AT&T took down my client's internet during a busy time for 45 minutes Tech Support |
- AT&T took down my client's internet during a busy time for 45 minutes
- The time that providing after hours support may have saved my life.
- Clusterf**k in the sandpit
- The most important call in the network.
- That time I flew to Mongolia to turn the volume down
- Dead Cell Phone short-ish
- A free laptop isn't good enough
- Unhappy Camper... A true story...
- What's worse than an outage? Clients who want to humiliate you about the outage.
- "We don't want to reinvent it."
- Not A Good Fit
| AT&T took down my client's internet during a busy time for 45 minutes Posted: 30 Aug 2018 11:09 PM PDT So, I work for a Telecom what does Data/Phones/CCTV and we had a Dental office client that had their DVR and cameras upgraded. Of course the owner wanted remote viewing on their phone of the cameras, but at the time, their AT&T router was acting up and loading incredibly slow, so the Senior Tech onsite at the time recommended her to contact AT&T regarding their malfunctioning router and to have it replaced. Fast forward a few weeks later, and I'm sent out to replace the power cord for the DVR as they had thrown it out during cleaning. This was just the beginning of hell. When I opened their IT Closet, I couldn't find a spare power plug near the DVR, and they have a small server setup and a power bar behind it that was crammed to the gills with plugs. Assuming that this server was important, I stopped and asked the client if they had a spare power strip so we could plug in the DVR and give it power. Right away, they began complaining about how they had to do everything, how I should just unplug anything and just get it done, before reaching in themselves and began unplugging things, summarily turning off the server. Eventually we got a power strip plugged in and the DVR Powered on. Then the real hell began. Right afterwards, the client quips, "So now you're going to do the remote access for my cameras yea?", and since my work order stated that Software had to be installed for the DVR, I assumed this meant configure the port forwarding for the DVR. Since this was a Dental Office, it had confidential patient records and as such, I was concerned for HIPAA compliance with having to create a port-forward to view the cameras (And yes, I know a VPN into the network from their phone would be a much more secure avenue, but most clients do not want to pay for a license for the VPN or the time it takes to set it up), but luckily after speaking with their offsite IT, I was informed that the network was structured in a way that the DVR was on the guest/unsecure side of the network, with a SonicWall protecting their office network. Easy peasy right? Wrong. After getting into their new AT&T router, I configured the port forwarding to the static IP I had assigned to the router, and usually at this point it comes right up, remote viewing is available and job is done. Except it wasn't. A port-check to see if the port was open was coming up as Connection Timed Out or Connection Refused. I double checked my port forwarding and confirmed I was forwarding the correct port, to the correct address and the device was connected and capable of being access via the intranet. Really strange. So, after double checking my work, I can only assume that perhaps the issue is on the ISP's side. So we call up AT&T's technical support, and I explain to the Technician what we're trying to do. Configure port forwarding, that the ports have been forwarded but the port is showing closed to the internet. Cue the absolute hell that falls upon me. The technician can't figure what's going on, and he says the dreaded words. "Can we try restarting the router?". It's 12am, middle of the afternoon, busy Dental Office and he wants to shut off their internet, which runs EVERYTHING. Computers, Phones, Payment Processing. Everything. Goddamnit. I clarify with the Office Manager and the Owner, confirming with the AT&T Technician on the phone that it'll be a downtime of 5 minutes at the max. How fucking wrong I was. Once the router is restarted, the internet connection doesn't come back up. Five minutes go by, and I'm thinking in my head, "Oh fuck. What did he do". Lights are blinking on the router, Technician is asking me what they are doing and tells me something about the connection not syncing. Twenty Minutes go by, the office is at a standstill because nothing can be done, and I can already feel the pressure. I'm the one who's onsite. I'm the one who's gonna be blamed for this. What the fuck did the AT&T Tech do. At this point, I tell the technician, "Look. Fuck the port forwarding. I need their network back up now." but he says he's still working on it. Throws me on hold. God fucking damn it. Thirty minutes in, still nothing is has happened. Internet is STILL down despite the broadband light being a solid green. Why the fuck is there internet access but their office has no internet? What the fuck has AT&T done. Then the technician gets back and says, "I'll have to transfer you to our 360 Care Center. They will be able to assist you", but right before that takes place, I'm