Tech Support Mode

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July 13, 2001
So this lady right now is reading me an email that we send to our users that have poopy connections. She's reading it word for word. Like I've never heard it before. Then when she gets to a point that she disagrees with, she tells me about her "guru" that knows everything about computers. Then of course I try to explain how it really is. Everytime, she says "well whatever." Then continues reading. Lather, rinse, repeat. So she got done "explaining" everything to me and says "ok. I just wanted to let you know." Now, on a call like that, the person is not even looking for help. She didn't want me to try to help her get a better connection or faster or any of the above. She didn't care for that. The absolute only purpose for that call was to tell me, the "expert", how bad our service is and she knows this because that's what Billy Bob Computer in my Basement told her. Maam, with all due respect, if you want to call someone just to vent, that's what friends and therapists are for. Please try to remember that your guru friend is not the know-all of your computer nor the computer industry. For instance if you or your friend knew anything about DIALUP INTERNET SERVICE, you would know that you are connecting over an analog phone line that was made to talk over the phone like 20 years ago. You would also know that computer hardware and internet technology is a tad beyond that. That would be like trying to drive a car that was built in the 20's on a busy freeway. Do you think you'd get knocked off a lot then? HMmm? Yes, of course you would. Secondly, let me just distinguish a really STUPID myth that no one can seem to let go of, thank you AOL. Our servers do not get "overloaded." We do not use all of the incoming phone lines and modems that we have to provide you your service. We don't even use EIGHTY PERCENT (80%) of our phone lines and modems!! Even at peak! (All of our lines are digital and can support incoming analog/digital calls.) Think about that for a second. 20% of the hardware that we have is idle 99.9% of the time. It does nothing, yet we still pay oodles of cash to keep these lines and modems here just in case. Because we are good. We are prepared and we care if something goes wrong. Of course, every now and again, it might get super busy if a modem bank were to drop momentarily, but let's look at this realistically. Internet Service is our business. It's how we make our living. We are beyond well prepared if anything like that ever happens. The 2 administrators that I work for wear beepers 24/7, even in bed (so I hear.) They spend about 85% of their lives here, in this office building, in the server room that they built for you. If any piece of equipment anywhere in this building turns off, or even studders, they get a page and they go immediately to the source. That isn't something that happens every night at 7:30 when you think it's "busy" and we're "overloaded" because that's what you heard on the Dateline Special Report. Talking on teevee is what those guys do best. Providing Internet Service is what we do best. Several tangents, main point: We provide service for thousands of customers who are happy with what they have. It's dialup and they understand that. Yes some people have much better phone lines than others and can sustain and good connection for long periods of time. You can't. The only variable there is your computer and your phoneline. If you aren't happy with your dialup service, please do not call me and complain if you don't want to know the truth. Dish out the cash for broadband or at least a digital phone line. If you don' t have the cash, more than likely your internet connection isn't something of substantial importance in your life. If it is, I'm sorry, technology is not free or cheap. That isn't my fault so stop telling me it is when you are the ignorant one with your hands over your ears. Thank you. Good day.
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July 20, 2001
Look people, I do not know what error number 030498772k8482psi203894 in Outlook Express means. Don't tell me the error and expect that I have all possible Windows error messages memorized by number.
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August 8, 2001
No sir. You aren't "pretty saavy". You don't understand what you're talking about, so please, cut the attitude and let me show you how to connect to the Internet. K? ..|.,
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August 10, 2001
Here's a funny one. My cube mate got this call. The customer hasn't paid his bill for 2 months so he got disconnected. He called yesterday to make a credit card payment. We do not process credit card payments ourselves, we have to send it to our accounting department to do it, which can take a day or two sometimes. Cube mate explains that to the customer who then asks why it was disconnected. He says, "The last payment we received was 2 months ago. That's why it was disconnected." Then the customer asks, "Is this going to happen often?" LOL - well no, not if you pay your bill it won't happen often. Silly people.
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August 13, 2001
Oh she did not just tell me how good that Jolly Rancher is. The one she is sucking on while I try to help her with her email. I mean who would do that? Boooo.
