Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

Tech Supportees are not clueless 100% of the time. Sometimes a Tech Support person is the one who is not getting it. Here in Bolivia, most of the market is Windows, and I use Macs, so I like to play with Tech support guys' minds.

Usually, a conversation with a simgle minded Tech Support Guy or Girl goes usually like this:

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: Hello, Internet service!

ME: Yes please, I seem to have lost my DSL connection

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: OK, please reset your modem, do you know how to do that?

ME: Yes, I already did it before calling you and I still do not have a connection.

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: OK, please go to the "start" menu

ME: Start Menu? I can't find it where is it?

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: On the lower lefthand corner of your screen, sir.

ME: No, there is nothing there

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: Are you looking at your screen, sir?

ME: I certainly am

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: You should find a green "start" button at the lower lefthand corner.

ME: I am telling you that there is no such thing here in my screen.

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: (a little agitated) OK, OK what version of Windows are you running SIRRR?

ME: (holding laughter) None

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: (probably thinking "what kind of ignorant newbie am I talking to? and in a sarcastic voice): SIRRR, What operating system are you running? there should be one in your computer!

ME: (In a gentle, condescending voice) Mac OS X. Do you need the version?

TECH SUPPORT PERSON: (After a few seconds and feeling really stupid) Uh..., OK, OK, let me check the manual...

A few years ago I worked in a small computer shop in the Netherlands and here are some tales i've come across in my time there.

One day a little old lady walked in the store looking for an Anti-virus, my boss helped her but like I said it was a small shop so I overheard the entire conversation. during the conversation my boss asked wich OS she was running and she assured him it was windows XP. My bos sold her a Norton anti-virus 2008 and another satisfied customer left the shop(or so we thought)

a few days later I got a call from that lady she was telling me the anti-virus didn't work. I asked what the problem was but she could's explain it to me (she wasn't a computer person) but her neighbour (who incidently was a computer expert) told her it didn't work. I then asked her what the anti-virus was sayng but she could't tell me that either becaus she wasn't at her home. I then advised her to call us the next time she was behind her computer.

another few days later she calls again (this time she was behind her computer) but this time my boss answered the phone (it was my day off) i don't know wat was said but it turned out she wasn't running windows Xp but windows 98 (yes 98(I really mean windows 98)) and therefor couldn't even install it my boss eventualy offered that she would bring her computer and the anti-virus over and we would install it for her free of charge she agreed and the call was ended.

fast forward another few days. the little old lady comes to the shop with just the anti-virus and she wants to return it, the conversation went a little somthing like this:

cust: hello I would like to return the anti-virus

me: I'm afraid i can't take it back because we can't check if the software is already in use.(and on our reciept wich is A4 size the first line wich is bold and size 16 states we don't take back software)

cust: but I could't install it on my computer.

me: yes I know about the trouble you've been having but there is no way for us to check if the license key is already in use.

cust: what do you mean license key.

me i open the box that contained the software to show here the license key and find that a) the box is incomplete. and b) she scribble over the dvd-sleeve and booklet.

I pointed that out and she stil couldn't (or wanted) to understand why we would take it back.

the next five minutes was a back and forth between me and the cust, with her saying that she couldn't install it and me saying that we couldn't check if the license key was used. I finaly remembered the deal she made with my boss and i mention the deal to her and she tells me that because her nieghbour(the computer expert) told her it was impossible she it must be impossible. It took me another five minutes to convince her to bring the computer over so that we could have a try and she agreed(again)

and (you've guessed it) anothe few days later and she returns this time with the anti-virus and her computer. we take the computer to the back and tell her that we will contact her within 2 days. that evening we hav a crack at it. opun booting we learned she actualy had windows 95. It turned out to be more difficult than we thought and we had contated symantec but they stopped supporting windows 95 a few years ago. The second evenig we had to give it up and the following day we gave the cust a full refund.

thankfully that was the last time we ever heard from here but she sometimes walked by the shop and eveytime my mind would go : don't come in. don't come in. don't come in. and i would try to form a wall around the wall with my mind.

(don't be afraid this second and last one is short.)

one day a man walked into the shop in half-panic mode. he explains that his son was born a few days ago and that the pictures he took with his digtal camera were deleted from the SD-card. my boss offers to take the card home and try a few programs amd the man could collect it the next day. that next day my oss enters the shop with big grin on his face it turned out he could recover a lot of the data and even som older pictures. those older pictures turned out to be nude photo's of his wife in different poses( the time gap between the those pictures and the ones of his son was about nine months, coincidence i think not). my bos then instructs me to just hand over the card and the burned dvd with the pictures and not say a word. off course when the man returned to collect his pictures came i had a hard time keeping a straight face.

More WTF moments:

Guy is asking to set up Outlook on laptop. It's asking for the orignal disc we did not provide him (Small Business Edition). We use Professional for our everything since it's what our company bought in terms of volume licences. Guy insists that we installed it using our corporate discs.

Guy: I don't understand why Office needs to install when it's already installed on the PC!

Me: It's a known problem with Office. When you install it without install all files (default install), it will work fine for one user, but when a new users logs in to use it, it will ask for the original CD again.

Guy: You're not listening to me! It's already installed on the computer! You guys installed it! I'll prove it to you that it's on the PC.

*I'm thinking to myself - "didn't I just explain to him...and he says I'M not listening? Okay, whatever"...*

*Guy logs off new user, then logs in as himself... causing awkward silence while all this is happening*

Me: I know what's going to happen, I see it all the time. You log in, it'll work just fine. I got it. But that doesn't change the fact that it's asking for the original CD that we didn't use to install it.

*Finishes logging in, then starting up Outlook ... yep, all fine*

Guy: You guys DID install it. It's not Small Business. It's whatever you put in it.

*Guy proceeds to go to Help-About on his own without me asking.... *

Guy: Oh... it's Small Business Edition.

*He sounds deflated that he's wrong*

Me: Right. And I see that it's also registered to Company XYZ. If we installed it, it would have said Company ABC.

*He goes back into defensive mode*

Guy: But you guys DID install it! We sent in the discs to you guys!

*Okay... what did I just say earlier?*

Me: If that's the case, it's still asking for the original disc that we used to install it. We don't have Small Business Edition. We have Professional.

Guy: *very quickly* Okay, I'll go find the disc. *clicks*

During the six months I worked the helldesk at a small ISP/CLEC in 2001, this incident from the very beginning was one of the best.

One of the other techs showed me how I could watch customers logging in. At the time they hadn't changed to a system that encrypted the passwords so they weren't recoverable, and the monitor screen showed them in plaintext.

It just happened there was a customer having a problem. From that connection the user was entering the *wrong* password in lowercase. Then the customer would try the *correct* password in ALL CAPS. The passwords were case senitive.

This went back and forth several times until it was getting painful to watch.

To avoid the eventual irritated support call we proactively looked up the account, called the customer and I politely told the person exactly what she was doing wrong.

About a week later the company changed to encrypting the passwords, which made troubleshooting password PEBKAC errors much harder.