Stupid Tech Support ________________________________________ • Customer: "Hi, I can't seem to connect you guys are you having a problem?" • Tech Support: "Well sir, what dialup software are you using?" • Customer: "The one you provided." • Tech Support: "And what version is it?" • Customer: (says the version number) • Tech Support: "Oh, that's the problem you need the latest version." • Customer: "Ok, how do I get it?" • Tech Support: "Well, just transfer the file via FTP." • Customer: "Well that would be nice, but I can't connect to the Internet." • Tech Support: (sounding exasperated) "I told you just to FTP the file sir." I hung up. ________________________________________ I had trouble downloading an operating system upgrade for a PDA, so I called tech support. • Me: "I can't seem to get this download to complete. What might be causing it?" • Tech Support: "What operating system are you running?" • Me: "Windows NT." • Tech Support: "Well, you have to be running Windows 98 or better in order to download it." • Me: "Ummm, I am. I'm running Windows NT4, SP5." • Tech Support: "Are you on a PC or a MAC?" ________________________________________ This is straight from a call log of a major computer company that happens to have technical support technicians in India and other points outside of the United States. Problem Description: Client wants to know the MAC address for the computer. Advise client that I have no way of knowing or obtaining that information. Advise client that she would more than likely need to call Apple to see if they could point her in the direction of obtaining that. Client says that the MAC address is not a macintosh address. Client says that the MAC address can be obtained by doing an ipconfig /all. Client ended up disconnecting the call. During the call I believe I could hear someone else listening. Just before the call was ended by the client there was a something faintly said but I could not make it out. Resolution: Advise client to contact Apple. ________________________________________ I'm not the most technical of people, but a few years ago, I got the infamous "blue screen of death." I called in the IT department, and the new guy told me that my monitor just had to be "de-gassed" (degaussed). Needless to say, I rolled around the floor laughing, and someone else was called in to replace my hard drive. ________________________________________ My boyfriend and I were sitting in my dorm room, when there was a power surge, causing my computer to reboot. Unfortunately, it never got very far and popped up an error message about a missing file. Panicking, I reboot again, and the same thing happened. Foolishly, I decided to call my computer's tech support line, and after struggling with their automated system, I finally got through to someone. • Tech Support: "Thank you for calling tech support. How may I help you?" • Me: "Yeah, um, I just had a power surge in my dorm room, and my computer won't reboot. It's giving me the error message: [error message]" • Tech Support: "Have you tried rebooting?" • Me: "Yeah. Want me to try again?" • Tech Support: "Yes, go ahead. Tell me when Windows comes up." • Me: "Ok...it's giving me the same error message. It's not even getting into Windows." • Tech Support: "Ok, let's try rebooting again, but this time, hold the button down for longer." • Me: "Er...how much longer?" • Tech Support: "About five seconds." • Me: "All right. Holding it down now...ok, it's rebooting." • Tech Support: "Good. Tell me when Windows comes up." • Me: "Same error." • Tech Support: "Ok. Let's try a hard reboot. Turn your computer all the way off, then unplug the power cable." • Me: (??) "All right, it's out." • Tech Support: "Ok, now hold down your power button and plug it back in. But don't let go of the power button yet." • Me: "Er. Ok. Tell me when to let go." • Tech Support: "Ok, let go. Tell me when Windows comes up." • Me: "Same error message. Windows isn't coming up." • Tech Support: "Ok, let's try looking at your BIOS." • Me: "All right." • Tech Support: "Reboot your computer, and when it's coming up, hit F1 as many times as you can." • Me: "Can't I just hit it once?" • Tech Support: "No, your computer should start beeping. I want to make sure it beeps." • Me: "All right, it beeped. BIOS came up a while ago." • Tech Support: "Ok, let's walk through some things...." He proceeded to do nothing more than confirm there was nothing wrong with my BIOS. He had me reboot again, and, of course, I got the same error message. • Tech Support: "Ok, let's try bios one more time." • Me: "All right." • Tech Support: "Now, when it's rebooting, I want you to hit the F1 key as many times as you can. It has to beep for this to work." • Me: "I really don't think my computer 'beeping' has anything to do with the problem." • Tech Support: "I think I know a little more about computers than you do, ma'am." • Me: "All right, fine, I'm hitting it. My computer is beeping." • Tech Support: "I don't believe you." • Me: "...Excuse me?" • Tech Support: "I think you're lying. I need you to hit it as many times as you can. This is very important." Finally, I gave up on the guy and made my