playing with the DVR and switch it from static to DHCP. Right away, it's assigned their PUBLIC IP address. Lightbulb illuminates, gears whirl away and I realize what is going on. "What did you do to port 3" "I put it in IP passthrough sir" "Why the fuck did you put it in IP Passthrough. Take that off right fucking now" Almost yelled this. "I'm doing it right now sir. It's done sir. " But still, their internet doesn't come back up. He transfers me to 360 Care, while I grab my laptop and rush over to their IT Closet. Quickly get setup, throw a patch cable directly into the router and check my IP Config to see what address I'm assigned. And I almost shit a brick when I see it come back as a XXXX.XXXX.1.XXX Their office network was the .1.XXXX. The guest/DVR network was supposed to be a .0.XXXX. I'm realizing what the fuck has happened, the colossal fuckup that has brought this busy Dental Office to a screeching halt for over 45 minutes now. The AT&T technician had factory reset the router. Now that 2+2 has equaled four, and I realize what the fuck is going on, I'm logging into the AT&T Router as quickly as I can, and resetting all the DHCP Pools to what it was before, and as this is happening, a AT&T 360 Care rep comes on the line and we begin speaking. This technician is state-side, unlike the last technician, and then he says this line that really pissed me off. "I don't know if the other technician told you, but this is a charge service. Are you authorized to authorize charges on this account?" And I broke a very special rule. Never curse infront of a client. And I broke that very rule. "What. No. The technician did not say that. I'm not authorized to authorize charges, and even if I was, I wouldn't be authorizing charges for AT&T to fix what they fucked up. Your technician put this router into IP Passthrough Mode over a fucking port forwarding issue. He factory reset the router and now I'm rebuilding their network and because of his fuckup, they have been out of service for 45 minutes right now" I shouldn't have taken out my anger on that rep, but luckily he understood and transferred me back to the Technical Support, but instead I got transferred to the phone department. Fuck it, I hung up the phone and finished the router configurations and reset the port forwarding required to their server. Their network comes back up. Internet connectivity is back, but now it's almost been an hour. Reconfigure port forwrding towards the DVR on it's port, and check on my phone. A connection was made and I can see the cameras. Finally a break after 4 hours onsite. I should have only been here for one. A quick phone call to the boss keeping him up to date on the situation, filling him in with AT&T's fuckup, and then on to speaking with the client about what happened and setting their phone up to view the cameras. They acts like they're happy, and confirms they can see them, but is rushing out to lunch. Have to get a signature on the work order, and the Office says to collect payment, but the Office Manager who's there won't issue it, calls the owner, who says they want to have my boss call them, and not to write a check. Great. Bounce between office and boss, keeping them in the loop. Office Manager walks out on break too.......didn't sign the work order. Can't leave without a signature. 20 minutes later, one of the guys in the Office signs off on it and I'm out of there. Next following day, I hear the tale of what happened between my boss and the Dental Office owner. A screaming match, where the owner was shaking, blaming us for the downtime and how they refuse to pay for any of the work done, OR the power supply that we provided because of their screw up. A total fucking nightmare from what I heard, and the owner even tried to say my boss was trying to shake them down for payment, and intimidate them because of their gender because my boss is a man and the owner is a woman. A total fucking nightmare. Apparently we aren't getting paid for the time, the job was a total loss of money, and how I screwed up by following the customers request to configure the port forwarding instead of throwing it in the lap of their IT person. And the day after? Apparently now the remote viewing has stopped working. But at this point, it was working when I left, so her IT person can deal with it. [link] [comments]  |
| The time that providing after hours support may have saved my life. Posted: 30 Aug 2018 05:50 AM PDT I will do my best to anonymize this story as best I can. This tale goes back to my time working for a local government. I was a member of that organization's helpdesk. As a helpdesk employee, there was generally no overtime or after hours work. When your eight hours for the day were up, you were done. There was one exception. The helpdesk provided IT support for city council meetings. These meetings started at either 4pm or 5pm and happened three times per month. A typical meeting might last 2-3 hours, but some meetings went on for 8+ hours. They were always on the same weeknight. This was not that weeknight. My girlfriend had called me and expressed an interest in going to see a movie with a friend of ours. I got off