Slashdot Mirror
10-year-old Microsoft Ticket Resurfaces?
Ian Lamont writes "Microsoft is apparently taking seriously a blogger's claim that a Microsoft tech support employee called back to check on a 10-year-old BSOD trouble ticket. The anonymous blogger suspects someone at Microsoft typed "1/8/08" into their tracking system for the date of a follow-up call, instead of "1/8/98." Microsoft told Computerworld support cases "are reviewed regularly so that we can ensure we're resolving customer issues in a timely fashion — regardless of the callback commitment set by the agent. Nonetheless, no system can ensure complete accuracy."" To be fair, this is all unverified, so choose to believe at your own risk.
Who remembers their mouse didn't work 10 years later?
If Microsoft is looking into it what more can you expect? Yeah, yeah, I know what you are saying, but *reality check* mistakes happen. I think its cool.
Now, the question is: are they going to fix the problem or is the OS now out of support?
This is slashdot. The article is critical of Microsoft. Of course they will believe.
Let's think about all the things that would have to happen for this story to be true:
1. Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this.
2. When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
3. Somebody has the same phone number of 10 years.
Or we could go with theory B: a blogger made up a funny story.
Microsoft actually answered in time and slashdot reported the news ten years late.
Well, I for one am quite excited about this. It may have taken them 10 years, but they're finally getting around to fixing the blue screen problem on Windows. i for one won't be missing it!
Microsoft offers support on their products? When did this start?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Nobody EVER calls back.
... to hear the next story, coming soon, about the tech support operator who was fired because (s)he was "too stupid" to be in the technical support department.
I can't exactly put my finger on it, but there is something about the blogger's story that does not ring true. Maybe it is the lack of any personal information, or the implausibility of the ticketing system just cheerfully accepting a 10-year-distant callback date, or the implausibility of the tech who called his parents failing to notice that he was responding to a 10-year-old ticket.
In any case, I would hope that Microsoft actually verifies the claims before making a big deal of them.
- In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!
People actually remember computers systems things that routinely do something interesting (good or bad) such as computer systems, cars, girlfriends and so on. Although these things aren't now deep within your long term memory it can take very little to bring them back. A sound, a smell a phone call from Microsoft...
I have worked in tech support at other companies, and we used to get regular reports about the oldest outstanding issues. And that was 10 YEARS ago - the same time this issue was opened. I can understand fat fingering the callback date - but no way an issue that old would get by for that long without being flagged by someone...
Did MS actually fix his problem? I find that to be more curious.
I guess everything is relative. Every time I had a support issue that required contact with a Microsoft developer it took days to even speak with one. And this was "enterprise" paid support, so I can only imagine what others must go through.
To their credit, once we were in contact with a developer they were usually helpful and always fast. But getting to the right person required telling our problem over and over to various levels of support staff.
Developers: We can use your help.
1. Why is this considered "news"?
2. Who cares?
Vescere bracis meis.
Hello Valued Microsoft Customer,
Thank you for contacting technical support. We value your business and are dedicated to resolving your issue as quickly as possible.
You say that your copy of Mechwarrior II crashed Windows 95 faster than El Nino crashed into the eastern seaboard. Well, ha! You're out of luck. What are you going to do, get an iMac? Like anyone's going to buy a computer without a floppy disk. That company -- whoever makes it -- is going to be out of business in a year.
Now I'm going to stockpile Pogs, make a lot of money from them, and buy some land in Afghanistan, while you deal with your own issues.
Signed,
Microsoft Technical Support
Wow. That's some impressive overclocking there. Liquid Hydrogen I take it?
Seriously, 2-3 crashes a day? That would be intolerable for me. Mine (Visual Studios, several games, office, web) Crashed maybe once a week or two in Windows 98 when I tried to see how long I could run it. Of course, after running for almost a week, it was very slow.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
I filed a bug against FreeBSD back in 1998. I didn't get a reply on that ticket until late 2002, if memory serves. Turned out to be a known issue with supporting EIDE, turning that off in the BIOS did the trick, as I discovered, and followed up the ticket myself the next day.
Over 2-3 years later, someone finally closed the ticket.
These things happen.
>> was probably about a 333 GHz Pentium 2 :)
:)
> That's some impressive overclocking there.
Ha -- good one! 333 MEGA-Hz.
> Seriously, 2-3 crashes a day? That would be intolerable for me.
In retrospect, yeah it does sound intolerable. Somehow I just got used to it. To this day I hit ctrl-s, ctrl-s, ctrl-s frequently when I pause for thought.