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August 14, 2001
Annoying call number 749. Me: "Okay I'll need you to double click on My Computer." Dude: "Okay hold on" *phone slammed down on the table* *patter patter across the room* *silence* *patter patter back* *pick up phone* "Okay now what?" Me: "Now you go pay $0.75 for a longer phone cord. Thank you for calling." *release*
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September 6, 2001
I know it's mean. I know they can't help it. This is a report I just entered for the last call I had. Come on people!!! Incident for Customer ID XXXX - Jane Doe Called tech support.... Said she couldn't get the Internet on her computer.... Explained her procedure of dialing in and said 'it just sat there' and she 'couldn't do anything with it.' Showed her how to open a browser. MF
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September 13, 2001
There is a certain company here in this fine desolate town I live in that has a network of over 125 computers. Their IT person is trying to find a company to host mail for them. Let's call him Mr. Notsosmart. Mr. Notsosmart has called up here 5 times today. He supposedly has a ISDN connection through a major caffeine drink making company we will call Moca Mola. Anywho, Mr. Notsosmart was provided email accounts through Moca Mola, but isn't actually a part of the Moca Mola industry, so they would like their own email. I explained that we can do that for him and suggested Outlook Express or Microsoft Outlook as a program for him to use on his ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY FIVE computer network. To which he replied, "For email? Outlook Express? Never heard of it." So yeah. I should be working at his job making whatever they pay him to be the head IT guy. Sheesh.
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September 20, 2001
One of the worst calls you can possibly receive is from a person who knows they are computer illiterate, but know that they know just enough to get by. Lemme 'splain. No, no, too much. Lemme sum up. This is the person who calls for help because he is not completely confident in himself, but once he gets a tech on the phone he knows all the answers. Not only is he a pseudo know-it-all, he's also a brancher. Let me just show you by conversation: Customer: Okay, I'm having problems with my email. I got this computer a few years ago from my son who is an engineer at the University of Texas. He graduated in '97 and married Bertha. They live in Minnesota now and have 6 dogs, 3 cats, a lizard, a rooster and a baby. Cute baby..(etc...) Anyway, I'm pretty sure I have everything setup correctly. I double checked the incoming and outgoing mail servers and my username and password and I'm getting an error message that says "Could not log on to the server using secure password authentication." Me: *take a breath to start to fix the problem* Okay, you have Outlook Express open right now? Customer: Yes. Me: Okay click on..... Customer: Another thing I just looked at, when I have the accounts here in the account properties window, it doesn't say what I want it to say. I'd like it to say my name instead of *whateverstupidthinghehasintherenow* Me: Okay.... first lets get to the first problem you were having. Go ahead and click on Tools and then Accounts in Outlook Express for me. Customer: Okay got it Me: Ok, now you should be on the mail tab Customer: Right. Me: Now click on Properties over to your........ Customer: Well now hold on. There is an account in here from my old ISP! How do I remove it? Oh, I'll just highlight it and click remove, that should work. Yeah there we go. Okay now what were you saying? Me: *silent sigh* Okay. Highlight your mail account with us and click on Properties. Customer: Ok done. Me: Okay click on the Servers tab. Customer: Oh now wait a minute, this doesn't look right. The email address here is not right. Me: Sir, click on the servers tab. Customer: Okay.. Me: Remove the check mark from the box that says Logon Using Secure Password Authentication, click Apply, Ok, Close, Send/Receive. Customer: It worked!! Thanks!! Now, lets talk about screen savers for a moment. Me: You don't need screen savers. Disable them. If you're scared you'll mess up your monitor when you leave your computer on, turn the monitor off. Thank you for calling have a nice day.*click* _________________________
October 23, 2001
First, this cracks me up. A guy that I've been working with to get DSL for his business, everytime he hangs up the phone he says "Sounds like a winner" only he says it faster than I can say "Goodbye" so it sounds like he's saying "Soondsnukawinter". I laugh everytime. Next, the bad. I post bad experiences with customers all the time. I post them and I usually give a disclaimer. I know they are not computer literate people, so making fun of them for that is rather useless because ignorance is usually not a choice. Sometimes, yes, but that's another post. Now. The lady friend I have had to deal with over the past few weeks is causing me some very painful tummy tumors. First of all, she came to the Internet 101 class here that I teach once a month. She came 2 months ago. She informed me that she had been to 8 (eight) other beginning Internet classes. I knew right away she was going to be a handful. Since that class, 2 months ago, this lady has called technical support not short