Tell me your tech support stories.

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Ever called them? Ever BEEN them? Tell me your stories. Make me believe I'm not the only one.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

Answers

I've been them. I've called them. Both suck. I'll tell my best (worst?) story from each.

Story One: Calling Tech Support
So I bought a scanner from Fry's. To no one's surprise, it didn't work. So I looked up the "troubleshooting" section of the company's webpage, which basically described my problem to a T and then said "yup, broken, sucks to be you." So I called their tech support number. It was in Wyoming, and was *not* a toll-free number. The conversation went something like this:

ME: Hi, I just bought this scanner, and the software crashes when I open it. I think it's a problem with the amount of power getting to the scanner. I was wondering if....

TECH SUPPORT MORON: Are you running Windows 95 or 98?

ME: Uh, a Mac. Anyway, I was thinking that...

TSM: Oh, then, it must be an extension.

ME: Uh, no, I think it's the power supply. I was...

TSM: No, that's an extension problem. You're missing the extension.

ME: No, I installed the extension correctly. The extension loads. The power supply isn't...

TSM: No, that's the extension. You see, on a Mac, there are these things called EX-TEN-SIONS (said loudly and slowly for my benefit), and...

ME: Yes, I know, I've used a Mac since 1984, now, about this power supply problem, I was just wondering if your scanner is compatiable with other power supplies, because I'd like to just buy a new power supply and...

TSM: Well, I don't think that'll help, since it's a problem with the extensions, and...

ME: OK, you must be right. Goodbye. *click*

Incidentally, I brought the scanner into Apple, and it worked fine. The wiring in my apartment is screwy.

Story Two: Being Tech Support:
So I worked as a sysadmin/webadmin in college. We had more morons than should be humanly possible. My favorite story, though, and I'll keep this one short, was this girl who came in complaining of a corrupted file. She had a paper due, and her floppy wouldn't read the file anymore. OK, fine. When asked, this girl didn't know what word processor she used, what OS she was running, what kind of computer she had (nor whether it had a little picture of an apple anywhere on it), what the professor's email address was (to email and explain why the paper would be late), nor even the professor's name. She also didn't bring in the actual floppy that was having the problem. :P Absolutely amazing.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2000

No matter how fancy my title gets, or the pinpoint-exacting ways in which my job responsibilities are defined, my job life has been, is, and will probably be (for a bit longer) Internet tech support. Never mind the well-publicized WordPerfect tech incident (power's off; customer can't figure out why he can't print) or the notorious Dell CD-ROM story (he thought the CD tray was a cupholder), I've seen stupidity at a comparable level. Without going into anecdotes, here's a fairly comprehensive list of what I like to call "Tech Support vs. Stupid User Cliche's".

Maybe I'll think of more later.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I had to write one more, though this one is technically my mom's story. :)

She's pretty good with computers, so she gets all these phone calls from acquaintences asking for random computer help. So last week, this acquaintence of hers calls at like 7am (my mom gets up early, but still). Apparently, this woman just upgraded to Win98 and couldn't get her network settings to work (we have no idea why she didn't just copy the settings from her Win95 configuration). In the network config, where it asks for the phone number of the ISP, she had entered in their own home phone number. This isn't too terrible in and of itself, but the kicker is that she called my mom because she "just can't understand why every time I try to connect to the Internet, my phone rings! And no one's on the other end when I answer it!"

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I'm working on the help desk for a chain of stores. Somebody calls in to get help installing some training software from CD. She's not having any luck using the automatic install, so I try to walk her through running d:\setup. Bad command or file name. Try again. Same error. Okay, just type d: and press the enter key. Bad command. Try again. I listen carefully and hear: tap tap tap tap tap tap tap. Bad command. I ask how she's spelling 'colon' and she says, 'COLIN, just like Colin Powell.' The irony is just thick.

Same chain of stores used those CD-rom drives where the cd never leaves the caddy; it's basically a CD in a cartridge, which saves wear & tear on the CD's. Makes a lot of sense if you have mondo turnover on sales team members. The company that supplied the computers ran out of that kind of drive and started shipping the standard type, with the tray you drop the CD into. I watched as a Dataserv tech was going to install something on the computer. He pressed the 'eject' button, grabbed the tray (thinking it was the caddy) and ripped it loose from the drive.

Another Dataserv tech called in to try to get something to install from one of the caddy CD's. We asked if he had tried a different cd, and he said yes. We asked if we had tried using a floppy disk to do the install (another option), and he said yes. We asked him to try something else and he said that the real problem at that that point was that he couldn't get the two CD caddies and the floppy disk out of the CD-rom drive--all three of them had been jammed in there. The scary thing is that he expected the 2nd and 3rd disks to WORK.

-- Anonymous, January 26, 2000

I worked in tech support for 3 years, but my good story is from when I was on the "User" end of the phone. I'll get there in a minute.

First, to the "Tech support person" side of the discussion, lemme add these:

1. Someone calls up and says, "My computer is off. My speakers are off. My speakers are unPLUGGED. And the speakers are playing a local radio station." (I don't actually remember how/whether we solved that one.)

2. We had a _big_ foam-rubber hammer that frustrated employees could take into the back room and use to beat walls until they were calm enough to come out and face the public again. We called it the "User Deconfuser."

3. This one happened ALL THE FRIGGIN' TIME: "My password was working five minutes ago, and now it's not." "Is caps lock on?" "What's _that_?" "A key that makes you type all in capital letters." "Ohhhhhhhh, right. Yeah, it is. Thanks. I feel like an idiot." "Well, you ought to."

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for:

I called Network Solutions to modify the domain name registration for My Company, which was originally filed by the person who held my job before I did. Thing is, she filed it not in the company's name, but in her own name. So I send the requisite form, and it's bounced back at me with the admonition that I am not Lara Lane. I can't deny this charge, but I'm still the person who SHOULD be able to modify the bloody domain now that she's been fired. So I call tech support, and spend the better part of an uninterrupted month on hold, ordering Domino's pizza delivered to the phone so that I won't have to leave...

Finally, the tech support person suggests that I re-submit the form that I originally submitted.

ME: The same one that got bounced back to me the first time? HIM (confidently): Yep. ME: Won't it just get bounced back to me again? HIM (confidently): Yep. ME: Why would I want to submit a form that's just going to get bounced back to me? HIM (suddenly less confident): Ummmmm...

I had to harass him for another two hours after that, before it finally transpired that he had the power to press about three buttons and just change the domain registration for me, which he did.

-- Anonymous, January 28, 2000

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