Best/Worst Tech support stories?

[seether]

It seems like a ton of people here have paid their dues at some point or another either working a help desk phone or hiding from the Dilbertesque bosses in an IT closet. I'm sure everyone as at least a few dozen unforgettable *priceless* calls/personal encounters. What were some of your favorite ones?

[BuddMan]

I had an old lady call me and said she could not dial up to the internet. I looked up her username, and she had a dial up account with us. For some reason she said she did not get an error message at all when it couldn't connect. I asked her how she was connecting. She said......"I pick up my telephone, dial the access number, but all I get are a bunch of noises." At this point I was ready to hang myself. I slowly explained to her that she needed a computer to use the internet and that it connected via a modem. She told me she would have to go buy one. That was my funniest and strangest call ever......

[seether]

That ranks right up there with the old lady who thought she was supposed to use her mouse like a sewing machine foot petal




This is long (so sorry in advance), but the stupidity is in the details:

me - thank you for calling gateway technical support, this is brad, how may I help you?

client - put your manager on now!

me - I can definitely do that for you sir, but before I do, I need to get some information from ... (at this point he cut me off)

client - no you don't. Put him on now.

me - sir, I'll be happy to put HER on to speak with you, but I must get your name ,phone number and client ID to verify ownership of the system and provide an accurate record of this call for your protection and convenience, in case you ever need to reference this call in the future.

client - no! let me tell you what you are going to do... you are going to put a manager on the phone right now, and you are going to send me a new system. and I don't want your manager, what, doesn't gateway have any men working for them? I'm not going to deal with some woman, I want someone who know's what the hell they are doing.

me - sir, you called technical support. If you called just to complain, I'd be happy to transfer you over to "client relations". I'm sure there will be some man with authority over there with whom you can speak. Otherwise, you can either deal with me on any technical related problem, or I can give you the number for our fee based support.

client - no... fine, what do you need from me?

I get his info.....

me - ok mr. xxxxx, what's going on here? whats the situation?

client - first of all, I'm going to let you know up front that I've been using computers for a couple of decades, so I know what I'm talking about. I know I've had this computer for more than 30 days so I can't just return it, but I'm letting you know right now how disappointed I am in you guys for selling such a defective version of windows.

me - sir, the copy of windows 98 that shipped with your computer is identical to every other copy we get from microsoft... (he interrupts me again)

client - hold it right there... don't try to play games with me. I said YOUR version of 98, the one you make that says gateway on it.

I don't even bother trying to explain retail vs oem.

me - alright sir, I cannot speak for anyone else you may have spoken with previously, but I can promise you I will stick with you until we get you squared away. We'll get you taken care of one way or another, so lets start at the heart of the problem, what EXACTLY is going on?

client - my brother came down last weekend from college and upgraded windows. He said this version would run much faster.

I decide not to send him packing right then and there because I want to stick with him until I can make him feel like a total ass. So I give him the "we aren't supposed to do this, but....." speech.

The guy is actually just pissed because he can't access any of his stuff after the upgrade.

me- so your mouse doesn't even work?

client - no, I'm stuck in DOS

me - ahhhhh, ok..... sounds like we might not be in such bad shape. Can you read to me what is on your screen right now?

client - don't talk to me like I'm an idiot, I know DOS, it's nothing but garbage.

me - Oh I don't doubt you, but you know, I'm required to ask anyway.

client - fine... "password"

me - password??? Hmmm.... what does it say right above password?

client - LOGIN ROOT:

I told him I was unfamiliar with that version of *ahem*windows, and explained that since it didn't ship with the system, it must be a retail version, so he could call MS for assistance, and gave him instructions to let them know that it was a GW that shipped with 98 and he upgraded it to linux (which I told him works more like NT than 98, which must be why it needs a password) and ask them for assistance. Since he never got my badge number, I just forgot to save the event notes -- hope he got the kind of support he deserved.

[Gurm]

The best one in my experience was a couple of the guys in sales at the company I used to work for (which went belly up and got bought out, much to my eternal delight).

These guys were the type that couldn't program their own VCR's.

I'd get a call from this one guy's secretary every day or two.

"Mr. ***'s computer can't get e-mail again!"

So I'd trek down there, and discover that he had taken his laptop home, and when he had brought it back he hadn't plugged the network cable back in.

So I would plug in the cable, reboot the system, and tell his secretary to remind him to plug in the cable.

