Tales from Techsupport

[FilanFyretracker]

users tend to be dumb 90% of the time, cable tech support gets real gems like "why did you shut off my internet", "your account shows as fully active". customer: "you guys always lie, after every power outage my screen tells me no signal when i turn the screen back on".

[Mileron]

I think I was just on the most unprofessional phone call ever... the tech guy who called me kept putting me on hold and answering other calls instead of addressing the problem. 80 minute call, 15 minutes of actual troubleshooting.

Win7 workstation, 2003 server.
Drive letter F is mapped through login scripts, and is accessible via My Computer.
When installing the product, the program doesn't recognize the network mapped drive. Says "media disconnected."
When running my product, the program doesn't recognize the network mapped drive. Various errors saying UNC path errors or "media disconnected."
The user who is logged in is not in the system's user group.
When logging out then back in as local system admin, the program doesn't recognize the network mapped drive.
Not my problem!

[Eremius]

Support:

I have an consultent working with me on the custom software being built for <a domain>.com. He doesn't what to ssh or ftp the server, he just want's a website to show him what is working and what pages are on the server.

Is there a link I could give him? Like a directory link?

The email from the consultent:

I want to see what he has that works. I don't need to see the files. Something should be at <servername>.<host>.com/name_you_can_access


Thank you for your help!

<Clueless User>
<Company Name>

Seriously? How can you be so clueless about an essential part of a business you own?

[Eremius]

Support:

I have an consultent working with me on the custom software being built for <a domain>.com. He doesn't what to ssh or ftp the server, he just want's a website to show him what is working and what pages are on the server.

Is there a link I could give him? Like a directory link?

The email from the consultent:

I want to see what he has that works. I don't need to see the files. Something should be at <servername>.<host>.com/name_you_can_access


Thank you for your help!

<Clueless User>
<Company Name>

Seriously? How can you be so clueless about an essential part of a business you own?

Dammit--would a mod fix my closing quote?

[Mileron]

Thursday - one of my company's web providers decides to migrate a website to a new server - without telling us - and also breaking DNS on it for more than 2 days.
Monday - DNS now resolves back to the website, however, the ISP decides to enforce a service-wide password change - again without telling us.
Monday afternoon - our webmistress decides to update information on the website, and screws that up, whereby instead of having the correct URL paths for the documents/downloads, she instead leaves her in-office network path (ie file: info) and breaks the website for a further 45-50 minutes.

And considering this company deals in TAX SOFTWARE during TAX SEASON at the beginning of TAX WEEK... you can imagine the number of frustrated people we talked to.

[Charbok]

And considering this company deals in TAX SOFTWARE during TAX SEASON at the beginning of TAX WEEK... you can imagine the number of frustrated people we talked to.

I had a customer who owns an out-of-home tax business complain to me that her DSL was down. I explained to her that I was not equipped to handle residential services on the weekends (company policy), at which point she yelled, bitched, screamed at me that the line serves a business, and since it is tax season, she's working around the clock and needs her line up right now. Queue the 10 minute conversation with irate customer about the differences of paying for a business class service and using a residential class service for business purposes.

In the end, turns out she was two months behind on her 15 dollar a month bill, and we had shut her off for non-payment.

My favourite though, is as follows:

Customer:
Hi, I need help using your service that I just bought.

Me:
Of course. What service do you have through us? Or, you can give me the Customer ID or business name that you're calling under and I can look you up.

Customer:
It's this 'work at home' thing I downloaded off your website. I'm just a housewife, no business. I just wanted to make some money using your program.

Me:
Ma'am, we don't sell services off our website, and we certainly don't have any 'work-from-home' deals.

Customer:
Bullshit, I downloaded this free trial and it told me to contact you for support, and here I am.

Me:
Okay, but what I'm telling you is that we don't offer that service. We are a managed services and colocation facility; we don't do sell gimmick products over our website.

Customer:
Fine, whatever, if you don't want to help me, just refund my money.

Me:
Excuse me, but what money?

Customer:
I paid a $1.30 to download your free trial. I want it refunded to the credit card I used.

Me:
So... wait... you paid for a free trial?

Customer:
That's right, and I want my money back!

Me:
Ma'am, at this point I have to suggest that you contact your bank and look for any fraudulent charges on your account. I guarantee you that my company has nothing to do with your program, and highly suspect you were caught by a scam. I'll look further into it, but can tell you right here and now that you will not get any money from us, since we never charged you.


That kind call happened about five times over the course of a single weekend. Some were more willing to believe they were scammed, a couple truly thought I simply did not want to refund their one dollar, thirty cents back to them. A bit later, we found out that some scammers set up a bogus 'make-money-at-home!' site and used my company's contact information for support. We fielded those calls for about two weeks before the bogus site was finally taken down.