work at 5pm, but our friend worked until 6pm. My girlfriend and I had planned to grab a light supper before the movie. My boss came in at 4pm and informed me that there was a budget meeting starting at 5pm and since it was my turn in the rotation, I would have to cover it. I called my g/f to let her know that I had to work late and I had no idea how late it would be. She decided to go hang out at her favorite coffee shop a few miles away from the theater until I could let her know what was going on. The meeting was relatively uneventful. The video streaming software that recorded the meeting crashed a couple of times, which was not unusual. Otherwise, the meeting went off without a hitch and actually ended around 6:30. I let my g/f and friend know that I was now free and made my way to the theater. City hall was much closer to the theater than either of them and they both needed a little time to get ready, so I was sitting in the parking lot of the theater on a conference call with them as we tried to work out what movie we were going to see. We finally decided on a movie and ended the call after maybe 10-15 minutes. I was tasked with buying tickets for us all so that we wouldn't have any delays getting in to see the movie. I was maybe 20-30 feet from the ticket counter when the doors burst open and people running out. It was surreal to see these people moving QUICKLY, but with very little sound. The only thing I heard people say was "Get in the car!". I stood there for maybe a second or two trying to process what was going on when the person whose car was closest to me got close enough for me to hear him telling the 911 operator that there was an active shooter. I turned and ran back to my car to tell my g/f and friend NOT to come to the theater. Each of those calls probably took 10 seconds or so. By the time I was able to start my car, the first police car had rolled into the parking lot. My friend later asked why I hadn't gone back in to help. Besides being an IT tech, I'm also a firearms instructor and concealed carry instructor in my state. I asked him how he would differentiate between an active shooter and a good samaritan with a concealed handgun permit. I asked him how the police entering the theater would know whether *I* was the active shooter or a good samaritan with a concealed handgun permit. My wife still believes that fate presented me with some unexpected overtime to prevent us from being in that theater... [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2018 09:08 PM PDT This happened whilst I served in the Armed Forces, whilst I was spending 6 months in the sandbox. The camp I was based at had a coupe of porta-cabins which contained DC's (Win2K), core switches and various other mission critical items of techie goodness. We had some giant generators outside the porta-cabins in case there was a power cut that lasted longer than UPS's did. These generators were meant to be serviced daily. Access to the Porta-cabins was via a set of keys which needed ot be signed for and returned and signed back in, once finished with. However techies tended to just chuck the keys to who-ever needed them next. Anyway on a typically sunny day at this location, I was called to install a new POE switch and run a link back to the portacabins. I did this and returned the key. Later that day I needed to return to the portacabin. So I went to sign for the key, the key was signed out to $OtherTech. I found $OtherTech in the Naafi and asked if they still had the key, they said they had given it to $YetAnotherTech. So I found $YetAnotherTech and sure enough they had handed the key over to someone else. I admitted defeat and decided to go back to the Naafi for a slushy and a couple of games of Pool. A couple of hours later I was near the Portacabin again and this time someone else was stood outside shouting at ppl asking if they had the key, lets call this person $Sergeant. There was a loud beeping coming from the Portacabin. I did an abrupt about-turn and headed back for some more games of pool as this was one mess I did not want to get involved in. $Sergeant did not see me, my escape and evasion skills were on par. When I got back to the Naafi I noticed there was no power to anything so the slushy machine was out of order. I bumped into $AnotherTech who was looking for someone. They found who they were looking for. This was the person with the key to the porta-cabin. The person with the key was told to head to the porta-cabin with the key. I knew that $Sergeant was there and decided to tag-along to watch someone get spit roasted and psychologically destroyed. Sure enough $Sergeant went ballistic then grabbed the keys. The beeping had stopped. This meant one of two things, either power was back on or the UPS's had died. The power was not back on. Luckily at that very point an Electrician from our unit was wondering past. $Sergeant shouted a load of colourful language, the important bits were "No machines can log onto network, no power, hook up the generator". Our electricians are meant to do training on all equipment in the Sandpit before deploying. He must of been hungover on the day where he was shown