You should have tried OS/2 :-). Around 1998, windoze 95/98 were trying to catch up, and doing a horrible job of it. TCP/IP? What's that?
yes, its true. some people have to work for a living and do things like type in bunches of numbers between incompatible systems. sometimes after 10 or 11 hours on a friday when you are late to pick up your kids and your weird supervisor said your shoes are not 'professional looking' enough, and you skipped lunch break to meet deadlines and the coffee machine was broken, and the printer jammed for the 8th time and someone told you that you should have filled out a problem report, and it was your responsibility, even though you have already filled out 5 problem reports all of which were completely ignored....
sometimes you might make a typo.
I suspect a /. editor typed "1/8/08" where he intended "1/8/98" and vice versa. Doesn't make sense for a 98 event to appear if MS accidentally typed "08", except if they're using Microsoft software to perform the search.
Perhaps the guy was setting up his machine ready to play Duke Nukem Forever expecting its imminent release and the guy at Microsoft knew better and put in what he thought was a suitable follow up date for checking if it worked out okay for him?
I know of a prof who will remain as nameless as her university and department who, in 1992, called up a student to ask if he was still interested in a graduate assistant teaching position. He declined; he had sent his letter of inquiry back in 1978 and was no longer interested.
From Geek Corollary #63, it follows that he's lying.
QED
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
"Sir, if you'd just wait until next year when we release Windows ME, I'm sure you'll find that all of your problems will have been resolved."
This guy's the limit!
Well, overclocking can lead to instability sometimes. I'm sure the crashing was just the price of going fast.
This means that I should be getting a callback on my ticket in in about 1 year, 3 months! Now I'll finally get that printer to work with Windows 98, yey!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Actually, if the ticket was for 1/8/08, then they're early -- by six and a half months.
Pay rises for accountants all round!
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Scroll down in the comments, to where someone named "Bran" (Peter Brando, according to the link" says "I work with MS Professional Support" and comments, apparently with a straight face:
"10 years is definitely a long time to have a case open."
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Techsupport has gone down the hill recently. All you get today is a call center in bombay with scripted answers - or worse, a free for all support 'forum' filled with millions of garbage queries.
The usual formula that they expect from you doesn't suite me since by the time I contact tech support on something I've done at least two days of troubleshooting and I'm not interested in rebooting my machine - again.
Incidentally if anyone has an idea of how to further troubleshoot a GPIB-bus problem where a *OPC? query occationally results in an immediate EADR error I'd be more than happy to hear any ideas...
Fluke and NI have no ideas.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
I've seen six year old tickets in a production trouble ticket system, but it's much more likely the TT system would be upgraded and cleaned of cruft during that time.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Although I can understand how crazy things do indeed sometimes happen, but I don't know of a single "decent" trouble ticket system that by default doesn't mitigate such occurrences. Although the call back date could be set for any time whatsoever, there's always a date for resolution. Normally it's entered automatically based on the type of ticket, severity label as per the tech's discretion or any number of criteria and often not able to be changed by the tech him/herself. This prevents techs from trying to escape being listed on the "overdue" or "open tickets" reports managers pull up. If the tech can modify it then normally the managers pull reports on "time to resolve issue" or other such reports that would have eventually shown a ticket open for a long period of time.
What this reminds me of is a disturbing trend in bloggers that any traffic is good traffic and since they have little to loose they'll do just about anything. Gamecocks, Gizmodo and if we dig perhaps others recently, too. After all, when MS closes tickets they like to send an email (in fact one time I couldn't tell them I simply wanted to close a ticket, put no resolution and not receive an email but they were not allowed to just "drop it.) So why wouldn't the blogger get it as definitive proof of the event?
At the end of the day maybe it did happen... maybe it was data corruption... who knows but it smells fishy.
That's just my POV... no more, no less.
The solution is still the same: Reinstall Windows.
The oddest part of the story is that any sentient being thought they could (or should even try) to get tech support from Microsoft. I mean how green could this user be to report a BSOD 10 years ago when they were almost an hourly occurrence?
To be fair, I have to admit that my Vista ultimate has crashed exactly once in the 4 months I've been saddled with it. Once more, and I'm picking up the call to schedule my tech support call - which will arrive after my retirement.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft built a system without timestamps, where you have to manually enter a date? I dunno whether calling that believable or not believable is more flamebait, but it's sure a wild story.
stuff |
And another, more important, issue seems to be how... of course we know MS-haters never, ever lie about Microsoft.
