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Worst Explanation From Tech Support?
Disgruntled-with-Tech-Support asks: "Let's face it: At some point or another, we've had to deal with some form of tech support. Quite often, it's a hit-or-miss experience depending on the level of support required. Occasionally, strange, bizarre, or nonsensical explanations result from the problems reported, such as this one: I had just had DSL installed, only to find it much slower than the 56K line I was looking to get rid of. On calling the provider, I was told (by someone who likely reading off cue cards) to visit one of their internal websites for measuring bandwidth. While there, I observed that they had both bytes per second and bits per second listed, and that the number of bytes/sec != bits/sec * 8, rather a factor around 13 or 14. I pointed this out as a possible problem, and the guy's reasoning: 'Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?"
He *was* way off... it was the bytes getting stuck, not the bits!
And amazingly enought, it always did. Lazy bugger that Scotty.
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
That my website was down because a link was posted on some news website, causing millions of geeks to load the page and overload the server. What a crock of shit!
Uh, it looks like the bytes are getting through to you ok, but the bits are getting stuck someplace.' What was your worst explanation from tech support?
Must.... control... fist of death....
I call to complain that my service was flaky. Several times an hour the cable modem would just go out for 30 seconds then return. I call them and the guy says "well the problem isn't on our end it must be your network". I respond "Why do you say that?". He says "Well because your cable modem has been online and operational for the past 3 days with no disconnections". I say "Oh really? That's interesting... because its power has been unplugged for the past 20 minutes..."
http://brandonbloom.name
I've had some doozies of experiences at a couple CompUSA.
One time the guy tried to explain to me that I would need about $50+ more hardware than necessary to fix what I suspected to be a buggy RAM problem.
On another occasion, I was with a friend, checking out a couple hot-swap IDE cages for a development server I was building and a CompUSA dorkus walks buy and says "They're really overrated, and you probably don't need them, unless you're building a server (guy leaves)"
I didn't know what to say, he didn't help, he just offered a stupid opinion and left. So I left too.
Error 407 - No creative sig found
I had a connection. I had an IP. However, nothing would go through the modem.
I even tried 3 different PCS and a Mac running Jaguar, directly to the modem, and still couldn't get anything through. And yet, I had a working, connected (if not logged in) modem.
So I called their support. Three techs I went through. They kept saying it was my problem, because they could ping my modem.
So I got to a second level guy. Chatted with him a while, told him what I'd done, what the first level guys had me redo.
He tells me he'll have the network guys check into it.
A day passes. Two. I call back.
Oh, it'll be a week before the problem's resolved.
A week. And four days.
I call back. I give my case number.
Drumroll.
I wasn't using an Earthlink-supported modem.
*blink* WTF? Excuse me? You guys SENT me this damn thing in the first place, and it worked fine til 11 days ago, and now it works again after I turned it off for two days.
Never did find out the real reason for it...
No, that's data harmonicAs. You got da bad block blues.
The Democratic Party: We've been pussies since 1968!
When I was a teenager I had a Sinclair Spectrum computer that loaded games off casettes. One game I bought wouldn't load properly and I was told by the salesman "Probably the Pixels on your type of TV are modulating incorrectly with the computer causing the loading error".
http://www.perthonline.net
At a computer repair place I was working at a few years back, I recall one of the techs there explaining to a customer that the reason his power supply had stopped working was that the "flux capacitor" had blown. :)
Mind you this tech wasn't an idiot (or an ID ten T), he just wanted to get rid of the customer
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
One time I called Redhat for tech support in getting a RH to run on a laptop. I was told, "LCD's don't have scan rates and frequency settings like CRT's do."
I almost went through the phone to choke the bastard.
-k
- Kate
"DNA is life. The rest is just translation."
At one big corporation I worked at, they rolled out a security patch and it caused my Windows machine to start acting up, so I called the IT support (we were encouraged not to fix problems ourselves), and the guy on the phone took control of my desktop remotely from his end, so I could see what he was doing. He got the Task Manager up, paused a few seconds, and then said "That's really odd, there's a process taking up 99% of your processor time". He tried to kill the process, but it wouldn't go away, and he repeatedly tried to kill it about five times.
He didn't seem to realise that the "Idle" entry isn't actually a process...
Ah, the infamous PEBCAK and ID-10-T errors.
Yes I can say i've actually told a customer they had an ID10T problem
=D
While my boss was in the office.
She laughed.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
My wife's (former) tech support person told her that her Windows 98 machine was crashing because it had DOS on it, and that the two were incompatible. He kindly reformatted the hard disk over lunch and reinstalled everything, supposedly without DOS, but didn't think it was necessary to back up her work. Then he yelled at her because he thought she should have noticed that he had been failing to back up her machine overnight, as required as part of his job description.
"Oh, that's perfectly normal; the computer just has to get used to the software."
On an on-site call about fifteen years ago, I told a clueless yet very inquisitive (i.e. annoying) lady that the belt had been slipping on her data bus, causing her computer to crash. She was much relieved when I told her it was no problem for me to tighten it back up.
I have no recollection what the real problem was, but whenever her computer would crash after that, she would call and tell me her data belt was slipping again.
When I did phone support as a student worker, I had to tell someone that their email was unavailable because the server sprung a leak and it was out of water.
Unfortunately this was true as we were still running a water cooled IBM Mainframe.
The clients seemed to accept it without question but I'd have to image they though we were yanking them.
I'm not feeling witty so bite me
When I was first learning about electronics, I was trying to find a simple way to convert DC to AC. I asked the RadioShack guy if I could use a bridge rectifier in reverse. "Maybe." Argh. Now I know better... what a waste of a dollar.
A friend of mine had satellite internet working for months, and one day it started cutting out on him. The signal strength would show EXCELLENT->BAD->ZERO->EXCELLENT. It'd keep repeating in this cycle so fast, it couldn't even initialize the connection. So it was basically worthless.
After installing all their updates, rebooting 10 times, rebooting the satellite modem 10 times, etc. the tech support guy told me 1) I must not've done what he'd been saying and 2) I have to uninstall everything and start over. If you don't have the CDs we'll have to mail them to you.
Enough of that crap, there was no way I was messing with that software anymore. I already fought with that thing for hours. Time to climb up on the hot roof and look at the dish.
The problem: About 500 bees nesting in the thing. Apparently it was cool...that or they were just getting high on the radiation, I'm not sure which.
The solution: 3 large cans of Raid.
I called the tech support guy back and he didn't believe me...
this site is excellent, i couldn't stop cracking up after reading some of these
# Tech Support: "Type 'fix' with an 'f'."
# Customer: "Is that 'f' as in 'fix'?"
# Tech Support: "Tell me, is the cursor still there?"
# Customer: "No, I'm alone right now."
# Co-Worker #1: "A boolean variable has two possible values: true or false."
# Co-Worker #2: "Umm...true?"
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Me: My internet access is running at far slower speeds than it usually does.
Tech: Do you have a router?
Me: ...yes...
Tech: Well, you know, you might want to replace it. Routers can wear out, like lightbulbs.
Me: ...
I've always had great experiences... just today a nice young man told me the best way to fix my computer was to type format c: ... well, I did it and things seem to be on track for
I worked technical support at a start-up ISP in '96. We had 5 external USR 33.6 modems hooked up to a term server. One day my boss accidentally turned off the UPS powering all the modems, all 5 users were cut off. Worse, while the term server rebooted no one could log in for about 3 minutes. An angry user called up, and I had to given an explanation better than "my boss pulled the plug." So I said: "Reboot your system." He did. "Try now." He got on. "It seems your system experienced a modem feedback loop. It happens from time to time, rebooting usually fixes it." My boss gave me a C-note for manufacturing the term "modem feedback loop".
Once, while I was in Hell I couldn't remember a phone number. So, obviously, I called the operator. Man, that guy was a bastard.
Kind thoughts do not change the world
I call up Time Warner RoadRunner support for the cable internet service. The cable connection is down. The conversation with Tech Support goes like this:
.... ?
WD: Hi, my cable modem isn't working. The Link light on the modem is blinking rapidly.
(I can hear TS typing up a trouble ticket with one, maybe two fingers)
TS: Whoah whoah whoah... How do you spell that? B - L - I
WD: Yes M'am, B-L-I-N-K. Thank you.
This is no exaggeration. That is exactly how it went down.
Attention Earthling: We have been studying your culture and We find it ... fascinating.
Your use of the expression "fucking comedian" leads Us to interpret this as a "profession" or line of work. Previous study has led Us to generate a rough understanding of "comedian." We have nothing really like "comedian" here on Betelgeuse IV; the nearest thing would be translated roughly as "dentist." We also have deduced a wealth of words referring to copulation (again no real equivalent exists here; the closest is "shovelling volcanic ash out of the commode")
However the confluence of the terms "fucking" and "comedian" has confounded even Our most famous dentists.
