We got the cops called on us after we refunded their money. Tech Support |
- We got the cops called on us after we refunded their money.
- Killing them softly, part 4
- It's your fault I didn't secure my phone properly!
- Technical Support to a 4yo - Product-improving Deviation From Build Spec. After Identifying a Flaw in Manufacturer’s Data
- You need to make it so i can’t save anything to my monitor
- Just put your router in bridge mode
- A Friend in Need & Flooded Junction Boxes
- Can't protect users from themselves
- External (customer) tech support for a software company
| We got the cops called on us after we refunded their money. Posted: 03 Jan 2020 04:10 PM PST Hello! Join me for the wild ride that is apparently my work life this week. I work for a computer repair and IT business mainly on the store front side of things but moving into the B2B services side of things. We also repair phones. Our story begins with a father and teenage daughter entering our lowly little shop. Daughter has an iPhone that won't turn on. They charge it and nothing happens. I check in the phone for diagnostics. Before opening the phone I notice that there's a small crack in the bottom of the screen. Okay cool so the phones been dropped before. Can't test much else cause of the aforementioned no power thing, but I do insert it into a specific tester for a specific logic board issue that affects power. It passes. Open the phone, try new battery, doesn't show any sign of life, try new batter AND new screen and BOOM phone powers on and charges and stays on and all kinds of good things. We make sure the battery charges to 100% and the battery tests healthy. Call the customer and inform them and they are upset and say that we must be lying as they bought that phone BRAND NEW earlier this year and the Daughter says she's never dropped the phone. We tell them that yes this is what the phone needs to work and the phone has definitely been dropped as we observed a crack in the display during our pre repair inspection. They say they don't believe us and will call back with their decision. Enter Mother. Mother comes in and says that she wants to see the screen because the Daughter has never dropped her phone. She told her Father that and she would never lie. I show the broken screen. She says that is a hard to notice crack but it is a crack. Daughter confessed to dropping her phone during a very tearful phone call. Mother proceeds to argue with us for 15 minutes saying that they have had that phone repaired with us before right after they bought it. We have no record of that. Former manager of store was popular with customers but shady on the business practices. We are not surprised. Tell Mother we have no record. Mother is mad but moves on and agree to repair. States they are going out of town for the Holiday and won't be back until the following weekend. K. It's lies. Finish repairs. Unit doesn't hold charge as long as it should. Bossman notices this. Assumes I put in bad battery. Tells Father we need to order another battery. Father is displeased. Asks why we put in a used part. Explains that it was a new battery but new things can still be bad out of the box. Father does not believe this but agrees to wait for new battery. New battery comes in. Install. Still doesn't hold charge. Test Logic board again. Still passes. Testing. More testing. Won't hold charge, phone grows hot, still passes LB. Phone dies over night during testing. Won't charge back up. Tries new charging port. It now charges while dead. Must need new charging port. Call Father. Father is LIVID. States that we should have caught that before, do we even know what we're doing, this would never happen with former manager. Bossman explains that it was charging but only while the battery has charge. Father doesn't understand that batteries can die and must be recharged as he insists that means we installed used parts. Bossman explains that no that's not what we do. Father demands that we take responsibility. Bossman declines. Bossman offers part for free if Father is so sure we are at fault. Father is irate and refuses the free thing. Demands to split it in half. Bossman agrees. Install charging port. Phone still does all the bad things. Test logic board and it still passes but Bossman grows suspicious. More testing. Bossman concludes that v expensive testing unit is lying and that the board component has failed. Bossman is not looking forward to that confrontation. I must fall on that particular sword tho because Bossman is called away to an on-site. Call customer. Goes to VM. Calls again. Leaves another VM. Mother arrives. Is informed of situation. Offer Mother a refurbished replacement option for additional monies. Mother is offended. They have already spent so much. Inform Mother that other option that we remove our parts, reinstall their not working parts, refund their money, and they leave with the phone in the same condition it came in as. After a loud angry discussion with Father they