Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

I'm on-site to a small insurance office.

Their fax machine had stopped working, and they

understood there would be a fee even if I couldn't

fix it.

It was a small home laser fax, one step above a

thermal printer

The paper sensor had failed.

It couldn't tell if a document was present or not.

Canned air didn't help and any service would exceed

the value of the device.

They're writing my minimum charge check and I see their

heavy duty copier.

It has a keypad!

I look at the back.

It has a phone socket!

They had 15 feet of phone cable in a drawer.

Plugged into fax line, sends ok, receives ok.

The check was rewritten for one hour on-site.

PS: Welcome back TechTales!

So many years ago, about mid '90s or so I'd say, my parents got a nice system for its time. Now, mind you, my mother is pretty computer savvy, she can do basic software and hardware stuff including troubleshooting. If she doesn't know something, she'll ask me or look it up. However, this is where the interesting part comes in.

After a bit of time, the DVD drive stopped working. My mother does the standard troubleshooting and it still doesn't work. So she calls...let's call them GuessWhy...and was on the phone with them for about 2.5 hours or so. They went through all the troubleshooting my mother already did several times over and thensome. Throughout this conversation, I kept telling her to call the manufacturer. Finally she relented and called the manufacturer. Within seconds, they immediately knew it was a bad drive and setup an exchange.

And you wonder how some people get the jobs they have.

Here's another one of mine I just remembered. During the early '90s, there was this company doing a free computer promotion. Well, amazingly enough, we won one of the systems which I was allowed to have. Well, after a while of using it, I started having some issues. Now, at the time, I was just barely starting to get into computers seriously, so I took it in for some help. Well, the guy at the tech shop was nice enough to explain some of the finer points of FDISK. Ok, that's great, helps me out in the future.

However, there were also some hardware issues that needed fixed so he sent it in as he didn't have the right tools and hardware. Ok, no problem, I'll wait. So when I got it back from the shop, I took it home and hooked it up. Ok, so far, so good. Then after a while it started slowing down again. So then I decided to say screw it and took the thing apart myself. Turns out the tech(s) at the shop where it was sent had no clue how to properly install hardware; there were extra cables and things weren't plugged in right. How it worked to start with was beyond me. After properly reassembling it and reinstalling all the necessary software, it worked better than when I got it back.

Just goes to show that if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself (so long as you know how, that is).

Here's another incident I wanted to share. This one happened just recently (a few months ago) and involves my personal site and the previous host I was with.

It came to my attention that my previous site host provider is not in good standing with its customer service and therefore I switched hosts. Here's what I mean:

One of my files disappeared after being edited and the file could not be recreated. I asked about this and got no response. After further experimentation, I found I could not load / create files more than 70 KB. As I had other files over 100 KB, I didn't want to touch them lest they be ruined as well. As I got no response, I wrote again requesting they look into it and have it corrected and if the poor service continues I will switch hosts. Their reply was less than remotely courteous: they accused me of uploading a 'hack' and somehow violated their TOS and therefore my account was closed. All I wanted was to know why I couldn't have files larger than 70 KB and to have it looked into.

So now, I hardly had any updated pages that I'd worked on because I got locked out of my account and the pages were not available. I was luckily able to save a few items before it was completely shut out. Due to this, I had to work from memory in trying to recreate some of the lost updates. I created a package from pieces of other saved files I'd kept from before, so I had everything, just a few things might've been slightly different. Now I had to find a new hosting service for my site -- again. [Thanks Free Web Hosting Area for nothing. Yes, I posted this so people know to STAY AWAY FROM FWHA due to their lack of ANY customer service skills!]

--Yes, I realize I should have kept a recent backup of my site on my computer, but I was lazy at the time. However, I've now started doing that just in case. Also note: the name of the service was NOT changed to protect the innocent.--

I work for a large educational institution in Australia. Some 7 or 8 years ago we had an Microsoft Access based database that had morphed through several versions of Access. It was a complex database and had one major flaw, when the interface opened up it opened in an actual record - users tended to start data entry on top of an existing record plus other features that annoyed the heck out of the users. Our IT was centralised but we also did some local support (by me), untrained but with hands on experience. So one day - April 1 - I sent out an email advising of a new interface which could be used for most purposes which overcame these problems and asked people to register for training by lunch time. The new interface was called Lirpa1 - 1 April backwards, and another name - Devil - as our normal interface was called GODS. I mentioned this to one person, luckily, because they suggested I tell second boss up as a precaution.