We would be most grateful for an explanation.
I ordered cable Internet from Charter a few years ago. The good thing was that they had someone out there in less than a week. The bad thing was everything else.
At the same time, we switched from satellite to cable TV. Just in case Charter had problems, I told them NOT to remove the satellite dish. At some point during the install, he decided to use the coax coming off the dish-- which he pulled out of the wall, leaving a hole in my garage's wall. Furthermore, he hit the dish-- hard-- and dented it, rendering it worthless.
I wasn't home at the time, and I knew he'd need to access my computer, so I set up an administrator account on Windows for him. (Hey, It was 2001, I hadn't switched to Linux yet.) I left this note for him, exactly these words: "username: Charterguy; no password." It's probably a good thing that he couldn't figure out what "no password" meant, seeing as he would have ruined my computer if he got onto it. (Of course, he left without running any cables or installing the modem, because he couldn't log on to my computer.)
And, just to add insult to injury, that night, when I went to sleep, I could swear that I was hearing voices! Turns out, he left his radio in my attic. (And those radios last for days on a charge if you only listen on them without transmitting.) I never did find it, so for the next three days, I slept to the sound of field calls.
Mod Interesting, I need karma.
Whatever it is I'm complaining about, I'm sure the Republicans did it. This is
I once had to call into the 'lovely' folks at Logitech to deal with issues regarding a wireless keyboard and mouse package. At the time the keyboard and mouse would randomly loose their connection to the base station. So after doing some standard troubleshooting myself and checking every concievable thing, I bit the bullet and called them. The guy on the line was not only rude but I questioned whether he had attended his science classes back in grade 10. Call it manufacturer denial, but he tried to insist that the colour of my mouse pad would somehow 'suck' the RF signals into its deep black hole of 'mousepaddery' before they got to the base station less then a foot away. The word 'wow' came to mind, but for all the wrong reasons. I know dark colours can attract certain waves better then others but come on!
-- Bored? Check out my Portfolio
What he's saying is that he'll kick your ash and break your teeth in the process, necessitating a trip to the dentist. That's what it means to be a fucking comedian.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
His responses were professional, until the point where he mentioned that the 900mhz model was 30% faster than the 700mhz model, and that could possibly justify the increase in the number of time I needed to restart. I then asked if, given two machines, one being twice as fast as the other, but crashing twice as often, these machines were equally usable. At that point he backed from his earlier statement :-)
Regards,
John
Falling You - beautiful
I have a 256Kb satellite connection (out in the sticks) and one time when my bandwidth dropped to below 28Kb speed or less, tech supp said "the cloud cover is slowing the speed of the beam down but once the skies clear you'll be back to full speed." //grumble// ...shouldn't have told him it was cloudy. ...worst part is I'm stuck with it 'cause it's the only company I can get out here with anything faster than dialup.
The problem eventually "fixed itself" but when I called again for the same problem about a month later, I made sure to say there wasn't a cloud in the sky. His response (almost sure it was the same guy)?
"There is invisible weather fenomenon slowing the beam down."
I couldn't fail to disagree with you less.
Can I ask who was the one that perpetuated all of those hardware misconceptions?
Whoever decided to tell the uninformed masses that the hard drive is that large rectangular box on the ground should be shot.
Me: My laptop won't boot. ...
Support: You need to open a ticket on the help desk web page before we can help you.
Me:
One time I was working with an application server called NetDynamics running on a Solaris machine when NetDynamics tech support said "It's a problem with Solaris, it's a Sun problem". I yelled at him "Sun bought you last year, you ARE Sun!!!" He stammered and said "Yaa, that's true...but it is a problem with Solaris". Ugh.
My cable modem had been going on and off for about 10-20 seconds a few times a day. I waited about 3 days, figuring they were simply "working" on it. I called tech support, only to be told "This happens every year about this time. The sun interferes with our satellites, which affect your cable modem. There is nothing we can do, sorry."
The following was published by an insurance company for internal distribution. These reports were submitted when policy-holders were asked for a brief statement describing their particular accident.
I had this exact same problem when I had my Speakeasy service (through Covad) installed earlier this year. For me it lasted exactly 14 days before it magically started working one night with no explanation to this day.
Every time I called them to see if they had made any progress, I got the same "do you have a router, does it have a firewall, are you running Windows, did you try blah blah blah" run around. I eventually narrowed it down to an MTU problem by crafting custom response packets from my external webserver until I hit a packet size that got through, but even with this information they weren't able to fix it.
I browse Slashdot at +3, Funny
User: OH MY GOD THE COMPUTER IS ON FIRE! Help! There's a computer on fire.
Tech Support: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
User: My name is blah, I'm the assistant dean for the University.
Tech Support (to himself): OH FUCK
Boss the next day: Umm, yeah. You're outta here. Nothing I can do.
Turned out to be a disk that crashed the hard way. And the platter decided it was still going to spin...and get really hot...and...you know the story.
This might be slightly OT, but you can't ignore the BOFH excuse server!
I once received a call from Qworst offering to sell me DSL. Since it had not been available in my area when I first moved in, I was interested to hear that it was available. To their credit, it was, in fact, newly available. To their discredit, the person I was speaking with wanted to bundle MSN with it.
I asked whether MSN would give me a static IP address (knowing full well where this conversation was going to lead). Her response: "It says here that you get 9 email addresses."
I explained, politely, that there was a difference between IP addresses and email addresses. She insisted that there was not, and that I would recieve 9 email addresses if I signed up with them.
I asked her if she knew what I was talking about, at which point she became indignant. She began to expound upon how *much* she knew about it all, and that I should trust her, she knows what she's talking about, and that I would receive 9 email addresses.
After a bit more back and forth, I decided to change tack - I said that this was all very fine and well, but that I would much rather use a 3rd party ISP. After explaining to her what an ISP was, and how this was different than MSN in this context, she said that such a thing was impossible to do. I was unable to suppress the cough of surprise.
"Excuse me? I had a different provider the last time that I had DSL at a previous address. I know for a fact that you can do this."
She was insistent that it was impossible, and became belligerent. At this point, it was all fun and games for me (I mean, more so than originally), so I played along and said that the real reason that I wanted a 3rd party ISP was so that I could be sure to get a static IP address, and that I was pretty sure that this was not a part of MSN's service.
She reminded me, again, of exactly how many email addresses I would receive. I told her she didn't know what she was talking about, and she said some very rude things and put me on hold while she talked to a supervisor.
I waited for a couple of minutes, and when she returned, she was very sheepish and apologetic. You see, it turns out that you *can* order DSL with a 3rd party ISP, but that she was only a part of the sales team doing this particular promotion, so if I wanted to order DSL that way, I'd need to call their DSL sales line. (The irony of this exchange was, of course, lost on her.)
I politely thanked her for her help, and recommended that she read the Qwest DSL website and learn about the difference between IP addresses and email addresses before talking to more customers. She thanked me, and I hung up.
That green slime had it coming.
Ouch. . .
Well, in defense, our Unix servers were (trying to remember) System 5, I think. . . Which SCO owns. . . But there were several contributing factors to having to reboot the servers. a) crappy server cases, not enough cooling b) crappy SCSI HDs, prone to fail in their RAID configuration c) We had shitty programmers, and there were so many programs running concurrently that our programmers wrote, its not easy to kill each one individually. d) Making the registers useless for about 5 minutes, because we hate the cashiers.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Our 1st level tech support forwarded a call to me because the woman couldn't figure out her password. When I talked to the woman, she said, "The woman I was just talking to told me my password started with an 'X' as in 'Zebra'. What should I type?"
Having worked at a help desk for a printer/scanner company, I've had the opportunity to give some questionable explanations just to get rid of the customer on the phone.
Customer: my scanner takes a long time to go through its scanning process
Me: (I go through the usual steps, then ask) Do you have a USB cable we could try?
Customer: Yeah (customer spends 8 minutes figuring out how to swap cables) Ok, wow! It's going so much faster now! What did you do?
Me: Well, USB has a much higher data transfer rate, so (customer interrupts)
Customer: So the different wire makes it faster?
Me: Uh, yeah. That's why it's called "USB". It stands for "Unbelievable Speed Bus".
Customer: Really? Haha! You computer guys always have clever names for things...
The stupidest tech support answer I've ever run into was during the height of the virus/worm scares in February.
My cable modem connection had stopped work. Given my ISPs track record, this was unremarkable, but after it continued for 2 days, I decided to call the tech support number. After supplying my ID number, the support person told me that my connection was intentionally shut off because I was broadcasting a widely-circulated Windows virus. I promptly informed the tech support person that I did not use the Windows operating system on any of my computers, and that I could not possibly have the virus I was accused of having.
The support rep immediately told me that I had the virus, and that they would not turn my connection back on until I jumped through their anti-virus hoops. I argued for almost 10 minutes with this neophyte that I could not use their Windows anti-virus on my Linux systems, and that even if I could, it would not do a damn bit of good. Did it matter? Of course not.