agree to second option. Do as stated. Hand phone back in original state and refund their money. Mother leaves with receipt of refund. Get call from Father 10 minutes later asking when we're gonna give back his money. Inform Father that the refund is complete in our side, Mother has the receipts, and it's in the bank's hands now. Father agrees. Then Father states that he has called the cops on us for "Theft by Deception" since we had his phone for a week and a half and we lied and tried to cover up our horrible mistake and lack of skills. He is also considering taking the business to small claims court for everything we put his family through. Father tells me to inform Bossman that that's coming down the pipe and that we deserve it. Call Bossman. Bossman laughs and says let the cops show up. Cops show up next day. Yay. TL;DR: initially simple repair becomes more complex and ends up drawn out over time. Customer is upset. Refund customer and give back phone. Customer calls cops on us. Cops actually show up. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 04 Jan 2020 02:18 AM PST This is a multi-part series about my life as a cybersecurity consultant. I've been doing third party vendor assessments for a client and we're going to have to fire some of them. So it goes. I wake in the morning with a hangover to keep me company while I figure out where I am. I have a call with Vendor 1 before I need to be at the client site. I throw some clothes on, wander to the impossibly bright open lobby/breakfast area and only find bad coffee, oatmeal and an Otis Spunkmeyer muffin. I see clean, earnest, well dressed men and women using words like "touch point", "swim lane", "PMO" along with sportsball analogies. I better leave before I hear "spend" used as a noun. I crawl back into bed, eat my paste-like breakfast and styrofoam coffee and read over Vendor 1. They're the 'we do big data things with healthcare' without any serious controls on all that data. Someone else did the site visit and didn't take good notes, but it seemed like Vendor 1 decided that didn't think HIPAA or our requirements applied to them. My call starts. We have:
After two minutes of the usual pre call patter, introductions, we go. Bethiffer:"We received a shocking email yesterday. As we explained earlier, HIPAA doesn't apply to us, so we shouldn't have to meet those requirements." me:"Ok. That's an interesting take on this. It also doesn't matter. Those requirements are in your contract" Floyd:"Like we said, those don't apply to us" me:"You hold a lot of healthcare data, right? Names, diagnoses, outcomes?" Floyd:"And more. But we're not sharing it with affiliates" me:"Ok..." One of the other analysts on the call:"We don't shaaaaare the information, so it can't be breached" me:"Well, that's not really true, you see." Bethiffer:"And we're affiliated with a major research university" me (realizing that I'm too hung over to have an absurd, circular argument):"Ok, ok. If you can convince your client project sponsor to sign off that you aren't required to do this, I'm ok with this. Until then, we ask that you prepare a plan to delete all of our data from your systems. It's just a part of the process. Everyone agrees and we end the call. I'm more nauseous than I was before the call. I clean up and force myself to look like a productive member of society, then make my way to the client site and sit through an hour long meeting discussing new virtual machine images in the cloud. I meekly attempt to prevent unnecessary complications, but two different factions of the Operations Team believe they need their own custom images. A consultant on our team recommends forming a common image that everyone else should use. This is clearly not how Client does things, so a few beardy sysadmins poke the consultant by asking very pointed questions about individual builds of Windows. This causes the call to lose all focus, forcing a follow up call later this week. This self selects for the worst ideas as competent people often have better things to do and stop coming, leaving the untrusted, unpleasant and plain incompetent behind to steer the big project. Thankfully I'm not responsible for much on this project, so I have time available to be on these calls and bill some time. It's time for me to call Vendor 2. They've texted me multiple demands to explain ourselves. I can't field a call like this in Client's building since they'll think I'm not dedicated to their problems. I don't want to take the call in my brand new rental car, since the new car smell and my hangover aren't getting along too well. Instead, I walk to the other end of the building and pace in the parking lot. Vendor 2 is Froomkin Printing, the print shop who left a bunch of PHI on an unencrypted USB device near an open loading dock. They're ready for a fight. We have Craggy, their IT Director, an unnamed Sales Manager and Mumbles, their outside counsel on the phone. Craggy:"How dare you do this to us? We're considering suing you