[Lysandor]

"There is never a good reason to hang up on customers, no matter how abusive they are." -- The Management

Old men with estrogen poisoning, who want to rant and rave about some relatively minor aspect of the service, instead of focusing on troubleshooting the root problem.

Cable TV customers who can't understand the concept of being on the correct input, and call at least once a month to have a tech walk them through the "source / input" button, or point them in the general direction of channel 3.

[Ronaan]

Idiots all around me. Two "experts" working on an e-mail for 10 minutes, trying to send it, failing. One of them (my old fart co-worker, I'm sure I've ranted about him before) says "oh I think we need to change transmission protocol for this to work... right Mr. Ronaan?

I blink a few times, say "uuuhhh no. let me have a look at that". Meanwhile the other person, who doesn't even work for our company, tries to click around on the computer. bad mistake.
Me: "EXcuse me, mind if I take a look at that?"
Her: "Oh no need to get so aggressive..."

I look at the open outlook "new mail" window and first thing jumping into my face is that the e-mail-adress contains no @ sign... but a € instead.
Fuckssake some people should stick to letters. On paper.

It wouldn't be that bad if they just admitted to not having any clue, but "oh hey we have to change transmission protocol for this one" is just wtf all over.

[Alikat Astrae]

I love that "aggressive" accusation, like "yeah, lady, I'm protecting my client's property, if I was a bank security guard you'd be rinsing pepper spray out of your bangs about now."

[Ronaan]

I got the backlash of it today... the recipient of said mail called and stated he couldn't read the attached .docx file.

Yeah no shit, it's word 2007 ... update your system.

I won't even TRY to teach Mr. "oh these newfangled computer things make office work so hard" how to change it to a standard .doc, or, what would be the smart thing to do, .pdf

I just sit there and do the work myself, happily humming the tetris soundtrack to myself.

[Mileron]

I got the backlash of it today... the recipient of said mail called and stated he couldn't read the attached .docx file.

Yeah no shit, it's word 2007 ... update your system.

He could also install the Office Compatibility Pack if he doesn't want to fork out the moola.

[Ronaan]

He could also install the Office Compatibility Pack if he doesn't want to fork out the moola.

Yeah that's what I had in mind. I think it's even among the recommended updateds once you have office below 2007 installed anyway...

I notice far too often people don't even read what the computer is trying to tell them.

"My computer won't work"
"So what does it say?"
"Nothing"
"Why doesn't it work then?"
"Well there's a box asking me to talk to my administrator"
"What were you trying to do?"
"Oh nothing"
right...
usually by then they get to the issue... "oh I was trying to install (random software they shouldn't be installing)"

asshats, the bunch of them. If you want me to help you, at least give me as much information as possible. You can read, right?

[Diallu]

I actually think that job might be fun.

For one day, give or take 23 hours.

[Ronaan]

Oh it's fun most of the time, but sometimes it's just that time of the month where the moon aligns wrong and everyone switches to stupid-mode.

Some guy got a new machine yesterday, got 2 calls already, "oh I wanted to install VLC" and "I wanted to install OpenOffice", both stuff we don't use, or else I would have installed it when preparing the machine...

And lately viruses (virii?) have started to pop up. Fuck people bringing their damned trojan-riddled $15 mp3-players from home. Fuck them. With a Primal Velium Brawlstick.
(our managed antivirus catches them, but whenever one of their machines goes from green to red I go from normal to green... hulk smash!)

[Merrick ap'Milandra]

Customer:
Bullshit, I downloaded this free trial and it told me to contact you for support, and here I am.

Oh.

My.

God.

That is mothereffing BRILLIANT.

The next app I write for anything is going to include a module that checks external IP to a geolocation service, obtains the ISP info and outputs their contact information under the "Help and Support" info.

[Melcar]

"Yeah, my computer doesn't work... won't do anything - came up this morning just fine, I logged in, but now I can't do anything...
So, I shut it down, and it's just been sitting here on this "saving your settings" thing for 15 minutes now."

Ok.. so, I head over there, no HDD activity sitting at saving your settings... I press and hold the power button.

"That doesn't work either"...

BEUMP! computer off... "well, it didn't work for me".

You didn't hold the button long enough.

So, get the computer rebooted - get it up to the login prompt, ask my user to login. She sits down - types her password... "your account has been locked... see your administrator".

Well, fortunately, I was right there - so I login as an admin account - pull up the Active Directory tools, unlock the account... log out -

ask the user to login again.