This entire "ten years after" thing could be 100% bovine fecal matter for all we know, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least.
Microsoft must have no mechanism for tracking work order/help requests. Come on. Every manager has daily/weekly/monthly reports that show the number of requests opened/closed/carried over and it flags old requests, and it sorts by age, so the oldest issue shows up at the top of the list. A manager would have seen this.
I have some familiarity with software for call center reporting. The managerial reports tended to show aggregate data, absolute numbers and percentages or contacts, closed issues, open issues, etc. There was never any reporting of an individual issue. In statistics class isolated outliers were often discard because of the distortion they would cause in the "good" data. I expect something similar would occur is any statistical analysis of long term call center trends. It is doubtful that a manager would be reviewed based upon outliers rather than averages, so his reports would probably not bother to show outliers.
The following is counterintuitive but the goal of many call centers is not to have perfect customer service. If you don't have a certain percentage of people getting tired of waiting on hold and hanging up then you are considered overstaffed, losing money due to excessive payroll. The specific percentage of desired hang ups varies with the average caller's revenue or cost (usually "baked" into original sale price in anticipation of future support) and the average staffer's cost. There is also a partially valid assumption that if its important they will call back, more so on the support side than the sales side.
When the help desk guy was assigned to make the followup call, he didn't notice and find it odd that the original call came in 10 years ago? He didn't call his supervisor over and say, "hey I think somebody made a mistake here! Maybe we should just close this out."
Closing out the ticket because the original start date *indicates* it is ten years old would be a bad idea. Presumably there was a typo in the call back date, 98 to 08, but it could have just as easily been in the original call date, 08 -> 98. The body of the report would have to be read to get context.
Basically someone put future dates in the billing system, making it believe we were in a future date, and resulting in ridiculous bills being sent out to every customer for a total of $7,500,000 in the short period of time the program run.
More info on the dreamhost page: http://www.dreamhoststatus.com/
And explanation of what happened by the guy who did it on its blog: http://blog.dreamhost.com/
"Words of wisdom: drop that zero and get with the hero" -- Vanilla Ice
The user hanged himself after 2 weeks.
The tech finally found the solution for the BSOD:
Microsoft Tech: "Hello, I found a solution to your BSOD problem".
Customer: "What is the solution that it took you 10 years to find?".
Microsoft Tech: "Upgrade to Windows Vista. Have a nice day!".
Customer: "Fucker...".
Kickass Cheap Web Hosting
On a related note (Score:1, Offtopic)
;D
Apparently not.
... the implausibility of the ticketing system just cheerfully accepting a 10-year-distant callback date ...
There are always exceptions. You open a retirement account at age 25, the bank/broker's system schedules call backs every ten years to rebalance as your risk tolerance changes as you get closer to retirement age.
As a software developer I would consider the more common short term nature of tech support and the less likely long term nature of some other business relationships. The result would be that the time window allowed for callbacks would be in a configuration file, not "baked" into the code. Misconfiguration or poorly chosen values are highly plausible.
A 2008 date, being entered in 1998, in the midst of Y2K problems...and it didn't crash the system or in some way go "what the hell?" Like every other business in the world, I doubt Microsoft actually was on the ball to have their Y2K issues fixed 2 years in advance...more like 2 weeks. ...in other news - I love that my confirmation word for this post was "reefer"...heh
The biggest reason that gives this story away as B.S. is that it claims that MS's tech support called a customer back.
Everybody knows that there is no freakin' such thing as MS tech support, so that alone is proof that the story is crap.
They called him back to ask what? Whether the issue with his shiny new installation of Windows 98 is resolved yet? Please remind me, for how many years has that version been unsupported? 5?
Hardly. A blogger made a funneh and made it on Slashdot.
See Appendix C, page 4 of the NI 488.2 User Guide. In addition to cause and cure listed there, the following may apply, from my personal experiences:
1. Bad GPIB cable allowing for intermittent ATN signal
2. If slot based, reseat the NI GPIB card - especially if you have an older VME cage, clean your card contacts and clean your case to ensure no extra circuit paths from dust.
3. If NI-GPIB-USB based, ensure correct contact with the cable in to the USB port - it has no strain relief. Further, check to ensure that the contacts are OK (this is least likely cause).
If you are running with multiple controllers, you're having an application s/w inflicted arbitration problem.
