"I think the modem is still plugged in...what do i do?" Tech Support |
- "I think the modem is still plugged in...what do i do?"
- New iPhone - can’t hear and people can’t hear me!
- We all make mistakes, but COME ON!!
- Wifi Bears
- "Can you hear me?"
- Hardware upgrade via the Internet
- Clean that cr@p!
- Temporary passwords are hard
- There is no color!
| "I think the modem is still plugged in...what do i do?" Posted: 30 Oct 2018 09:46 AM PDT Hey guys, my last post 4 years ago got 3k up votes, so i thought it was about time to give you guys another. Recap: I work for a rural ISP dealing with Fixed wireless and Satellite internet. Since the last post i have moved into a position dealing with Installers in the field. I get this call, the guy speaks rather slowly, I'm not calling into question his intelligence, but i ask myself who ties this guy's shoes in the morning.
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| New iPhone - can’t hear and people can’t hear me! Posted: 30 Oct 2018 04:23 PM PDT This happened about a year ago. I worked for the IT department of a local hospital. I'm at an off-site campus where I give a doctor a new iPhone. I always leave the package plastic on the phones, some people really like peeling the plastic off a new device and also it keeps my prints from smudging the device. Transferred his info from his old phone to the new and tested it before giving both back to him. Next day I get a call from our helpdesk telling me to go check with the doctor I gave the new iPhone to the day before. They said that the doctor said he couldn't hear while calling someone and that they couldn't hear him. I explained to helpdesk that it's a brand new phone and that there shouldn't be an issue, but that I'd check it out. While heading to the doctor's office I'm trying to figure out what could possibly be wrong with it. Get to the doctor's office and see the phone that I gave him yesterday. It still has the frigging plastic on it! I tell him that I believe I see the problem and remove the plastic from the phone. I explain that the headset and the mic were both covered by the plastic. He goes out in the hall and calls me. I hear him and he hears me. He shakes his head and asks that I not tell anyone about this. [link] [comments]  |
| We all make mistakes, but COME ON!! Posted: 30 Oct 2018 10:27 AM PDT I work for a small MSP servicing around 100+ clients with 5-20 employees and our biggest client having 50+ employees. This is a story about one of the clients. Characters: $Me – Ready for Season 13 of Overwatch. Grandmaster hear I come……. $Brains - Cubicle mate who can retain any all information somehow. I don't know how he does it, but he puts all of us other techs to shame. 2 of us have College Degrees (not that this means anything really) $Ditsy – Nice lady from $School (Airheaded at times and blames everything on the firewall, I MEAN EVERYTHING, to try to get out of the bill) but once you explain the issue she understands and drops the firewall issue $DT – Dumb Teacher I'm about 6 months into working at MSP as the frontline/onsite grunt. Haven't been to too many onsite calls, and my knowledge is still at the FNG level. $Ditsy calls and is having network issues at $School. They are not a fully managed client. Only thing we manage is the firewall
As stated I'm 6 months into my career. Every time she calls it's the firewall. It gets really aggravating hearing it constantly.
I check our remote software and see her computer online. I also log into the firewall via the WAN IP. Firewall is the same since we installed it minus firmware updates and updating the content filtering. I get disconnected from her laptop.
FYI, they have around 25 teachers with crappy laptops not on a Domain because things…... and around 35-40 desktop PC's for the students.