unless this changes" me:"Well, the security requirements are a part of the contract. This was your mistake" Mumbles:"Well, we'll see about that. We'll make you" me:"No, you're not going to sue. Once you sue, our reports become a part of the record. I assure you that all your competitors and customers will know you were canned for weak security." Mumbles:"We'll file a protective order" me (having lost all patience):"You're going to claim your inability to put even free controls in after multiple warnings is a TRADE SECRET? That should go in your ad copy" Mumbles:"Well..." me (windmilling in anger):"Look. You took this work because it paid better than printing placemats advertising muffler shops. When you took it, you promised that you'd do this right because if you do this wrong, you hurt people. What if your mechanic decided to not bolt your wheels on because it took too much time? How about this? What if your cocaine dealer put fentanyl and sheetrock dust in your cocaine to fatten up their margin? Unnamed Sales Manager:"Uhh, what? Are you accusing us of using cocaine?" me:"I assumed you were and used an analogy that I hoped would get your attention" There's a bit more yelling and the call ends. I realize I've been walking back and forth in the parking lot waving my arms and yelling in front of the building. I hope nobody noticed. To be continued. [link] [comments]  |
| It's your fault I didn't secure my phone properly! Posted: 03 Jan 2020 06:33 PM PST As previously mentioned before, senior tech support for the Fruit-based company. Had nothing to report for a while but this interaction was funny. Customer calls in saying that her phone had been stolen. Pretty standard affair, tell them to mark the device as lost, see if there's no recent locations listed and go to the police to file a report. However, people think we have access to the location of all the world's devices on demand, regardless if the device is on or not, and call in to see if we can tell them where it is. When a device is marked as lost, it stays pending until it connects to wifi. When it does, it shows the message saying it has been lost/stolen and it's pretty much a brick. The only way to disable this is either by accessing the owner's cloud account or... guessing their passcode. This would give full access to the device, including changing the cloud account password. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ M: Me C: Customer M: "So have you marked the device as lost?" C: "Yes and it showed a location but now it's gone from the website." M: "Right... Did the phone have a passcode?" C: "Yes, it was 000000. I got an email saying the lost mode was off now and my password was changed." \facepalm-headdesk combo** M: "Well, what's probably happened is that the passcode was guessed and they changed the account password and disabled all cloud features." C: "What do you mean? What do we do now?" M: "Not much you can do apart from filing a police report. A code like 000000 is very easy to guess and it's one of the first combinations thieves will try." C: "So you're saying you can't help? I bought this phone for a lot of money specifically because of the security! (yeah, right) I have banking details, my passwords, work information, everything in there!" M: "I understand, but if the phone is unlocked, it can't tell who's using it and we don't have a way to see what is the current cloud account, location or phone number being used right now." (obvs no serial number or IMEI were provided, but we don't have a way to tell anyways) C: "This is outrageous! There's got to be something you can do! Are you telling me your $800 phone is just the same as any $100 phone if it's stolen from me? It's my phone!" M: "That doesn't matter, a child could guess that passcode. It's not our responsability if you don't use the provided security measures properly. If you install a $300 door lock for your house but leave the key under the doormat, it protects your house all the same as a $5 one." C: *light pause* This is ridiculous! I'm going to go on all social media platforms, complaints websites and everywhere I can and tell people that your so-called security is nothing different from any cheap phone and to not buy your devices ever again!" M: "Feel free to do so, but also add a warning to not use passcodes such as 000000, 111111 or 123456 as they are very easy to guess and compromise your data." C: "Ugh!" *click* _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ One thing I didn't mention is that the customer called the police when she saw the location of the device, but because the phone was in an apartment building, they said they weren't going to be ringing everybody's doorbells and ignored her. This is somehow more acceptable than us not telling her who's using her phone. Tl;dr: Customer has phone with 6 zeros as a passcode, surprised pikachu face when told her accounts and device have been taken over by the thieves. [link] [comments]  |
