Client doesn't like their own work and refuses to pay their salesman Tech Support |
- Client doesn't like their own work and refuses to pay their salesman
- Sysadmining, still sysadmining. I asked for a ticket, and for my sins they gave me one
- My Quantum Mechanics Professor
- Wedding Bells
- Old Phone Old Problems
- WTF moment: Hurricane Florence
- 30 minutes then dropped
- Is now a bad time?
- Another Karen Incident
- Woman threatening to sue for lost pictures of her kids that had been missing for five years.
- Network admin manager doesn't know how to subnet
| Client doesn't like their own work and refuses to pay their salesman Posted: 30 Jun 2019 05:30 PM PDT So, for a bit of background, my day job is management in a foundry but I own a small business where I make custom computers and sell one-offs as well as support those. Mix in some data recovery and I've got a healthy business as a hobby that gives me some extra money and more leverage in turning problematic potential customers away because I can afford to do that. That being said, I'm usually pretty good at picking up on customers who smell like BS and finding the right way of saying "I will not be able to provide you with what you need" and Over-extending Customer didn't really trip those. He's got a fairly decent idea of what he wants and is pretty good at telling me that he wanted a system that would get him 60fps in his games, can stream, and host Minecraft server simultaneously. His other thing is he wanted something that just looked "badass" and luckily I had a system I had assembled from used parts and was getting ready to sell that would fit his bill. Then comes the first problematic conversation between Over-extending Customer and myself. OC: I don't like the look of the front, it would be kickass if we could see into it. Me: That's no problem, I could reuse the case somewhere else. I could absolutely order a new case if you wanted to pick one out, you'd just have to pay the difference. OC: Nah, I'll just put a window in the front like those cool ones. Not worth spending extra. Me: Are you sure? If you're willing to put a deposit down on it, I don't see why not. OC: Yeah, let's do that. So, I pulled the panel off and he asked for another case badge as he was certain the one that was on there wasn't going to live and he said he liked it since it pulled it together to make it feel "store bought" which is the opposite of what I want, but I'm not going to argue with that. I got a deposit for the cost of the case figuring this would be a week or two and he'd get something he was happy with and pay the rest of it off. This is where my bullshit-o-meter started to go off. He fell off the face of the earth for over a month. I have a fairly expensive system sitting and we're about to hit the end of the deposit period, meaning I could just swap cases and re-sell the hardware if he still doesn't contact me or pay of the system. Our next (and final) conversation goes through text like this... OC: I dropped the panel off. Me: I've been trying to get a hold of you. Your grace period on your deposit is up in less than a week. When I get home I'll put the panel on and send you the invoice. OC: I don't want it. Me: What do you mean? OC: I. Do. Not. Want. The. Com. Pu. Ter. Me: Your deposit is non-refundable, are you sure that you do not want it? OC: The tower looks like shit. You shouldn't have let me try to mod it. I don't want it. Everything has a refund. Me (in bewilderment): There's really no refund on the deposit, and you were the one to modify the case. I can rework the front panel to get it to where you want if you'd like. That was it. Never heard anything else. When I got home from work that night he had left the front panel at the door, and he did exactly what he said. Cut a huge hole in the front and if he had executed it well it would have been pretty slick looking, but he spraypainted the front with no prep and clearly no experience and did a pretty shoddy job of cutting to the shape he wanted. Fast forward to today where I'm doing my best to recover this front panel due to time constraints and to hopefully break even. This is the story of why the most involvement customers will now get is picking out what they want and watching until cash has exchanged hands. TL;DR Customer wants to try case modding. Does not like the final product, I find out it's because he's unable to cut the panel and really laid the Krylon on it without the most basic paint prep. The verdict is still out whether he'll try for his refund or not. [link] [comments]  |