boyfriend finish the call. About half a minute into the call, my boyfriend gets a really funny look on his face and ejects the floppy disk that was in the drive. He rebooted it, and it worked fine. I suppose this doubles as a stupid user story too, but you'd think a tech support person would have checked for that early on, instead all the other dumb things he had me do. ________________________________________ I called up tech support because Internet Explorer insisted on opening everything I was trying to download with Quicktime. • Customer: "Internet Explorer insists on opening everything I try to download with Quicktime." • Tech Support: "Ok." • Customer: "So whenever I click on anything that I want to download it tries to open it with Quicktime." • Tech Support: "Are you sure that its not a Quicktime file?" • Customer: "No it's an exe file." • Tech Support: "So it's not a Quicktime file?" • Customer: "No, and I can't right click either, to do a Save Target As." • Tech Support: "Oh, but you're sure it's not a Quicktime file, right?" • Customer: "Yes, it is an executable file, DOT E X E, not DOT M O V." • Tech Support: "Is it a .exe that can be opened in Quicktime?" ________________________________________ I use a cable modem ISP, one of North America's largest ISPs. During one of their interminable outages, I called to demand what the problem was. • Tech Support: "Is your computer on? Is the modem plugged in?" • Me: "Yes, it's on and working fine. The modem's plugged in, but it isn't getting anything from your end." • Tech Support: "Ok, can you click on the 'Start' button and type 'WINIPCFG'--" • Me: "Yes, I know. My IP is listed as 169.XXX.XXX.XXX." This IP was the one Windows 98 usually gives when it's supposed to have one assigned to it but doesn't get one. • Tech Support: "Well, sir, that's the problem." • Me: "Yes, I know. I'm getting no IP. I'm not in the network." • Tech Support: "No, sir, the problem is that you're using a Mac." Er.... • Me: "I'm sorry?" • Tech Support: "Sir, your IP is a Mac IP. You're not using a PC." • Me: "Uhhh, I am using a PC. It's a Dell with an Intel PII-450 CPU. I'm running Windows 98." • Tech Support: "No, sir. Your IP indicates that your computer is a Mac. IPs that start with those numbers are used by Macs." • Me: "You know, I don't think it works that way. I'm pretty certain IPs are assigned based on where the computer is in a domain and a subdomain and such. I know all your IPs assigned in this area start with XXX. And I'm quite certain my computer is a PC." • Tech Support: "I don't think we use 'domain' here." • Me: "Can I speak to a supervisor, please?" ________________________________________ This incident happened to me in India. This was in 1992-3 when Windows 3.1 was becoming popular. My machine had a CGA card and monitor, which I exchanged for a VGA card and monitor. The machine booted up -- there were no warning beeps -- but nothing was appearing on the screen. So I called up tech support. • Customer: "The computer boots up without any warning beeps, but nothing shows up on the screen." • Tech Support: "Is the monitor connected." • Customer: "Yes, but there is no display." • Tech Support: "Did you install the drivers for the VGA card?" • Customer: "How can I install them before I'm in DOS?" • Tech Support: "You have to install the drivers first before you can get a display." • Customer: "You don't need VGA drivers to boot to DOS like you do for Windows. I should be able to boot to DOS." • Tech Support: "Well, insert the floppy you received with your card. Go to the A:\Utilities directory. Type 'readme.com'." • Customer: "I cannot see anything. How do you expect me to read a file on the screen?" • Tech Support: "Read the file, and it will explain everything." I hung up. The problem was that the monitor was broken. I took it to the shop and proved it, and they gave me a replacement. ________________________________________ After owning my computer for a little over two months I noticed the system was sluggish. • Me: "My system's really slow on bootup." • Tech Support: "Have you been on the net for a long time?" • Me: "Well, yeah, about a month or two." • Tech Support: "Try deleting the cache. Oh, and do you have a virus scanner?" • Me: "Yes, it was the first thing I put on the hard drive." • Tech Support: "Oh, get rid of it. That's the problem. Those virus scanners screw things up on your disk. Get rid of it." • Me: "Isn't that risky?" • Tech Support: "And you'll have to format your hard drive with Quick Reinstall. That's really all I know." • Me: "Um...sure. Sure I will." A friend cleaned up my system path, and the boot lag cleared right up. And guess what? I didn't have to format my hard drive after all. ________________________________________ My school district decided to require us school psychologists to do all our reports on laptops and print from a single printer. After a few months the laptop they provided me ceased to work with the printer. I spoke with the IT Manager. • IT Manager: "I don't know if the problem is a hardware problem or a software problem." • Me: "Ok." • IT Manager: "So I can't solve the problem now." • Me: "When can