Tales from Techsupport

[Alikat Astrae]

It might have been very important that he left specifically to take a "poo," because it's long been known that leaving to take a piss never causes problems.

I mean, come ON. TMI, Caller! TMI! Just say "I went out of the room for a few minutes." Sheesh.

[Mileron]

I was scheduled to work from home again today.
Since I got the domain login problem resolved, I figured I was good to go.

HAHA yeah fucking right.

So I get logged in to the laptop, go to the VPN login, and it says "invalid password, or certificate missing."

I retype my password just to make sure. Same thing.
I go into IE's options and look for my authentication certificate.
It's GONE.

I call the Helpless Desk.
Me: Hi, this is Me from Smalltown, NJ, and my ID number is 12345. I have a work-from-home laptop that I was previously able to connect to the VPN with but now my authentication certificate is missing.
Tech: Is it expired?
Me: No, it was renewed last May, if it was expired it would still be present but be displaying "Expired."
Tech: Did you delete it?
Me: No, I just haven't needed to use it in VPN capacity in several months.
Tech: So it expired.
Me: ... No, I renewed it last May, in 2011, for a 3-year certificate, and installed it at that time, but now when I try to connect it says "invalid password or certificate missing", and since I can log into the actual computer using my domain login information and password, I checked for the presence of any certificate, and it is gone.
Tech: Well, I can see about setting up a new certificate for you, but that takes a minimum of 24 business hours.
Me: That's all fine and good but I won't be needing the VPN certificate for a while after today, and I need to work now, so I'm just going to drive into the office.
Tech: Or, you can go into your Outlook email and look for last year's renewal
Me: Emails get deleted after 90 days, which is why I have PST files, which I can't access unless I'm on the VPN, because my Outlook will not open without the server connection.
Tech: Well, I can put in a 30 minute high priority call, but seeing as how the certificate generation and research people are only M-F they won't get back to you until tomorrow after 9am Central...
Me: Go ahead and put in the 24 hour request, I'm going to drive into the office now. Thanks, have a good day.

*sigh*

It's gotta be me.

[Alikat Astrae]

Make it write-only maybe? I bet some damn ActiveX or Javascript website bullshit caused your certificate to be deleted. As a softening-up measure so you wouldn't be able to use any resources via VPN to combat whatever it is they planned to smite you with next.

[FilanFyretracker]

It might have been very important that he left specifically to take a "poo," because it's long been known that leaving to take a piss never causes problems.

I mean, come ON. TMI, Caller! TMI! Just say "I went out of the room for a few minutes." Sheesh.

I once had someone call into the tech support and wanted help with their cable modem... while it was power cycling and the computer was rebooting... they brought the phone with them and decided that they should take a piss... TMI Live =x

[Schezar]

I like the people that want to eat while trying to talk to you.

[Aennyil]

I once had someone call into the tech support and wanted help with their cable modem... while it was power cycling and the computer was rebooting... they brought the phone with them and decided that they should take a piss... TMI Live =x

They obviously know how to use a phone, so why not mute while doing their personal business?

Frankly though, if a shared bodily function moment is the worst part of your day you got off easy imho. Ymmv.

[Mileron]

Tech guy I just talked to has this history of always having his user on the phone when they call.
I think this is the second time in 7+ years that I've talked to him without her also on conference.

Anyway, back at the end of December, I was asked by the sales rep to send this customer a copy of our programs to handle 1997 and 1998 tax returns.
Told the sales rep that we don't have those programs any more, as they were DOS based, and as such we stopped supporting their use in 2007, and their installation in 2003.
I was off the rest of that week.
Came back on Jan 3rd to several angry emails from the sales rep, "why didn't you send them the 1999-2002 programs to them"
Um, hello, you only asked me about 97-98. When did my job requirements include "telepathy" ?

So I create a CD and ship it to the customer. They get it on 1/5.
I then spend over 12 hours on the phone with them over the next 10 days getting it up and running, because the tech guy has problems following instructions that are higher than #1.
I finally get it working.

Fast forward to today.
I find out that said tech person has been emailing my department repeatedly for over a week requesting the 1997 and 1998 programs again.
I had his emails "on deck" to reply, when he called and got me.

Tech: Yeah hi I need the 1997 and 1998 programs.
Me: As I told you back in January, we no longer have any supported programs for those tax years.
Tech: Well then I need 1999-2002.
Me: I shipped you a CD a month and a half ago and we spent two weeks getting them working.
Tech: Oh, yeah, I threw that CD out. Can you email it to me?
Me: (I hear the user in the background saying "Is this the CD you need?")
Tech: Oh, here's the CD. I'm going to put it on our I drive.
Me: You did that last month. If you're going to have the user in the office use it, just create her shortcuts.
Tech: But she gets an error, "cannot write INI file to Windows System Area"
Me: We covered this last month as well, either create a blank INI file by hand in her Windows\System directory, or copy it over from the other user's computer.
Tech: Oh, yeaaaaahhhh....