Then he'd leave nasty voice mail on my machine telling me not to patronize him and that it must be some OTHER problem because he WAS on the network but he couldn't get his e-mail.

It wasn't some other problem, he just didn't know what being "on the network" meant. *sigh*

This went on for weeks. Finally I had to have the VP of engineering step in and talk to the VP of sales, who set up a small demonstration in which we very politely showed him how to work the network.

The worst part was that during this several week period of bickering, he and I spoke directly maybe once. He'd always either leave a nasty message on my voice mail or make me deal with his secretary - a sweet older lady who really just had no clue.

-----------

The second guy calls me up (his office is right next door to Mr. Disconnect) and says his machine has stopped working. Well, I go downstairs and check it out, and yeah it isn't working - because c:\windows\system is gone missing. I figure this is kind of bizarre, but I restore it from his network backup (yeah, thank GOD I set those up, huh?) and after a thorough check to make sure there isn't some virus or something wiping his windows directories, I send him on his merry way.

Two days later... guess who calls?

And guess what's wrong with the machine?

So I go down there and restore it again... only THIS time I surreptitiously install a keystroke logger.

So the third time he calls I'm ready.

The little ****er was deleting his own system folder!

Why? NO IDEA. He had plenty of free space on the drive.

I tell him to stop doing it, and he gets angry, saying I am making shit up. He complains to his boss, who complains to my boss. We all have a meeting (did I mention I _hated_ this company?) and I show them the logs that clearly show him typing "deltree /y system" from the C:\windows directory.

They show him the logs, he gets angry and says "well nobody needs any of that system crap on their computer to do sales work! Why do you keep putting it back?"

We just all sort of look at him with astonishment, and my boss and I leave as his boss is gently explaining things to him...

Sad part is, _I_ got downsized from that company. They cut back the IT budget - to hire more salesmen. *sigh*

- Gurm

[Technoid]

Heres a story that is inspired by one of our customers:

Benny the Barbarian.

Once upon a time there was a barbarian who decided to get himself an computer.
He went to the nearest computer shop and bought a computer with a fast Duron processor.
He asked if the computer had Internet and the sales person told the barbarian that the computer neither had a modem nor any other possibilities to connect to the Internet.
“Good, the Internet is only for stupid kids and for idiots” the barbarian said and left the store with his new computer.
Upon returning to his lair he used the remaining days of the week trying to figure out if the orange cord should be in the orange outlet.
When he finally was able to start his computer he was terrified when he first saw the Microsoft logo in the screen.
“They are trying to make me use that silly Internet” he was so scared that he almost ran for his life.
Then the Desktop of WinME appeared and he saw the “Internet Explorer” icon and his fear transformed into rage.

Her ran all the way back to the computer store and started to howl, curse, threaten and fart.
The sales person (who had been on sick leave when the barbarian had bought the computer) tried to calm him down and ask him what was wrong.
The barbarian continued to call the salesperson foul names and other undignified things.
And then he started to advance further swinging his fists and generally looking like a deranged windmill.
Then when he was prepared the cause the salesperson bodily harm a pack of free Internet CD’s caught his vision and he looked around in the store and found himself surrounded of things that was made by Microsoft or could be used to connect to the Internet.

He ran out of the store and didn’t stop until he was safe home in his lair.
You see, Benny the Barbarian wasn’t the bravest barbarian or the strongest one.
He sneaked back later that week precise on closing time of the store and confronted the salesperson that sold him the computer.
Benny again started to curse and howl and swinging his fists like a deranged windmill.
Fortunately for the salesperson the system integrator was on his way to leave the store and when the barbarian saw him he stopped dead in his tracks.
The barbarian was trying to figure out what he should do now and thinking is hard for a barbarian.
Before he could decide on anything the salesperson said
“Return the computer and we’ll give you your money back”
The barbarian said, “OK” and left in a hurry since the system integrator looked angry enough to show a Macintosh up where “the sun never shines” on the barbarian.

Two days later the barbarian had conjured up enough courage to return to the store with the computer and got his money and with a last reply he left never to be seen again.
“Now I’m going to get a computer with only Word and Excel and no Windows and no Microsoft!!”

The employees of the computer store wished the barbarian a gruesome life and continued to sell computers both with and without Internet to happy customers and lived happily ever after.

The End

Any resemblance to actually people is entirely intentional.