this generator as he did not know how to use it. $Sergeant went ballistic. We found another Electrician, who could use the generator, we all helped push the generator nearer the portacabins and hooked up the cables. But it would not start. It had no fuel in it. Looking at the daily checks, it had been shown as having fuel that very morning and had been checked by the electrician who did not know how to use it, he had also signed off as having done a full functionality check and a test run. ANyway, we managed to get fuel and power up the Porta-Cabin. Just as this happened, the power came back on. That evening, we all had a briefing regarding the keys and only the person who signs for them is to have them and once finsihed theya re returned. The electricians got destroyed and spent the following couple of days doing some additional training. [link] [comments]  |
| The most important call in the network. Posted: 30 Aug 2018 08:11 PM PDT Hello everyone, first time poster here. This is a bit of a long story and takes place over a decade ago when I was working for a now bought out and absorbed cell phone carrier. We were in the final stages of a new install. Brand new mobile telephone switch was installed, and two major metropolitan cities worth of cell sites were in the process of being constructed, and integrated. One important fact, is that 3G EVDO, was an afterthought. So The voice network for CDMA was not IP based, and used a protocol called BCN which used what they call "Traffic Ranges", "Traffic range groups", and "Ports" for routing. Ports were assigned to a physical or logical T1 for example. However the EVDO cards at the same towers used PPP to an aggregate router at our location. It was inefficient since it required at least two T1's to every cell site, even when little to no traffic was being served by either most of the day. So this is why a major telco vendor giant (we will called them $TITAN, for their widely known DACS hardware which used that name) approached my company to sell their brand new routers which could do Pseudowires for the proprietary voice t1's but would not transmit idle frames, allowing us to purchase one T1 to a cell site, and with the power of QoS prioritize voice but still allow EVDO to be installed without fractionalizing a T1. Sounds sweet right? So to set the scene, this was on a friday and we were working 12+ hour days as the launch date when customers could buy service was fast approaching. It was around 8pm and I was working with a field tech to integrate one more cell tower before I could go home. Everything seemed to be going well. We finally got connectivity, I sent the load to the tower hardware and was waiting for it to finish and to give the tech the OK to go home himself. Before giving the all clear I wanted to update the firmware on the cards because they were way out of date and throwing alarms. Unfortunately the updates failed. When troubleshooting why I noticed I suddenly had intermittent connectivity to the hardware so I called my field tech back to troubleshoot. As soon as I called him the issue cleared. Confused I told him to hang tight and wanted to troubleshoot some more. After hanging up the issues started up again. I tested the T1's thoroughly which were not taking errors then started to question the $TITAN routers. I really wanted a smoke break so instead of calling him back from my desk phone I grabbed a test phone cell for our network so I could walk outside (I did not want to use my personal phones minutes from our competitor). The call originally failed which was odd, so I retried and this is when I noticed my subsystem ping cleared up again once it connected This got me worried. I hung up to troubleshoot some more, and ran subsystem checks on our "toy cell" which is just a cell site on our loading dock which covers our office area and has a similar configuration. It also was having what appeared to be packet loss. I made a call from one of my test phones, to another and the issue cleared up. I then checked the status of the far away cell tower and it cleared up with my two calls on my local cell site only, and immediately had issues when I hung up. We had a real problem here, but why was it happening NOW?! we had over 100 sites integrated with this configuration. I called my boss and my coworker over and while they did not believe me at first, they could not refute the evidence. I checked alarms for our cell sites, and sure enough they were bouncing/flapping in the past couple hours! But why was MY calls so important to the network? It was then I logged into the call server, and noticed with my two calls up, it were the only two calls this multi million switch was doing. Remember, we were not a live switch. Normally we had a few dozen contractors working all hours of the day. But this was a dead time, apparently everyone went home and this was the first time it was truly idle and apparently the $TITAN hardware was losing sync when it literally had no calls. We opened a ticket with the vendor, as our dedicated on-site techs from the company also drove out of the area to go home for the weekend. The vendor said they would pull logs but not