I email the sales rep.
Me: Your customer keeps requesting 1997-1998 programs, but we cannot provide these to him, for the same reasons as in December, because they are DOS based programs and we no longer support them.
SR: Why not?

I need to build myself a brick wall with a head-bonking target.

[Mileron]

It's just my day.

One of the sales reps walks over to my desk.
SR: My computer won't start back up.
Me: (knowing I'm getting the end of the story) Why did you reboot it?
SR: Well, it froze.
Me: What were you doing?
SR: Entering sales orders.
Me: Okay...
SR: And it froze. So I kicked it.
Me: ...
SR: Then it turned off. So I turned it back on, then it was doing this scan thing. Chuckdiskette.
Me: CHKDSK?
SR: Something like that. Anyway, it stopped at 8% on the second scan.
Me: Oh, that's not good. (I go over and look at it, and sure enough, hard locked during CHKDSK. I power it off for 2 minutes, hoping the drive will self-park, and boot it up, but again it gets stuck at 8%.)
Me: Looks like you crashed your hard drive.
SR: But I was just trying to enter orders!

*head-desk* *head-desk*

[Alikat Astrae]

"Then it turned off." In the words of George Takei, "Oh MY!"

[Mileron]

I got in today for the "late shift", 11:30 to 8pm.
My senior tech compatriot comes to my desk as I'm setting up and says "phones died this morning before 8am. It's a Verizon circuit problem that seems to be affecting the whole state."

Lovely.

Then I find out from the first person who arrived this morning that he called the Helpless Desk and a near-duplicate conversation to the one from three weeks ago occurred, with the SAME REP.

And the phones are still out, five hours later.

[Mileron]

Get an email from my manager.
"The sales lines for all groups, and all but one Support group, are down."

Guess which support group is still getting calls?

Uh huh.

So I get a customer who says "I'm trying to call Sales, but I keep getting a message telling me there's a problem with the phone system, try again later."
Me: That's because there's a problem with the phone system, sir. I can't even transfer you at the moment. I can take a message though."
Customer: But I want to be transferred.
Me: Unfortunately sir, the system outage is preventing me from transferring you. May I take a message?
Customer: I just want to be transferred to Sales.
Me: Sales is unavailable, sir, may I take a message for you?
Customer: So you can't get me in touch with Sales?

[Eremius]

Get an email from my manager.
"The sales lines for all groups, and all but one Support group, are down."

Guess which support group is still getting calls?

Uh huh.

So I get a customer who says "I'm trying to call Sales, but I keep getting a message telling me there's a problem with the phone system, try again later."
Me: That's because there's a problem with the phone system, sir. I can't even transfer you at the moment. I can take a message though."
Customer: But I want to be transferred.
Me: Unfortunately sir, the system outage is preventing me from transferring you. May I take a message?
Customer: I just want to be transferred to Sales.
Me: Sales is unavailable, sir, may I take a message for you?
Customer: So you can't get me in touch with Sales?

<--If ever there was a post that exemplified this...

[Melcar]

<--If ever there was a post that exemplified this...

A few of my prime examples:


"So, is like this email that came from somethingstupid@gmail.com that says click the link to keep your email address open, Did this come from you guys?"
{from multiple people}



"How do I send an email to everybody in the organization?"

Well dumb-ass you click new email, you open the organization email address book, and select the 4th one down - you know the one that Has the name of the freaking organization.

[Mileron]

Every couple of months, one of my users comes up to me.
User: The fax machine says "Check Paper."
Me: Did you put paper in it?
User: Yes, but it still says "Check Paper."
Me: *knowing this user, and her history with "Check Paper", I know it doesn't have paper. I walk down to the printer, grab a handful of paper, turn to the fax and put paper in the empty paper tray.* It needed paper.
User: Oh, is that what it means?


Customer's tech calls me on 3/1.
Tech: I need to install this program on a SAN appliance.
Me: We don't support that.
Tech: Why not?
Me: We don't, but if you want to get technical, it's because of permissions, you probably won't be able to set Full Control permissions to the program folder.
Tech: Well it worked on the old one.
Me: You're lucky, most firms don't get it to work, but again, we don't support it, and you need to put it on a file server.
Tech: Okay.