| Posted: 03 Jan 2020 06:56 PM PST The comments about people having to build LEGO sets as part of the job interview process in this Tale from last week prompted me to think about how I spent a significant part of Christmas Day and several days following. I think this qualifies for TFTS; I provided support and it's Technic.... My four-year-old nephew got a LEGO Technic Compact Crawler Crane for Christmas, Set Number 42097 for those of you who want to see it. As the build complexity level was supposedly far beyond what a 4yo could achieve, I was voluntold to provide technical support for the assembly of said crawler crane, due to my spending several years back in the '80s working for LEGO as a model builder. $Nephew was finally able to get off the tenterhooks he had been on since he unwrapped his gifts at sparrowfart on Christmas morning after Christmas lunch, during which I had consumed several Aperol Spritzes and large quantities of baked ham, roast pork etc. and consequently was fighting against a food coma; no time for that, we have a crane to build! So we set to building; I limited my role to assembling the parts required for each step in the instructions and correcting his very-infrequent mistakes. Slowly the crawler crane took shape and we got to the stage of the caterpillar tracks being on it and $Nephew being able to push it around the floor. Being LEGO Technic and a crane, it has a lot of movable parts and I started pointing these out to $Nephew. "Hey $Nephew, look what happens when I turn this!" $Nephew, in excited-4yo voice "Dad! Dad! Look what happens when I turn this!" This sort of thing went on for a couple of minutes and then I said, "hey $Nephew, the caterpillar tracks even have idler wheels" ('cause I think I know what idler wheels are, but my fact-checking for this post revealed that I was actually talking about return rollers), this of course followed by, "dad, the caterpillar tracks even have idler wheels!" At this point Dad Tech Support got involved. $Dad saw something amiss with the caterpillar tracks installation - for he is a diesel mechanic who specialises in earthmoving equipment - and pronounced, "these wheels [return rollers] are wrong, in real life they are under the centre of the tracks, not under the plates on the edge like this". We conferred and confirmed that the wheels had indeed been installed 'by the book' (the LEGO instructions); $Dad then asked me if I thought we could modify the model so the 'idler wheels' would be under the centre of the tracks instead of the edge. It only took a few seconds of inspection for $Dad and I to see that it would be easy to make the change, which involved moving the wheels from one side of the pieces they were attached to, to the other side. A minute later the change was done and I said to $Nephew, "now it's even better, it's just like a real one", to which of course $Nephew said, hey Dad, it's even better now, it's just like a real one!" The model was started on the afternoon of Christmas Day (Wednesday) and was finished on the following Sunday afternoon. I have to say, my four-year-old nephew did really well - the model is meant for 10-year-olds and up according to the box and he made very few mistakes in putting it together. I could have built it in a fraction of the time, but this was definitely a case of 'Tech Support deals with Competent User'. My nephew had hours of enjoyment putting it together, I had fun helping him and spending time with him and his father (who could have easily performed the same rôle I did in the job, but was very busy as Christmas was at his house) had fun making the change to the design. $Nephew has since had hours of fun playing with the finished crane as well. In conclusion, if LEGO models are to be used as assessment tools in a job interview process (and I don't remember having to build a LEGO model in order to get my job as a LEGO Model Builder), maybe see who improves the model by deviating from the instructions, rather than selecting the people who follow the instructions exactly - although I am sure there are situations where the latter approach would be better from the employer's point of view. [link] [comments]  |
| You need to make it so i can’t save anything to my monitor Posted: 03 Jan 2020 09:01 AM PST User: I just moved from one building to another and all the tech (minus the laptop) was using went back to the original user. Me: Ok. (we aren't allowed to give out spare hardware for situation like this, only if they are broken) User: Can you get me new hardware. Me: No, why didn't your manager order it two weeks ago when you were notified of the move? User: My manager said you could purchase the hardware for me. Me: No, we don't have the authorization to do so, that is why your manager is supposed to do this for you. User: So you can't? Me: No. User 5 min later: I found hardware, Can you set it up for me. Me: Ok. (Walks over and see there power supplies three docks, one monitor, an ethernet cable and a monitor. Figures out what goes where and gets it up