Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

The ISP I work for (Xtra) just launched a closed portal called Bubble - This is one call we got that just shows people think technology can do anything.

Customer Perception: Email

Notes:

Cust believes that there is moisture in his PC as a result of downloading the bubble.

- Cust believes he has taken the PC down to the local PC technician and found that to be the issue.

Advised cust that this can not be the case as the bubble is a piece of software, not a physical bubble.

- Cust maintains that it is an issue caused by the bubble and he needs a new motherboard.

Advised that the bubble is not capable of producing moisture as it is a piece of software.

- Cust then advised that he has been an share holder in our company since 1993.

- He advises that he was a foundation shareholder.

Advised cust that this may be the case however it does not change the fact that the bubble is not a physical bubble and that it is physically impossible to transmit a bubble over an electrical current or a frequency.

- Cust then supplied the following email address: ******@anotherisp.net.nz

Advised that it is then odd that the bubble was downloaded by his son in law on to his PC as it is only for Xtra customers.

- Cust wants to know what Xtra are going to do about his PC.

- Cust advises that he has been reading about the trouble that the bubble has been causing and wants to know why we would put moisture in people PCs.

Advised that there were issues - software related, however we are not putting moisture in peoples computers.

- Advised that I cannot help with his PC as it is not an issue incurred by Xtra.

Referred cust back to his local PC tech.

There was a simpler answer we could have given:

Advise the customer that in our opinion, the problem lay with the organic interface and that the customer should seek the advice of a PC technician: Xtra will be happy to pay for repairs if the PC tech proved that the problem was moisture from the Xtra bubble.

I was helping a girl with a problem with word, and I was asking her some questions.

Here is the conversation

M - Me

S - She

M: Wich version of Word do you have?

S: I don't know

S: The one on the computer

S: Microsoft

Duh

There's this lady that works over in Marketing. She s rather meek and mild mannered, so when I go into her area to help a user with their computer I ask her if I can borrow her chair. At first she would get up and pass me the chair with no questions asked, at which point I would scoot into someone else s cube to help them with their problem. She would stand there for a minute with a look on her face of what do I do now?

These days when I ask her for her chair she firmly says no! as she giggles. I give her an "attagirl!" and go grab a spare from someone else.

So reading some of these and thought I'd contribute my own story or two. I've been working tech support for a Canadian ISP for about the last year and a half to two years, and I've got a few whoppers. One of my favorites came lately.

Customer calls me, we're troubleshooting his internet. AFter a while and realizing this guy is slightly... well, really dense, I figure his internet is just fine.

So we're going to do a google search to show him that indeed his internet is working.

Me: Have you ever used google?

Him: Yes.

Me: Okay, go to google.

Him: It says it can't find... oh, sorry, I spelled it wrong. How do you spell google again?

Me: g-o-o-g-l-e.

Him: Okay, so there's an 'r' in there?

Me:.................................no.

This isn't a help desk style tale, but it is still a good story. I am a help desk rep of overall a little over a year now. Back when I was in college, I majored in Computer Networking Technology. In my second year I had a teacher who was pretty much in our opinion someone who may have been pretending that she knew what she was talking about.

The one moment that got me was this: I came in one day to our little server setup. We came in to find our main server was stuck in a boot-up loop. It would get as far as showing the Windows Server 2k3 logo, then reboot itself.

We determined that a repair from the install cd would do the trick after asking around. However we did not know what to put in for a command when it came time to ask for one. So to keep things moving we asked our teacher. She came over and looked over the situation. She suggested that we use the "dsmod" command.

For those who don't know, "dsmod" is a command that only works when windows is actually running. As she walked away, my partner and I just kinda chuckled because it was the bonehead play of the day for us.

I've sort of fallen into the official role of tech support for my family... a situation h'm sure you're all familiar with.

anyway, these are comments that I've heard (or have been heard by people i know).

R: So, what your saying is, if i buy a server i don't need to pay for internet access?

Me: I have NO idea how you got that from what i just told you.

(I was trying to explain how the client/server model worked)

S: I've heard about those digital cameras, but isn't the film really expensive?

(during a thunder-storm)

R: We don't need to turn off the computers, the odds of lightning hitting the house are one-in-a-million...

(FLASH/BOOM lightning right outside)

R: ... never mind.

Me: NO! you can't make a (CAT5) network cable into a T-junction by cutting and soldering (nuff sed)

R: My computer gave me an error, can you fix it?

Me: What program/error?

R: I don't know, i closed it.

Me: ...

R: Well, fix it!

R: Can you help me with program X? i want to do Y.

Me: I can't help you, I've never used X before.

R: That's ok, just tell me how to do it.

(back and forth like this for a few minutes)

(Following a discussion of what happened to Estonia)

R: So you can only hack into computers with websites then?

Me: No, any computer you can connect to can (in theory) be hacked, like computers you connect to over the internet.

R: But the internet is just websites!

Me: Ah, no!

F: Wow! i can't believe some program made my computer so much faster!

("some program" was anti-spyware [1000+ infections], plus I doubled the amount of RAM in the system)

That's all i can think of off the top of my head.

Great site, keep up the good work!

I work technical support for a major cable and internet company. This late night cable call has been passed around the office, so I had to share:

C - Customer

R - Representative

C - I'm having a problem with my digital box. It's not working. My sister and I can't watch pay-per-vier

R - What do you see on your TV when you try to order?

C - I forget. my TV is off....

R - Could i get you to turn it on for me?

C - hang on a minute - Hey sis? could your turn the TV on for me? -pause- Bwahahaha -uncontrollable laughter-

R - is everything alright?

C - It's fine! My sister just got up and started rubbing her chest up against the TV screen!!!!

As most geeks of my generation, i'm stuck with doing free tech support for the whole family.

Every time my father has a problem with his machine, it created itself by magic. Spyware popping up? I didn't do it. Setting messed up? I didn't do it. Seventeen new users created? I didn't do it.

Note how I did everything humanly possible to prevent this, he's locked out of admin rights, told him to use nothing but Opera, never IE. Made a macro to close IE and start Opera in case of a "mistake". Schedule a virusscanner in the background to run every two days.

And yet, whenever I have to fix something that "mysteriously happened" I notice several version of p2p programs, a load of IE specific spy- and addware, No viruschecks since I was last there, 20 new icons on desktop, most of which are addware.

This is just a general outcry to humanity. If you did something, TELL US. If it's to emberassing to tell, at least learn from it. Please?

I had a customer on the phone and he was telling me that he didn't receive any mail from us.

I opened the case and this is what I found :

"I think that the person you are searching for is not living her...

But if your drive is to bulky for you, I can arrange that....(means, I will have it with all plesure)

Regards,

Another Mr .........

Well, when I have checked the name and email address, there was an error in the name. And the same name was in the email address. My colleague made a mistake in 1 letter. So both guys had the same email usind their familly name and because of 1 letter, the guy who wrote the mail received all our email and wanted to have the drive with plesure as a gift......

Crazy....