I do some more digging in the firewall, but nothing comes from it. I decide an onsite visit is needed as this is a major issue. So off I go down the yellow…… brick………... road. Luckily the $school is only 2 miles down the road. I walk in and get BOMBARDED with teachers freaking out and asking me all these questions. (you would think they would be in the rooms with their kids teaching them). $Ditsy shows up and gives me a key to the network room and I'm off. Now to give you an idea of the network room. It's a 2-post telecom rack with cabling dangling down from a 15-foot ceiling punched down on the patch panels. 3 switches – 2 Gigabit and 1 10/100, our firewall and their $ISP modem. So, I get to work. I plug my laptop in and get dropped packets randomly with no pattern while running ping tests to google. I try multiple different ports on the switch and same issue. I then realize I'm on the 10/100 switch (which is noticeably older than the 2 shiny 24 port Gigabit switches). So, thinking it's the switch I change to a 1GB switch and no issue. AH_HA I HAVE SOLVED IT(ahhh the FNG mentality). I tell $Ditsy and she approved new switch. I get one out of my car and install it. Get everything cleaned up and get ready to leave. Did a test and…... issue is still happening on new switch. WTF!!! So back to the drawing board. I start testing patch cables and plugging them in 1 by 1. After some time, I find that its patch 85. I started at 1. It's a long day. AND OF COURSE, NOTHING IS LABELED one the wall plates. So, I search the labs and call $Brains. I explain the issue to $Brains and he's asks a few basic questions, nothing worth mentioning.
There are 3 labs with around 15-20 computers in each. There are 3-4 8 port switches in each lab with the desktop hardwired to them. So, with $Brains on the phone, I go to each lab and look at the switches. It an ugly setup. First lab has no loop. Second lab has no loop. Third lab has no loop. WTF. I'm sitting in the third lab mentally exhausted, tired, hungry and pissed that I cannot find this issue.
Low and behold, there is a loop. Lovely 5-foot Ethernet coming out of the switch and right back in. I remove the cable and the network comes back up and whirrs to life. All is well. So, I go to $Ditsy and explain the issue. She has 4 teachers in her office at the time as its now after school. 1 of those teachers is the one who runs that lab.
I explain the loop and what it does to the network and that once I removed the loop it resolved their internet/network issues. $DT looks confused.
I left. I was done. There was no amount of Facepalming or headesking that I could do that would help me. FYI, this client is an alternative school and limited on funding. Makes supporting them difficult as they spend more money on support, rather than getting the right setup. They unfortunately don't see it like that even though we have explained it to them multiple times. Edit: Grammar, I also emailed $Ditsy later to tell her to tell $DT to plug that cable into the printer to have his printer work again. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 01:16 PM PDT I just got off the phone with one of our site techs after getting off the phone with the guy who owns the property where some of our equipment is located. The things customers mishear sometimes amazes me. Even generally tech savvy people just space out I guess. Last night several of our customers (small local ISP), including yours truly, experienced about 20 minutes of slowdown to 26k. Yep, we were all suddenly on dial up again. I was at home & since I am getting signal from that site I cannot log into it because reasons, so I can't fix this. I can't get in touch with the network guy, so I reach out to the old network guy for help. He can't login because he's same site as well but he has a work around & while he was logging in to see the others on the site it, all magically fixed itself. I mention this to network guy who talks to tech guy, gives him some things to look for & some reasons why it might not be us at all & sends him off to the site. Owner of site was on hand & naturally, having been affected by the sudden slowdown last night wants to know why. Tech looks at equipment, everything fine, no error logs, nothing. Because "I don't know but our network team is on it. I'm just hear to make sure the physical side is fine" is not good enough for any customer anywhere ever the tech gives network guy's half assed 'probable' reason, which unfortunately included an example. Network guy says this might have been due to interference from other 900 spectrum equipment that was briefly in the area and as it is the end of October, at dusk, in a rural area, it was quite possibly something to do with hunters illegally doing something that apparently lots of local hunters do. (I don't hunt so I didn't grasp the specifics, something to do with dog tracking or with taking pictures & transmitting them). Tech isn't a hunter either so some of this got garbled I guess so the guy calls me after tech leaves and asks me what we intend to do about the "Wifi bears" problem. He doesn't allow hunting, he said this several times so I guess since hunters aren't allowed on his property it had to have been the bears who had the equipment? Or maybe he thinks we are going to hunt those damn signal jamming bears down. Tech says he never even mentioned bears