And then We have the funny things that enlighten our days:

This is by the worst-case cpu torturing I have ever witnessed!
A customer phoned and asked if we had a Slot 1 motherboard.
Thinking of a misfit Asus I810 motherboard I said; yes, we have a used one that you can have for 50$..
He came in later and bought the board….
Later he phoned and said that something was wrong because his computer froze when he was in bios and that he couldn’t get it to set his P3 500 to the right freq…

Of course I suspected the board myself
Although I never had any bad firsthand experiences with it, it had been out to three customers before and they always said that it was bad or broken or crazy.
At the time it had been thoroughly tested three times without me finding anything wrong.
So I told him to bring his computer with him and come in with it and I would fix it…

When I came to work this morning he had left the computer.
I took of the cover and guess what I find?

A P2 350!!!

Case solved I thought.

At a closer inspection I found out that the heatsink was not mounted flush and was broken…

While fiddling with the cpu and trying to remember where the *** I hid those old P2 heatsinks I notice that the casing is broken and twisted.

Turning around it and looking into the P2 casing I see that it is a P3 that has been put inside the P2 casing!!!

And to my horror I see that there is a 3mm space between the cpu core and the metal back plate of the P2 casing!!

No wonder it crashed!!

I rummaged around and found an old P3 HS and a fan that fit.

The P3 had no backplate so I slaughtered a floppy cable to get the connectors and used them for spacers.

I put it back into the computer and miraculously it booted and I set it correct in the bios (as in setting the fsb to 100MHz).

The customer swore that he had bought the cpu as it were from a store in Stockholm.

His description of the address where on the dot to a place notorious for selling “black market” computer parts…


I’m hoping that’s the last time I see either him, that cpu or that misfit motherboard..

And all the time he claimed to be a “Unix specialist” (he pronounced it Eunuchs)…..

And the latest and greatest from our customer base:

Approximately 3 months (give or take a few weeks) one of our customers wanted to have a new DDR motherboard, 512MB PC2100 DDR, and a Athlon XP 1900+, but he did not have enough so he opted to wait a couple of months,
When I told him the price I specifically said that it was the current price and that it most certainly would be lower at the time he projected that he would have saved up! (I told him thrice in very simple words even)

Today he came into the shop and verbally attacked me:

Customer: I don’t like when you try to take advantage of me!!!

Me: ?????What??????

C: The price you gave me on the parts, it’s way to high!!! I checked them on the net!!!! You can’t take twice the price that everyone else takes!!!!!

Me: You are comparing the price I gave you 3 months ago with current prices?

C: Yes!!!, and its not right to make so much profit!!!

Me: Please let me check our current prices, they have changed during these three months.

C: I don’t have time with that!!!. And you can’t make that much profit on me; I know what I earn every month and its pure evil to do as you do!!! (Really blowing steam now)

After repeating the above conversation twice with me in vain trying to make him see the illogic in his reasoning, my patience was almost gone and I saw that I had two choices to save my sanity:

Strangle him, and throw him out with the rest of the garbage….

Leave and let my boss handle the moron…

I did the last thing! (Which was nicer to the customer than to my boss)

I checked our current prices and they where even lower than the prices he had found on the net!

WHY ME!?!

[zandor]

Ok, here's my best support story.
I used to work for a company that made high-end webcam systems.
One day one of our guys was out setting up a couple of cams for a fashion show. The catch was the customer had packaged the computer in a box with an insufficient number of promotional t-shirts. Naturally the thing showed up broken. Fortunately the critical framegrabber board looked like it was still OK, so they went out and bought a Compaq desktop at a local retail store.
Fast forward to 1am that night, and the show's the next day. I'm basically oblivious to what's going on. I was a developer/sysadmin (mostly developer), and didn't really deal with installations all that much. Particularly when our own guys were there running the show.
At any rate, I was out at a bar drinking when I get a frantic cell phone call from Ryan, who's out on site. He can't get the framegrabber to work. I take a blind guess and tell him to look in the bios and see if there's an option for enabling busmastering on the PCI slots. Sure enough, there is. Reboot, and the board starts working.

Here's another good one.
Our server software would run under Windows, Linux, or Solaris. We used Solaris in house and recommended it for large installations. At this point we'd probably be just as happy with Linux, but at the time the Java stuff just wasn't quite up to par yet. This particular customer, being one of our largest, was running our server software on Solaris. The guy they had assigned to take care of the machine asked one of our guys something along the lines of "shouldn't there be a C:\ prompt here?" while he was being walked through some routine configuration work.

