly amazed by the number of people who believe they can somehow get internet service without a computer, but this particular incident was one of the best.

This particular customer had pretty much no knowledge of computers or technology in general, but she openly admitted it. She had had a friend get her a surplus PC from their workplace, and I instantly recognized it as such because there was a sticker attached to the top documenting a "Hard Drive Deletion/Destruction." It attested to the fact that the drive had been wiped, three random passes and 0's. I assumed that her friend would have installed an OS on it. Bad assumption. After hooking up the cable modem, I turned the computer on, only to be greeted with the message "No Operating Systems Found." I couldn't help but feel a little sorry for the customer.

I run my own photo business. I got the money for it by helping out friends with their computer problems. One thing led to another and soon a few hundered people had my number and would give it out for tech problems. I had worked on systems for a major airline so basic computer problems were never a problem.

Back in 99 when everyone thought the end of the world was coming and buying Emergency Power for their PCs I got a call from one of those many "others" who had my number.

The basic problem was the brand new computer would not turn on.

After talking price I drove over to look at her system. Sure enough, the boxes were all there. She even had a bunch of extras from Wal Mart to go with her Gateway. Fancy mouse pad etc.

I was going through the basics while she was talking about the Y2K garbage. Then she said it. . . . .

I found the best deal on a power supply, only ten dollars.

I didnt even finish what I was doing, I looked under the desk and sure enough, the computer was plugged into a surge protector, which was plugged into ITSELF....

That was one of two problems. I also have found a real power supply plugged into the surge protector which was plugged into the power supply.

So, this all happened about a year or so ago. I was 13, maybe 14, and knew a fair amount about computers. So I decided to install Linux. I downloaded an installer, burned it to a disk, and restarted the computer.

Everything was going fine in the installer. I had correctly partitioned my disk, installed everything perfectly, followed the instructions it gave me on the web site. So, I get to a section where it tells me I need to download more in the installer.

This is a problem. My desktop wirelessly connects to a router in another room, and I didn't have a long enough ethernet cable to connect them. I couldn't go buy one either; it was 11:30 PM.

So, I gave up and decided to reinstall Windows. Restarted the computer, put in the Windows Reinstaller, and it told me it needed to format my drive.

This is where I did something stupid. I was afraid I would lose everything stored on the drive when it was formatted (despite the fact I had partitioned it, and it was pretty much gone anyways).

So, I restarted it. Stupid me. Anyways, it started to freeze at boot. When I put in a CD, it wouldn't load it. I couldn't get to anything. I was stumped.

So, I decided to call a tech support company. Let's call it, uh, Nerd Patrol. I was put through to a guy there and this is pretty much how it went:

M = Me

NP = "Nerd Patrol"

NP = Hi, welcome to Nerd Patrol, what's your problem?

M = Uh, yeah, I partitioned my disk to try and install Linux, and, now, it's freezing at boot.

NP = Freezing at boot?

M = Yeah, it just says [whatever it says]

NP = Hmm... try blah blah blah

Ten minutes later

NP = Yeah, I think you have a virus. I'd try calling one of our guys in the morning and having them check our your computer.

M = So, wait, you're telling me that I PARTITIONED MY HARD DRIVE, rebooted it with it working fine, and now that it doesn't, I have a virus, despite the fact I don't even have an OPERATING SYSTEM ANYMORE?

NP = Yeah.

M = Hangs up.

Yeah, sure, it really could have been a virus. I'm no virus expert. Honestly, I doubt it.

Eventually, I unplugged the bad hard drive from my computer and made my old slave the new master. I successfully installed Windows and Ubuntu and the computer works great.

I have a rather embarrassing story about one of my calls to Verizon about the DSL activation. As some background I was working at a web hosting company that for a few months was having some serious issues with DOS attacks bringing down the whole network. Now im sure I dont have to say that this is a problem, especially when it would happen at a time that no one was at the datacenter. So during this time, we decided that the best solution would be to setup a machine on a DSL line with a static IP address with access to the internal network.