to expect a response until Monday since we were not a live market. Unfortunately, with the packet loss and the fact we just made the alarming live to the NOC, this meant they would be forced to deal with all our hundreds of towers giving alarms over the weekend every few seconds. Not a good scenario. After talking with my coworker and boss, we decided on the best course of action. I took my two test cell phones. Plugged them into their chargers, and made a call between them. I then put a post it note on each of them on my desk, designating them as "The most important call in the network" Our $TITAN vendor took 4 weeks to come out with a software patch to fix their routers to not drop T1 frames on their pseudowires. After that I was finally able to hang up the most important call I ever made. [link] [comments]  |
| That time I flew to Mongolia to turn the volume down Posted: 30 Aug 2018 06:01 AM PDT I'm an audiovisual consultant and automation (Crestron) programmer. On the side I'm an aviation geek. I love my job for the free travel but sometimes... well.. sometimes I wind up with a weird one. Like last week. One of our "clients"* is a super cool non-profit/NGO with a mission to further medical education for fixing/preventing problems with a particular part of the body in developing countries. As part of the program they have an aircraft fitted out with a classroom, operating room, etc., etc., -- totally self-sufficient if they need to be, including water purification, generating their own medical oxygen, etc. [this would be so much easier if I weren't trying to keep things anonymous ;) ] Like I said: Cool group, cool mission, and as an aviation geek: I get to work on/around a very cool plane. When the opportunity first presented itself several years ago, I was 150% on board. Anyway, one of the complaints/concerns since my last visit--somewhere much less exotic--was that audio on some of the recordings sounded distorted. 99.9% of the time this is because the volume into the recorder (or somewhere else in the signal chain) is too high and 'clipping'. I got a sample of an affected recording and sure enough, I'm even more convinced that's the problem. And I asked them to try turning it down. The client's team had some concern about being qualified to turn the volume down themselves. So I wound up on a plane, flew from the US to Mongolia (via China), turned the volume down... confirmed the problem was resolved. And flew home. Obviously, that wasn't the only thing I accomplished -- one of the big wish list items had been to observe an actual program to see where we can drive improvements and that was the most valuable accomplishment -- but if felt weird starting the trip with the official to-do list being, entirely: Turn volume down. *- Client is in quotes because of the unique financial arrangement where they don't actually pay us. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2018 10:23 AM PDT Haven't posted in a while, and this one really got me today. I cover a bunch of offices for the company I work for, and I got a call from this guy that went like this: "Hey, my cell phone is dead" "Dead, dead? Or something isn't working?" "Dead, dead. I can't load the internet" "Can you get to the internet?" "Yes" "Well then it isn't dead" "I mean no. The screen won't come on. Can you help me? I need a new phone" [figure I need to replace the phone - his job relies on it] 1 hour and 42 minute drive later "Where's the phone?" "Right there" [it's on, I can call people, get online, access email... everything] "I need to install a program" "That's not what you said when you called me" [figure out he's accessing a webpage - which he knows how, and can already get to, doesn't need a program, and wants a shortcut made for the page] "This is what you made me drive 2 hours one-way for? Are you fucking serious?" Hasn't asked for anything since. Like... I get he had no idea how to do it, but don't overtly lie about something to get what you want; that's what drives me insane. Couple edits for clarification. Rage has taken over. [link] [comments]  |
| A free laptop isn't good enough Posted: 31 Aug 2018 04:35 AM PDT Hello everyone, posted this already on r/choosingbeggers but they told that it would be appreciated here too. So here goes! Recently we had a customer that called our servicedesk, I currently work at an IT firm. His laptop broke so he send it like a week ago to us for repairs. We repaired it and he decided to call, asking for a new laptop because his broke and his hands were too big for that laptop that we repaired. We give out free laptops to all employees which they have to give back at the end of their contract. Usually this is fine, but he commanded me to get him a new laptop **right now**, I asked to speak to my supervisor he agreed and I went there, explained to my supervisor his laptop was repaired but he still wanted a new one because his hands were too big for the keys. (Bit of context: we can order special laptops which are bigger, but the keyboard isn't bigger. It does have a larger screen and more CPU power etc). My supervisor told me that nothing was ordered and that he should contact his supervisor