You need to stop using your laptop right now as your battery is dangerously close to blowing out. Tech Support |
- You need to stop using your laptop right now as your battery is dangerously close to blowing out.
- The "$10,000" cardboard box
- I didn't change the password, you did!
- How to run a business in 2019
- When a client knows just enough to get themselves in trouble.
- But how do I clean out my emails without cleaning out my emails
- Need help with wifi... but don't have a wifi adapter.
- customer has as much money as stubbornness
- Wi-angry - family tech support pains
- Support disable ordering online and only allowed telephone orders.
- Don't you love when customers answer their own questions?
| You need to stop using your laptop right now as your battery is dangerously close to blowing out. Posted: 19 Aug 2019 11:20 AM PDT So browsing through the ticket queue this morning and came across a fun looking one that I just had to pull.
The picture she produced was a laptop that had the top part, where the keyboard was, separated from the bottom part. I think to myself. "Huh... thats interes....ting OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!" Yeah... thats thermal expansion of the battery. I call her up. No answer. Call her cell number. No answer. I called her boss.
She hangs up. I call back.
I wanted to say "Duh hoy."
She puts me on speakerphone.
I submit a ticket to purchasing for warranty/replacement and pull the call log. I submit the ticket numbers for mine, purchasing, and the call log to my boss letting him know the situation. I CCed his boss and the CIO. I made sure they knew I did my job and that the user may decide to ignore me. Spoiler alert. She ignored me. Two hours later I am notified that an investigation has been opened regarding my "Mishandling" of the repair process and that disciplinary action may be handed down. I forward that email to my boss who responds with the notes, call log, and ticket numbers. Five minutes later the name on the investigation is changed to the manager's name. She continued to use it and it caught fire. Yes I have pictures... no I will not share. EDIT: For those asking. The laptop caught fire and burned both the user AND the customer. Let that sink in. You know exactly why I am sparse with the details now. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Aug 2019 08:26 AM PDT Years ago I worked tech support for a company that made an automotive scanner that ran software similar to a dealer tool for multiple car lines, they broke somewhat frequently, and we offered loaners for units coming in for repair. Our one requirement was that the shop had to give us a tracking number that said their unit was picked up by ups/fedex/etc. first. Also relevant to the story is that when we sell the tool it comes in a hard, laser cut foam lined case. The scanners are pretty beefy themselves, I've had to destroy them before disposal before (proprietary stuff they'd like to make as difficult as possible to recover) and it took some WORK, so even in the poorest of packing conditions these scanners don't get physically damaged, the cases are mostly for storage and transporting so nobody absentmindedly drops a spanner on the screen. One day, Bob calls (not his real name, I don't even remember it). He needs a loaner for his busted unit, we give him the standard "send us a tracking number" line. No word for a few days, ticket is still open, another call from Bob. Bob: "Where's my loaner?" He inevitably hangs up, grumbling, and we don't hear from him until the next week. Bob: "Why haven't I gotten my loaner yet? Do you realize how much work I've lost because I don't have that damn loaner? You've cost me over $10,000!" Silence as the gears turned on the other side of the line. He eventually realized how bad he fucked up, He asked about the hard cases we send new tools in, and I had to explain that they were heavy, bulky, and expensive to ship, so we don't bother with them on loaners, they easily weigh 10 lbs on their own. He never even sent us the tracking number, his scanner just showed up for repair the next day. [link] [comments]  |
| I didn't change the password, you did! Posted: 19 Aug 2019 06:48 AM PDT Recap for those of you who don't know; I'm a technical advisor for CCTV products which includes a lot of IT. Most of our customers have adequate IT-knowledge to being able to do their job (general IT knowledge such as understanding subnet masks, use of PCs, etc etc) but the small percentage does not. Backstory; Customer calls me and tells me one of his cameras is broken. I tell him to send the device to me first before shipping it over to RMA so I can have a closer look. I check the device, I find out the firmware got corrupted (probably caused by a bad file). I flash the device, works again, nice and dandy, I reset the device and send it back over to him. 2 weeks later I get a call. Me: Me - Customer:HiDoggy!
I teamviewer his PC and see that he's connected to the webpage.
We're logged into the camera.
Needless to say I was more than annoyed. Welp. EDIT: spelling/typo's [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 19 Aug 2019 09:21 PM PDT So my parents owned a baby goods retailer for the last 15 years, they have since sold it and are much happier with the reduced stress. During that time they moved from being a purely bricks and mortar store with traditional leaflet marketing to an online store with an online marketing as well a bricks and mortar store. They brought me along for the ride and I built and maintained anything remotely related to IT. Restarting the router, keeping the internet and phones running, printer troubleshooting, that was me. Running cat6 cable, installing file servers, and security cameras, yup me. Building a website, managing the web and email hosting, installing a speaker intercom system, you guessed it. After they sold the business I was free. But so that the person coming after me wouldn't be completely lost I wrote a handover document on how everything had been set up as well a password vault with any relevant information they would need. This included the config of the business grade fiber connected to a pfsense box i built. I get a call from the new business owner about 6 months after the handover. Internet has been down for 5 days, he doesn't know what is happening and is far from a digital native. Being nice I helped out as much as i could over the phone, restart this, try that. Ultimately i couldn't help much over the phone. Wished them luck recommended they call the ISP. Cut to a week later, I get a call from a tech they had hired asking for guidance on how the network had been set up. Turns out the reason the internet stopped working was they didn't like paying $850/month for business fiber and canceled the service. They forgot to order a replacement service though. Funny how the internet stops working for 2 weeks when disconnected. When they finally got the replacement service they opted for ADSL at a location that will be lucky to get 5Mbps/0.1Mbps. Have fun running your online business. I later found out through the grape vine they had fired there digital marketing firm, turns out online isn't their focus anymore. They decided to spend the extra money on letter box leaflets. Physical leaflets dropped on mass in a neighborhood. Their clientele are new parents aged 20-35. Let that sink in. [link] [comments]  |
| When a client knows just enough to get themselves in trouble. Posted: 19 Aug 2019 02:21 PM PDT My company ships out servers to clients which runs a slightly customized flavor of linux. During the intro calls, we gather some network details and configure the servers to be plug and play as soon as they get them out of the box. Explicit instructions are given to call us as soon as the hardware shows up if they aren't comfortable plugging in the power and ethernet cable and turning it on. That's it. Just two cables and power button. Done. That is until "George" comes along. SLG (me): XXX Support, how can I help you today? George: yeah hi, I just got one of your servers, but I'm a little stumped on the setup. SLG: oh hey George, we spoke the other day, have you unboxed everything yet? George: Yeah, got it all plugged in and turned on, but I'm stuck half way through the uhh, lifecycle setup thingy. SLG: the... oh... did you do anything after turning the server on? George: Yes sir! I was going through the booklet that was in the box with the server, but got a little stuck on one of the questions and now I'm calling you to help me out. SLG: That was not what we discussed two days ago. Can you do me a favor and restart the server, NOT saving any changes if prompted from whatever screen you're in? 3 minutes later George: It says, 'unable to find boot menu'... Did I do something bad? :( Yes Georgie, yes you did. Good ol' boy managed to reformat the hard drives, wiping out our OS install, and due to my company policies with "proprietary information" being what it is, we couldn't send him a copy of the ISO to re-install it. He had to box up his (~70 lbs) server and ship it half way across the country for us to re-load the OS and then ship it back to him. He learned his lesson and called us before he even unboxed it the second time round though! [link] [comments]  |
| But how do I clean out my emails without cleaning out my emails Posted: 19 Aug 2019 08:29 AM PDT This is gonna be a short one. I think the title explains it all. So our company's Exchange mail policy is set to a time limit of like 2 years (I think?) or 10GB of data in a person's email box. Que hoarder sales person (HS). HS: Tech, there is something wrong with my email. Come look at this. I go there and of course I am getting the message that their email box is getting full. Now I know this user is a habitual hoarder. See gets an email about an order for a product and prints it out then files away both the printout and the email (just in case) into a plethora of sub-folders in her inbox based on customer name, product request and customer's shoe sizes. (OK maybe not but I can't make sense of the complex menagerie of folder hell.) Me: It appears that you are reaching the 10GB limit on your email box. You have to delete somethings. HS: What? No! I have to have all of this what if the user needs to know what they ordered last year at this time? Me: Could you not just look in the ordering system to pull up their orders? HS: Yes, but I have to keep this just in case. Can I copy this off to a server or someplace? Me: Sorry, but our email retention policy states that email can not be copied off and they have to remain in the email system. HS: Well, is their a way that I can clean some of these emails out without actually deleting them. Me: :::blink blink::: :::eyes squint slightly a the birth of a headache above my left eye::: EDIT: Guys I am not asking for an answer to this solution. I know that you can use achieving systems and store emails outside of exchange. I am just telling a story of a stupid user that wants to have her cake and eat it too. [link] [comments]  |
| Need help with wifi... but don't have a wifi adapter. Posted: 19 Aug 2019 12:09 PM PDT So I got a call from a friend who wanted their PC to connect to their network with wireless... except they had no wireless card. I provided them with some spares that I had and they went back to their PC. So, a little while later, I get another call asking for help with installing the card. I explained the need to remove the blanking plate and slot a card that matched into the motherboard slot. They did that and powered up their machine, but we couldn't see the card. It wasn't in Device Manager, so I suggested that either the card wasn't fully inserted, it was a dead card, or there was a fault with the motherboard. They checked, and found the card wasn't fully home, so we tried again, but still, no Wireless card in the Device Manager. The PC ended up on my desk... the blanking plate had been removed, but from the card, and the card was inserted the wrong way round! To my amazement, when I turned the card around it worked and I demonstrated wifi access to a relieved user. I compliment the inventors of PCI-E and designers of this card for making this mistake survivable! [link] [comments]  |
| customer has as much money as stubbornness Posted: 19 Aug 2019 05:06 AM PDT I work at a small telecom company and we provide copper lines that we offer DSL & phone over or in new areas (that we are still expanding) we offer speeds upwards of 1gig (if the customer can pay we offer faster but have to strike up a special deal. I once saw a host running 10gig with a specialized ONT and IMac). At the time of the story I have been working at ISP just over a year. I've been studying Net+ since its directly related to my job and I am decently knowledgeable when it comes to networking and my job is spread wide enough I have to do some things that would be considered higher tiers or even sys.admin. But at ISP we have one tier total for all calls and if you don't bug sys.admin the more they like you. Especially when you thoroughly document and provide information. Which in this particular case I did. Repeatedly. This customer I dealt with is one if you say the name aloud in the call center everyone is suddenly tense. She bought a insurance program from us that for a low monthly payment if your internet stops working, even on the customer side of the demarc and inside the customers home we will dispatch a trouble ticket for an installer fix it for "no charge". But there are steps to aquire such a magical ticket as abuse of this could cost a company significantly. begin scene 1
This is where I was already looking at her extensive history on how she would yell at techs on call as soon as she starts to feel if she doesn't get her way, so immediately I started to document everything. Her modem/router (that I will refer to as just router from her on out.) was online her ping times were great her signal strength from the DSL equipment on our end to her router looked very good as well she was definitely getting the speeds she was paying for. But I wanted to cover all my bases. I use a tool on the router to have the router itself ping a domain or IP and display the results in the gui, and surprise surprise 0% packet loss to google.com, and her router has been up since the last time she called.
Frustrated customer unplugs router and instantly plugs it back in
Total time elapsed of the router being off: .000001 seconds
Frustrated Customer complies and router reboots and is still the MVP of this call
Shockingly her internet doesn't work still. I had a feeling from the start that there is something LAN side causing issues. Either her windows 10 PC or the 3rd party router (DLink) that I see in the ARP table. when in doubt blame windows
It's at this point I get excited to embarrass her with how disgustingly nice my tone has been the whole time and she had been rude and profane (profanities omitted) because I was 75% sure that it was the DLink. She probably has an ancient wifi B/G/N AP that belongs in the dump. And if it wasn't that definitely windows 10.
At this point I knew what the ticket would be and was feeling good, since for tickets that are needless and plain old harassment, as I disclosed to try to scare her out of it. But I knew most likely our installer would probably go out find nothing and waive the fee as a courtesy check at their discretion Installer goes out, find no trouble. Close ticket. END SCENE 1
BEGIN SCENE 2 Less than 3 weeks have elapsed and I see her name pop on my screen with the usual trill of my desk phone. sigh
enters the matrix of customer connection data and unsurprisingly everything looks great. Better than the first time I looked at her connection. Her router has been up for 19 days (last time her and I were on the phone) and I want to do this quickly.
DLink reboot ensues and customer is ever so unhappy.