I was asked to get the DSL setup with a static IP from my boss. So I called Verizon and requested the setup for our current phone line. They got it setup and said it would be active on May 10th and to call for the information such as the static IP.

Now my previous experience with Verizon is that their support is not lets say at my level, so i dont call unless i need to. May 10th rolls around I call the numnber i was given and they ask me for the phone number for the DSL. I tell them it is (xxx)622-xxxx and basically they tell me that its setup on a dynamic IP address. Now it is critical that we have a static IP setup and I had told my boss it would be setup by today(as a week had already passed with 2 more outages). So I started to get upset that they skrewed up and that it would take another week to get on the phone. I started yelling and said I need to speak to their supervisor now. I am put on hold and I speak to their supervisor who tells me the same thing. So finally I get fed up and demand to speak to their office manager. They eventually put me on hold and as i am waiting I realize that the number I gave them was wrong it should have been (xxx)612-xxxx. So I hung up and called an hour later.

Moral of the story... It dont matter how much you know you can still make simple mistakes.

OK so a little i was asked to look at a cellphone for a friend whose sound was out. I determined it to be hardware so I called up the company and basically said that. Somehow the lady I talked to came to believe that I worked for the company at a branch office and that this was for a customer. So she said to me and I quote "Hold on let me check these guides to see if there is anything else to check."

Long story short we ended up exchanging phones. Its funny ever since then I have always come off as being a tech/someone knowledgeable that works for whatever company I am calling and it is soooo much easier. They dont assume im wrong anymore. They go through a checklist to "make sure" I covered everything. Did you do this...check. and so on.

Tip: Pretend you work for them its much easier.

At the time of this story, I was working for a large american internet service provider, which primary offered dialup services.

One night, I had gotten a call from a rather elderly lady who claimed she had been trying to connect to the internet, and while doing so, her computer "became very angry with her". It had been yelling at her, and calling her awful names.

Confused, and not interested in finding out what she did to her computer to make it angry, I proceeded to walk her through checking her dialup settings.

As I was checking, I noticed her dial-up connection phone number had a typo in it. After we corrected it, I suddenly realized why her computer was angry...

The number she was dialing was repeatedly calling some guy in New York. Since her modem's internal speaker was enabled, the guy who her computer was repeatedly dialing was shouting loud and clear at the woman from inside her computer. I didn't have the heart to tell her. I told her that her computer has forgiven her, and to be cafeful when typing our connection number.

My father works with a bunch of men who reckon they're the bee's knees when it comes to all things IT (although my father considers himself pc illiterate).

So one day he regales me with a tale of woe that one of the guys was experiencing with his computer.

He had just purchased it and oh, it was super fast, super expensive, had tons of disk space and yadda yadda yadda, but when he started using it he couldn't figure out why it was running so incredibly slowly...

So my father, being the helpful soul that he is, using the basic knowledge he's gleaned from using my own PC asks the man what he has running on it.

Oh nothing unusual says he, only FIVE of the more popular antivirus packages and several different types of anti-spyware...

My dear old dad nearly wet himself when he heard that and it had much of the same effect on me. Needless to say the guy with the problem hasn't spoken to him since that point.

I work as a tech in education. Be weary of who is teaching you. They are not as smart as the letters after their name say.

So I get a call from a visiting teacher that the monitor is broken in the classroom. So I go over to see what the issue is, expecting maybe a power cord or plug is loose.

So I get there, and the monitor on switch light is on, but the screen is black. I look down at the desktop and turn on the computer.

I walk away and tell him I fixed the monitor.

At a previous tech support job, I was walking a caller through typical printer troubleshooting. I kept noticing a delay when I would ask him questions, and his answers somewhat incoherant and made very little sense. Finnally, while I was asking him a question, I heard click! click! -bubbling------more bubbling- cough cough cough cough cough gasp cough in the background... At that point, I knew EXACTLY why he was having trouble answering questions!