Finally, in order to get my connection back on, I agreed to perform their anti-virus tricks "to the best of my ability", and install Windows just so I could "remove the virus" from my system. The rep actually thought this was an excellent resolution to the problem, but for some reason didn't believe I would actually do it (could have been my vehement renouncements against the entirety of Microsoft's products). After another 5 minutes of cajoling, I convinced her to turn my connection back on so I could get the anti-virus tools, and access Windows Update.
I was, however, given a stern warning that if I was found to persist in operating with this virus, I would have my account revoked, and my services cancelled. I submissively agreed, and thanked the rep for her time and patience. I haven't heard anything since, and I never did actually install Windows or use the anti-virus crap.
What do you expect for minimum wage, a script, and a bunch of college kids majoring in business?
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
User : Why does it (something, various) .. ?
.. ?
...
Me : Because it fucking does.
User : Why do I have to (do something, various)
Me : Because you fucking have to.
User : I can't (do something, various)
Me : Reboot your computer.
User : I just rebooted my computer.
Me : Rebooting the computer without knowing why you are rebooting it won't fix it. Reboot it again.
(waits...)
User : Wow, that fixed it. Thanks!
Me (under my breath) : D'oh.
(actually there was a esoteric bug in SPX connections on a Netware network where computers configured as remote print servers would not reconnect the SPX connection the first time it was attempted after that workstation locked up because the Netware server thought that the SPX connection was still connected. Attempting to reconnect from the same MAC address failed, but the server knew something was wrong at that point and released the SPX connection and the next time the 'print server' configured computer tried to tell the server that it was ready to be a 'print server' it would let it. As it did all this in the boot script (autoexec.bat) it really would fail on the first reboot and work on the second reboot. I could have walked them through typing in the commands by hand, but having them reboot it again was generally (much) faster.)
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
What Drive is the application installed on?
I said, "The 'D' drive."
They said, "Ohhhh... you should really install the application on the 'C' drive."
- sigh -
While checking to see if my ISP (cable i-net provider) provides IMAP for checking email, I decided to call. After calling, and explaining to the tech guy what IMAP was, he said: "Can't you just login through our web interface and use it." I said, "Yes, I can, but I'd rather not, because I'd like it to simply be checked by my MUA, rather than diddie dallying around typing in passwords on the web interface and such."
Silence for a couple of minutes, and then he said, I don't know.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
me:"My cable modem is dead."
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"I can ping the gateway everything else is unreachable."
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"I just downloaded 200MB of pr0n in 30 seconds and I'm calling to say thank you!!"
@home tier1: "Clear your browser cache."
me:"Hmmm.. good idea."
I bet we could start a whole subthread of explanations heard from Best Buy employees. I hear something ridiculous almost every time I go in there (unfortunately, the line is usually delivered to someone who seems to buy every word)!
* "This [less expensive] camera can only hold 15 seconds of video because of the 'cache overflow'" - about a Sony Cybershot P7 whose video length is limited only by Memory Stick size
* "Well, the wireless internet is faster because it doesn't have to squeeze through the cable."
and the most egregious of all lies-
"This Lexmark printer is excellent."
---
WARNING:Slashdot karma not redeemable in the afterlife.
I bought a new Philips TV several months ago and the component input wouldn't quite work with my PS2. (I'm far from inept, I've worked as a professional video editor.) So after some lazy attempts to fix it, I figured I'd call Philips and ask if there were any issues after various PS2 message boards failed to help. After several layers of phone-menus, I finally spoke to a real person, a nice Indian lady who probably was introduced to electricity earlier that day. I explained my simple situation and asked if my TV model had any issues with the PS2. Her response was that "the Playstation should not be used with any television." Regretfully, I hung up the phone instead of mining for comedy gold. I called again and spoke to an Indian gentleman who had only been briefed on television and was not aware that things could be hooked up to televisions. So before hanging up I explained to him what a Playstation was and used lots of fancy language to describe my problem. (I just didn't know how to fix it!) Philips rules! PS- I fixed the problem by updating the DVD drivers that come with the PS2's DVD remote.
Several years ago I signed up with an ISP for dial-up service. I forget the name, it was a national service as I recall, but I got the impression that their local office was pretty small and possibly independently run. I called up to get the POP server address on what happened to be the day that one of the early e-mail viruses (Melissa, maybe?) was scheduled to deliver a payload. Keep in mind, that a fix for it had been widely available for over a month. The tech picked up the phone and went, "My God man, don't you know what day it is? The Melissa virus went off today! I can't help you today, we've already lost three machines in our back room. Call back tomorrow, and whatever you do, DON'T GO ON THE INTERNET!"
Of course, I'm the fool, because I didn't immediately run to find another ISP.
Overnight, my 1G drive (this was a while ago) developed about 10,000 bad sectors. Obviously bad news.
Gateway Tech Support: "How many sectors are there on the disk?"
Me: "Oh, about two million."
GTS: "That's really not very many then, is it?"
I never bought another computer from them.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is insufficiently documented.
Everything else has 'advanced user' setup. Why can't we have advanced tech support?
Because everyone will choose that. You may have to add a warning, "If you demonstrate that you aren't in fact at advanced user, you will be mocked mercilessly."
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Is that something like my cable internet company saying they wouldn't be able to fix my internet that they ACCIDENTLY unhooked until six days from now unless I purchased their cable TV package to expedite my support?
Dustin - A different story...
I still remember the time the Rogers Cable tech insisted he could ping and connect to my friends modem while my friend and I were sitting there staring at the modem in the middle of his floor, unpowered, and disconnected from the cable. The tech wouldn't believe us when we said there was no way in hell he was pinging this modem....oh well.
Turns out somebody else had hard coded the IP number that the Rogers was trying to assign to my friends modem. Unfortunately it took 3 hours and several higher level techs later to figure this one out and fix it.
"So click on the thang-a-ma-jig and that will open the dealy and then you can start the jobby".
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
no, no, no, no, no! "The Earth's magnetic field is shifting. You will have to walk back to your dorm with your floppy disk wrapped in tin foil and hold it it least 6 feet above the ground."
bash: rtfm: command not found
Just FYI.
I once used an excuse straight out out the bastard operator from hell's excuse generator..
"Electromagnetic interference from solar flares, sir."
The best part?
It was true. They had a 100"+ UTP arial cable.. Dude asked me why he was having packet loss. That summer, the sun was kicking out lots of solar flares..
Back when Apple released its first widescreen (1600x1024) LCD "Cinema Display", I got one. But I was disappointed that Apple's DVD player software didn't handle it properly. When I played a widescreen DVD, it would have thick black borders around all four sides, as if it was first matted to fit inside a 4:3 area, then it was matted to fit inside a 16:9 area inside that. Not a big problem, just a silly bug, and an annoyance. So I called Apple tech support. "I just want to make sure you know of this problem, that you log it in the Apple bug database to be fixed in the next rev of the DVD software," I said.
"That's not a bug," said the tech support peon. "Here's a tech note which explains why you'll have bars above and below the picture when you play a widescreen movie on your monitor."
I told him, "That tech note only applies to 4:3 displays. I'm on a widescreen display. It should still give me thin black bars on the top and the bottom, but it shouldn't put bars on the sides as well. This is Apple's high-end monitor and I paid good money for it. I want to see this problem logged as a bug."
He gave up and had second-tier tech support call me back.
"First, I want you to reformat your hard drive and reinstall your operating system, then try it again," the second-tier guy told me. I figured, what the heck, I have backups, doing a reinstall will take less time than trying to convince him I don't need to reinstall. So I reinstalled. The problem remained, of course.
"The problem is that the Mac can only show a movie at up to twice its original size," the second-tier guy told me. "Your Cinema Display is bigger than that."
"Listen," I said. I have a sixteen-by-nine movie. I have a display that's 1600x1024 resolution. The movie is playing in a 1280x720 box in the middle of the screen. Now, what's the biggest resolution a 16x9 movie should be able to play on a 1600x1024 screen?"
There was silence on the line.
"I'll give you the answer. 1600x900. Right? That goes from edge to edge and leaves thin black bars at the top and bottom, each exactly sixty-two pixels tall. Not thick black bars around all four sides like I have now. Right?"
More silence, then: "I'll work on this and call you back."
He never called me back.
Just a little overstated... heh
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
When I was 13 years old I used to call Gateway and request help. Most of the time they didn't even give me an answer, they would just hang up. F U Gateway! :)
That was probably because you had Dell.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Upon asking why, I was informed that it "had something to do with data harmonics".
My brother once explained a firewall's operation to a non-tech as "rotating the shield harmonics." The explainee (while obviously not believing it literally) considered this a good enough analogy for his purposes.