Rebooted her computer and that solved her issues and she chalked it up to "weird, I know it's the lines" and once again demanded a ticket be placed again. Installer goes out, find no trouble. Close ticket. Unfortunately I was not graced with the privilege to speak with our beloved frustrated customer again but every few months I check up on her. She was so convinced it was the copper lines that we laid to her property she had this call 2 more times with two more call center techs. Fast forward a couple months and she PAID BY THE FOOT for a special fiber drop to her house. Which can be $20-30 PER FOOT. And then USED THE SAME DLINK. More troubles followed for MONTHS no matter how many times we told her it has to be a LAN problem offered her solutions that were much cheaper and easier than is laying an undisclosed amount of money on a cable. Estimated between 8-15 grand! After she calls and harasses more coworkers she is finally convinced to at least replace the Ethernet cable to her DLink and poof! Like that! Callbacks stop happening. TLDR: customer has as much money as stubbornness and spends many thousands just to have needed to replace a $7 Ethernet cord Side note: she called and was angry again and told us it's our fault when she had a power outlet go out and it shutoff her internet access and refused to believe it was her outlet (fiber ONTs have battery backup go into a phone only mode when they lose ac so subscriber can dial 911). This I would empathetic with her a bit if she hadn't called multiple coworkers directly expletive's and names over the matter. EDIT: FORMATTING [link] [comments]  |
| Wi-angry - family tech support pains Posted: 19 Aug 2019 05:56 PM PDT Brother with his laptop (he is 40+ and he has used computers for atleast 20 years): "How do I connect to the WiFI". Me (20 yr old younger brother that lives with him): "Sure, click the wifi symbol and you will see the new network I just setup, <ssid>". Silence.... Me internally: very tense knowing he has gone from 0 to 100..shocked tho it's happening just for Wi-Fi Brother: "Is that how you explain it to your IT clients?" In the world's most condescending and angry tone.. but not yelling. Me: "oh I've seen you connect to the Wi-Fi before on windows 7 and XP, it's very similar, I didn't want to patronize you.. but anyway just click on the little 'watermelon' symbol that you can see on the bottom right and then click the name of SSID". Silence..watching him do that very slowly.. Me: "Enter key <getmeoutofhere>" Silence..praying it works... Me: "Done".. Smiling to hope to defuse this tension. Silence... Me internally: Walks away wondering how much more of this I can take..it's like this 50% of the time about anything. His job makes him cranky. Update: I moves out 6 months later when things got much worse. Leaves behind a NAS and an amazing premium WiFi router for his Security cameras. Was a few years ago..time to get it out of my head. [link] [comments]  |
| Support disable ordering online and only allowed telephone orders. Posted: 19 Aug 2019 05:05 AM PDT I just posted a story about tech support and I honestly remembered a recent story that happened a month ago. I work in IT and I was requested to contact support of a software company. Yep even the big ones have crazy support. I ordered a product for one of my staff and then I discovered that the staff wants to use multiplecof their products. The all in one package seems like a better choice and was more cost effective. Also the staff only wanted products from this brand and didn't like alternatives. So I wanted to upgrade and remove the single product. Here is where the funny business happens Support: "hello may I help you sir" Me: " yes I want to upgrade my package. I want the annual subscription that covers everything. " Support: " that is not possible. Only way to do it is to delete account and recreate it again." Me" are you sure this is the only option? There are no alternatives" Support: " nope is the only way" Me: " okay do it. Then after that I will order the upgrade" Support: "okay it is done" I loggin the website and try to order but I cannot order online anymore. I was confused, before I was able to choose the software and can select multiple at once now the option is not available I called support. Support: " may I help you" Me: " yes I was able to order online, now I can't for some reason. Can you fix the issue" Support: " you do not have any software or history under your account" I retell what happened Support: " okay sir you want the upgrade. Can you please give me your credit card details" Me: " no I want to order online please. Can you please check what is the issue with account" Support: " it is not possible to order online. Only way is through telephone" I was confused cause I literally ordered online so I knew it was a lie. Maybe the staff is just reading a script or something. Me: " I actually ordered online before. Can you please transfer me to someone who knows more about the account" Support : " okay will transfer call to manager" Support manager : " hello sir, I got informed that you are not willing to give us your credit card information on the phone" Me confused as fuck and scared that this is a scam but I know I only contacts support through official website but maybe telephone support are contractors or something. Support : "only way to order our product is using telephone or using local vendor". Me: " local vendor it is". Called vendor and things went smooth. Though till this day I'm confused. Everyone I talked to agreed that what they asked for seems fishy. [link] [comments]  |
| Don't you love when customers answer their own questions? Posted: 19 Aug 2019 02:56 AM PDT I work for a company that hosts accounting software on a virtual machine. Despite doing this for years I am still amazed at the stupidity of some people. Me: Hello this is me, how can I help you? Customer: I am trying to export to excel and it's not working Me: Do you have excel? Customer: No Me: You'll need excel Customer: Okay thank you *hangs up* [link] [comments]  |
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