As part of my job I review all tickets we create for a client. I ran in to one from the week end that we all can understand.

"She does not have an address bar visible in her browser and is unable to access our site. User has limited computer knowledge and only uses it to get her email. User has a lot of added browser software installed and no idea of how to use it or what it is. Had user find a blank space (this was a trial to start, there are 7 or 8 bars visible)in her browser tool bar. Walking user through the removal of the Yahoo browser and toolbar ad Google tool bar. User has too many to remove. Told user that she will need to get a local tech to help since we are well in to 3rd party programs as the problem and well out of scope for us. I strongly suggest referring user to a 12 year old for the next level of support.

Ok, for the prequel. I'm not a tech support person. I'm just a 15 year old who is ok with computers (I'm running ubuntu fiesty fawn, and can (barely) code C/C++) and who has two computer illiterate parents. I have a few stories to share.

1. Once my mom didn't trust me on the internet, so she installed netnanny 5. Ok, easy. CTRL+ALT+DELETE, end process netnanny (or start -> run-> msconfig-> startup services). Netnanny 5 wasn't too intrusive, but it wouldn't let me access IGN message boards. So I had to disable it. Anyway, once I was "cleaning" XP (list of recently accessed documents, regestry, history, temporary files, defragging it, etc), and I deleted the list of the top 5 apps you've been using recently. Netnanny was one of them. My mom then thought that I deleted netnanny, because it disappeared from the top five apps. I had to explain it to her, she didn't believe me. I told her no one is so stupid that they'd delete a parental filter and hope their parents wouldn't notice (netnanny has a mode where it wouldn't block bad websites, but rather tell the parent what bad sites were accessed). I knew she used netnanny everyday, and wouldn't delete it. Then she said "AH-HA! So you WERE thinking this out, weren't you???" Baka.

2. Not really a story, but my dad is convinced that windows (and it's programs) are the best. I've installed firefox on his laptop, and he deleted it. Why? "Because IE is faster and more secure..."

3. Whenever the router occasionally doesn't work, it's my fault. Yes, I am free tech support, and my parents know they suck at computers, but I'm somehow always wrong when the router stops working. One day I was torrenting, and I unplugged the router for greater speeds. The next day, I'm still torrenting, and the router is unplugged. My mom tries to get onto skype, and it won't work (for obvious reasons, the computer she was trying relies on the wireless router). I tell my dad this, and he says "It was working a few hours ago. I got my email and everything." Sure it was working, when all of our neighbors have WEP keys on. So I say "Did you get email on your laptop, or blackberry?" He says blackberry. I was so mad (because he blamed me).

4. Relating to the last story, when mom tried to get on skype on the wireless network when the router was unplugged, I told her I was sorry that she missed her meeting with her sister on skype. She said "It's ok. Skype said she was offline anyway." I then explain that skype couldn't connect to the internet, ex cetera. I implied that she wasn't using common sense, and she got mad.

5. Relating to the top two stories, this time again about the router. I think my dad managed to blame Ubuntu on the router not working, something like how it'd work in XP. So I booted into XP (I tri-boot with Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and XP) and it still doesn't work. I then explained how a router can work indenpendly of a computer, and demostrated it by just having the modem connected to the router, and the router connected to nothing else. Somehow it's still Ubuntu's fault.

6. This one isn't about my parents, but rather a "friend". While waiting for class to begin, he said "Windows is the best thing that has happened to me." Read that slowly over and over again.

7. Another "friend", a WoW-tard. Someone asked, so I preached the word of Ubuntu. Then my redneck friend says "Does linux run WoW?" I answer "No" (he's so dumb he could never get WINE/crossover to work) then he says "See, that's the problem with linux." Baka. (yes, I game too. The only reason I tri-boot with XP is for half-life 1&2).

8. Last story. When XP wasn't working a year ago (windows slowly kills itself thanks to it's registry/bad programmers who make bad uninstallers) because I partitioned it for linux. Yet my ubuntu PC boots up in 45 sec, while XP takes 5 minutes on THE SAME COMPUTER. My dad's laptop boots XP in about 10 minutes (his crap laptop has a centrino 300 megahertz processor in it). How can he defend windows?

