Geeks, lets hear your tales of woe

Tweet

Ok, a recent topic on here about how to deal with Technical Service Reps got me thinking, how many of us on myLot are techies, and what tales of horror do you have from manning the phones, or dealing with end users in general? Lets hear your tales. I'll start with two, one from the net and one I personally experienced: From the Net: This is an oldie, perhaps an urban legend, perhaps not, I don't know for sure. Basically this TSR takes a call from a customer asking why his computer won't work, the TSR works on the issue for quite some time asking if the power button was on, if he could unplug and replug it in from the back of the tower, all the basic first line questions. Then he askes the customer to try another outlet and the customer says he can't because he can't see the plugs, that its too dark with the lights out. The TSR then asks why the lights are out and the customer explains that the power is out in his area. The TSR then asks the customer if he still has the computer box, the customer says yes the TSR then tells the customer to pack up the box and ship it back, the customer asks why what's wrong with the computer, the TSR replies "Oh nothing is wrong with the computer, but you are to f**king stupid to own one." Now from my own experiences: Right out off college I got hired by a ISP to set up their server, and do the support etc, basically I was the sole employee of this little ISP (yes this was back a few years when it was possible to do that). This is well before the era of DSL or cable internet, this was the old 28.8 dialup modems, we had a rack of modems that people would dial into and then out our T1 line to the internet. Well I got this call from one of our customers she tells me that the internet is not working. I ask her what is happening and she tells me that her computer is telling her there is no dialtone, I ask her if she has call answer (when there is a message waiting the dialtone changes, so you have to check messages before connecting), she tells me she doesn't have that service, so I then ask her if she is using the same phone line, she tells me she is. I then ask her if her modem type has two jacks, she said yes, that her phone is in one and the other goes to the wall jack. Right then I knew the problem was that the cables were reversed, she had the phone in the jack line and the jack in the phone line, with this setup on many modems you could still use the phone, but you could not use the modem. I asked her if she was using the phone that was plugged into the modem, she told me she was, I told her she would have to hang up switch the lines and attempt it, if it still didn't work she should call me back. Without hanging up she tells me that she switched the lines, I asked "What just now?" She replies, "Yes, just now after you told me to." "You unplugged the phone you are talking into right now and switched the jack it plugs into." "Yes" she replied. I couldn't believe what she was claiming so I asked again, "the phone we are currently having the conversation on was just unplugged from the modem, while we were speaking and you switched plugs with the cable the goes to the wall jack?" She then angrily replied, "That's what I just said isn't it?" "So your telling me you unplugged a phone that your having a conversation on and continued said conversation without interuption." "Are you calling me a liar?" she snapped. I had to actually take the phone away from my ear and stare at it for a minute blinking, I then replied "Yes, I am afraid I am calling you a liar on this one. I have no choice but to call you a liar, you cannot unplug a phone you are talking on and expect the connect to remain." She huffed and said "well I did it quickly." I just shook my head and said, "No ma'am you did not. No matter how quickly you did it it would have hung up on us." She hung up on me and a few minutes later I saw her account go online and she never called back again.