Bloody brilliant. Wish I'd thought of it.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I had an intermittent problem with my cable modem for weeks that kept getting worse. The connection would slow down at random times, often coming to a complete halt. I would go down to where my masq box is hooked up to the cm, check the lights, ping the nameservers, etc -- all would usually check out, though with lots of packet loss. I'd call and they say it sounded like moisture in the cable!
Eventually I started losing connection alltogether. I'd go down and the status lights on the cm weren't blinking. I'd unplug, plug back in, run pump -R and try it again. Sometimes it would work, usually not. Again I called Comcast and they would schedule a tech visit, only to have the connection start working again a couple hours later and I'd call to cancel.
Every time, Comcast could see my cm online and insisted it must be my computer -- if they came out and the problem was on my end, they would charge me.
Well shit, they're gonna come out, see the POS 386 machine connected to the CM, see that it's running Linux, walk out and charge me -- so I ran the cm upstairs to a machine on the first floor and hooked it up directly so the tech would see that everything on my end was supported and fine.
Guess what -- started working again... for an hour. Then stopped. Then started. Then stopped again. This was nuts.
I went ahead and called them again and once again scheduled the service call -- working or not. I figured the worse that would happen now is they would come out and find it was working and I'd have to keep calling them back until they either fixed it or I had an anurism.
I went to work the next day and my wife called mid-day to tell me that the problem was fixed: "something had chewed through the cable and they had to replace it".
Sounded like the biggest bullshit explanation I ever heard until I got home and saw for myself. Sure enough, they had pulled the coax out from under the deck and run a new line -- the old line laying in the yard so I could see. Some little cocksucker with an overbite had chewed through the insulation.
The explanation the tech left with my wife was that the flakyness with the modem was probably because of varying dampness depending on outside temperature, time of day, dewpoint, etc. I think the modem dropped out everytime that buck-toothed, plastic-munching, broadband-killing fuckwad was out there nibbling on my cable!
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Back in 1994 or so I was working for a company integrating some technology from MicroStrategy into our product and we were having some trouble making parts of it work. One time when we called technical support and posed our question, the response was a quick "It works here, thanks for calling!" followed by an immediate hang-up!
perl -e 'srand(-2091643526); print chr rand 90 for (0..4)'
This one was hilarious. That tech is a genius.
Customer: "When my computer boots up, all I get is a black screen that says, 'boot2/'."
Tech Support: "What operating system are you using?"
Customer: "I'm using Windows 98 and NT 4.0."
Tech Support: "Ok, I'm the Mac tech. The Windows tech is gone, but I can try to help you."
Customer: "Ok, what should I do? I've reformatted the hard drive and have fresh installs of both operating systems."
Tech Support: "Sir, have you put any cheese or mustard in your a drive?"
Customer: "What? Did you just ask me if I put cheese or mustard in my floppy drive?"
Tech Support: "Yeah, we've had that happen a lot lately."
Customer: (staring blankly at roommate, who was laughing uncontrollably on the floor) "I think I'll wait for the PC tech to get back. Thanks for the help." (click)
>|<*:=
Awesome site! Here's one that made me laugh the hardest:
I'm working as a tech support person at a Finnish newspaper printing and publication house, and we have several reporters that submit their files via a dial-in modem line directly to our layout system.
Once one of the reporters wanted to call the tech support because the modem wasn't answering his calls, but the call was answered by a computer illiterate.
* Reporter: "It seems that...eh, modem's out again."
* Computer Illiterate: "Oh, just a minute. I'll go look for him."
He proceeded to page the whole company through the central P.A. system.
* Computer Illiterate: "Mr. Modem, Mr. Modem, there's a call for you."
My co-worker intercepts, trying hard to keep a straight face.
* Co-Worker: "Mr. Modem is on vacation. He won't be back till August."
The computer illiterate returns to the phone and tells the reporter that our modem is on vacation till August.
You @#$%^. I trusted you.
-The customer
Secretary calls me up and says that there is a problem with the server and I need to fix it because she has some important document to work on.
I ask her what makes her think the server isn't working (she did not use a server).
She says that the little box on the screen is moving around like it always does before she logs in (Windows NT) but that it says "No Server Input".
I say: huh?
I've never seen Windows show that screen before...
So, I try to pull up the machine via PC Anywhere... no go.
I try to ping it... no go.
I ask her to describe it again. She says it looks like it always does, but it says "No Server Input".
Frustrated... I climb into the car and drive to her site.
When I look at the monitor, well... it looks nothinkg like a Windows dialog box (which is usually grey in color).
It is a nice colorful Red-Blue-Green "rainbow" colored box... that says "No Signal Input".
You guessed it (I hope)... the monitor is on, but the computer isn't.
So, I boot the computer and all is fine.
When she asks me what I did to fix it (she disapeared as soon as I got there, like most of them do... especially if you need their password)... I told her that I had to reboot the server.
Didn't have the heart to tell her...
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
Yeah, I had one of those from when I did tech support at the university. Working a 8 hour shift from 4pm to midnight on a thursday night. About 11 o'clock someone calls down and wanted to register their new computer for a connection before the weekend. This should be no problem, I just need to get her MAC address. Now mind though that I'd been up since 6 and had 2 exams that day. The conversation goes something like this:
... Right Click the Mouse where?"
... like where the wallpaper is" which she thinks is the monitor as her wall is behind the monitor. It had been a really long day and I couldn't think of how to explain what the computer desktop was. It wasn't her fault, she had just never heard it put like that before. Anyway by this point the two of us are laughing at one another because we both sound completely clueless. Eventually her roommate pointed to the screen and we were all good. It was a nice laugh on a very long day.
... I'd always just be the "Tech Support Dude" anyway ...
Me: "Ok, you're going to want to right click on My Computer and click on where it says Properties at the bottom"
Her: "
Me: "Oh on the My Computer Icon on your desktop"
Her: "... Well where on my desktop - My mouse is on my desktop"
Now, I think she means her mouse cursor but she actually means the top of her desk. After I realize that I try to explain "No no, the computer's desktop
She sounded cute too but you know
The *only* time I've had anyone at Fry's tell me something intelligent was this:
I was looking for something that was on sale that week, probably an HD. Sunnyvale was out, but the guy I asked check the computer, and Palo Alto still had a dozen or so.
Me: "Can you call them and have them hold one for me?"
Him: "Sir, this is Fry's. You can get there before I can get someone on the phone with a clue."
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
From bash.org:
@FirebirdGM> I just called my Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty.
@FirebirdGM> The guy that was on the phone told me that it was only a few pounds difference.
@FirebirdGM> And that's why I don't shop at futureshop.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Not exactly on tech support... but flying out of La Guardia, after sitting on the tarmac for 45 minutes without moving we were told over the loud speakers that we were being delayed because the plane was too big. I don't know what they did to make the plane smaller, but we took off 25 minutes later.
I worked help desk in one of my university's computer labs and had an old lady come up to the desk for help. So I go back to the computer with her and she explains what she is trying to do (access some class work online). I wasn't sure what problem she was having with this exactly until she started asking how I was moving "that thing" (curser) around on the screen to go to the different pages... That was a long day.
Dear Betelgeusian IV. You have entered the Slashdot domain. Please reply with one of the following to prevent a hostile interaction with this Earth Tribe.
Be sure to say Linux rulz
Windows, M$, Bill Gates, GUIs, Darl McBride teh Sux
And most important, have a racist anecdote ready about Indian tech support complete with some nonsense about "Indian accents". This is most amusing as most Slashdot people still think that India is some place "out of town", somewhere near Africa, is a place where people go to school on elephants...oh wait - "Indians go to SCHOOL? Them niggers really are progressing, huh Billy Ray? I gotta stop humping my sister in the haystacks and start reading that Almanac thing." Finally, if by chance anything positive emerges about India (i.e. a better voting system, qualified software engineers) it must always be suffixed/prefixed with one of the following sentences to lessen the blow to the Great American Ego - "<Positive news about Indian> but there are poor people in India, so it doesn't matter" OR "<Positive news about Indian> but there are hungry-starving people who can't afford to use both their nostrils in India, so it doesn't matter". Happy communications with these well-read, literate slash-dotters.
that's when you tell him that he has to keep scanning, because if the unbelievable speed bus goes under 50mph koonoo reeves gets killed.
In an annoyed email over an on and off cable modem connection, I sent, "Dear Charter Comm, I currently subscribe to your cable modem Internet service, I would be very interested in upgrading to an 'Always on' Internet connection. Please contact me if such a service is in or comes into existence." My reply was, nearly word for word, punctuation(or lack there of) and all, "i'm sorry i don't know what you mean, what is an always on connection"
What do I have to do to get a sig around here?! www.bearscanfly.org
- Explain the concept of time zones. Mail went down in the UK at 10am. EST was 4am, and I call UUNet. The guy goes, "What do these people in the YOOKAY want mail at 4am?" It's 10am there, sir. "But it's so early in the frickin' morning! We always do our maintenance between 4 and 6." Yes, and that's 10 to noon in England. "But it's still dark out there, right?" The supervisor I demanded to speak to later told me she had to explain the concept of time zones with a flashlight and an orange.
