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Situation 1
Stupid Computer UsersWe have all dealt with this kind of user at some point!!
From an ex-field sales/support survivor:
I used to work in a computer store and one day we had a gentleman call in with a smoking power supply. The service representative was having a bit of trouble convincing this guy that he had a hardware problem.
Service Rep: Sir, something has burned within your power supply.
Customer: I bet that there is some command that I can put into the AUTOEXEC.BAT file that will take care of this.
Service Rep: There is nothing that software can do to help you with this problem.
Customer: I know that there is something I can put in... some command... maybe it should go into the CONFIG.SYS.
[After a few minutes of going round and round]
Service Rep: Okay, I am not supposed to tell anyone this but there is a hidden command in some versions of DOS that you can use. I want you to edit your AUTOEXEC.BAT and add the last line as C:\DOS\NOSMOKE and reboot your computer.
[Customer does this]
Customer: It is still smoking.
Service Rep: I guess you'll need to call Microsoft and ask them for a patch for the NOSMOKE.EXE.
[The customer then hung up. We thought that we had heard the last of this guy. But NO; he calls back four hours later!]
Service Rep: Hello, Sir, how is your computer?
Customer: I called Microsoft and they said that my power supply is incompatible with their NOSMOKE.EXE and that I need to get a new one. I was wondering when I can have that done and how much it will cost....
Situation 2
Cup Holder Warranty???
True story from a Novell NetWire SysOp:Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"
Tech Rep: "Yes, it is. How may I help you?"
Caller: "The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?"
Tech Rep: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"
Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."
Tech Rep: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?"
Caller: "It came with my computer, I don't know anything about a promotional. It just has '4X' on it."
At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn't stand it. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off the drive.
Situation 3
Press Any Key...Check out the following excerpts from a Wall Street Journal article by Jim Carlton --
Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.
AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn't read word processing files from his old diskettes. After trouble- shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer labeled the diskettes then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.
Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with Xeroxed copies of the floppies.
A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.
Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.
Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so a Dell tech suggested he go to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me a couple of friends,"the customer replied. When told Egghead was a software store, the man said, "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."
Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was "bad and an invalid". The tech explained that the computer's "bad command" and "invalid" responses shouldn't be taken personally.
An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.
Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn't work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in, and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked "What power switch?"
Situation 4
Tech Support StoriesEditor's Note: The following came to me pre-formatted
I was in training getting ready to do tech support for Compaq computers when my boss/trainer told me about a phone call received by tech support when she was in Houston.
A lady bought a Compaq computer at a local retailer. The same day she called the retailer to complain that the machine came with a dead mouse. The retailer put the lady on hold to call Compaq to see if the mouse could be replaced. While playing the middle man between the customer and tech support, he found out that the lady did not want a new mouse. Upon further investigation, the salesperson learned that somehow, a mouse (the living, furry kind) had crawled into the box and died.
Also, from the dungeons of tech support:
A tech for Texas Instruments notebooks received a call from a man who lived deep in the country. The man was working on the notebook in his cabin before going to bed. He left the notebook on his kitchen table turned on. The notebook went into power-save mode after a few minutes. A racooon crawled into an open window and stepped on a key on the notebook. The notebook came to life, lit up the screen and began to make the usual computer noises. This scared the racoon, who urinated on the machine. The man woke up to find that both his notebook and the racoon were dead. He was calling tech support to see if this sort of action would be covered under warranty. The tech had to put the customer on hold because he was laughing so hard. When he regained his composure, he got back on the phone and told the customer that this would not be covered under warranty, however, he would said he would not log the call and referred the customer to customer service so he could tell the customer service rep that he was going to sue because TI killed his pet racoon.
Situation 5
Keyboard WashingI don't know if you wish to post this, but I'm betting you'll be amused anyway. It's also a good tech tip for the desperate.
A few years ago I was system administrator for a medium sized company. One day I did the horrible thing that everyone says *they* never do and spilled a cup of hot chocolate into the keyboard of my Sun SPARC 4. Needless to say, this did not go over well with the machine.
It was after office hours for Sun so I had a choice: Stop working for the day or try to repair the keyboard. With nothing else to lose I carefully disassembled the keyboard and discovered that the problem was chocolate between the layers of mylar. The actual electronics were unscathed.
I took the parts to the office kitchen and proceeded to carefully run them under the tap. About the time I was washing the actual keyboard top the president of the company walked by. He did the only actual double take I've seen in real life and gradually slowed to a halt. He stood there while I washed the keyboard and placed the pieces in the dish drying rack. I waited for him to ask what I was doing. After staring at each other for about 15 seconds he said "I don't want to know" and walked away.
After the parts were thoroughly dry I carefully reassembled the keyboard. It worked perfectly thereafter.
Situation 6
The TraineeDate: Sometime in February
Synopsis:
We had set up an accounting system for one of our clients and done some training over a period of a few months. One of the girls was really excited and eager to learn everything about it. One fine day she noticed one of her machines was acting a little strange so she gave me a call...
Girl: One of the machines is doing something weird. It keeps beeping and I don't know what to do.
Me: Okay, go have a look at the screen and tell me what it says.
Girl: Okay (goes away to have a look at what's on the monitor). Okay, the screen is black - it doesn't say anything.
Me: It may have a screen saver. Go back and hit a key.
Girl: (Goes away again). That didn't do anything. The screen is still black.
Me: That's odd. Is the monitor on??
Girl: Let me check. (Comes back some time later - laughing) It was off...
Another time she called me and asked if she could run month-end a couple times a week - just to keep things nice and tidy. I said "why do you think it's called MONTH-END??!!!"
Situation 7
Dangerous GamesDate of Incident: Summer, 1996
Source Reference: Eye Witnesses
I was contractor working for a company who-shall-remain-nameless as a Windows95 phone technician. Elsewhere in this company they also did hardware phone support. One of the hardware techs received a call from a user with a monitor problem along the lines of "I turn the monitor on, but it doesn't show anything". According to the customer, the monitor's power indicator was on, but there was no image whatsoever. The technician spent well over an hour and a half trouble shooting this issue, including going through every manual they had, and finally gave up. The tech asked the customer if they knew of anything that might have caused the problem.
The customer responded with "Well, you see, last night, my husband, he play a submarine game, and he get very angry, and he pull out his gun and shoot monitor". The technician, not quite believing this, verified that there was a large hole in the monitor, then politely informed the customer that "If you [the customer] *ever* call tech support about a piece of hardware that has been shot, you *will* inform the technician of this at the beginning of the call." then hung up. The only thing that kept the technician mostly sane was the thought that customer had been sitting and staring at a live and powered cathode ray tube (or whatever the equivalent is in a monitor) for about 2 hours all told.
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