if he wanted a new one but the decision was still up to us if he actually needs one to do his job correctly. So I went back to the phone, unmuted the phone and told him: "Sir, I just heard we don't have an order for a new laptop, however if you would like on you can contact your supervisor to put in a request.". He went rage mode instantly: "NO I DONT WANT MY SUPERVISOR TO GET A NEW ONE I WAS PROMISED TO GET A NEW ONE BY **my supervisor name who didn't know about any of this**, HE WOULD GET ME A NEW ONE!". After that I calmly said: "Sir, a new laptop doesn't actually make the keyboard any bigger, just a bigger screen and more processing power". So he said: "I WANT THAT THEN AND FAST I NEED A LAPTOP!!", but his laptop was repaired and he could get it if he wanted? Anyway: "Sir, I'll ask my supervisor to call you back.", he said a forced and annoyed fine and hung up the second after that. [link] [comments]  |
| Unhappy Camper... A true story... Posted: 30 Aug 2018 06:47 AM PDT Without giving names, I worked for a large computer company and received a call, I worked at front line for only 2 weeks when this occured and it was my first... "Holy molly" moment... (I'd say worse but..) Who's involved... Me$ Cust$ Supervisor$ Me$ " Thank you for calling ----- Can I please have your name and telephone number. Cust: (In a thick texas accent) provided all his info so I can pull up the computer etc Me: Alrgith and how can I help you today sir? Cust: Hold on a minute there son hold on a minute... *thuink* phone is placed on table roughly. I'm thinking "Oh he's gonna go get a paper or something, so I wait patiently.. then heard *BANG BANG* Cust: (Out of breath some from rushing back to phone?) Son I just shot your computer! Me$: After about 10 seconds of stunned silence at his admittance... "Well sir, it appears your warranty is no longer valid, is there anything else I can assist you with? Cut$: Nope, just wanted you to know you got a horrible machine!" *click* I documented everything inlcuding a recommendation we void the warranty on the unit and not 5 minute later I get a tap on my shoulder (I had moved onto my next call) Supervisor4: Are you S**tting me?!?! Me$: (muted phone) "Nope, pull the tape..." they did, they heard it all as I did, and I actually got a "Attaboy" for being so calm under the condition... I just shake my head these days [link] [comments]  |
| What's worse than an outage? Clients who want to humiliate you about the outage. Posted: 30 Aug 2018 02:16 PM PDT POS software support here. This actually happened today. We had a data center outage somewhere that caused pretty much all of our clients to go down. Of course, half the universe starts calling in. Cue obligatory wailing and gnashing of teeth. We take calls and tickets en masse. We pat hands. We listen to rants. We assure people we're working on the issue. Here's where $Dillweed comes in. $Dillweed is a man who likes to know everything, even the stuff he probably doesn't need to know. He also is the type to be as condescending as possible because he knows our support team is made up of almost all women. But his all time favorite thing to do when reporting issues is to make a fucking continent out of a molehill. You could probably spill a spoonful of water in this man's house and he'd act like you carved your initials into the Bastille. That's how anal this man is. This is the guy who once spent 20 minutes arguing with me about decimals. Our software has a little wizard where you can assign a tax to your items for sale. You open the wizard. You name the tax. You put in the amount you want to tax and choose percentage or nominal amount. Whatever you put in will be the tax. This guy wants to know exactly how much tax will be put on the item if he puts in 2.5% or 25% or .00025 or 0.05. He wants me to do the calculations for exactly how much will be taken off based on what he enters. He then demands full documentation on how the software calculates mathematical amounts and percentages and rounding. (He did not get this.) Another occasion had him demanding our server documentation and configuration info. And the exact processes we take to clean out the server/perform maintenance. And the times for doing so. And the names of the people who manage it. (He didn't get this either.) Why? Because the internet at his business is shitty and causes the software to disconnect a lot, and after six months of no less than five people, including higher-ups, telling him that it's his crappy internet, he STILL refuses to accept it. This is the also the guy who raised hell because one of his users broke something in the software by doing a thing they were told NOT to do, causing a main component to start acting screwy. Took us a week to fix it, but I'm pretty sure if he was able to stand over us with a whip, he would. Then he asked what steps we were going to take to prevent it from happening again and if we planned on issuing a statement for the "appalling amount of time it took to resolve the issue." (We didn't send this.) Now, picture the above, but picture it being demanded by a man who is very obvious in his blatant condescension and talks down to you like you're a child throughout the whole conversation. Oh, and who also likes to come up with difficult questions and then stuffily says stuff like, "Shouldn't you know that?" On to today. We got the all clear that the outage was over. We called/emailed people to let them know - most people were super appreciative. We basically said, "Hi, the outage is over, everyone's back up, you're good to go." Keep in mind that this was a data center outage that had nothing to do with us. Our manager even sent out a mass email notifying everyone of the issue. I sent the same type of email to $Dillweed and closed out my ticket. He reopened it. He's how that whole email exchange went:
