Tales From Technical Support Content
Several years ago, I was talking to a recruiter, and I was giving her my e-mail (from my own domain):
Me: "It's John@Smith.Net (Changed, of course)."
Her: "OK. I'll send the job description immediately."
10 Minutes later, she called back.: "it bounced. The message says "John@Smith.Com does not exist."
Me: "Yes; my e-mail is john@Smith.NET, not .COM."
Her: "But all e-mail addresses end in .COM."
Me: "No; they don't. COM is called a top-level domain. There's also ORG, NET, MIL, GOV, EDU, and others."
Her: "When did they add this?"
Me: "Late 50's to early 60's, I think."
Her: "Oh. I'll send your JD to john@smith.net."
About twenty years ago, I worked for the first company to offer to put photographs on disk (not Kodak). The Windows programmer was brilliant. Unfortunately, he preferred coding to debugging, so one day he walked into my office, dropped a disk on my desk and said: This is the latest source, and a readme.txt witha few bugs in it>"
Me: "Um. Tony, I'm DOS, and Win16; I know almost nothing about Win32."
Tony: "It's your code man."
I configured my computer as dual boot for Dos/Windows and WinNT, and added Win32s to my Win16 configuration. After halkf a day of setup, and single-stepping through the code, I discovered that the code we'd paid for from a "professional" code shop had a basic pointer error.
Later on, I discovered two error messages Tony had put in:
"The code should never reach this point."
"User did something really bad."
I've seen several "write click" horror stories here, but here's a new one on me:
Me: If you right click on the icon, you can get the properties menu.
User: "I'm left-handed. Does that make a difference? (Humor in the voice)"
Me: "If you're using your mouse with your left hand, and have the buttons reversed, then , yes; it does."
User: "Gotcha."
Several years ago, when I was working in the R&D department of a major photo developing system, my boss, who was working on new software for the next release of our "Pictures On Disk" product: "Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!I HATE computers."
Me: "Great career choice."
Back in August 2003, a very aggressive Worm, called the MS Blaster Worm, and targeted at Windows 2000 exploded onto the scene. I was working at MS at the time and volunteered to help handle the support calls. I normally did high-level support for developers, but I knew my way around a beginner.
Me: "MS Technical Support, this is Rich. To whom am I speaking?"
Customer: "Betty."
Me: "Hello Betty. Your call came in to the MS Blaster support line. Is your computer infected with the Blaster Virus (we called it a virus so we didn't confuse people who neither knew nor cared about the difference between a virus, a worm, or a Trojan Horse)?"
Customer: "I don't know?"
Me: "What prompted you to call us?"
Customer: "A friend at work told me there's this really bad virus out there that's infecting all the computers, and that I needed to call Microsoft immediately."
Me: "Ok. There are a few tests we can run to see if your computer is infected, and some preventions we can add so it doesn't get infected. Are you running Windows 2000?"
Customer: "I don't think so."
Me: "DO you know what operating system you're running?"
Customer: "Macintosh OS-something."
Me: "So you're using an Apple Macintosh system?"
Customer: "Yes"
Me: "I have good news for you. The Blaster Worm is only targeted at Windows 2000 systems, and can't infect Macintoshes."
Customer: "Are you sure? My friend was so sure my system was infected."
Me: "I'm pretty sure, but I'll admit I'm not a Mac expert. You could call Apple technical support and ask them. They ARE experts in Macs."
Customer: "OK. I'll do that. Thanks."
Me: "You're welcome. Have a nice day."
Back in the early 80's, when the IBM PC was still fighting to become the standard computer, our R&D department owned about 6 PC's. Floppy drives were becoming awkward, due to the large amount of data being generated. This was the day when 720 floppies were the largest removable media available. To combat this, the engineers started getting hard disk drives in the 10-15 MB size. More than once I got called up to troubleshoot "I can't save a file but there's still lots of room." It was always the "255 file entries in the root" limitation.
Me: You can't save everything to the root directory. You're only able to have a total of 255 entries in the root."
Luser: "Why?
Me: "Because that's how DOS is designed."
Luser: "Can't you change it?"
Me: "Only by writing my own operating system from scratch, and I'm not quite that good yet."
Luser: "So what do I do?"
I then gave an explanation of how to create sub-folders, etc. I guess I appreciate the confidence.
My wife had an annoying habit of calling 3½" floppy disks "hard disks" and 5¼ floppy disks "floppy disks." She also didn't understand why the hard disc in her computer wasn't the same as her 3½" "hard discs."