He then calls back 3/9.
Tech: I need to install this program on a SAN appliance.
Me: We don't support that.
Tech: Why not?
Me: As I mentioned last week, permissions.
Tech: But I need it on this SAN.
Me: It won't work. Put it on a file server.

Today...
Tech: I installed this program on a SAN, but it doesn't work. Keeps giving me "path not specified" errors and permissions warnings.

Le sigh

[Mileron]

Get an email from a customer's tech.

Attached is a PDF.

The PDF is of a screenshot

The screenshot was taken by a user, pasted to Word, printed, faxed to the tech, scanned, then emailed to me.

Didn't we cover something like this a few pages ago? Le sigh.

[Melcar]

Didn't we cover something like this a few pages ago? Le sigh.

Yes, yes we did - post #327.



Quite the creative solution though isn't it?

[Mileron]

Our office's antivirus is Trend based.
It used to be housed on the primary file/print server in the office.
This was changed back in November, around the time they changed our Windows Updates solution.

Naturally, they didn't tell us about either change.

So when people started bitching at me in late January about the fact that their Windows installs were freaking out that their Antivirus wasn't working, wasn't updating, and was showing "out of date install, no updates available" I got worried.
I emailed my primary netops server support contact. Got back an autoreply, "I am no longer with Company."
So I email the second on my list. It takes him 2 weeks to get back to me. "OH, yeah, we disabled the AV Host on your server and it should have auto-migrated all your users to this office's server."

Well it didn't.

So I had the dubious honor of going from PC to PC and manually uninstalling, rebooting, and reinstalling the AV from the other office's server. This process, which I found out after the first attempt takes 20-30 minutes, requires two passwords and three network administrator logins.
Thankfully I have them all.

Anyway, there's only a handful of computers to finish by this point (tax season is painfully busy), including a low-use terminal server in the office.

So I send out an email today at 4pm to all of the office users saying, "IF you use this Terminal Server, then BE AWARE you will need to LOG OFF your session before 8AM Friday so that I can reboot it for necessary updates. If you DO NOT know what this computer is, then you DO NOT need to worry about it."

Naturally, I get 3 instant responses, and a further 4 more over the next hour asking "Do I need to worry about this?" from people that wouldn't know a terminal server if it fell out of the sky onto their heads.

[Mileron]

Over the last couple of years, several of the departments in my office have been transitioned to laptops for work-from-home capabilities.

All of these laptops are Dell, are shipped with a plethora of accessories, including a keyboard, mouse, carrying case, and a docking station.

So far, 4 of the docking stations have died at different intervals, where the non-built in monitor (when docked) will go black. It still shows that it is on (amber power light) and you can see the screen is "on" - sort of like if the screen saver were set to "blank screen." But you can't do anything to get the screen back.

Today, I call the Dell Enterprise number I was given on the first go-around last year. (#1)
They send me to another number.
That guy (#2) tells me that I need to contact Latitude support (duh) so he gives me another number and transfers me.
The guy (#3) at the third number tells me that I need Gold Large Enterprise support, so he gives me the second number again, and transfers me to dead air.
I call back the second number, and tell the lady (#4) who answers that I've been trying to get in contact with GLE support. I give her my service tag at her request, and she tells me that I need Gold Large Enterprise support. Um, right. So then I ask for a phone number, which she gives me.
She transfers me back to basic support (#5). I tell the guy there that I need GLE support.
He gives me the GLE number (which the previous woman was supposed to transfer me to) and transfers me again.
I get to another clearing desk (#6) who transfers me to the actual correct place. (#7)

Funnily enough, that guy tells me that, even working for Dell, he gets the same runaround if he has to call for support.

[Bonlainy]

That's odd, because all of our laptops and desktops are Dell, and anytime we have an issue I'm the one who calls it in. We have one number to call, for us its Gold Support, and with basically the push of the 2 button I am connected to a technician who asks what the problem is, asks me to run diagnoses software if needed, and then schedules a tech or a parts shipment (if it's something I can do myself like replace a HD). All our laptops are Latitudes, too. Granted we only have a handful of docking stations, but we've never had any issues with them. Here's the number we call: 866-876-3355.

Hell, just last week we had two E6410 Latitude laptops come up with broken bottom case plates, and both times the tech just marked it down as accidental damage and setup a next day repair. Sucks you got the run around like that, I've never been transferred or told I would get a call back, they get me to a tech the first call.

[Mileron]

Usually I get helped first time through, as well.
The last time I called, they gave me 888-242-0938. Calling that number started the runaround.
I was also given 800-822-8965, 800-459-3355, and 866-516-3115.

Here's the number we call: 866-876-3355.

That's the final number the last tech gave me, and it's the one I will be using from now on.