- Confused Sweden and Switzerland. Austria and Australia. "I am am sorry, sir," said the snooty tech to the head of our Australian Division on a conference call, "I show no 'Sydney' in Australia, maybe you meant Salzberg?" His response, "What are you, kid, TWELVE???"
- One tech said on the conference call, "My boss said to tell the frogs to sip their wine and just wait." On the call? Two techs from Transpac. Merde.
I also got boldfaced lied to, like "Our routers don't keep logs," or "I'll call you right back." Of course, not all was rosy overseas.But all in all, I loved working International.
the ISP we were using was switching cable modems, so naturally we lost service when we missed the deadline to get ours switched over (ISP was sending account notifications to a former tenant not even affiliated with our account). In calling tech support to find out what to do, I was told that I couldn't simply bring in the old one and exchange it for the new. I was told that it ABSOLUTELY had to be done by a service tech and that I would have to wait at least two weeks. After explaining that we ran a business and required a modem immediately the tech guy informed me of a "group of roving service techs" who were dealing with these types of emergencies. He promised to forward our phone number to them and we would be contacted later that afternoon. When my roomate woke up in the early afternoon to find no internet connection he was not satisfied with my explanation, and after an hour of waiting for the phone call from the roving techs, he called the head office himself. They had never heard of these roving techs, and that he was more than welcome to come down and stand in line with all the other people exchanging their modems. In all subsequent dealings with this ISP, I called twice, and the secod person I talked to was always the one that solved the problem.
I got into trouble a few years back for returning an item to a vendor with the fault description "fucked" written on it. The vendor stated that without a proper fault description they could not accept the item for refund or exchange.
Item was relabelled and sent back to them with the following fault description: Faulty Unit, Continuously Kills Electronic Devices.
Item was subsequently accepted for full refund
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
I rang Microsoft up to activate some software (I know, I know). I had to go to a human operator, as the system didn't like my serial number. The conversation went like this: Tech Support: Hello, Microsoft Activation Services. I'm afraid I can't activate your product, please call back tomorrow. Me: Why not? I need the software as soon as possibly... Tech Support: Yeah, there's a bit of a problem at our side. Me: What? Tech Support: [embarrassed] All of our computers have crashed, we don't know what's gone wrong, and we can't boot them back up. ...well, at least for once Microsoft were refreshingly honest :)
Me: "I'm trying to upgrade my current system with an external 56k modem, and I'm having difficulties getting it to work."
Tech: "But why would you want to switch out your current one for one that's only got 56? I mean, you already have 75, right?"
Me: "No, you're thinking of the processor; I'm talking about a modem, and mine is only 14.4k."
Tech: "No, actually those are just different words for the same thing."
Me: [Silence.]
Tech: "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
Free as in mason.
I remember being the operator for an IBM 4361. The controllers (like massive coax hubs) booted from an 8inch floppy.
It wouldn't boot one day, so I called tech. We worked out that the boot floppy was currupt and we'd need a new one. They said they would need a copy of the floppy to do this.
That presented me with a problem, as the floppy was currupt of course, and I didn't have a spare anyway.
They tech guy said, no problem, just photocopy it and fax it to us.
Well. I was all prepared to explain exactly how stupid he was when it transpired that the floppy had a label on it with the codes required to gen a new copy!
koan
This signature intentionally left blank
I had been getting bad parts from MicroCenter for several weeks, had been dutifully diagnosing them and returning things that didn't work as I was desperately trying to complete a system that did. As I had bought the processor and motherboard as a pair, and the motherboard wasn't working, they wanted to refund only the total deal cost minus the non-sale cost of processor, leaving me with a processor costing about 20 dollars more than the identical ones they had on sale.
"We can take back the motherboard, but not the processor"
"Why can't you take back the processor?"
"Because you've opened it. We only take returns if it is unopened, or we can exchange it if it is defective."
"Can I at least get the sale price for the processor?"
"No, because you bought the 'bundle' processor, not the 'sale' processor."
"That doesn't make sense. They're the same processor, in the same box, with the same SKU..."
"Sorry."
"If I tell you it's defective, are you going to take my word for it like the other half-dozen parts I've returned."
"Yes."
"And if I get that exchange processor, the exchange processor is in a returnable, unopened state, correct?"
"...Yes..."
"Can you see where I'm going with this?"
"...Sales price it is."
The ______ Agenda
From: Manjeet
To: Robbie
Subject: MOUSE IS DEAD
HI ROBBIE
PLEASE CAN YOU HELP THE NEW SECRETARY ROSE WITH HER COMPUTER. HER MOUSE HAS
STOPPED WORKING AND SHE CANNOT DO HER WORK. HER EMAIL ADDRESS IS:
medsec@***.com but she cannot access her emails because
she's got no mouse.
MANY THANKS.
Manjeet.
--
i don't understand...was i supposed to email her a new mouse??
I'd have cussed him out in Atheism. Which is pretty hard, because none of the words exist.
paintball
Still wondering what I would talk to with a 1 port hub.
Was is warm and wet?
paintball
Wow, a hundred inches really is a long run. Was it also in danger of being crushed by a dwarf?
demi
The day I realized I knew more about computers than most tech support:
I wanted to get some more RAM for one of my boxes. I called to find out the RAM speed, etc. needed. The end of the conversation:
"Does this PC require parity RAM?"
"Yes, sir. The RAM has to be installed in pairs."
Oooooooookaaaaaay
Correct explanation:
"Which room are you in, and should I bring any alcohol?"
Actually, I suppose the second half of that is unnecessary - you were working tech support at the university, you obviously needed to bring alcohol.
paintball
A: We have an exact copy of the light bulb here and it seems to be working fine. Can you tell me what kind of system you have?
Nerd: Derogatory term typically directed at anybody with a lower Slashdot ID than you.
I used to provide over night support for a batch processing system. Early one morning I got paged and dutifully stumbled half dressed to the pay phone around the corner and called the operations staff. Me (though yawns): What seems to be the problem. Support: The whole systems ground to a halt, the link to America has gone down, we think some trawler's dragged the line up. Me: I'll get my scuba gear and be right down. Support: Really? Me: Goodnight.
Damn it. I used to fully understand the relation between bits and bytes. But after reading your three helpful posts I somehow lost that knowledge and became confused again.
You should have stayed in bed today.
Well did you call the plumber?
No. The reason to use "octet" is because you want to sound like an IETF RFC, because that makes you sound more authoritative or because it makes your boyfriend horny.
octet==byte.
It wasn't exactly BAD tech support, but it was amusing. We've had DSL ever since we moved to WA (just outside Seattle), and in the beginning, it worked about 98% of the time. Then, after a year of just fine service, it suddenly stopped.
I called Verizon, and asked what happened, since nothing had changed at home. They ran through the regular tests over the phone, and when nothing odd turned up, they said they'd look into it and call me back.
The next day I get a phone call. "Yes, sir? Yeah, well, as you know, for DSL to work, you have to be within five miles of a phone switch." Yeah, I'm thinking, I haven't moved or anything... "Well, sir, the thing is, someone was doing some upgrading on the lines, and they patched in a GIANT COIL of cable about a block from you, effectively making the line distance between you and the switch about twenty miles. We'll send someone to remove that coil ASAP."
A day later some Verizon guy shows up at the door shaking his head. "You the guy with the DSL problem? Yeah, there's only one key for the hatch with the GIANT LOOP of coil behind it, and the guy who has it is out sick today. I'll fix it tomorrow." He shook his head like he was seriously embarassed to be telling me this. I just laughed.
It got fixed a day later, but that was easily the most amusing tech problem I've ever had.
The part I was looking for was an RJ45DB9 connector. I had one on me (my personal one), but needed to buy another one (for the business).
The fun started when I went into the store:
Me: Yeah, I'm looking for a DB9-to-RJ45 connector. I don't see them on your shelf, maybe--
SalesTroll: Sir, there's no such thing as that part.
Me: Uh ... no, I need to connect a rollover cable to it. There is such a part. I didn't see it here, but was wonderi--
SalesTroll: That does not exist! I don't know where you got the idea--
Me: *pulls out my hardware - lo and behold, the hardware that "doesn't exist"!
SalesTroll: *confused and shocked expression*
Me: Please grab a manager for me and ask; you may well have one in the back, as you do some networking here.
SalesTroll: *Goes to a manager and mutters something ... manager looks at me and loudly says, that doesn't exist. SalesTroll then pulls out my hardware. Manager looks confused, comes over.*
Manager: Wow, that's weird ... I've never seen anything like this. They must be really rare.
