Tales From Technical Support Content
I work for Panasonic and I support the higher-end products such as Plasma, LCD and DLP televisions as well as DVD Recorders, Blu-ray players, etc. My first day after training for Plasma support I received a rather sad yet hilarious call.
CST: the customer
TSR: me
TSR: Thank you for calling Panasonic Plasma Concierge HelpDesk, my name is Chris (I use my first name at work and my middle name at home). How can I assist you?
CST: Yes, I'm calling because I need my screen replaced.
TSR: (blah blah, "do you have a case #, have you contacted us before, etc)... Okay, sir - and may I ask why you believe you need a new screen?
CST: Sure... well, I think before I bought this TV I should have checked whether or not it was compatible with my girlfriend.
TSR: (laughs)... okayyyy.
CST: ... Well, we had some fun last night and when we were done she blew out the candles and got wax all over it.
TSR: Ohhhhh, I see. Sorry to hear that. But, I will inform you that unfortunately due to the circumstances it is considered to be physical damage and your repair will not be covered under warranty. Since this is the case, the method you use to remove the wax is completely up to you. However, I will tell you that you are not the first person to have this issue.
CST: Really?!
TSR: Not at all. You'd be surprised. My suggestion would be to turn the television on for about one hour and let it reach it's normal operating temperature - then use non-abrasive tissue and angle a hair dryer at the wax. Wax has an extremely low melting point and this should help to remove it from the screen.
CST: You know, I though about doing that. The hair-dryer is (girlfriend's name)'s, too - maybe I should make sure IT'S compatible first?
TSR: (laughs) - I'd check into it, sir. (survey offer, blah blah, etc). Thank you for calling Panasonic.
This is a personal story of dumb.
I have a temp job as a programmer for a printing company. I recently wrote this ASP.net web application which could be used by anyone in the company to schedule an appointment for outside visitors. This application would log the appointment details into a SQL Server database and automatically notify security via e-mail. Having debugged the application, I deployed it to the server.
A week later, I needed to fix a bug in the program. The bug was a UI bug that would appear immediately upon submitting the appointment notification form. When I made the change to the code, I deployed the changes to the production server. I decided to test the changes by entering in a test appointment. It was only after I hit the "submit" button on the appointment notification form that I realized that I had forgotten to disable the mail bot functionality before testing it.
I opened the mail bot settings menu that I had built into my application and to my horror, the auto-notify field was set to the head of security's e-mail address. To make things worse, my changes to the code failed to fix the bug.
The smart thing to do would have been to disable the mail bot until I was done debugging; but instead, I decided to run the application inside of the Microsoft Visual Studio development server for testing purposes. In the past, the mail bot needed to run on the production server in order to work and I was counting on the fact that the mail bot shouldn't work on the development server. Unfortunately, I quickly found that this was, for what ever reason, no longer the case.
Now I felt really stupid. Not only had I sent, not one, but TWO bogus e-mails to the head of security, but I had still not fixed the bug in the program. Taking no chances, I disabled the mail bot through the settings menu and continued to debug the code until it was fixed.
In the end, I quietly e-mailed the head of security explaining the situation and apologizing for the annoyance.
My mother is an intelligent person, an artist who is one class away from having a Masters in Art Education degree.That being said.....I continually get this from her;
My son lives with her , and he uses her computer on a daily basis, and has tried many many times to get Messenger on her computer.She promptly deletes it when she finds it on there....i asked her why one day, and she told me " it causes viruses".....
This one isn't really funny, just a little daft.
I'm the sysadmin for our organisation. The IT department is just me. When I'm on leave or sick etc one of the admin staff is instructed to change our Server's daily backup DAT72 tape in my place. Each tape is labled "Monday" right through to "Friday" and logic dicates that on "Monday" you put the "Monday" tape in the Server as my predecessor set it up so that it would only back up that night if the correct tape was inserted. Simple, right?
I had booked a Friday off to attend a medical appointment in the nearest City to me. The previous night however I'd stupidly left my house keys behind in work, so I nipped down early on Friday to pick them up. While I was there I changed the Server tape to "friday" to save the admin person a job.
I returned to work on the Monday to find an email from the admin person on Friday saying "I went the change the server tape, but the Friday tape was already in...so I put in the thursday tape instead. Hope that's ok".
The cable I have wont fit into the back of the ISP
What shape is the end of the cable?
Purple
I've been reading Tech Tales for a few weeks now (whilst 'working') and I've not seen this one mentioned at all...
I get nominated as on-site tech support in my office because I'm the only one that knows "my keyboard is acting funny" means "I need you to tell me to press Num Lock".
Our PC hardware is fairly ancient. My Xbox (not 360) is more powerful than the PC I'm typing this on. I'm expected to use SAP (big software), Outlook 2003 and IE6 on a machine with barely enough RAM to install XP with.
I digress.
As this stuff is fairly ancient, it's also fairly resilient (my PC hasn't crashed once in 4 years and I often don't bother turning it off overnight).
When things go wrong (usually a failure to boot), I'm called over to look at it (usually before anyone calls MIS).
My favourite fix (and the point of this tale) is to ask the user to step away from the desk and turn away for a second. They hear a loud, metallic thud and instantly look around, seeing nothing that could have caused the noise.