or any animal & insists he said it was just a random speculation of something that *might* have caused it, but the guy seems fairly certain we are claiming that we had a slow down last night because bears are starting to hibernate and don't want the hunters to find them so they are doing something to interfere with tracking signals that plays havoc with broadband as well. Wifi bears. Jamming hunters tracking signals. As I said to the tech, "this is why you never ever give out any information that is not 100% proven to any customer." [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 11:00 AM PDT This happened back around 2005 or 6 when I worked for a call center. Requirements to be an agent on the phones included breathing. Up to whomever was performing the interview if anything further was required. I was working as a tier 1 tech support slash whatever else stuck at the time. Walking down the main isle one day to help a new agent find the right sequence of apps, a ball of chaos falls out of her chair and blocks my path. A normally sweet upper middle aged woman is frantically spinning her arms and screaming into her headset along the lines of "Are you there? I can't hear you anymore!" and generally assuming the louder she got, the better the chances the far end would respond. Initially the poor agent had hit her mute button on the headset fiddling with the cord, but when the customer on the phone stopped responding, she plain freaked out. She created such a scene that agents 7 rows down are prairie dogging trying to figure out what is going on. Her supervisor is barreling down the row nudging chairs back to their own calls that have turned to witness the whirlwind next to them. I'm given the stink eye to stop whatever mission I was currently on as this was obviously a MAJOR ISSUE that had to be resolved NOW. I notice the headset cord limply dangling about the same time as the supervisor. Within fractions of seconds we wrestle the headset away from the distraught ball of nerves. The machines were locked down to the desk and couldn't be moved far, so it required some interesting contortionist abilities to get things plugged back in. As I'm crawling behind the desk to get the headset plugged back in, the supervisor notices the caller is still on the line and lets the agent know it's cool. Our superstar agent then pushes me aside to grab her monitor and shouts into at the customer, " Its OK! My headset came unplugged, I'll be back with you in a minute, just hold a little longer!" To this day I cannot fathom how or why she thought that would work. TL;DR: Agent's headset came unplugged and thought the customer could hear her by shouting into her monitor. I plug it back in and she's right as rain. [link] [comments]  |
| Hardware upgrade via the Internet Posted: 30 Oct 2018 02:13 PM PDT A short one that happened at work today. Initial info; our embedded systems do not have wireless network adapters as our experience shows that our clients have abysmal wireless coverage available, but we do occasionally assist in setting up wireless connections using, for instance, USB dongles. Client
Support
Client
Support
Note #2: This client had already been with us and online for six months. Client
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 02:52 PM PDT This happened today. We have a user that requests a new wireless ergonomic keyboard and mouse set monthly almost to the day because they are "dirty". Apparently she is a germaphobe and our company has made special accommodations where a manager comes to her office and cleans it personally. I get the ticket to see this user we'll call "GP" (germaphobe) and replace her devices. I get to her office and start replacing the devices. I take the old keyboard off her keyboard try and grab the 10-key and mouse and put it to the side. I start taking the replacement set out of the box when: GP: "Clean that crap before you put the new keyboard down." Me: Quickly glance towards the tray. There is dust, food particles and other debris there. "What crap? I'm not sure what you are talking about." GP: "The dirt and dust off the tray. Wipe it off before you put the new keyboard down!" Me: "Sorry I don't have anything with me to clean it." She stares at me and releases a deep breath/sigh. Goes into her purse and grabs a Lysol wipe or something similar begins to wipe down her own tray and desk. I quickly smile to myself and let her know her new peripherals are on her desk and make my way out grabbing the old devices. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 02:13 PM PDT I took a support call for our proprietary software, everyone else was out to lunch: U: "I'm locked out!" Me: "I have unlocked and reset your password. Your password is Capital P lowercase a,s,s,w,o,r,d,1, exclamation point. Password one with an exclamation point" (Password1!) U: "How is that spelled?" Me: "Uppercase p,a,s,s..." U: "Pash?" Me: "Password...p,a,s,s,w,o,r,d..." U:"Is the one spelled out?" Me:"No,sir." U:"What's the exclamation...oh..." He then started to say, "can you just come here?" But caught himself because he realized we're on the opposite side of the country. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2018 01:26 PM PDT
Lesson learned, You can't trust the end users to even be able to see color! [link] [comments]  |
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