Me: Uh, no, they're used for Cisco devices all the time--
Manager: Oh, those're like Macs, right?
Me: *holding back laughter and murderous thoughts* Uh, no. *I take my hardware back* I'll order online, thanks.
Ah, such fun.
Let me guess... English goes to India?
Please consider making an automatic monthly recurring donation to the EFF
You wouldn't believe me, some guy just phoned me and asked me how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty.
:)
I told him that it was only a few pounds difference.
Hey man, the whole concept of a desktop is stupid anyway. The screen of any OS doesn't really resemble a real desk, just because it's contents loosely resemble little folded papers and manila folders.
You just learn to say things like "In the upper left corner of your screen, which is also known as the desktop, is a picture with the words "My Computer" under it. By the way, that picture is called an icon. (Now you just taught them something.) Right-click the icon and you'll see a box with choices appear. That's called a context menu, by the way, in case you didn't know. If you did I apologize, I just like to help people out. Click the Properties option on that context menu."
If people get confused on the technical terms like desktop, icon, or context menu after that point, it's their fault and they deserve to be placed on hold until the world ends.
Best support story: I did support for an Encyclopedia program, and other software for other companies. The Encyclopedia software line was closed for a holiday, but not other lines so we were working. Encyclopedia line rang cuz someone forgot to put it to voicemail. Guy gets put on hold. We figure he'll hang up eventually. 9 hours later someone finally decided to pick up the phone. The guy was chipper and happy as could be, had a simple question solved in 2 minutes, thanked us and hung up.
# Erik
Soon after I bought my first digital camera (and before I bought a printer) I found a camera store with one of those Kodak "digital printing" kiosks. I played with it a bit, then I had a question. I could see a floppy drive on the system, but I coulnd't find a CD or CF reader.
I was in Hawaii in September last year, and after a long day I decided it would be relaxing to sit in the hotel hot tub for a while.
:\) not Works and I'm in a document but I can't get it to be lowercase. I've called Dell and they can't fix it either."
:\
It was fine for a while, then some elderly woman got in at the same time (which was a bad enough sight itself) and she decided to make conversation. Well, the topic came up of me being a 'computer guy' but nothing really came of it.
Then, some elderly old man joined the party (remind me not to stay in that hotel ever again) and made conversation with the elderly woman, and somehow got on the topic of computers again, so this man asked if I could help him with a problem. I figured, hey... I'll be nice.
He said to me, "Ok, I'm using Microsoft W-O-R-D (He spelt out Word
I'm trying not to laugh, and think a bit... Automatically assumming its the CAPS LOCK key, he said he tried that so I then tried explaining Format and Paragraph settings changes which got me nowhere.
I guess it would be funnier if you'd been there. The man spelling out W-O-R-D was probably the highlight of it all.
Some vacation
[intekra] - [www.plex.nu]
In a former consulting gig, the client had bought a component to connect to their LDAP server. I eventually discovered that it was corrupting memory badly, and called support. The head of their support department told me that although they gave free support for 30 days to anyone who downloaded the same software off the internet, we had to buy a support contract because we'd actually paid for the software. She even refused to tell me if there had been a newer release, or if this was a known problem unless we bought a service contract.
Call me petty and vindictive and small, but I'd post the name of the company... if only I remembered it! Nixon was smart to actually write down his enemies list.
Make your computer ten thousand times larger--try Frink
No no, you're talking metric bits/bytes. He means imperial.
Sheesh, those Europeans, always trying to get everyone to change to their kooky system.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
I used to work the phones for Maxtor's HDD tech line, and later the NAS support line. Boring ass job, and amusement had to b self provided. Some of my better ones were:
"How do I turn on my hard drive?"
"Have you tried blowing in it's ear, rubbing it's thigh? Works for me."
"Huh?"
"Nevermind"
"OK, put the phone down, rub your nipples and sing songs by the Scorpians for good luck when you reboot." About 10% of the time I used this line, they would actually do it. Customers with a sense of humor rock!
The best one I had was a NAS 6000 call. 1.4 TB of storage in a hot swapable RAID 5. The customer had filled it with data and deleted the original source. No backup (you can see where this is going). Luser decides to demonstrate hot swap drives by removing two drives and swapping them.
"Is there anything I can do?"
"remember that it's lengthwise, not across when you slash your wrists. Across is just a cry for help."
"OK."
Dok
"You can't screw the system, but you can give it a good fondling." -- Too lazy to look it up
Working for a Mississippi ISP I had a customer call to switch from a local competitor. He explained that when the competitor's service seemed unusually slow, he called tech support and was told that, because of the hot sun in Mississippi, the asphalt in the roads heats up, causing telephone lines to melt, resulting in the slowdown.
Yes I can say i've actually told a customer they had an ID10T problem/p>
We call them Layer 8 problems where I work.
lizardb0y
http://www.vintage8bit.com/
see? that's why measuring nybbles per half second is the industry standard... too confusing any other way...
Racks to the left of me, Routers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you!
I've never heard of an arial cable. Is it more expensive than the garamond cable?
When ESDI disks came out, we thought it would be a good idea to try and get better support for the new technology. So we signed up for the $1200/yr premium support plan. That kind of money should at least get us past the "reformat your disk" nonsense.
We got our first ESDI system, and booted the latest Xenix install with ESDI support from diskette. Everything went smoothly until it got to the part where you format and partition the disk. Two thirds of the way through the formatting, it found a bad sector. No biggie, these were common and just added to the bad block map in those days. However, it kept finding the *same* bad sector over and over - ad infinitum.
So we called our premium tech support - confident that now we had a problem that they couldn't possibly blow off with "reformat the disk", since that was exactly what we were trying to do. Not to mention the big bucks we were paying. I explained the problem, and to my horror and consternation, the guy said, "Reformat your disk and reinstall Xenix." I completely lost it, and told him he was a complete idiot and needed a new career. He told me I needed to calm down and follow instructions if I wanted his help. I told him what he could do with his help. The boss gave me a long lecture on the relative number of flies caught with honey versus vinegar - however, that was the last SCO system we ever bought.
The conversation went like this:
Me: "Hi, what settings should I use for your DNS servers?"
SBC: "What DNS servers? Are you having trouble connecting to the internet?"
Me: "I'm installing Linux, and having issues with getting it to work over a PPPOE connection."
SBC: "I'm sorry, we don't support exotic operating systems"
Me: "I don't need support, I just need your DNS servers."
SBC: "Sir, you don't understand, unix based computers are incompatible with the internet."
I just sat there astonished for a few seconds, and then hung up. I'd figure it out on my own.
Saying "What utter rubbish" is what causes the problem in first place. The definitions of kilo/mega/gigabytes are varying depending on who's speaking. And then there's the standard units, which are always the same. As long as people don't agree on something, and insist redefining the prefixes based on context, there will always be confusion.
I solved this problem this way: When I say "1 Gibibyte", it's 1073741824 bytes, and when I say "Gig", it's "About enough, but still too fucking much, to burn on a CD". =)
Support Rep: Hi! I'm Eliza. What's your problem?
Gun: I need to check and see if my forwards to a [yourdomain] account are being blocked based on the server they're being forwarded from. Do you need the IP address, forward address?
Support Rep: What does that suggest to you?
Or you're French.
As everyone knows, DSL speed is limited by wire distance from the local telco Central Office or Remote Terminal. A couple of summers ago, SNET (Connecticut independent phone company, now assimilated by SBC) was having a lot of trouble with bad DSL performance. They had wildly oversold their bandwidth and the service was almost unuseable between 5PM and 9PM, peak gaming hours. Faced with a barrage of calls from angry customers, telephone tech support people were telling callers that the reason for their DSL trouble was that the summer heat was stretching the telephone wires, which increased their effective distance to the CO/RT and therefore slowing down their traffic. As the lines cooled in the evening, they shrank again and performance returned.
...it did happen to a woman right in front of me at Micro Center in Radnor, PA, several years ago. She was in front of me in line at the service desk, where I was waiting to either drop off my PowerBook for repair, or pick it up. That I don't remember.
I overheard her exchange with the guy manning the service counter. Apparently her PC kept running out of RAM and someone else had suggested the presence of a "memory leak." The service counter guy assured her that the machine's RAM was solid and not liquid, therefore there was no chance that it could leak from the computer.
I don't know how I managed to keep a straight face.
~Philly
A friend of mine called Dell Tech Support because a new USB 2.0 card he installed was slowing down his computer. He called Dell Tech Support, and the tech person told him to run the Dell Diagnostics software. He got an error saying "Invalid System Clock." The tech person put him on hold for around 20 minutes, and then came back on and said "You couldn't have gotten that error. Do you have another disk to try it again?" He said "Yes", tried it, and got the same error. The tech person came back on, and said "There's no way you could get that error. It's a figment of your computer's imagination."