| Sysadmining, still sysadmining. I asked for a ticket, and for my sins they gave me one Posted: 30 Jun 2019 08:53 PM PDT Monday morning. It was bound to happen eventually, can't avoid it if I tried so may as well face up to it and stare it down. Dragging my butt into the office, still recovering from a weekend of doing absolutely nothing but recovering from the last week. Exhaling the last cold air of dawn from my lungs and breathing in the stale hot air of the office air mixed with the smell of coffee and toast from the early starting staff members. Making my way to my cubicle, I ignore the frantic hand waving of the human resources (two lies for the price of one) who are begging me to show them how to operate their computers for them since their brains haven't warmed up sufficently to remember how to do their jobs. And to think I share the road driving to work with these people in the morning. I arrive at my cubicle, my tiny corner of refuge, my Fortress of Solitude that everyone knows about and visit incessantly. Firing up the computer, I again mentally toy with the idea of make a false carboard wall to disguise my cubicle as a storage room full of cardboard boxes. The computer on, I log in and start dealing with the email and trouble tickets from the weekend while my phone starts ringing off the hook (I swear these people watch me on hidden cameras waiting for me to sit down). I fight my way through the weekend spam buildup, and make my way to the trouble tickets. First one in the queue is from one of our Branch Managers on Sunday. BRANCHMGR: "USER has finished with us today (Sunday). Please disable his access ASAP" OK, nothing like starting the day with a employee deletion, even if this user wasn't one of the bad ones. Better than a cappuccino enema some would say. Started employee termination proceedings. No need to refer to the instructions, I wrote them. Do all the necessary changes in our sales system, change and disable AD and backup then delete the users Exchange mailbox. Just as I hit the delete button to finalise the user deletion, the ticket queue dinged. I watched as the final step processed telling me the user had been totally deleted, then tabbed to the ticketing queue. The Branch Manager had sent an update. BRANCHMGR: "I made a mistake. USER doesn't finished up till tomorrow (Tuesday). Can you please reinstate his access as he can't get into his computer." That's it, FML, Monday morning had won already, and it was so early in the game. I went outside to stand in the slowly warming sun, toasted a "well done, ya bastard" to Monday with my hot chocolate and wished for a cigarette even though I have never smoked in my life. [link] [comments]  |
| My Quantum Mechanics Professor Posted: 30 Jun 2019 09:21 PM PDT I went to school for physics, and, somewhat randomly, found a workstudy job to be first-line IT for several departments at the university, including the Physics department. Now, that made me a little nervous. I've been on here, I know how people are - I'd hate to have a user who wants to strangle me also be my professor who's handling my grades. Luckily, I didn't interact directly with current professors too often and I generally had a good relationship with them. One day, a ticket came through. "Keyboard's dead, probably need a new one". Got a little nervous when I noticed it was my current professor in Quantum Mechanics (had class that morning). Whatever, he's a pretty nice guy. I go down there and immediately notice the keyboard isn't our standard issue, it's a pretty nice one he probably bought himself. He's telling me how he "tried everything, it's just dead...can I get a department one?" So, you want the piece of shit Dell USB keyboard? Yikes. I flipped it over....and turn the power switch to On. Immediately works fine. It's not often you see a user's eyes as they realize....he just stared at me, thankful but ashamed. "Are you serious? I swear this one didn't have an off switch" said the man who, mere hours earlier, lectured me on Particle Spin. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2019 11:44 AM PDT Here's an extremely short story which recently happened to me. My now wife agreed that I should post it here. It was the day of my wedding and all was going well. The vows had been read, the rings exchanged, and the first dance had. My wife and I were now sitting at our sweetheart table, enjoying our recently cut cake and watching some of our guests dance while others were coming up to wish us well and chat a bit. As I sat savoring the sweet icing I saw someone from my side of the family approaching. They walked swiftly, a smile on their face. I waited, expecting a congratulations. Instead, I was greeted with a phone being shoved in my face displaying various models of laptops. "Can you help me figure out which of these is better?" Were the words out of this person's mouth. All I could do was sit with with a look of disbelief on my face. A few moments later I simply replied "not today," turned to my wife to ask if that really happened, and had a bit of a laugh. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2019 07:51 PM PDT So I work for an MSP that started off in the telephony world. Naturally we do a lot of VoIP. One of our customers calls in saying they have a dead phone which is just great because they have some of these super old VoIP phones that we never have on hand... because they're super old. The dispatch guy who answered went through the usual remote troubleshooting and they were adamant the phone was dead. Plus it seems like every 6 months they call to get one of these phones replaced. So I get assigned the ticket and decide I need to call the client to let them know what's up. Me: Hi outdated_user, I just wanted to let you know that we have none of this particular phone on hand and we will need to order it. It will likely take 4-5 business days to come in and then we can come install it. Outdated_user: Are you sure there is no way you have one on hand? We really need that phone replaced. Me: I'm sorry, but I know for a fact we have none in stock. In fact we sold the last one we had to you about 6 months ago. One thing you could consider would be upgrading your phone system version so that you can use more updated phones and we always have these in stock. Outdated_user: That's something we could think about but we need a phone ASAP so please just order the phone. Me: Yes ma'am, I'll get it ordered. So I order the phone and it comes in 4 days later at the end of the day on Friday. At this point it is too late for me to get the phone out there plus I was already booked out for the rest of the day. My dispatch guy calls me and says they're really antsy for that new phone. I tell him it will have to wait till Monday. Outdated_User tells him they will have someone there for me at 8:30 am. Monday Morning rolls around and I head straight to the client from my apartment with the phone in hand. I walk into the office right at 8:30 and someone peaks around the corner. Office_Lady: Can I help you? Me: I'm here to replace a phone. Someone was going to be here to show me where the phone is. Office_Lady: Hmm, I'm not sure. Hey Jill, do you know who's phone needs to be fixed? Jill: *Indistinguishable office noises Office_Lady: I'll just take you upstairs. I'm taken upstairs and I start checking phones. Finally I find the desk with an unlit phone and I get to work. I check the cable and trace it down under the desk and find a small 8 port switch. Surely this little switch wouldn't provide PoE (Power over ethernet. This is used in cases where you can use the data cable to both power the phone and supply data). I find the PoE injector and it's unplugged from the wall. I plug it in and sure enough the phone comes right up. I make a test call to my cell phone and then I head downstairs. Office_Lady: Wow, done already? Me: Yes, the phone was just unplugged. Office_Lady: \Suprised Pikachu Face* So I leave and head to the office with the new phone still in hand. I'm mildly agitated that it was simple but hey, at least it was simple right? I let the dispatch guy know the job is done and to charge $45.00 for a trip charge and $90.00 for IP Labor at an hour minimum. Which comes out to about $150.00 with tax. Because the phone was unplugged. I look forward to the phone call from Outdated_User asking to explain that invoice. [link] [comments]  |
| WTF moment: Hurricane Florence Posted: 30 Jun 2019 11:15 AM PDT As you all see, I've been doing a level of technical support for a while. I had a customer, last year, that was in Wilmington after Hurricane Florence. She was calling in because she had no service. I say, "Ma'am, your area is in a state of emergency and most roads are completely closed off to our technicians. At best, there may be power but roads need to cleared." She says, "My building still has power so can we please try to restore service." I said, "Alright. Let me have your account number and see if can reach our switch." I log into our core router and, of course, the interface is down. I ask her if she can verify the color of the lights on the uplink of the switch. She says the following, "I can't get to it. It's under water." I roll my eyes so hard that I hurt myself. She asked me to send a signal to it like it was a modem. She got angry after I wasn't able to fix the issue. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2019 10:55 PM PDT I work for a European government agency and this is less a story about the user and more about the circumstance of the call. Forgive any less great English and bad translations. Our company is an internal service provider for the government agency and the directorate above it. We provide archiving, HR, payroll and IT. More importantly we provide support in the programs within all fields, separated into three support departments: archive, economy and IT. All three have the same phone number with a different number to press, but all options are read to you before you can press the button. I work on IT support. We were swamped due to summer vacation and sickness and a user had to wait 30 minutes in queue. Then I took the call. I'll be Rep and he is User. Rep: "IT suppport, how can I help you?" User: "Hi, yes, I would like help wit-...." glancing over at my phone I realized it was out of power. Frantic search for charger, wait 1 min to get 1% then turn on. As my phone is back online, I see the user appear at the bottom of our 30-min queue. Retrieve call and get back on with User. Rep: "IT support, how can I help you?" User: "Hi, I would like help with economy system" Rep: "... Alright, I will patch you through to economy support who handle support on that software." [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 01 Jul 2019 03:08 AM PDT Shortish and sweet. I had recently (at the time, on a