"oh no, you took my user name out of there -- now I never remember what it is."

firstname.lastname

"Oh, that never works"

first.last

"no, it's got something with my middle initial in there"
why are you arguing with me on this... EVERYBODY is firstname.lastname -- yours is janet.stupidhead
"Ok, I'm just saying that doesn't work"
TADA! It worky!



---
OK - so we run the Phone system too - We have a Toshiba Strata CIX 670 Digital telephone system, our trunks are 2 24 channel PRI T-1's
Our Toshiba Strategy Voicemail system is also digital, and has a "call record" feature - for when you deal with Unruly people, you press the little button - it records direct into your voicemail.

So, one of the Reception desks has been complaining about the call treatment - They would have calls come in, nobody would answer, or 8-10 calls would come in all at once, and then call would go to voicemail.

"Well, we can't have that, because it goes to MY voicemail, and if I'm not there, nobody checks it" --

Your kidding me right? Well, I can shutdown the call forwarding during the day, which means it will ring, and ring and ring and ring - until either you answer it, or they get tired of the ringing in their ears.
"Ok - lets do that".

That conversation happened Thursday...

Friday now, I get "oh, we've got to put it back the way it was!" -- Because calls come in, and I'm trying to play voicemails back into my little white thing, and the ringing interrupts them.

What little white thing? --
"Well, I have this little white thing that I plug into the phone, and then plug the other end into the tape recorder I play the voicemail, and record to tape, then I can playback the tape - to transcribe it."

Are you fucking kidding me? Why do you people not ask us how we can do things? No, we'll just go out and buy things, and plug them in - and sure they'll work. but still really????

So, we take a digital recording, convert it to analog, playback at normal speed recording to another analog format - play back again this time listening to it and transcribe it... wow...

Here's what we gonna do... How would you like to get an email with the voicemail as a .wav file attachment - (by the way, they do do Digital transcription too) -- and then we load that .wav file up in your other transcription software -- and then you can just type it straight there --

Know what that means? YOU DON'T HAVE TO PLAY IT multiple times to listen to it ONCE! WOWZERS!


and all it would have taken would have been a simple phone call saying "This is how we do things -- Is there a better way"?

[Mileron]

Customer: I was just on hold with the most horrible hold music after one of your comrades put me there...
Me: I'm sorry if your transfer was unannounced, how can I help you?
Customer: I just want to put your software on my new computer, and the last person told me I couldn't
Me: Well, if you'll give me a moment I'll look up your info
(a few botched attempts at getting her to speak English later, so I can look up her info. There's a call time-stamped 2 minutes before mine)
Me: Well ma'am, it looks like your licenses were cancelled over the past few years... One product in April 2007, the other in October 2009. At the time of cancellation (I read according to the notes) you were informed that reinstallation, support, registration, and updates would not be allowed.
Customer: But I paid for the damn software!
Me: Yes, but you are not paying for support or updates, which includes reinstallation on a new system...
Customer: Your damn program might have changed, but the laws haven't, so I didn't pay for it! I just want it on a new system!
(back and forth for 4 minutes about this, her not paying, etc)
Me: Ma'am, I'm going to get you in contact with Sales, as this is no longer a Support issue. Please give me a moment to find the correct number for you...
(I can't find the transfer queue in the phone directory, so I pick the next closest one. Meanwhile, she's ranting about how this is BS, she paid for her software, she hates dealing with this F-in company that keeps buying out all the good software, etc)
Me: Ma'am, I can hear you
(customer continues to rant)
Me: Ma'am, I can hear you. Please hold.
(So I finally put her on hold and get her off my phone.)

Yeesh.

[Alikat Astrae]

Wait, she bought software from your company and your license requires them to pay continuously for "updates," which also just happens to encompass the mere reinstallation of the original package? You guys are monsters, I hope she sues your company into oblivion, your company deserves to die a slow and painful death for having such a shitty shitty license. I am fairly certain that in California, a customer could legally own your testicles after you pulled that.

[Grindel]

My thought was "wow, if she has the software and just needs a code to put it on a new machine, give her the code." Are you guys worried she'll have two instances of the software running on two different machines or something?

[Gidizlo]

From Mileron's earlier comment about working for a company that sells tax software and the customer's complaint that "the laws haven't changed" I'm guessing we're talking about an income tax code, accounting standards, or possibly a legal library service subscription, and not your typical EULA and software license arrangement.

It is standard to sell concurrent user licenses limiiting how many individual users can research online the materials. It often is a bit more than a simple regurgitation of the raw IRC or FASB or state laws. The companies are marketing the search functions, editorial content, and continous and timely updates to these professional materials.

You're not paying for a one-shot software arrangement. You're paying for the maintenance of a library's worth of reference materials.

Dunno if that is truly the case here, or if that affects certain viewpoints about 'legality' expressed here...