One of my most beloved systems ever was an old 386 that my uncle gave to me when I was 11. The thing was ancient. All it had was a 30 MB hard drive and a 5" floppy. I decided to add a CD-ROM to it, because CD-ROM's were the new fangled doodads of the day (it was rated 2x, just for the record). Of course, the thing didn't work when I hooked it up. I know today it was because my motherboard didn't have an IDE connector (just a generic "hard drive" port), but I tried desperately to hook it up. I referred to tech support numbers in the manual, and got to talk to somebody. He asked what kind of a computer I had, what OS I was running, and recommended I call somebody at IBM and ask them about the problem. So I called IBM, and told them I was trying to upgrade to a CD-ROM drive. The first question they asked was what computer I was using, and I told them it was a Datatech. The woman on the other end practically screamed at me: "The DATATECH is not an IBM machine!" And me, in my eleven-year-old glory screamed back: "Well, then, why'd he tell me to call you?" For about four years, I was afraid to call tech support because I thought people would take advantage of me since I was so young. Now, I just solve the problem myself.
...an embedded processor has a 16 bit word.
*boggle* *boggle* *splat*
Did you hear that? It was my brain exploding. Congratulations, you've killed me. Now I'll have to set the building on fire.
SQUEAK, the Death of Rats explained.
over Washington state. It was incredibly foggy and the pilot and passenger quickly became lost. The decided to fly close to a building and ask for directions. The found a building and wrote a note to the people inside the building. The note read, "Where are we?". One of the office workers noticed the helicopter outside the window and quickly wrote a note back saying, "in a helicopter." The pilot immediately seemed to know where he was and flew directly back to the helicopter pad and landed. The passenger was astounded.
"How did you know where we were?"
"That was the Microsoft building. Where else would you get a technically correct, but completely useless answer," replied the pilot.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
After a couple of days of a non-working cable modem and apparent lack of service from my cable provider (For reasons of anonymity, I will not mention the cable providers name, but we can call it "Cox").
Anywho...I proceeded to call the cable company and wait for Tech Support. After a few minutes holding, a lady came on the phone and I proceeded to explain my problem. She tried to walk me through the standard script (is it plugged in? do you have a head on your shoulders? are you sure its a computer?). Finally I asked if I could talk to someone in the Technical Dept (NOT Tech Support) and see if I could re-register my modem's MAC address. After flailing and obviously trying to prevent me from getting to the real help... she told me (drumroll please):
"Oh Sir, I just found out that Internet Explorer is experiencing a nationwide outage and you will need to call Micro$oft about the problem"
YOU GOTTA BE F$@#!ng Kidding Me!
I tried to be nice and tell her I didn't really think that was the problem and again ask for the Tech Dept. She would not budge. So we went back and forth on this a few times (all the while Im trying to remain calm).
Finally I lose it and try to explain as nicely as I can: Maaa'amm I don't think this is could be the problem because IE is a local application, merely a way to browse the web, its just tool. Since it runs local on a machine...it can't actually have a Nationwide Outage.
And before I could finish she was trying to interrupt again so I raised my voice and said: "AND IM NOT EVEN USING IE...IM USING MOZILLA! But Im sure there is a nationwide outage of that as well. Or maybe its my command prompt/ipconfig, maybe its having a nationwide outage as well. RIGHT?!?!"
Then she hung up on me....the nerve.
I once told this user by the phone to "move the mouse across the screen and right click over My PC", well, a colleague of him told me later that the guy actually lifted the mouse from the table and waved it in front of the monitor while he was saying to me on the phone "But it doesn't move!"
At Cablevision, they consider the digital upgrade to HDTV to be way to complicated for mere ordinary folk to handle. So they send "Super Cable Guy"! A special technician who is trained to install the HDTV converter box. It's a good thing they don't charge for this service.
Well, Super Cable Guy dorked around my Mitsubishi TV for about an hour before declaring that this particular TV did not support HD, despite the large "HD 1080i capable" printing on the front. He insisted HD 1080i had NOTHING TO DO WITH HDTV!! But he agreed to humor me and leave the converter around so I could try.
After he left, I walked downstairs and looked in the back of the TV. He had plugged the cables into the standard RGB input instead of the clearly marked 1080i DTV input. I swapped the cables, checked that I now could receive INHD and a bunch of other channels and then called the cable company and told them they need to explain to their techs just what HDTV is.
JoAnn
A couple months after I had my cable modem installed a few years ago, it was pretty slow. Lots of dropped packets at the gateway, that sort of thing. So I gave Shaw a call to let 'em know I wasn't happy with the service I was paying for.
:)
The explanation I got: "It's been cold lately, that's probably what's causing it."
This was in -October-. In Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The temperature was hovering around freezing...maybe a little colder. No snow yet. On the Prairies, before the winter's out it's going to drop down to -30C.
So I hung up on him and the problem went away in a couple days.
For the record, I've had the modem a few years, in a temperature range from about +35 to -35. It still cuts out sporadically, but temperature has no obvious correlation
I had ordered two used, 386 laptops over the internet. One model had a 5 mhz faster cpu than the other, otherwise they were identical. When I received them it turned out that there was something wrong with the "faster" laptop - it took about 20 minutes to boot up. It didn't take long for me to realize that the hard drive in the faster laptop was defective. Since the two machines used the same model drive, it was easy to swap drives and confirm that it was the drive that was the problem - a conclusion reinforced by running diagnostic software. I called tech support for the laptop dealer and had a conversation that reached almost psychotic proportions:
Me: The hard drive in the faster laptop is defective, it takes about 20 minutes to boot. When I swap it into the other laptop then that machine takes about 20 minutes to boot. I've run diagnostic software that confirms that the drive is defective.
Tech: The drive in the fast machine is slower?
Me: Yes.
Tech: That's because the bus speed in the faster machine is actually half that of the slower machine.
Me: What?
Tech: The way the manufacturer gets the cpu to run faster is by slowing down the bus speed and then doubling the clock.
Me: Hmm. But the same drive has the same problem when I move it to the machine with the slower cpu.
Tech: Yes. That's because it has a slower cpu.
Me: So the faster machine is slower because of the bus speed and the slower machine is slower because of the cpu speed?
Tech: That right.
Me: When I take the drive out of the slower laptop and put it into the faster laptop, then it boots just fine.
Tech: Yes, that because it is the faster machine.
Me: Each machine can't simultaneously be slower than the other. If B is slower than A then A can't be slower than B. You know, it would like violate the law of transitivity. The problem is just that the drive is defective.
Tech: Fuck you! [hangs up]
Wish I could remember the snappy answer given to that one...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
My DSL line started dropping out at random after a thunderstorm, the tech support guy told me the problem was that my DSL modem was in the same room with the computer, and the EMI from my computer was the cause. He said I would need to relocate the modem to a room with no other electrical equipment, then wait one day for the "fields to dissipate". Where in the world am I going to find a room without so much as a lightbulb in it? I found a copy of the latest firmware for the modem, flashed it, and was back up without further issue. I wonder why I even bother with those guys.
I had bought a retail-packaged CPU there and the OEM fan/heatsink that it had come with seized a few days of use later. So I bring it back to the MicroCenter, flag down one of the fellers, and said to him:
Me: "Hi, I bought a CPU here the other day, and while the CPU is fine, the sink it came with looks a little buggy".
Employee: [stares at me blankly]
Me: "Is it possible to just get the sink replaced? I don't need a new processor."
Employee: [continues to stare at me blankly]
Me: "Hello?"
Employee: [very slowly and seriously] "This is a computer store, we don't sell sinks here. You want the Home Depot in the next plaza."
Me: [stares at employee blankly]
Tell that to Unisys.
That would be awesome. You should post an email address for someone senior at Unisys. I'd love to see a flood of emails from slashdot users telling them their byte size is wrong.
I had to pull something similar with the cable company a while back.
I was moving out of a shared student house, and needed to change the bill into someone elses name. So I dutifully phoned the company to make the change a full billing cycle before I moved out.
Sales: Hi, thank you for calling cogeco...yada yada yada... can i have your account number
Me: 12380918232
Sales: Sure, now what can I help you with
Me: I need to change the name on my account, I am moving out
Sales: Okay, sure I can help you with that, just to let you know there will be a $19.95 service charge for the name change
Me: Ummm Are you still running the free install promotion
Sales: Yes
Me: Is there a disconnection fee associated with ending my account
Sales: No, as long as you call at least a week in advance
Me: Can you see where I am going with this?
Sales: Okay, I can do that name change for you free of charge..
paul reinheimer
Me: Oh, looks like the battery was loose.
Customer: No, it wasn't, I'm sure.
Me: Oh...(grasping)...were you near a window when you put the battery in?
Customer: Maybe...
Me: That's it. Sometimes sunlight can corrupt the internal settings of the wireless mouse, which can be reset by removing and replacing the battery.
Customer: Oh, THANK YOU!