I didn't email him back because I may have had a couple of seconds where I blacked out a little in rage before I told my manager about it. She basically said she'd be reiterating what they already said in the email. Honestly? I guess I'm not sure why I'm so pissed about this other than the fact that maybe this guy has finally made me snap. I get that you were down, that critical business processes were interrupted, there was frustration, ect. But the issue was resolved. It wasn't even our issue, which was clearly communicated to you. The CAUSE of the issue was already communicated to you. Why do we need to be giving you more details? Why do you need steps on our processes? This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't already know he'll be shooting off as many emails to as many higher ups as he can find until he gets his answer. TL;DR: Condescending customer is more condescending. $SupportAnalystDrej almost sets customer's house on fire. [link] [comments]  |
| "We don't want to reinvent it." Posted: 30 Aug 2018 06:54 AM PDT Not tech support, but software development. A -- COO/de facto Manager of Software Development (but knowing little about software development themselves) B -- My senior collegue C -- The CEO (knows even less than the COO about development) M -- Me A: Client needs to allow only USA phone numbers to be submitted on their web forms. B: We'll have to make a database of country codes to check against. <A bunch more explanation on how many core features of our CMS would need to be changed to support the functionality this way.> M: USA country code is +1. So filter for +1. If you find a +<anything but 1>, you know it's not a US number. Kick it out. If you find a +1, you know it's a US number. Keep it. If neither, just treat it as a US number (because in all likelihood it probably is). A: Could we just use three text inputs for the number and just not have a place to put a country code? M: That would work. C: We don't want to reinvent it. A: <Continuing his grand plan> C: We don't want to reinvent it. Programmers have already solved this problem and it's on the internet somewhere. M: A's three input idea would work and be the simplest. C: I said we're not going to reinvent it. The problem has been solved; go find the code and use it. The above would have been the execution of A's idea. Took ten seconds to write. But C didn't want us to do that. He wanted us to find an already-written version of B's convoluted solution. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Aug 2018 08:17 AM PDT I try and go a good bit before I start posting stories here, kind of let them pile up--plus it's hard to find the time to sit and write them out. This one I had to share because I feel it's more of a PSA--it's shortish, too. Background/Characters: Me (owner of a local tech company, but I also handle the majority of calls, repairs, etc.) vs. Non-Profit Lady (NPL from here on out). Phone rings
This here is a red flag because my site is designed for the most incompetent of people and explicitly says we do small/medium networking/office support, but to be thorough, I want to know what she means by "networking."
It's important to note here that not once was I angry, frustrated, or anything other than polite to this lady. I assume she had a moment of anger with her current tech support and called me in a rage with no real information or plan in mind.
I smiled when she said that--maybe because I know I dodged a bullet, or because in just dealing with this person I too knew that this would end badly and certainly wasn't a good fit.
I should say that I like helping people figure out what they need and providing solutions for them, but they've got to know what it is they need and what they expect from me and my company. If you call a support company and just say "DO NETWORKING FOR ME!" into the phone they're probably not going to be much help. Maybe I need to get better at asking questions to get to the root of what people really need, but then again, I've never encountered a person who just repeats the same questions and non-answers and expects me to just say, "Yes we can do all of the things you have not mentioned once in your non-answers!" So PSA to companies in search of tech support: Know what you need, what you want, what your expectations are before you call---or at least be willing to talk it out with the tech provider to reach those goals together. [link] [comments]  |
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