of 5 times a week. She has been here to the office at least 4 times. She lives an hour away! She makes special trips just to come up here! She has no power whatsoever of retaining knowledge. I'm not saying this makes her less of a person or that I'm better than her. I'm just saying it is SO ANNOYING to try to do technical support for her. She wonders constantly when I'm trying to get to her email settings, she clicks wherever she wants and then I hear "Oooh.... oops... hold on let me get back to that screen. OOoooh." She has a revelation at least twice per conversation and that revelation is normally her figuring out that the right mouse button and the left mouse button do not do the same thing. At LEAST twice a call. She got very mad at me one day because I walked her through some settings and told her she would need to hang up and try again to connect and if it didn't work to call back. She called back. I wasn't at my desk. My co-worker told her that, then helped her some. She ended up having to call back later that afternoon and I answered the call. She informed me that I had gone to the bathroom after I told her to call me back and that was very rude and she didn't want me to help her anymore so for me to transfer her to someone else. Now that I think about it, I think I posted about this lady before. Well anyway, she's looney. I don't want her to come to the Internet class. I don't even want to teach that class anymore. Anyway, I'm so very frustrated with her. That one specific user. I'm pretty sure she has some kind of mental illness. So that makes me have a little sympathy. Plus she hates me now so when I get her on the phone she asks for someone else. hehe sad job this is. ___________________
October 24, 2001
Well not really tech support, but work related none the less. I can not stand it when a customer doesn't pay their bill and their service gets cut off, so they call us and tell us the long sob story of being in the hospital, having surgery, a mother dying, a child failing class, a dog puking, a bird molting or a finger bleeding from a papercut. I hate to sound insensitive, but I hear it all the time. I'm not a moron, so don't lie to me and think you've gotten away with it because I extended your account. It's company policy to extend the account if you call to make arrangments regardless of your personal tragedy. Just be honest. Tell me you're a lazy poop head and didn't send the payment in for two months. That will make me feel better. ____________________
October 26, 2001
Here's a good one. A guy calls me and says "the lady that I rent a house to next door has your service, and when she writes me emails, she never uses capital letters. I told her to fix that because it was improper capitalization, but she said that your service won't allow her to use capital letters in their emails." ... Does anyone out there understand how absurd that is?
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November 15, 2001
I love it when sales people call from other call centers and at the end of the call we both just sit there because we are both too lazy to reach over and push the release button. Well operator etiquette is that the originator releases the call. Except for with relay. We could never hang up. Well if a caller hung up but the call didn't disconnect, we had to wait 2 minutes, then call a supervisor over and explained what happened, then the supervisor had to hit the release button. I always thought that was stupid. Am I making any sense here? No? Right then. Back to work.
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November 26, 2001
Here's a tip to angry customer #4097. If you're mad and throwing a temper tantrum for being on hold, that's fine. If you feel like yelling to me that you want your account closed immediately and then you feel like hanging up on me, that's fine too. But when you want to close the account, it usually helps if you give your name before you actually hang up. Yeah. That's smart of ya. Moron.
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November 29, 2001
(Not Tech Support, but funny) So I went to the McD's here and sat at the remote order thingy before drive through window number 1 for about 3 minutes before I decided something must be broke for them to not even tell me to hold for a moment. I pulled up to window number 1 and the poor little girl looked at me, looked at her computer and started pressing buttons in a panic type mode. Then she asked me to hang on and went and got her manager. Then I told her that I hadn't placed my order yet so it probably wouldn't be in her computer yet. I've never seen a more confused McD's worker as I did just then. For a few seconds I could almost see the wheels in her panicked head turning. Manager standing there, me staring at her, she was nervous. She finally managed to ask me to drive to the next window because she couldn't take my order so I did. After I placed my order she was standing there and took my money and *ran* back to her window to get my change, *ran* back and gave me my change. I'm pretty sure she was new because she was trippin. The guy at window number 2 told me that his battery had gone out on his headset thing so he didn't know I was sitting out there. Needless to say, if you don't get to place your order at the remote window, it's best to approach window number 1 in a calm manner so as to not frighten the attendant.