Member of Orkut? Annoyed with spam?
True story, an ex-girlfriend of mine was having problems with her Dell. The first support guy we talked to told her to: "take a shotgun, point it at your monitor, and fire." That was her last Dell. She was a geek too, she didn't appreciate that.
today is spelling optional day.
Back when I had a Sprint cell phone, I had a week where I could make outgoing calls, but couldn't receive calls. When I talked to tech support and the guy asked me where I had been for the last few days. When I said that I had mostly been at work which was at NASA Ames, he said:
"Oh. NASA reprogrammed your cell phone."
How do you respond to that? The next day, my cell phone started working again. I guess NASA must have reprogrammed it back!?!?!
The cover thing reminded me of a tech support story of mine.
I was doing support for some lawyers. Built them some PCs. One guy calls me after a week or two and says he can't get on the net.
So I arrive and test the PC. Yup. No net.
I do a little fiddling, then eventually take the PC out of the little wooden cubby hole in his desk to fiddle with it. I take the cover off, and check to see if the net card has worked loose.
Reseat the card, and all's well. Put it all back together...and it goes offline again. Went through this loop 3 times.
Finally, one time I ran my hand down the far side of the case. (Since I was under a desk, I hadn't had the opportunity to really see the opposite side of it.)
He had lined his case with refrigerator strip magnets.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
"From bash.org: @FirebirdGM> I just called my Futureshop and asked them how much a 20 GB Hard drive weighed when it was full with information, compared to when it was empty. @FirebirdGM> The guy that was on the phone told me that it was only a few pounds difference. @FirebirdGM> And that's why I don't shop at futureshop." After reading that I called where I work (as tech) and asked one of the girls the same question who was working at the time, she didn't know how to answer, she was fired by my boss a week later, oops
~ All comments automatically moderated -1 since 2004 ~
I have a similar experience:
We pulled out onto the tarmac and sat there for ten minutes. Then the Captain tells us that they found a piece of the plane is broken, but nobody knows what it does, so they're calling the manufacturer to find out if it's important. Half an hour later, they get the answer that it's not. We took off and landed fine.
My DSL gets forty mebibytes to the fortnight, and that's the ways I likes it!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
As a Mac user I called Bell South and demanded to know why I couldn't get the much cheaper self-install option on a DSL line.
It went something like this:
"So why can't I get a self-install? This is like a Mac tax you know. I can't get the free install, I can't get a free NIC..."
"Sir, if you have a Mac then the signal will sense that there is a Mac in the building and stop outside. A technician must come and draw the signal in by priming the line."
I pause here to revel in this statement...
"So let me get this straight. Your DSL signal is a sentient being, that can tell what brand of computer I own and then make a conscious decision to defy the laws of physics and stop in the middle of a wire?"
Long pause....
"Well that's just what they tell me..."
"Thanks but I'll just get my service elsewhere."
Fun!
I've spent 3 years of my life doing tech support, seen plenty of good and bad tech's but this takes the cake. My team was providing tech support for internal employees of a F500 company, we we're required to go through a script at the start of each call to determine whom we were talking to and if they were calling on behalf of themself or someone else. Our caller id system worked on users' employee id's but sometimes people would fat finger their eid and we would be made to look stupid. My cube neighbor gets a call from some lady who had typed in the wrong number. Apparently they had a bad connection because he keeped speaking louder trying to find out why she was calling. Suddenly he nearly screams out, "Are you calling for Dick?!". He realized his mistake, apologized profusely and then put her on hold for five minutes till everyone had stopped laughing.
Open the pod bay doors, Wendell.
I'm sorry, Fahr, I'm afraid I can't do that.
Aparently nits are in season again. Pick them while you can!
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
Told me that I suddenly couldn't log onto my online banking (which I had been using for months) because of an incompatibility between my cable modem (which I had been using for months...) and their servers. Huh???
Working as a system administrator/support person I get alot of PEBCAK (problem exists between chair and keyboard). After a while experiencing these problems I've started doing the Jedi Mind Trick hand movement in front of the screen and chanting some gibberish before I sit down to fix the problem.
;)
It's really hillarious when I then do exactly what they've been trying to do (so they claim) and it works. This leaves the employee with their mouth wide open, staring at me stuttering "b-b-but.."
Then I leave.
Try it, it's tons of fun
computers let you make more mistakes faster, with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.
So...
you're buying an Emachine...and you're buying it from Best Buy?!?!
It must be true.
Slashdot is no longer just for nerds
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
...Breaking News...
This just in: Standard computing term "byte" has been redefined to refer to a group of 10 bits, rather than the previous 8. "The old standard was simply too confusing," say laypeople. The new term for referring to a group of 8 bits will henceforth be a "bibibyte." Industry insiders quoted as saying "WTF?!"
I love doing that. A lot of the projects I work on involve getting 2 or more (usually 3-5) external comapanies together and usually an internal service section or two, they're mostly integration type projects. Conference calls are fun, even more so is when you get them to come for an onsite meeting. Firstly they always insist that the meeting be on their site so they'll have their techies on hand. We refuse and say if you want you can bring a techie with you. When they show up there's always a 2-1 ratio of PHBs to techies (and each company sends multiple techies). So you sit them around the table and get them drinks. The first 30-50 minutes are taken up by a silent game of "Who's got the most 733T toys?" as everyone puts their laptops, PDAs &c on the table infront of them. The competition is usually fiercest between the PHBs, techies tend to have a mixture of self bought Palms, iPAQs and (if they're really badly paid) old Psions coupled with a 2 year old laptop that was a cast off from a manager. Occaisionally you see a techie with an iPod or a newish laptop infront of them. I think the former is probably a sign that they don't have a PDA and the latter usually means they work for Microsoft.
Once the winner has made himself known (it's always a male) the meeting begins in earnst, that is the blame storming begins. The PHBs sling accusations at them interspersed with occasional huddles with their techies after which they emerge to say something outrageous (e.g. "Windows 2003 server has a much lower TCO than Linux!") and the techies visably flinch. Then time comes for lunch where the PHBs all head for different top rated resteurants (trying to get us to go with them and not the other companies) whilst I join all the techies down in the nearest pub. Over the first beer we discuss the problems, over the second we rough out the solution and over the third we sketch out the details of the solution and devise a rough project plan for implementation.
Whilst the techies head off to retrieve their repective PHBs from which ever lap dancing club or department store they've found themselves in, I head back to the office and put the designs into Impress, lug my laptop down to the meeting room and hook up to the projector. The PHBs all wander back, sit down and try to kick off their blame storming again. I present the solution that was designed over lunch, usually to the howls of the Microsoft PHBs becuase I'm running Impress on SuSE Linux. Six months to 2 years later all suppliers involved announce how they designed and implemented this wonderful system. All by them selves. With no help from any one. Honest! Really! They're really telling the truth now! For sure! It's all those other companies that are liars!
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
Looks to me like that DSL rep would have offered a better response with one of these Tech Support Spheres instead.
Lessee (shakes sphere, reads answer): "Network Error" - see? It works!
- Rob Wilco
And I haven't been wrong yet.
If that's true it speaks to a limited body of experience because, as everyone knows, all blanket declarations are false.
--
As a matter of fact, I am a lawyer. But I play an actor on TV.
I work network support for the Deptartment of Education in a major metropolitan area, and we got a trouble-ticket sent over to our group with the following Problem Description:
"how do I set up a teacher's iBook so that teacher can access DOE email at home without the need for an internet service provider"
Responses we came up with:
1. A REALLY long ethernet cable.
2. Terrestrial microwave.
3. Print the emails as they arrive, pay couriers to deliver the printouts.
4. Our datacenter is moving to a new building at the end of next year, suggest moving it into her apartment.
I only read RFCs for the articles.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Sorry, but I must digress...
I am forced to manage the network at the office, as we have no IT staff, so I am the part time IT staff. 25 clients, 6 servers. Fortunately, I am an old school nerd, so I have learned lots of helpful tips to reduce the workload.
1. If they complain about the speed of their system or internet connectivity, firewall their IP off the network for 2 to 3 days. When you release the lock out, they seem to think its a lot faster and don't complain anymore.
2. The easiest way to reduce errors and mistakes is to make a big deal out of every small problem. This way they are terrified to do anything except what they have to do in order to get the job done. No more wondering around the control panel, internet, etc.
3. If they ever install any program without your permission, then the computer probably needs to be pulled and bench tested. This should take 3 to 5 days. Complain about "spywear" and "viruses", and try to use lots of confusing terms with nano, giga and mega in them (then they will act like they understand, which is really funny). They will never install anything again.
Now, some may think I am being funny (it is, but I'm not). Some will think I am cruel. Some will think its a bad BOFH inpersonation. But if you get about 10 hours a week to keep with all this stuff, you would develop these methods as well.
Oh, and it is a fun way to relieve stess, too.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!