you solve it?" • IT Manager: "I told you: I don't know if it is a hardware problem or a software problem. I can't fix it until I know." • Me: "Ok. I need to print my reports. When will I be able to?" • IT Manager: (angrily) "Look, if it's a hardware problem I can't fix it! I don't know if it is a hardware or a software problem." I made several more attempts to communicate with the IT manager about this problem over the next few weeks, only to find myself in the same conversation. Finally, I sent a memo to my boss, explaining that I was having difficulty getting tech support and could not print out my reports. My boss wrote back: • Boss: "Please do not harass the IT Manager anymore. He has already explained to you that he doesn't know whether it is a software problem or a hardware problem." ________________________________________ • Technician: "What a bad day! The PC is not working well, the phone is out of order, and I wounded my fingers when trimming the network plug with a knife to fit the PC hole." ________________________________________ A few weeks ago I was calling around to some local phone companies, looking for DSL. I have cable right now, but I'm extremely unhappy with the pathetic support they give. Anyway, the phone company is one of the main providers of DSL, so I called their number to ask some questions. • Me: "I want to get more information about the DSL." • Her: "What would you like to know?" • Me: "Is the 768K download in bits or bytes? I'm assuming bits." • Her: "I believe it's in bytes." • Me: "So you are giving me faster than my cable connection for cheaper? Are you sure its not 768 kilobits, which is about 96 kilobytes?" • Her: "I'm pretty sure it's 768 kilobytes." • Me: "Ok, that works. As for the IP address, is it static or dynamic?" • Her: "It's dymanic." • Me: "Oh, ok. So how often does it change?" • Her: "The only time it ever changes is when you go in there and change it." • Me: "Ummmm, then how would that be dynamic if it never changes?" • Her: (click) Ok, so, strike one. The girl in tech support didn't know what she was talking about, so she hung up on me. I called back, and this time a man answered the phone. I told him the girl was not only clueless but hung up on me, and I am already considering not using them. He said he would try to help. I asked him the same questions. The download speed is 768 kilobits. The IP address is dynamic and changes every few hours. But he couldn't answer anything else: he didn't know where I would get the DSL modem from, if they are using internal DHCP, how the changing IP address will affect my connectivity and downloads, etc. He finally admitted that at that particular call center, they really don't know much about it. He gave me a number for tech support. I called that number and a lady answered. She gave me a set of responses that were different still. I finally wrote in to their customer service and told them that after one person clearly had no clue what she was talking about and hung up on me, a second was guessing and admitted he didn't know, and tech support gave me completely different answers, I will not be using their services. The next day I received a reply. The man who replied basically said he was sorry for such bad service, and please call the following number for support. It was the number I dialed the first time. ________________________________________ I use a cable modem company for my Internet service. One day, it was not working. So I called our neighbors down the street and found that theirs was not working either. I decided to call tech support to see if it was down in our area. The message did not list it, so I went ahead to ask tech support. • Tech Support: "Oh, we've been getting a lot of calls from that area today." • Customer: "So service down in this area, then?" • Tech Support: "Hmmm, well, my records don't show that. Okay, let's check your settings." • Customer: "I've already checked my settings; they are fine. But I can see that the light on the cable modem isn't on. I just want to know if service is down and if someone is working on the problem." • Tech Support: "Hmmm, the problem isn't on our end, it's on your end. Maybe you should try to re-install your drivers. Sometimes the drivers just fail." • Customer: "Ma'am, we have five computers connected to the cable modem? None of them can get online. Are you saying all their drivers failed simultaneously?" • Tech Support: "Oh, your computers are networked? Well, we don't support networks." • Customer: "That's fine, I have my PC connected directly to the cable modem right now." • Tech Support: "Well, just re-install your modem drivers. Go to Control Panel...." • Customer: "Wait, you are telling me that five PCs of five different brands with five different drivers failed simultaneously? And how about the rest of the area? I think your service is down." • Tech Support: "Ma'am, I think it's your drivers." • Customer: "Uh, thanks, I'll check it out and call you back." I called back 30 minutes later. It turns out service was down in our area.
goos thread, unfortunately placed in wrong forum "Link Development".. MODS - please move to general chat section..