Mike

[High_Jumbllama]

Can't remember exactly was what said. Game X does not work. My husband likes game X and the doctors say he is going to die in a few months. The game required a computer capable of 800x600x16bit and the desktop could not go above 640x480x8bit. the lady thought it would motivate me to use some magic to make game X work since her husband did not have long to live. Either that or she lied.

[Lizzard[MPE]]

great stories..

i refuse to work in tech support after my Murray experience. the company was great and i loved my job... but i didnt realize how many men in the states call tech support before they check to see if they have gas in their lawnmowers. hehe.. actually i liked helping everyone out with all the technical stufff about their lawnmowers.. but the winter snowblower calls are what sucked.. i'm convinced that the maddest ppl on the planet are guys at 7am in new jersey with non working snowblowers in there hands in the freezing weather. oh well.. i thought about going back to work there for awhile after i moved back from Indiana..but i didnt want to remind my family how much i knew about lawnmowers..so i wouldnt get the dreaded calls every summer from all around askin me to come over and take a look. :P

[ZokesPro]

Where to start? Most of my stories sound like all of yours, just different systems and different customers.

I hate most of all our damn salesman for giving all of our customers false information! Stupid morons, we end up getting yelled at big time by almost all customers for having been mis-directed by a slimy sales rep.

Sometimes you just want to disconnect your phone and go home. Other times you just want to blown the place up!

[ZokesPro]

Originally posted by Lizzard[MPE]
great stories..

i refuse to work in tech support after my Murray experience. the company was great and i loved my job... but i didnt realize how many men in the states call tech support before they check to see if they have gas in their lawnmowers. hehe.. actually i liked helping everyone out with all the technical stufff about their lawnmowers.. but the winter snowblower calls are what sucked.. i'm convinced that the maddest ppl on the planet are guys at 7am in new jersey with non working snowblowers in there hands in the freezing weather. oh well.. i thought about going back to work there for awhile after i moved back from Indiana..but i didnt want to remind my family how much i knew about lawnmowers..so i wouldnt get the dreaded calls every summer from all around askin me to come over and take a look. :P

Hee hee. That reminds me when I was trying to fix my lawnmower when I was younger.

ME:"Hey dad, the mower doesn't work, we need a new one!"
Dad says:"Check the gas level!"
Me:"Ah crap."
Dad:"So what was the problem?"
ME:"............"
Dad:

[High_Jumbllama]

Forgot about another. A game that shall remain imfamous and nameless except that we shall call it "Y". Y in its brief existance already had a bad reputation. This was a month after I started taking calls during my first christmas season.

Customer - I installed game Y and now Windows won't boot.

Tried going into Safe Mode. That worked.
Tried booting into dos Mode. That worked.
Tried loading Windows after going into DOS mode. That did not work.
Tried reverting the registry to an earlier version. No go.
Grrrr me thinks. Attempt to reinstall windows over a phone. Luckily this lady was good with instructions and telling me what was going on. She was just setting me up for the fall! The whole time Windows was installing she told me what she saw. I told her what to do if anything. Meanwhile, my head started to rest on the back of my chair at a 90 degree angle with the phone just resting on the side of my head. Supervisor walked by and chuckled. I did not have a headset at the time. No sense in taking call notes during the Windows install unless something weird happened. Booted windows after the reinstall. No go.
Talked to lady some more. Lady happens to mention "I just recently restored my computer."
Me says something like "What have you installed since doing this?"
She only mentions one game. There was nothing important on the machine.

After two hours, I ended up giving her an RMA number. Telling her to restore again and just not to install Y again. I don't know if she ever got a refund.

Edit:
I was just lucky that in my seasonal exposure to tech support that I learned how to have witty conversations that would at least make them chuckle or less pissed off. It took a lot of self control not to agree with people that actually sid "I am so stupid." They were easier to deal with than the people in charge who were wanted calls to only last 8 minutes even when system specs usually took 7 minutes because people did not know how to even look up info on their computers. But it would only take about 9 minutes to fix this issue. We weren't allowed to call them problems. They tried to insist on splitting a 9 minute call into two calls that would annoy the customer and actually take longer as two calls. The supervisors gave up after a while because they knew I was seasonal in their department.