and running makes it so screens can show desktop on monitor and extended on laptop.) User: Thanks. Me: No problem. (Starts to walk away) User asks: What does this mean Me: ( Looks at system and realizes she is 3 days past changing her password the system is giving her a chance to change it before blocking her) It's telling you need to change your password. User: Can I wait to do it? Me: No. User: Ok. (Changes password) I start to walk away. (again) User: Can you make it so my documents aren't saved to my monitor? Me: (Straight faced) What? User: I don't want by monitor to save my files. Me: (takes a breath and exhales then goes to explain that the monitor has no ability to save a file to it) User: I want screens the same. Me: Ok. (does it) User: Thanks. Me: nods and hurries away before user say something more that makes me want to take computer away. This person is a QA programmer! They make twice as much as I do, and they don't understand how a computer works?! I really need a new job... [link] [comments]  |
| Just put your router in bridge mode Posted: 03 Jan 2020 05:37 PM PST Sorry: a bit long I work for a fiber isp. Customer kept getting disconnected from his VPN. He had recently switched from cable, and told the csr (Customer service rep) that he needed us to put our router in bridge mode. A ticket was opened to send out a technician. The tech's manager looked at the work order and was like, "what?" He immediately reaches out to me in network operations. I tell the manager to ignore it; I reassign the ticket to me. Now, this is a college town with privately owned campus living. The guy works at the university, but as it turns out, his traffic is running through a router that's used for students. Many students can't afford a router, and they have wall jacks in their rooms, and/or we provide Wi-Fi. In turn, our router does have a firewall running with VLANs. So, I go in and configure a dmz (demilitarized zone) so he will not be affected by the firewall: all it takes for him to use it is to set his wan ip to a static ip that I will provide. So I call the customer: Me: generic introduction here Customer: I've been trying to get you guys to put your router in bridge mode. Me: yes, I know you're having issues with your vpn, and thats why I'm calling. We just need to make one quick change to your router and you'll be all set. Customer: there's nothing wrong with my router. I teach networking at <university> and you need to put your router, on your end, in bridge mode. Me: well, I set up a DMz for you and we just need to configure your router to use a static ip. Customer: no, you just need to put your ONT into bridge mode. Me: you can't put an ONT into bridge mode. Customer: uh, yes you can. An ONT is basically a router <.... No it isn't.... At all> and you need to put it in bridge mode. Me: sir, with all due respect, an ONT doesn't route traffic. Customer: yes it does! I don't understand why Comcast was perfectly fine putting their router in bridge mode, but you are refusing to! facepalm Me: the technology they use is very different, but rather than going into all of that, let's just get this fixed for you. Customer: no! I do want to go into that! How is it different? Me: did we rent you a wireless gateway, or did you have to buy your own router? Customer: I've always owned my own router, even with Comcast! facepalm fuck, that's not gonna help me here... Me: sir, a wireless gateway is a modem AND a router in one unit. To put a wireless gateway into bridge mode means you are turning off the router part so it only acts like a modem. We aren't dealing with a wireless gateway in your home. We are dealing with router connected to a super x that has six modules with 24 ports per module, connected to 96 other switches, which connect to switches as well. Comcast put the wireless gateway into bridge mode, turning off the routing side. If I did that, you, as well as very many others, would simply not have internet. Unless someone was really smart and set a static ip with the settings I would love to give you. Customer: then just put my port into bridge mode. Me (trying not to lose it): just humor me and lets put this static ip into your router. Customer: just give me the settings, I don't need you to walk me through it. Me: OK! Here's the ip, netmask, and gw! And for dns, just use 8.8.8.8 and 4.2.2.1. Customer: I have to use those dns? fucks sake dude, for fucks sake Me: you can use any dns you want, but those are root. Heck, that 8 one is Google. Customer: I know that's Google, and I don't trust Google. omg, yes, Google is logging dns requests... Goddamn it, gotta hold myself together... Me: that's fine, I can give you our dns servers, but you really can use any that accepts your traffic. Customer: I was going to use <rattles off a few ips> I don't fucking goddamn care! Me: that's great! Just pop that in, and I want to confirm you have internet. Customer: because you think it won't work? Me: I want to be the last person at (my company) you