But my most likely suspect for you - if you're running a single controller system - is that your interface isn't the controller in charge (CIC) when issuing the operation complete query (*OPC?). That is remedied by asserting a bus clear or naked (no address) interface clear. However, if your s/w is well structured, you should be querying on an operation in progress, so you wouldn't expect that. You might - if you suspect older hardware to be a problem - trap for the error, issue a bus clear and re-attempt.
Finally, ensure that you have the lastest updates for your 488 driver and VISA from NI, latest firmware from Fluke.
And don't underestimate the other components in the chain. I was troubleshooting a problem with an instrument for days before discovering that another instrument's GPIB interface was card based and his card was loose. Turned out he would change his address, phantomly and on-the-fly causing all sorts of bus malice. Reseating that one did the trick.
If you have access to the NI GPIB bus-sniffing controller, run a bus-sniffing session and you'll likely learn the real cause and cure if the above doesn't help. They're a little pricier, but worth their weight in gold. I wouldn't run a lab without one.
I've used GPIB since it came out as HPIB, almost going back to 78. It's reliable if done right and not requiring many hardware swapouts for a problem this simple.
I don't work for either NI or Fluke, nor do I independently consult on these matters - I just like the protocol.
Apologies to others for being otherwise off-topic.
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.
I call BS. I worked Windows 95 support around that time ('98), and while we did often call people back to check on problems, it didn't work the way this guy imagines. Calls logged in workbench that we wanted to follow up on were just left open. Each morning you checked your open tickets, and called the ones that needed calling. No automated dialer either, as some have suggested. If something was left open to long your supervisor would check on it with you, and it would get closed or escalated posthaste.
If this guy really did get a call, my guess is he got a wrong number when a tech was following up on somebody else's problem. Maybe his customer record got mistakenly linked to somebody else's ticket. Maybe he's making the whole story up.
Premise 1: Microsoft uses out-dated systems
Premise 2: Out-dated systems would explode if they attempted to represent a date in the year 2000 or higher
Premise 3: An employee entered the year 2008 into the help ticket system in 1998
Conclusion: Microsoft's help-ticket system exploded. Contradiction... therefore, Premise 3 is incorrect
David Spade, is that you?
if you think that's bad, wait until the General Protection Errors hit everytime you reboot Windows. Win95 was in the market during this support ticket. Win98 wasn't for another 6 months.
Please blame this on someone else's code because it makes you guys look like idiots. A customer support system is the kind of system a 'normal' business would put high up on the importance ladder if they cared about their customers. Another company, say one with a monopoly position, might just do it as an exercise. This isn't a sales dept in/out board folks and yet they allowed any date value to be entered for the trouble follow up date?
Nice work boys and girls of Redmond. No wonder it's 2008 and your products are just now reaching the reliability of single UNIX boxes of the mid 90's. Well, albeit with either redundancy in real hardware or virtual hardware. But nice work for moving forward at the speed of a lead sled.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
You know, I'm getting realy tired of people bitching about /. Sure the site has its flaws, but if you think it's a "waste" to be here, then leave! Please! Most of us don't want to hear you bitch. Personally, I enjoy a good laugh at MS' expense as time well spent.
A little extreme, but sometimes things just get forgotten. I'm a little surprised a trouble ticket festered for 10 years but who knows? I got an e-mail once that took 5 years to be delivered, it turned out the e-mail server was decommissioned whilst mine was still in the mail spool and, 5 years later, the server was turned on again and did its job.
Just recently I got a reply to a Freshmeat post I made in 1998. Old data can stick around for a long time!
Why WOULDN'T you want to keep the same phone number? I've always had the same cell number and hopefully always will. I've moved, but the area code is less and less relevant as more people have cell phones anyway.
I see no reason to change phone numbers or email addresses as long as they still work. Old friends can always reach me if they want to.
No, the BSOD problem has NOT been fixed.
It's a bit better than it was in Win95 and Win98, but still there.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Big deal, I mean if the issue was serious the person would have phoned back themselves. Mistakes do happen in any system, and MS isn't exactly a small company that can reasonably catch every one of them. Mildly amusing, maybe, but ultimately unimportant.
next I suppose you'll be telling me that nobody cares if I can't read my floppies any mmore.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Am I really supposed to believe that Microsoft's help desk software was Y2K compliant in January 1998?
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
Ever tries getting a support call by Mr. Linus Torvalds regarding his OS? Good luck if he even bother s even opening your mail.