[Dogbert]

Well, I've been on an ISP help desk. This means lots and lots of disgrunted people with strange things going on with their win3.11/win95.
Usually when speaking to adults I'd ask them if they had kids, if they had, I'd talk to the kid.

Reason ?

Me: Ok, now type your username (for example Cohen23)

Customer: Ok

Me (thinking to myself): Yes, lower left of the Keyboard, yes... 3rd
key from the left.... Yes....?

Customer: Click

Me (still thinking): Ok... good.... Now top right... Yes, next to "P"...
Right there...

Customer: emmm... Where is the "o" ?

Me: Top row, second from the right, next to "p"

Customer: Oh, yes, got it ! (click)

Me: Excuse me, but do you have a kid who uses the computer ?

Customer: Actully I do, would you like to try solving the problem with him ?

Me: Sure !

Once the kid arrives, things go in a breeze, most of the time I'm trying to stop him from going too fast so I could check things on my side



And something really strange that happend to my friend a few years later in ISP helps desk as well:
He had a customer complaining that the internet connection was TOO FAST ! Need I mention that he used a 28Kbps modem ?
Further questioning revealed that he was using the net for chatting in all kinds of chat rooms and the text was running faster than he could read
This brought people from all around the ISP (system, helpdesk etc.) trying to find a way to make the chat text move slower on his computer

[RichL]

I must have been particularly lucky in my 10 years service, as I have a bare handful of really odd calls to show for it.

Aside from the classics of not-connected cables, forgetting to turn off CAPSLOCK and blaming IT for their password being rejected, and the one where a woman married a greek and would forget how to spell her username on a weekly basis, some of my best calls have revolved around mice and keyboards.


I was working for a defence company, and there was a project that was running behind schedule so the manager took the step of throwing money at it and hiring more and more contract programmers and engineers, stuffing them all into a small office.
This led to more than one report of non-working mice. Usually where someone was trying to use someone else's mouse and wondering why their pointer wasnt working.
This same office is also the one where I commited a howler and cold-booted a PC I was working on, except it wasnt the one I was working on it was the guy next to me who was running a Defrag at the time (these were DOS/Win311 PCs). Luckily it escaped unscathed.

My most memorable call from that area was the case of the Nocturnal Mouse.
One of the programmers reported his mouse was working erratically. I looked, checked the rollers for gunge (or being bent, these were VERY cheap mice), tried it, found nothing wrong, but replaced it with another anyway. The same mouse worked fine back on my system.
A day or two later, he calls back with the same problem. I go there, reinstall the drivers, check the connection in the back of the PC, try it and it works okay. Shrugging, I'm just turning to leave when he calls "Its doing it again!"
Lo and behold, his mouse pointer is moving very jerkily. I lean over his shoulder, move the mouse and it works fine. I lean back, he tries it, it doesnt.
Eventually we work out that the sunlight coming through the window falls directly on his mousemat, and every time I leaned over his shoulder it blocked the light. The brand of mouse was so cheap that the casing was practically translucent and the sunlight was affecting the optical sensors inside. A field upgrade was carried out using a black permanent marker, and the mouse lived happily ever after.

Finally, this one happened to a collegue of mine.
I'd moved out of desktop support and into Networks, although our company had reorganised to the point where desktop support were little more than peripheral monkies and call loggers. The calibre of staff we got to fill said posts were barely able to do that. So although I was in Network Support, we'd quite regularly get calls from a Desktop Support Assistant (DSA), (occasionally one who claimed MCSE qualification) saying that someone who couldnt save a Word document had a network problem, or similar.
Anyway, we get a call come in saying "The user is typing at one PC and what she's typing is also coming out on the screen of another PC at the other end of the office. It must be a network problem." I was just going to lunch and decided to deal with it when I got back. My collegue (who'd came into Networks from an admin position and had very little PC experience) decided to take a look, theorising maybe someone had installed PC Anywhere or something.
It was indeed true that what was being typed on one screen was coming out on the other as well. He disconnected the network cable, duplicated the fault again and thus proved it wasnt the network. Seeing the bewilderment on the face of the DSA he took pity on the poor, overpaid chap, and tried to help out.
It transpired that both PCs had wireless keyboards and mice, and on the one at the opposite end of the office someone had connected the mouse reciever into the keyboard port, and vice versa. Putting the receivers into their respective ports cured the fault.