Thursday) finished setting up a major new networking system at the local five-Doctor Medical centre in my small Australian country town. The doctors also provided 24 hour coverage at our local hospital. One of the GPs (Dr L) was leaving soon and had a couple or three laptops that she wanted to donate and was going to remove her personal stuff first. I'd suggested that I'd do it if she was unsure and I'd set them up with the latest Windows (98SE!!!) since she had all the CDs that came with them. Anyhoo, fast forward to the weekend and I, coincidentally, started a medication that I was allergic to (didn't know until then) and I had an anaphylactic reaction and was rushed to the hospital by ambulance and met by Dr L. As she's jabbing me with adrenaline she says that she'll keep me in overnight for observation (no problem - Universal Health Care rocks). After faffing around doing blood draws and more jabbing, Dr L asks "Since you're going to be in here anyway, would it be all right for me to bring in the laptops for you to look at?" We both had a good chuckle when we realised what she had asked and, yes, I did have a look at the laptops for her. I guess she felt that since she was never off the clock, nobody else should be, too. Not fair, she was a great person and doctor and well missed within the community. I felt obliged to post this after seeing a couple of other posts about weddings and the like when the same things happened. Some people have no shame. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 30 Jun 2019 11:04 AM PDT We are a M-F organization. Late Friday afternoon, about 20 minutes before I am about to leave, Karen walks in to my office. Karen: We are using the main conference room for an event tomorrow and I need wireless access. (I turn off Wi-Fi during off business hours) I set it up and tell her, "I will not be available tomorrow at all, I will be completely out of contact!" Karen: OK, we shouldn't have any issues. Saturday morning, 9AM I receive a text, "call me, I need help"! What part of "I will not be available tomorrow at all" didn't she understand? I never responded, I am sure I will get a call from the CEO but when I tell the CEO that I was never informed of the building being open on a weekend 20 minutes before I am leaving for the weekend, I am pretty sure they will understand. The best part, I bet it has something to do with using the projector and seeing black because her background is black and she was using "extended display" instead of duplicate. She still has not figured out dual displays even though she has had them for over 2 years. [link] [comments]  |
| Woman threatening to sue for lost pictures of her kids that had been missing for five years. Posted: 30 Jun 2019 07:13 AM PDT Just read a short story on here about someone threatening to sue and was inspired to write about my experience. Mine is much longer, but I hope you enjoy it. Having worked in tech support for five years at the time, I knew fairly well how people can get but this was a first. Woman comes in for her appointment, with two minutes to spare. When she was told that it had been cancelled, she demanded her two minutes. Me being the person they call to calm people down, I ended up helping her. My lunch was scheduled for the time that her appointment had ended. This all matters later. I start to help her. Her computer kept giving her a warning sign that the HD was full. She ignored it and kept using it. Eventually the computer wouldn't let her log into her user because it was so full. A lovely feature of an old OS that is no longer present. So I do the usually, clear caches via terminal so we can at least log in and clear stuff out. We get logged in and I immediately go to the trash folder. It's absolutely full. I'm talking 20GB of info. Facepalm I explain that she needs to empty her trash, but that we should check it to be sure there isn't anything in there that she actually needs. Obviously she doesn't know how the trash works and I like to be certain. She immediately says, I'm afraid to empty the trash because I can't find pictures of my children that I am missing. They have all passed away and when I got this computer, the guy at (insert random IT shop) transferred all of my info and showed me that the photos are here, but I can't find them. I open the trash, search .jpeg and various other photo file forms. Nothing comes up. Still being concerned I start searching her files (with her approval and while she watches) explaining everything along the way. There are absolutely no photos of her children on her computer. At this point in time we are halfway through my lunch. I ask if she still has her old computer. She says yes. I explain that we should probably search that one to see if we can find them and get them transferred for her. She insists that they are on her new computer, that she can't use her computer without emptying the trash, and that she wants me to delete the files in her trash and she will come back with her old computer. I am now super hesitant to remove any files. Period. I show her how to empty the trash, but explain that until we locate the missing