have to deal with to get this issue resolved. Customer: well I can't right now, I have other things to deal with; I don't have time. Too much is on my plate. But I'll try it later, and if it doesn't work, you'll hear from me. you don't have fucking time?! Neither do I! You fucking shit! Just get the fuck off my phone Me: OK, but you should be all set. Have a happy new year! and I kid you not, his closing statement: Customer: I hope they didn't monitor this call, because it's obvious you fell off the script. click .................. My heart aches for customer service representatives and installers/support who are skilled at their job. That was about noon today. And students: if the customer was being honest, and you are going to school for networking at a university, it could be a fucking idiotic blow hard like this teaching you. Fortunately: I didn't hear back from him. Thank God that wank didn't fat finger it. Edit: sorry for how things were formatted; chunks of text were lost. That was venting it out at 6 pm. So imagine: that was at noon, and six hours later, I was still so riled I couldn't write out the story. Thank you for letting me get that out. [link] [comments]  |
| A Friend in Need & Flooded Junction Boxes Posted: 03 Jan 2020 09:54 AM PST Background: I probably broke some rules doing this, but it was long enough ago and a small enough thing that (hopefully) nobody will get in trouble by me posting this pseudonymously and anonymized on Reddit. I worked for a particular ISP's call center here in Canada for a while, and some time later moved back to my (very) rural hometown (sub-2000 people). A friend was going through some personal things, all while moving to a new (to her) place just outside town limits, but still within ADSL range. Seeing the opportunity to take what would probably be a frustrating thing off her plate, I offered to take care of setting up her internet. She gave me her personal information, a spare key to the house, and told me to go ahead and make it happen. There were a few reasons I volunteered to take this on. First, I used to work for the ISP, so I knew the verbiage to use with the call center when setting up a connection in a rural area. Physical addresses are different, and it can cause much confusion. Secondly, this was an older property in an area that had original copper lines everywhere, with junction boxes in places that regularly flooded. You can read up on it if you want to, but the short version is that once upon a time the government ran phone lines everywhere and operated the telephone system. Eventually a couple provinces sold everything to a private company with the agreement that they were required to continue providing service to everyone, regardless of how rural. This was decades ago, so if you saw anything with the old government telco logo on it, you knew it was old. This was the case with all the junction boxes in the area, as well as the demarc on the side of this house. The first phone call the to ISP went pretty okay; I set up the account with her information and let them assume I was a room mate with authorization on the account (this is the part where I probably broke some rules). They scheduled a tech to come out to do the installation a week later. I intentionally didn't ask them to run an automated line test like I normally would; I knew that if I did it would probably fail, and rather than fixing the issue, the underpaid, undertrained, script-reading automaton (I can say that because I used to be one of them) would say that service wasn't possible. How did I know the test would fail? Well, most of the junction boxes in the area regularly flooded, because they were located part way up the sides of drainage ditches, or sometimes right in the middle of them. They're supposed to be sealed units with waterproof connections, but decades of harsh weather took it's toll. This included the demarc on the side of the house, which I'd opened to run fresh cabling to (another rule broken...) and found to be full of corrosion. When the tech came out and plugged in to do his in-person line test, it of course failed. The tech was newer and dispatched from a neighbouring city, so I filled him in on the whole government-telco-ancient-flooded-junctions thing. He informed me that he wasn't authorized to do line repairs on this trip, just the basic installation, so he documented everything, ran a couple more tests for thoroughness's sake (kudos to him for this) and told me to expect a call to set up another appointment when they would do the line repairs and then install. Another week later another tech was dispatched. Tested at the house, fail. Tested at the CO, failed. He had to start at the first hop from the CO and test every junction between there and the house. Most of them failed and needed new parts and redone connections. Half a day later he was finished, but told me that he wasn't authorized to do the installation, just the line repairs. Another appointment would need to be scheduled. At this point I was laughing to myself about how long this was all taking as I had expected it to go like this, but it was getting to be a little more than I'd hoped for. Finally, yet another week later, the local tech was finally dispatched! I knew this guy from other installations and repairs (him being the only local tech for the ISP/telco and me being the only IT guy in the area), so a nice chat was had while he dug the modem and testing tools out for the install. But upon testing, it seemed there was still something wrong with the lines. Dang-nabbit! Of course, he wasn't authorized to do line repairs on this dispatch, so another appointment would need to be scheduled. Or would it?... He looked through the logs of what had been done so far, and decided to bend the rules a little. Because the failed test had been registered in the system already, he couldn't proceed with the install even if he could fix the line issue, but he was able to come up with a plan that should cut down on how many more callouts would be required. He fixed the remaining line issues (another junction box that was missed by the last guy, and completely replacing the demarc on the side of the house), and told me to phone the call center before the next tech came out to have them run another automated line test. If it passed they could change the work order for the next appointment to be the installation instead of a line repair followed by another installation appointment. Only one more appointment instead of two! I called in as per his instructions, the test passed, and the work order was changed. The following week a technician and trainee arrived, we plugged in the modem, and internet was finally had after what was at least of month of line repairs and waiting for appointments! After a while, once we were sure everything was going to stay working, my friend called in and had my name removed from the account. She still experienced the odd slow-down when the drainage ditched filled in the spring, but not enough to cause problems. Certainly better than the only other alternative at the time, which was satellite. That company will get it's own stories in the future... [link] [comments]  |
| Can't protect users from themselves Posted: 03 Jan 2020 10:46 AM PST One morning, I get to the office to an email from my boss with me as a third wheel --
I glance at the screenshot ${customer} sent. She's not logged in. I can see the company logo and this beautiful picture of a Joshua tree I set as the background, but none of the rest of the page.
${sr_engineer} is an eloquent sort of person. ${boss} responds privately
Later that week, I get another message from ${boss}
He forgot to log in. You can't help users from themselves :) [link] [comments]  |
| External (customer) tech support for a software company Posted: 03 Jan 2020 11:11 PM PST I work in external tech support for a software company. The software is relevant to the automotive industry and our end users are repair people. Needless to say, the vast majority of them are not very "tech-savvy". I've had some really interesting calls over the years. A guy once called into our "small engine" software queue. He was not a current customer. He stated that he has some Amish people who work for him, so he didn't have a computer to run the software. He wanted to know if he bought the software, if we could install it on a ...............WORD PROCESSOR? This was in 2007 but still, who used them in 2007??? I took a call from field tech from a 3rd party company that we sometimes contracted installs out to. She called because she couldn't locate the "delete" key on the keyboard that was attached to the server! The customer was using a different one than what came with the server and she couldn't find the delete key on it. I told her that she was in Idaho and I was a few states over, and that I couldn't see that far. She wasn't happy..... We received an email asking for help with a particular function on one of our subscription websites. We responded back asking him to email us his customer number, phone number, and other basic information so we could locate his account in our system. He responded back: "I can't send email to you"........ Kind of a reverse one here. We hired a guy on a 60-day contract to help out. He was studying for his 3rd or 4th Microsoft certification. He took a call from a customer that was having trouble viewing one of our websites. Our websites would only work on IE. He came to me for help. ME: "What version of IE is the customer using?". HIM: "That's the thing. Every time I ask him to tell me what is says under Help>About, it says AOL version blah blah. ME: "That's because they are using the AOL browser, not IE.". HIM: "Oh. I see.". ME (to myself): "3 Microsoft Certifications and ZERO common sense!" [link] [comments]  |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Tales From Tech Support. To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, United States | |
No comments:
Post a Comment