User buys a new phone and demands I set it up even though I'm on vacation Tech Support |
- User buys a new phone and demands I set it up even though I'm on vacation
- Sorry, but my wand is in the shop
- Yep, I can do that just fine
- We broker her Laptop
- A lesson learnt.. Never go beyond your remit and cover your ass with paperwork!
- remotesupport the hard way
- locking myself out on long distance
| User buys a new phone and demands I set it up even though I'm on vacation Posted: 28 Sep 2019 11:44 AM PDT I am the only I.T. support for a small company (35 people) so my job ranges from unlocking accounts to managing multiple networks. Leading up to my vacation that started right after work on Friday I sent out two different emails to the whole company telling them I would be on vacation and only available for emergencies and please keep everything else until I return. Three hours after I get home and start my vacation plans I get a call from one of the vice presidents. He had just bought a new phone on a whim and needed it setup with email and multi-factor authentication for applications we require it on. He needs this all done before Saturday afternoon because he has work that absolutely has to be done and he doesn't have his old phone anymore so he can't use that until I get back. Last time we set this up for him it took close to three hours because he refused to follow the directions I sent out and was mad I couldn't just remote into his phone and do it for him. I told him I'd send him the instructions as soon as I could get to a computer. I sent him the instructions again (while very drunk) at 3 in the morning and he began texting immediately asking for more help. I fell asleep and woke up to texts ranging from 3 until 8 asking for help because he couldn't figure out my instructions. So now I've been talking to him for over two hours and loving this vacation. At what point am I allowed to start taking violent action? [link] [comments]  |
| Sorry, but my wand is in the shop Posted: 28 Sep 2019 05:35 AM PDT A while back, I worked in tech support for an accounting firm. I was the in-office support person, while the other two support team members managed the domain and network remotely. It cut down on a lot of pointless distractions if there was someone in the physical office to handle the standard user issues, so the other two techs could focus on other critical tasks like security, compliance, migration, setting up new hires, archiving and deleting inactive accounts, etc. The firm wasn't small, but it still was closer to "mom and pops" than being one of the giant firms (only 40-50 users). It was a nice place. Everyone was friendly and on a first-name basis with each other, even the higher ups. While they were all very nice, not everyone was technologically inclined. Guess that's why I had job there. This incident occurred around the time after we had migrated over to Office 365 and right after we enabled MFA for all users. The only user with a problem was one of the managers. He was leaving the company soon (amicably and his choice) and only had a few weeks left, so of course he would be the user with the crisis. It had to be the guy with one foot out the door that has a red alert that demands my full attention. Kind of like being forced to repair a Win 7 machine the same day the new Win 10 laptops arrive and are being distributed. Pointless and unsatisfying. After all, without the user who witnessed my labors, who will sing tales of the mighty battles waged by those of us who work in tech support? Anyway, the manager's account kept getting locked due to repeated invalid login attempts. We traced the issue back to his phone. He had a phone that looked like it had barely survived a horror movie…cracked screen, chipped plastic, mystery stains, etc. (FYI, he ate at his desk everyday with the phone out, so the mystery was whether a stain was bacon grease from a burger or oil from a pepperoni pizza slice.) It seemed that even though we had set up his phone correctly for the change, his phone was sending the old login info anyway as quickly and as annoyingly as a kid that keeps repeating "are we there yet?" on a long road trip. Seriously, this phone was hammering his email account every 30 seconds with a wrong password, so no wonder the account kept locking as soon as we unlocked it. I tried the usual steps of checking and re-entering the correct settings and user info. I tried deleting and re-adding the email account. We even reset his account to without MFA to see if the phone would work correctly (which it did not). The manager was becoming very frustrated. He kept saying, "You have to fix my phone! I need to be able to get emails! I can't get onto my computer!" (His network login of course locked with his email, so he also couldn't log on to his computer. He could do literally nothing until it was resolved. Welcome back accounting Flintstones style!) When the standard fixes failed, I started asking more questions about the