"No wonder it's 2008 and your products are just now reaching the reliability of single UNIX boxes of the mid 90's. "
/., and they -are- juveniles.
Of course, it's 2008, and Linux boxes are just now getting to be as functional and usable as windows boxes from the mid 90's. And what do you know, those are the pieces that have issues.
Linux and Unix are reliable at their core because they are relatively simple. Windows has issues because it isn't. The surprising thing isn't that Windows has issues, the surprising thing is how rare they really are in the scheme of things. It works pretty damn well, considering that there are hundreds of millions of copies out there, and they run on just about everything reasonably well.
I like Linux as much as the next guy, but it's just juvenile to trash windows like some of the folks here want to. Oh, wait, that's right, this is
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
Has it occurred to anyone that the phone call was from MS, but was to the wrong number?
I get calls like that once or twice each year.
People mis-dial.
The anonymous blogger suspects someone at Microsoft typed "1/8/08" into their tracking system for the date of a follow-up call, instead of "1/8/98." Should that not be "typed in 1/8/98 instead of 1/8/08"?
ROFL. I could so many many things right now. Microsoft. Tech Support. BSOD's. Trouble Tickets. 10 years old.
:)
You could not ask for more of an opening to take pot shots right now.
It's okay.. mod me down.. this time I deserve it
It was for Windows ME.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
"Of course, it's 2008, and Linux boxes are just now getting to be as functional and usable as windows boxes from the mid 90's. And what do you know, those are the pieces that have issues."
I wouldn't call Windows functional or usable in the mid 90's. NT v4.0 was ok but it's guts were still unreliable and insecure and you've got to be high if you're considering Win95/98/ME in that comment. But hey, for a bunch of hacks throwing free code of the wall, todays GNU/Linux is pretty sweet. I'll leave it at that.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
First off, Windows 95 support ceased on Dec 31, 2001. I'm sure they cleared all open issues at that time. Support could still be obtained through third parties that had done the support for MS, but it was fee based and not affiliated with MS any longer. Secondly, the software MS was using at that time (CITS and Compass) had no scheduling feature. I worked for MS support in 1998, so I know the procedure and practices of the time. This was likely either a wrong number, a satisfaction survey on his most recent call, or a complete fabrication.
Customer: I switched to Leoptard... but now my computer boots to a blue screen. What's going on?
Apple Support: That doesn't happen. Have a nice d.. (click)
Back in my day we didn't have blue screens of death... they were more like amber screens of death. ASOD as we affectionately called them.
My parents last 3 digits are 555. They have been for over 30 years, the local number has changed once in that time when our exchange closed. The national code has changed once too.
Well, it only worked in a relatively unsupported way for 10's, if not 100's of millions of people, 99% of which would have not been able to use linux in any way. Linux is only approaching being usable by those same people. During this time, vast amounts of business and user work got done, the majority of which was done on win 3.1/95/98. You have to deny reality to declare that windows didn't function fairly well for running Excel, Word, and email.
Windows reliability is fun to make fun of, but let's be real - the majority of users ran and still run the shit day in, day out without significant issues. I ran IT organizations during the 90's, supporting 100's of users. For a while, I supported a download farm that served up 10's of millions of windows based clients for one of the major consumer applications out there. If Windows didn't work and wasn't usable, we wouldn't have had a business, and my retirement wouldn't be paid for. Compare the Windows downloads for Firefox to the Linux downloads. Which platform is used by the unwashed masses? In the aforementioned download farm, our linux downloads were less than 2% of the total.
Geez, think critically for a second. Could your Grandmother user Linux? Linux is great, and I love it, but "usability" is not high on the list of positive attributes.
Now, it is not out of the question that I might be high. But that again would be besides the point.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
"Geez, think critically for a second. Could your Grandmother user Linux? Linux is great, and I love it, but "usability" is not high on the list of positive attributes."
no, she's 6' under but my mom-in-law has used it for over 3 years. I'd also setup a system for a friend who also had two high school age girls with userID's on the system. The support issues went to zero after dumping Windows for these users.
Now, attempts to get similar systems in local schools and libraries have been met with the same problems of the 90's. Various contracts were said to not allow these proposed systems configurations. But they fumble through at a snails pace of MS innovation. And regardless of how many get PCs which are stuffed with Microsoft's preloads, their software still sucks IMO. The fact that people make money off the people who use Windows has no bearing on the quality of the product. None.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Call me back when your mother installs Fedora herself. As to your friend with the teenagers, I have two myself. The reason those issues are going to zero is you've installed a system that they can't install new apps onto. While that reduces issues, you did so by reducing 'usability'. You could have achieved the same affect by installing XP Pro and removing administrative access from their logins. But again, these are system administration steps that reduce usability, which, as I said before, exists in a competing balance with stability.