One of my co-workers was doing some tech work for a customer, and when he arrived at her desk, he noticed that she had two monitors. Her problem was something to do with the network, but my co-worker could not help but notice that all of her windows were opened on one of the monitors (she had about six programs running). To make life a little bit easier for himself, my co-worker dragged the window he was working in to the second monitor, and the customer freaked. Apparently she just thought that the second monitor was there so she could look at the pretty picture she had set up for her desktop background, having no idea that she could drag windows to, and do work on the second monitor as well. Amazing how stupid some of these people can get.

I find I get more grey hairs from Tech support "professionals" than I do from users. I had a scenario where I was given an older Inspiron notebook, being told it wouldn't boot up to Windows. My first instinct was to run the Utility Partition and check the functionality of the Hard Drive. I managed to receive an error code, with the instruction to call Tech Support for a description of the problem. As the computer was bought under Home & Home Office, that's the tech support division I called (big mistake)

After getting what I believe was a live person (hard to tell the difference between Voice recognition software running its script or a tech support person reading one) I give the error code.

I should remind the reader that we're talking about an error on a hard drive. So, to be told that the error message meant that there was no CD or Floppy in the drive came as a little bit of a shock. After spending half a minute verifying the information, and ten minutes arguing with the support person about how the information she gave was clearly inaccurate as it's impossible to put a removable disk into an Inspiron's Internal Hard Drive.

I decided after those ten minutes I'd make more progress without the help of the tech support department. Within the next hour, I was able to get the Inspiron to boot up to Windows, and found the OS to be in functioning condition, and returned the Inspiron to the user.

Needless to say, it wsa the last time I called, or intend to call that particular Tech Support Department

A work colleague recently complained to IT that she wanted them to remove the modem from under her desk.

The IT bod was confused by this request, as there were no modems stored under her (or anyone else's) desk in that office. He explained this to my colleague, who started to get irritated; adamant that the modem WAS under her desk, that it was really big, and that she kept kicking it by accident.

Sniggering behind my hand as I tried not to make it obvious I was listening intently to the ensuing argument, I listened to the IT bod as he asked my colleague if she meant her PC. She replied, pointing to her keyboard, mouse and monitor, that THIS was her PC, and the thing under her desk was a modem.

At this point, the IT bod explained very patiently that what she was actually referring to was the tower unit of her PC.

Just a little story about getting some decent tech support.

And sorry for the bad english in advance since its not my native language.

I was home on a friday at around 6 o'clock and noticed that the internet connection went down. Ok checked the router, tried to reconnect, rebooted it and got the error that my username password wasn't acceptd anymore.

So lets make a "short" call to tech support of my isp.

After getting transferred over three different telephone numbers (no they couldn't put me right through) I finally reached the tech support line.

Autmatic recording: Would you like to have your call recorded to ensure quality blablabla

me: no (don't like being recorded)

tech: Hello how my I help you?

me: Hi uhm my internet connection broke down 20 minutes ago and I can't seem to connect again.

tech: Which error message do you get if you try to connect again?

me: It says my username password is wrong.

tech: So you typed in a wrong password!

me: No I didn't change anything, the password is safed and reused.

tech: So you assigned a new password online!

me: No I didn't do such a thing either.

tech: (in a tone that says I'm right and you are clearly wrong) Well we can talk about that topic forever or I send you a new password which wold take 3 work days to reach you by mail.

me: (one weekend without internet, nooooo way) Uhm ... I think I'll just wait for an hour. ..... Thx anyway -.-

tech: bye *click*

After waiting for 30min and calling again, this time with a yes to the recording for Quality purposes, I got a nice tech support woman who told me they had problems with their authentication servers and that this problem is already been taken care of.

After another hour of a life without internet it worked again. Without a new password.

grrr for the first call and yay for the nice tech support lady. ^^