phone. Turns out he had been experiencing problems with a lot of apps since the last phone OS update. I realized the update probably didn't install correctly when during my questions he revealed that he ran the OS update while the phone wasn't connected to a power source (even though you're supposed to have it plugged in for an update…..says so on the update screen and everything. And yes, he manually told the update to proceed anyway while unplugged). He had started the update, the phone died, he charged it, and the phone seemed to continue with the update upon charging/rebooting. Likely culprit identified! For clarification, the company had a BYOD policy option, so it was his phone and he controlled the update process. I'd have preferred company provided devices for more control and tighter security, but it wasn't my choice. We just changed some default settings for security and installed some additional security software, but other than that, it was still his phone. You'd think that finding the culprit meant a solution was at hand, but this is where it got interesting. I tell him we should backup the phone, reset the OS to factory, and import his data back to the device after doing a fresh update. He looks horrified at the suggestion….and I mean the "you just ran over my puppy in front of me" horrified. Manager: "You can't do that! Stop!" Me: "I haven't done anything yet and why not? Don't worry. We'll make a local backup as well as one to the cloud, so you don't need to worry about losing any data if that's your concern." This is when manager tells me that he and his wife are in the middle of a very nasty divorce. I felt for the guy, as he was otherwise a nice guy and obviously under a lot of stress from his personal life. He says he has texts on his phone from her that he needs as "evidence" (evidence of what? I didn't ask). I told him that we could preserve the texts, take screenshots, back them up to a service, and/or even print them out, scan them, and email pdf copies on the texts for him (and printed copies might even be easier for presenting during divorce proceedings). Manager: "No! No! NO! Her lawyers will say they're fake! I need them on the phone as they are, not some copy! I can't risk it!" Me: "Ok, well, maybe we could delete your email from the phone. You have your laptop, so you can still check email when at home." Manager: "No, I need it on the phone too! I don't want to keep my laptop open at home, so you have to fix it!" Me: "We've tried everything we can with this phone besides restoring it to factory. Since your phone is in such bad shape physically, how about a new one?" Manager: "No, I need this phone!" Me: "Maybe we could email the boss and request a used smartphone. Some of them are pretty cheap secondhand, and it would only be for you to use for a few weeks. We can express one and take it down to [the company's mobile provider] store for a new sim card/number on the company account. Your personal phone could remain untouched and as-is, and you'd have a separate company phone for the email." Manager: "No, I don't want to carry two phones! I'll forget one! Hurry up and fix it! I need to get onto my computer and do my accounting stuff [I don't remember the actual jargon he used] for the client NOW!" Me: "Well, could you at least turn your phone off until we discuss a solution, so it stops hammering the email server? That's the only way to unlock your account so you can get back on." Manager: "No! I have a kid and his school might call me with an emergency!" (I don't know why he didn't give his direct office line to the school for his contact info as well as his mobile.) The manager was becoming increasingly frustrated and shot down every compromise or solution I had. I felt bad for the guy, but the more frustrated and unreasonable he got, the more my nerves were beginning to fray. Manager just kept insisting: "Just fix my phone! Don't delete anything! Don't give me another phone! Don't turn it off! Don't remove the email! Just fix it! You're IT! You have to fix it!" Me: "I don't know what you want. You keep saying fix it, but also don't touch it, do anything to it, or make any changes of any kind. That's not possible! It defies the laws of reality!" After 30 minutes of his increasingly loud demand for the impossible, and with no reasonable compromise or solution accepted, I just began waving my hands over the phone to "summon the gods of tech support." (Yes, I literally, began waving my hands over the phone and chanting because subtle sarcasm is not my strong suit.) Me: "Oh mighty gods of tech support, lend me your power, I beg of you! Abracadabra! Hocus Pocus! Sim Sim Salabim and wonder twin powers activate! Ooga Booga! Evil Spirits Be Gone! The power of Cheez Whiz compels you!" The manager just looks at me like I've completely lost my mind while I chanted. Me: "It doesn't seem to be working! We're losing him! If only my wand wasn't in the shop! I'm sorry, but we've done all we can. The rest is in