Apart from catching those who could reasonably expect to be caught, three things happened. First, I came back from getting a coffee and first boss up, whom I would describe as a female agressive bikie moll type protecting her authority, was standing by my door with second boss who had been talking to her. Neither admitted it outright (second boss hinted several years later) but first boss up had turned up to yell at me for announcing a major change without her authority and to ask what the f. I was doing etc., etc. and second boss had stopped the outburst in time :) Second, one of our data analysts, who should have known better, at a meeting several days later praised this initiative. By that time everyone else knew about the joke but didn't know where to look during this praise. Third, and this took me several years to realise the probable cause, some four or five months later the data analysts were given access to the background tables which allowed them to run proper queries and reports without all the glitches. I can't help thinking that in my ignorance my joke had shown the way to an easy solution once they had thought about it. No one said thanks!

So in continuing reading Techtales, I came across one about Qwest which reminded me of this situation.

A few years ago, I was living in an apartment complex not too far from where I am now, with a few roommates. Well, we had a Qwest broadband service and it kept going out on us. So we had the apartment maintenance come look and the internal lines were wired wrong, so it was rewired, and it was still wrong. So much for proper maintenance. So finally, me being the official techie of the group, talked to Qwest and had one of their technicians to come and look at our lines. Lo and behold, the entire line was wired wrong. So the Qwest tech got it all rewired and did a direct line connection for our DSL and it worked nearly flawlessly after that.

In having the tech come out, we were informed there would be a charge since internal wiring wasn't covered under their standard policy. Ok, that's fine. However, the roommate whose account it was under was upset about the charge even though we already knew it would be extra. Well then, if you didn't want the extra work done and be charged for it, then don't ask for a tech!! DUR!!

Another part of that whole technical situation is that Qwest really doesn't have that great of tech support, except on a rare occasion when there's someone there who actually knows what they're doing. On one such occasion, the tech let us connect to her directly for any further issues (either by direct line or transfer) and would actually get things done. Unfortunately, she left that department after a while so any further communication we had was through the standard, low-level, clueless tech peons.

Around 2004, I had just moved out of my house, leaving my extremely clueless parents at the mercy of their computer. Dad can't type, Mom doesn't know how to copy and paste a website address, and their computer runs to this day on AOL dial-up.

I come home one day and take a look at their computer. They complain of viruses and XXX-rated images popping up. I try to install Norton (Bad idea, I know), which becomes a prompt failure as their computer can't handle it. A month or so later, their computer literally blows up. By this I mean it started sparking and smoking.

I eventually suggest that I need a new computer. The one I had was, no joke, a whopping 10gig. My mother promptly cusses me out and says my computer is top of the line. When her own computer blew up from who knows what.

I now have a 300 gig.

My father spent thirty-seven years designing and building computers for a big (blue) computer company, but when it came to using them...well...

Him: Why won't this stupid computer keep my time and date settings? I'm sick of putting them back in every time!

Me: Your CMOS battery is dying.

Him (while taking the case apart): It doesn't have a CMOS battery.

Me: Right there. (Points at a chip with a clockface on it.) YOu have a Dallas Realtime chip.

Him (sarcastic as heck): That's a chip, not a battery. A battery is a little round silver thing.

Me: Okay. (No point arguing.)

A few days later, his computer couldn't find the hard drive, and he of course went totally ballastic. I had to drive him and the computer over to a friend's place to have it looked at.

His friend: Your CMOS battery is dead.

Him: It doesn't have a stupid CMOS battery!

His friend (pointing at the same little clockface chip): Right there. A Dallas Realtime chip.

I was dispatched to the nearest Radio Shack to purchase a Dallas Realtime chip and lo and behold, the computer booted obediently up.

My father: Geez, she actually knew what she was talking about for once in her life. Imagine that.

Me: You're welcome, dad.

BTW, this was the same man who insisted that viruses were "nothing but a load of crap invented by software companies so they can sell us more useless junk." On;y after having to go over to my parents' house after work for a week and a haf straight to reinstall Windows on his slowly-crashing computer did I finally insist he take it back to the same friend who'd solved the battery issue, since I didn't want to be the one working on it when he finally lost all his data. Four hours, one twenty-six page virus report(not exaggerating)and one AVG installation later, the computer was working again. Of course, he never updated AVG after that, but that's another story...