files, I don't want to be the one deleting things. She sighs and says, I understand. I will delete this stuff right now. She goes through the trash bit by bit and ends up emptying it. She thanks me for my time and leaves. My entire lunch break is over and I now need to rearrange my schedule to take a 15min break because there is no way to fit in a full lunch. A week later I get pulled into the managers office and am told I have an important phone call, a phone call from our legal department. They asked me about this woman and to detail the entire interaction. Luckily it was memorable enough (due to the timing) that I could give them exact timestamps of our interaction, what was said, the emotions that I could read from her body language, my hesitance, and the outcome. They watched the security footage and everything I said was exactly correct, almost to the minute. Apparently, the woman went back to the IT shop and they confirmed that there were no photos of her children on the computer. They weren't malicious and didn't say that I deleted them, but confirmed what I had already told her. She assumed that I deleted them when I emptied the trash. Hold up. I emptied the trash? Noooooooo. You did. Anyway, she got a lawyer and tried to sue me and the company for emotional damaged and destruction of property or some shit. And when I say 'tried' obviously it didn't get past a short phone call after I recounted the interaction. I thought I was done with the situation, until she came in for another appointment, told the check in person that she specifically didn't want to work with me, and proceeded to occupy my colleagues time to try to find the photos that I deleted. Yes, she stuck to that story. She wasn't ever rude or angry, but the fact that she tried to sue me is odd. Almost as if it were setup. I will never know, but had she continued to pursue suing the company, she would have lost horribly. TLDR: Woman's computer won't let her log in because her HDD was full. Had 20GB in the trash. Told her to delete trash, but because she clearly didn't know how trash worked asked her to go through and be sure nothing important was there. She mentions that for the last five years she has been missing photos of her dead children asks me to find them. I can't. She empties her trash on her own accord. Leaves happy, or I thought happy. Tries to sue the company. No actual suit happens. She comes back some odd months later for help again. UPDATE: for those saying they would back up her hard drive or ban her from the premises. I worked for Apple. Didn't want to say it for fear of the apple pitchforks coming out. We don't and cannot backup anyone's data for any reason. It is the customers sole responsibility. Firstly, we see so many people everyday that it isn't feasible and imagine the lawsuits they would have if we did back up their data and somehow lost the backup. I know, that would be tough to do, but you haven't seen some of the crazy shit I have seen that is 1 in a billion. But the fact that we see millions of people across thousands of stores is enough to keep your hands off of peoples data. Second, why would we service her again? Well. Apple receives hundreds of these threats a day. They quickly clarify the situation with the employee that the customer interacted with and advise the lawyer not to pursue legal action. Open and shut. Most people think it's a good idea and that they could get millions, idk what lawyer in their right mind would support that person and entertain such a petty suit, but they do. Also, it isn't hard to make an appointment with a fake name and hope the two people in the store that could identify you aren't there, or are too busy to notice. It happens more often than you think. EDIT: Added TLDR and Update. [link] [comments]  |
| Network admin manager doesn't know how to subnet Posted: 30 Jun 2019 06:40 AM PDT I had a call where a customer's network vendor was calling in to check on the IP range for their client. After pulling up the account and verifying them, I told her, "The customer purchased a /27 IP block." She said, "So they have 27 usable IPs?" Baffled, I said, "No, a /27 gives them 29 usable IPs." Then, she asked for the subnet mask. I say, "The last octet is .244." She says, "So the subnet mask is 0.0.0.224." I said, "No, this is a class C space. It's all 255 except the last octet." She then says, "So 0.0.255.224 or 224.0.0 255?" I say, "No, 255.255.255.224." After playing this game for around 30 minutes, she says that her manager wants to speak to me. I'm thinking that I'll finally have someone who knows what they're doing. I read off everything just the same: /27 block, .224 as the last octet of the subnet mask, gave DNS info. Everything was good until the very last statement. She asked, "Just to be clear, which IPs are usable?" I said, "x.x.x.226 all the way through." (I work for an ISP) She then asked, "So .225 through .255 is usable?" I go silent and stop myself because I almost say, "In what world is .255 is usable IP, lady?" I just say, "No, .254 is the last usable." [link] [comments]  |
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