God's hands. He's dead, captain." And with that, I just turned and walked out of his office. Hey, I'm an 80's kid, so when I decided to fake chant to make my point, I couldn't help but give as many nods to my childhood as possible. I'm not sure if he got the specific references, but there was no missing my point. Half an hour later, he called me back in and had me remove the email account from his phone. Once he had calmed down after I'd left, he'd thought about it and decided he could keep his laptop open at home because he was only there for a few more weeks anyway. He started laughing and with a smile called me a jerk for putting on my "magic show." In the end, nothing too dramatic. No villains, no revenge, no arrests. Just a frustrated slightly tech challenged manager going through a rough patch. Not a bad guy, just expecting miracles….and me without my wand. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2019 07:36 PM PDT Picture this. Its 10:30 pm, you're about to go to sleep, you ave your coffee, then your neighbor knocks on your door. This is a record of the following encounter. OP: Oh hello. Whats up? OP: I don't need one So yeah. Currently downloading the Win10 iso, and when that's done I'm going to shut down my PC, unplug my optical drive and plug up his HDD. Cheers. I am the only one who can do this in a 10 mile radius of my home. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2019 08:16 AM PDT This is a old one but as it is some time ago i can just recall the highlights. I used to work in the first level tech support line of a big name internetprovider company here in germany. There are so many stories. One of the more memoral stories is about an elderly lady who called us, because her internet didn´t work, but her landline, which was also from us did. Now if someone of a certain age is calling us, the first challenge is to find out WHAT the problem is. Not what caused it but what is currently wrong. So her internet is not working and she asked, if we can send one of our technicans out? Sadly i can´t put in a ticket for a technican in our system, without asking the usual questions first. How is the modem? Did she switched it off and on again. And all the other annoying questions everyone complains about. As most customers we have, she didn´t care to answer the questions and if i can just send out a technican because her internet isn´t working and this is what she is paying us for. And if i can´t do it maybe she should call the other "big company name everyone in germany knows in bright pink" and become a customer there? In the meantime i got a read of the modem and the line and everything seemed fine and dandy. Also as i said she still could call us over her landline. And suddendly she dropped the bomb. Her "My laptopscreen is still black." Again we are a internet provider. We don´t sell laptops or anything. So i asked again. Me: So it´s not your internet, but your laptop screen is black? She: Yes, it´s black, because my internet doesn´t work. And as you are my internet provider, it´s your fault. And you need to send a technican out to fix it. Me: I can send a technican out if you want, but in this case we would need to charge you for it. We only provide our technicans for free, if our wire is broken. She: Well it doesn´t work. And i am not paying for it. You are providing my internet. And as the screen is black, because of your internet, this is the reason why it´s black. Me: I am sorry but this is not the reason why it´s black. Clearly the internet is working as we both are talking with each other. This means there is a signal. I sadly can´t support you for your blackscreen and recommend that you should bring your laptop to a repair shop. She: Well i will not bring my laptop again to a repair shop, i just brough it to one last week. I really should become a customer of "company in bright pink and with a catchy tune". They would send me a technican. Me: Ma´am you can do it. But i am honest with you now, you saying that our service is responsibel for your black screen is like pointing at the street and blaming it for your car not starting. You told me now that you already had a problem in the past with your laptop and i am sorry but again, your internet has nothing do with it. If i send you a technican he will bill you. The end result was that we ended the call and me having talked 25 minutes about a problem with our service, which was not a problem. [link] [comments]  |
| A lesson learnt.. Never go beyond your remit and cover your ass with paperwork! Posted: 28 Sep 2019 01:48 PM PDT Years ago, I worked in support team for various gateway products including an email solution that was installed on various Unix platforms. It's a pretty awesome product, let's call it messagePure. Now, this product had its own MTA and one or more server(s) with a milter on it so the install and set up normally required an administrator who knew what they were doing. Roll on and this caller phones in and says that he had run out of disk space on a SAN that had 40GB. Well, this does sound excessive even for larger solutions so I went through the bread and butter stuff with him, yes what he said was verified, there were inodes left so where did space go?... It turned out that he had archiving enabled and was saving a copy of every mail that the policy touched. The simple solution was to clear down the archive as it was a number of years old at this point. We cleared down the oldest archives and logs with him while he was on the phone and got the solution working again. I then suggested logrotate to keep the space under control. He had never used it before and asked me to ssh in and set it up for him, which I did as its a simple setup. He was happy and I got a 5/5 for the ticket. 6 months later they had another issue and the user blamed me as I "must have touched something". I had no RMA so got yelled at for logging in when the customer asked me to. I have never gone past my remit after that (for the record logrotate in a Unix tool, nothing my company supplied). Now when I hear "can't you just.." I remember that experience and just say "nope, thats your admin's job" TLDR: customer asked to go above and beyond and then blamed me for other issues months later. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 28 Sep 2019 01:32 PM PDT First i know many will think i make this up or tell an old tale again, but this happend to me personally and is entirely true.Its freely translated and i tryed to recreate the conversation but it was very close to this: senior owner of a small company and reg customer calls because of a problem with their server. we have no VPN in there so i asked him to make a remote connection. since i knew he is usually does not work much, if anything at all, computer related thing i tried to talk him trough the process starting the remote client. But nothing i told him worked. already a long time in trying anything. but it didnt worked.oh well we had that before (people cannot double click as they are to slow yes this happens too) --- couple of minutes later (actually a lot), a few tries, still same menue, hold on he is reading the context menue of the desktop still no joy and i was thinking what could causing him not be able to click that icon, we go back and forth a bit then it hit me Wait a second, WHAT? Now it became clear that he never does anything with any computer, ever. This was 2017, that company even plans every customer project digitally for almost 2 deacades.This took in total way over 50 minutes until he was able to start remotesupport :) the problem then was solved in under 2 minutes. [link] [comments]  |
| locking myself out on long distance Posted: 28 Sep 2019 02:41 PM PDT Customer with many chain store, configuring a new master config for the stores VPNs. for security reasons stores have only one vpn to main network. no access from the outside to a store.now ofc, since reconfig the VPN is touchy and used routers are potatoes (small stores with often only one computer so who cares) i usually setup a temporary acces to the router itself from the outside, reconfig the vpn and close it up right after. but at this one, things are different. its behind a cable modem and for some reason that modem is not briding but masquerading. so no outside access without portforward on that router and i dont have its password, its 9pm so noone to ask. oups, router gone, connect gone, no reconnect. thing plays dead.now what. either wait till morning (they open to early for my taste) phonecall the sotre clerk, trying him to get remotesupport running, which will be hard as he wont have also no dns without VPN and possible no admin rights on his machine to reset the tcpip config... hmm or lets try something else. we go back and forth, but thankfully he can kinda relate :)also i can feel his pity me trying to find out which mail the customer used,.. its a bit messy... Bingo, releave. he activated port forwarding, i remote in, and since i still need to reconfigure that thing and not only get it back up, try to troubleshoot it in 2 minutes and reset config..... many fast clicks and types later its backup, provider deactivates portforwarding again. turns out, while all stores have identical routers and firmware, there are minor version differences in a very few.now i had a faulty option in the vpn main config (something about agressive reconnect and reducing timeout time) that was simply ignored in the later versions, but trow up the minor ealier one. vpn service simply didnt start because of it. bottom line, -never rely on errorhandling trough different versions of software, even minor ones, you never know -check your logs in the lab that they are absoltuly error free, working is not enough, even or specially its late -to much security is not always a good thing, sometimes a hole saves the day but most and foremost -you can get in - anywhere - if you beg hard enough :) [link] [comments]  |
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