Finally, I hit on a way to explain it. I took an old hard drive apart, and cut the casings off of the floppy discs. I then showed her the hard aluminum platters from the "hard drive" and explained why they were "hard discs." I then showed her the actual medium of the two floppy drives, and explained why they were "floppy discs." As she examined the floppy material, she said "this looks exactly like recording tape."
"Yes--they are made of very similar materials."
Aftert that, she got it. Please remember that ignorance is not the same as stupidity. I see so many complaints that "s/he has a PhD," or "is an MD," but I suspect that if the average "computer tech" had to talk to an MD or PhD or teacher in the other person's specialty, you'd find yourself befuddled. The stupid ones are the ones who refuse to learn, not the ones who haven't yet learned.
About two years ago, I was working as a tester for Microsoft Link (nee Communicator). I was in a huge "work bay" with 15 other contractors. Because of the nature of Lync, most of us were running six computers at our workstations; one was for normal work, and the other five were running against Lynq in audio/video conversation mode. We were all getting very slow connections to the backend servers. One day I decided to find out why. After tracing out the wiring, I found out. Each work area had an 8-port hub. Since there were only two network ports in the room, the connection from the wall jack went to the closest hub. A network cable from one hub went to the next; and the next. Yes, 8 network hubs were daisy-chained together. A closer look revealed that the majority of the hubs were 10Base-T, even though the two network taps were 1000Base-TX (gigabit Ethernet). I notified my supervisor, and she sent a work order to the facilities group which handled networking hardware. This time they did it right: 10-port gigabit switches on either side of the room, with a 1 gigabit switch at each work area. When it was all fixed, my manager said: "I've been sending complaints about slow connections for a year, and I was repeatedly told that everything was as it should be."
Several years ago, I arrived at work on Microsoft's Main Campus in Redmond, WA. I was unable to log in, or access network resources.
Since networking was a major part of my job, I checked my network configuration. The IP address was mapped into the 192.168.x.y address space, which was wrong. At the time, the network was set up on the 10.x.y.z address space.
I called tech support and described the problem.
T: "What's the default gateway?"
Me: "192.168.0.1 (this is the default when setting up a DHCP server)."
T: "Can you ping it?"
Me: "Yes."
T: "Can I have your network tap #?"
Me :" Yes--it's blah, blah, blah."
T: "OK. Can you hold for about five minutes?"
Me: "Yes--or you can call me back."
T: "I'll call back."
Me: "Thanks."
[Click]
[Ringing phone about 30 minutes later]
Tech: "Can you release/renew your IP address, please?"
Me: "yes. Hold a second. Done."
Tech: "What's your IP address?"
Me: "10.x.y.z"
Tech: "Can you access network resources?"
Me: "Yes. Somebody set up a rouge DHCP server, right?"
Tech: "yep. Sorry it took so long to get it cleared up, but I had to find somebody with cable room access to disconnect the server cable."
Me: "You should have asked me. I have cable room access."
Tech: "You do? Oh; yes; I see you do. Sorry I didn't think to ask. May I put you on the list for that building?"
Me: "Sure. Thanks. Please note that I'm VERY satisfied." (I did support myself, so I know what it means)
Tech: "Thanks--I'll send you a survey link. Anything else I can help you with?"
Me: "No--that's everything."
Tech: "'bye."
[Click]
Many years ago I was a Unix sysadmin for a multinational bank.
They didn't have a sysadmin at every European location, so I was sent to one particular place when they were due to conduct a power-fail test, followed by a system upgrade.
At the time of the power-fail test, I'm standing in the computer room along with the branch manager, and tell him:
"There's a problem, you don't want to do this now."
His reply - "Shut up, you're here as a courtesy and to do the upgrade tomorrow."
"But..."
"Which part of shut up didn't you understand"
I bit my tongue, and waited for the inevitable issue. Power was shut down, and everything in the server room crashed.
What I'd seen was that the UPS was on BYPASS - a big, glaring red BYPASS light on the front panel, which apparently nobody noticed because it was always there.
I got a reprimand from him (which my manager got removed) for "not properly bringing issues to management's attention".
Several years ago, a friend called me about his computer running very slow, and he even knew why. "There's a process using 90-98% of my CPU, and I can't cancel it."
Me: "Hmm. It might be a virus or a bot. What's it named?"
Him: "System Idle Process."
Me: [Click]
[Ring]
Me: "Hello."