What I've actually done (after moving the monitor off the top of the desktop case) is lift the box between 2 and 3 inches off the desk and dropped it.
To understand why this fixes 99% of all catastrophic failures (won't boot, beeps at power-on), you need to understand what 1000 power-cycles will do to a machine. Specifically, the bit about repeated thermal expansion eventually unseating components.
Power is off when I do the drop ;)
I ve done systems work for many years and we had the following rules on resolving problems:
1. Nothing is impossible--never say something can't be done. Anything can be done, it just might take time or resources.
2. If you can't find out what is wrong within a given time frame then you need to ask for help.
3. Never say "I don't know", always say, "I need do more research, I need to look into it more, I'm working on a solution etc."
4. Test thoroughly, diagnose accurately, explore all solutions examining the pros and cons and risk involved, and fix the problem properly and for good.
Generally, I never had more than twenty four hours to solve very complex problems and often, if a system was completely down, I had to get it back up, diagnosed and fixed, within an hour or two. I've worked 30 hours straight many a time, over Christmas and other holidays, on call 24 hours a day for years without a break and had to support computers in remote locations overseas where no one spoke English.
Now when the computer system in a doctor's office goes down, they hold the technician fixing it to much stricter standards than they adhere to. They expect it fixed immediately or sooner and want to know exactly why it went down and know that it will never happen again. Wouldn't it be nice if these doctors had the same values and provided that same level of service to their patients?
Wouldn t it be eye-opening for computer technicians to provide these doctors with the same level of service they provide their patients? When they ask why they are getting an error message, we can respond with one of their very caring and educated responses:
1. I don't know. That'll be $300. See me again in two weeks if it hasn't gone away.
2. You aren't getting an error message! That's not an error message. There is no error message.
3. What do you want me to do about it?
4. I think you're just depressed. Maybe you should try going back to work? Or taking these pills...
5. Oh, that? That's nothing. Lot's of people get that message. Just forget about it. Have you seen the new Lexus?
6. Just click ok. Everything is fine. You don't really need that data anyway, you've got plenty more.
7. That? Well, if I fix that, you're just going to have more problems so, believe me, you're better off just living with it.
8. You'll just have to wait to do office payroll for at least a month or two. I want to see what this error is going to do and I don't want you to stress the system. It may go away on its own if you take it easy. If not, I'll have to get another consultant in who specializes in this type of error and they are really booked up.
We can joke because we have too much integrity to ever treat a customer like that. But it s funny to consider!
I work in the UK for a large multinational office products supplier. I started as a credit controller and moved to credit analysis (grand title, not so grand job).
I'm the whizz-kid here who knows how to use Excel and VBA to create standalone applications. Usually I only have to stretch my powers as far as pressing NumLock on peoples keyboards when they say "my computer is acting funny".
My boss is somewhat aware of my technical ability, but has absolutely no idea how best to employ it.
However, he does want an application created. He wants a database (his word) to record the details of out top customers (not actually our best customers, just those that owe us the most money) to track contact details, level of debt and other pertinent information. Essentially, pooling together information about customers that hold multiple accounts with us, saving us tracking disparate accounts which actually relate to just one company.
This is a fairly easy task with Access, requiring only a little knowledge on creating input forms. The database itself would be very simple indeed, being a variation on the standard 'contacts' list.
Except, and I quote, "Access is not supported by [our French owners] and cannot be installed". That's right, an Accounts department not allowed to use MS Access.
My boss wants this 'database' done in Excel, to be completely idiot-proof (we have an idiot on the team who regularly manages to break most Excel related tasks).
Not only will he not release time for me to develop this application (which I could do, but requires nasty amounts of VBA to keep the front-end simple), he will not pay me as an outside developer (let alone any kind of support contract).
Needless to say, once he dropped those two bombshells, development immediately ceased.
I am now one week into my three week notice period. My new employer is paying nearly £3K more for me to do a much better defined (i.e. simpler) job!
Years ago, when I was doing hardware support for a certain computer manufacturer based out of TX....
I get a call from this old man who seemed to be the quintessential lovable old great grandpa. He was the nicest guy you could want to talk to and pretty sharp for his age. Or so I thought. In talking to him, I found out he was 95 years old and as we ran through the various steps of troubleshooting, he told me stories of his past life. It came down to the fact that his Win 95 install was hosed and we had to do a complete reinstall.
Everything was going very well. He did everything he was asked as we kept up our conversation. About halfway through the reinstall, he said he needed to use the bathroom. I said, go right ahead, I'll wait.
And so, I waited, and waited and waited. About 15 minutes have gone by. I start to hear rattling sounds in the background. I didn't want to drop the hook on the poor old guy and make him start all over but time was going on and I was getting the evil eye from management and QA. I was about ready to disconnect when I hear footsteps approaching.
The phone receiver is picked up and I hear a voice saying...hello? Who's this? It took me about 5 minutes to get him back to where we were and to remember what we were doing. It turns out that he had come out of the bathroom and went into the kitchen to get something to eat....
We finished the reinstall with no further incident. Needless to say, I got drug into the manager's office for some "coaching" on time management issues. Outscource call centers are all about numbers and bean counters, not people.
