Slashdot Mirror
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!
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!
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...
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."
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
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.
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".
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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
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.
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...
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
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.
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
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)
>|<*:=
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.
- 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.
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 :)
Free as in mason.
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
Wow, a hundred inches really is a long run. Was it also in danger of being crushed by a dwarf?
demi
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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?
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.
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
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
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!?!?!
My DSL gets forty mebibytes to the fortnight, and that's the ways I likes it!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
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.
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.