Him: We got disconnected."
Me: "Um-hmm."
Him: "How do I kill that process?"
Me: "You don't. The System Idle Process is just a fancy name for unused CPU cycles."
Him: "How do I make it use all of them?"
Me: "The programs will use all they need. If your system is slow, it's not because of CPU problems. What's slow?"
Him: "My system is taking forever to download a file."
Me: "What file?"
Him: "It's a DVD movie rip."
Me: "How big is it?"
Him: "2.3 GB."
Me: "You have a 56k dial-up connection. It will take forever."
Him: "How do I speed it up?"
Me: "Get a T-1 line."
Him: "How much is that?"
Me: "Hundreds of dollars."
Him: "I can't afford that. Is there a cheaper way?"
Me: "Buy the DVD."
A few years ago, my manager at M$ got herself a new optical mouse from one of the marketing people. As I was walking past her office, I heard her calling the mouse almost-profane names. I stepped in and asked if I could help.
"This brand-new mouse doesn't work."
She slid the mouse back and forth on her expensive mirrored desktop.
Me: "Optical mice don't work on mirrors. They look for optical changes, and the mirror is designed to be as optically-uniform as possible."
Her: "Oh. What do I do?"
Me: "Use one of those mouse pads behind you."
Back in the days of Windows for Workgroups (WGW 3.11), a networked version of Windows 3.11, I was an integrator for an Electrical Wholesaler which sold IBM Industrial Computers, PC-compatible IBM computers designed for industrial use. Since I was the only one who could even spell NetBIOS, I managed the in-house network. Since we needed to share a number of files and two laser printers, I set up a spare "white box" PC as a "server." I put a second hard drive, two printer ports, and a CC-ROM drive in it, all shared on the network. Each user had his/her own "Z:" drive, a subdirectory on the shared drive, and a "Y:" drive, the shared CD-ROM drive, since we couldn't afford a CD-ROM for everyone. They also had two shared network printers. When I had to do an upgrade to the "server" (faster CPU and more RAM), I notified everyione via e-mail that the network would be down allnext day. I was about ten minutes into the upgrade when a salesman came up to me:
"My Z drive isn't working. Can you get me a new one?"
Me: "The Z: drive is a shared drive on this machine, which I e-mailed was going to be down today."
Him: "Can you take some time out to fix my Z: drive?"
Me: "This IS your Z: drive. Once it's fixed, you'll have access again."
Him: "But I need access NOW. Can't you just give me anew Z: drive."
Me: "No."
Him: "What do you mean?"
Me: "What part of 'no' is unclear?"
Him: "But I need my Z: drive."
Me: "Then stop interfering with getting the server back up."
Him: "What do you mean?"
Me: "Go away. You'll have your Z: drive tomorrow morning."
Him: "But I need that data now."
Me: "Did you get my e-mail telling you the network would be down and to copy any essential files on the Z: drive to your local drive?"
Him: "Well, yeah; but I didn't know that included me."
Me: "I sent it to you, didn't I?"
Him: "Yes; but---"
Me: "Go away. I'm busy fixing EVERYBODY'S Z: drive."
Him: "OK. Can you help me with my printing problem?"
Me: "NO."
We are a small company, and we recently implemented CPNI to better secure our customer's information. Below is a conversation with a customer after receiving our email with details to provide us an account password:
[Me] Hello and thank you for calling XXXXX. My name is XXXXX. How may I assist you today?
[Customer] I received an email to add a password to my account. Do I have to participate?
[Me] Yes ma'am. We require all our customers to participate to better secure your account from unwarranted changes.
[Customer] *Frustrated* But we're a small company. This is completely unnecessary.
[Me] I understand your frustration ma'am *lie*, however this is not only a requirement for our customers but a requirement from the FCC that we have to perform to better secure your information and account.
[Customer] *Continued Frustration* I'm the customer and I am not satisfied with your answer! I want my account to be credited a billing cycle for having to take the time to do your job or I will move to a company that doesn't require this information.
[Me] I'm sorry ma'am, but I cannot provide credit to your account for non service related issues. This isn't just a requirement for us. This is also required for ALL communication related companies. You will have to provide an account pin, password or detailed information about the account in order to call into support.
[Customer] *Furious* I want to speak to your manager!
[Me] Right away ma'am. Please hold.
*Transfers call to manager*
The customer ended up leaving our services because it was way too inconvenient to add an extra level of security to protect their privacy.
Tales From Technical Support Index