You won't agree, and that doesn't worry me too much. If Linux were 'usable', it would be popular among the unwashed masses.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
you've obviously have not used Linux in the last few years. Application installs are brain dead easy as long as you ONLY choose from the few thousand typically available from the major distros.
I also know some with your attitude to trying something new and have seen them pay over $200 a couple of times just to get someone to reinstall Windows and reinstall all their applications. I've also seen a few people purchase new computers just because Windows started acting up and the option was to hire someone to fix it or get a new computer with Windows pre-loaded. Makes a nice profit for all those supporting, selling, pushing Windows.
Good luck with Windows, you seem to be quite happy in your ignorance of what else is going on out there.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Anyone other than me who think that this may be a planted story?
I mean look at it.
Some guy who noone knows who is, makes a post in his second blog about MS not calling him back, in this post he makes no smart remarks or anything about Microsoft and then Microsoft say that they are "investigating it".
In the end, this doesn't make MS look bad, and can actually be spun to be good PR if they follow it up correctly.
Reminds me of when the BBC's caption on it's daily B/W photo mentioned that it was taken in 1027. When I asked how they obtained a photo before photography was invented, evidently they were not amused at being caught making such a stupid mistake because they failed to reply.
This netcraft confirmation has been sitting in the queue for over 10 years now!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
No wonder people hangup on them!
--- I am known for the ones who want to find me on the net. Is that a privacy risk or a privilege? One might wonder..
Okay I feel I should put my two sense in. I used to work at Dell doing outbound calling(meaning I did the freaking call backs). The people doing the callbacks in my department were usually the best agents in that department. From what I seen of calls coming into the outbound team in my department was that a lot of agents booking callbacks and recording logs made a lot of mistakes. They were not always formally trained in computers, and some of them you would wonder how they managed to get fired from Burger King, walk across the street and put their name on the application.
More often then not the worst ones worked on the night shift, had been fired or quit(couldn't handle someone getting pissed off because the customer knew more about computers), so you couldn't ask them what the hell they were thinking. Sometimes people didn't log things at all. So on more than one occasion when I went to make a callback I was in a similar boat the newest log was 10 years old and it was booked for a follow up. Well you figured that some jerk didn't log his case in the system and you make that call. Never had it happen that it was really a 10 year old case.
Now as for your 1. thing about tracking open closed cases. There would sometimes be 3+ open cases for one issue(depending on how many times the person called in), typically you would close the last one you were working on if you seen this. But remember like I said sometimes people suck and don't close the case. Managers weren't suppose to close those for you so they would stay open but the manager would know it was suppose to be closed(Managers were suppose to reprimand agents for doing that but that hurt their stats having to fix a problem). Our system then would auto close the case after being opened untouched for 2 months. But I assume this was an old system(10 years old) that might have been upgraded that could have had a bug not to close old open cases. Or they could have two separate systems where you don't close open calls before they are made(we had something simular to that, a call was booked and never closed until it was called made sure it wasn't accidentally closed, I sometimes had callbacks booked over 2 months after the initial case was opened because someone was going on holidays)
Either way it seems that this story is completely plausible. But I would rather have them make a mistake call me 10 years down the road then not call me back because it looked like someone fubbed up.
But because the blogger is anonymous I doubt it has much merit.
Well, there's a mature, civil response. Someone around here has a good sig that discusses the meaning of ad hominem. Keep your eye's peeled.
I was taught to respect my elders. The trouble is, it's getting harder and harder to find some.
I have to say, I would choose not to believe it. One look at the content of the call(eg IE3 crashing on windows 95) and the tech guy would dismiss the call.
America, Home of the Brave.
sorry but your statements lead me to believe you are unqualified for the discussion. You are fully qualified to state the obvious of how many are using Microsoft software though. What other option do I have but to state this when you say my mom/etc can't install applications on Linux? It is currently very easy to install applications on most Linux distributions. Different from Windows but very easy. And yes, there are cases where going outside of the distribution repository for an application requires more than a button click but hey, I've seen nice pretty button-click Microsoft application installations screw up other apps and even Microsoft apps so it's not 100% roses on Windows either.
end of discussion IMO since you don't have the background to discuss what is outside of the Windows world.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus