We use "clarify" where i work to queue suport calls and tickets to ensure they are completed in a timely fashion.
Now before they reach me and others in the same department they must pass over 4 different support people and then eventally reach us at "desk-side support"

what i ask is the most stupid support call that has ever reached you and how you went about resolving it, i will start with mine:

A user calls complaining about "im-proper" excel behavior, we ask what the problem is, she says:

"when I open lotus notes and launche an excel attachment, excel opens, then if I switche to lotus notes again, and launche a seperate attachment a second copy of excel loads, whats the problem?"

after 5 minutes we finally grasped that the problem was excel loading TWICE.

it took a long time explaining that if you open TWO seperate documents then TWO copies of excel will load, i dont hink she actually got it, instead she was just told not to worry about it !!

A while back I worked at a Cable Provider/Cable Internet.

We have one customer that would phone every wenesday night. The conversation went something like this:

me: Hello .. ******* Cable Vison How can I help you

Her : My Shows aren't on

Me: What show is that?

Her: My Game show is suppose to be on and its not

Me: What game show is it... what time is it suppose to be on ?

Her: Its Who wants to be a Millionair, and its on at 8:00pm Tonight


Me: ** Long Pause** What time does your clock say?

Her: 9:00pm .** pause** .. Sorry bye

haha

Jason: :emlaugh:

You had this conversation once a week?! Even once would be hilarious... but... once a week!

Yes.. sometimes more often then that.. It was always about her game shows... and what day or time they where on .. or why they weren't on .. It was a headache...

Start Paraphrased call

Thank you for calling Tech Support, Mike Speaking, How can i help you.

I'm not getting any pages.

Do you get connected ma'am?

Well, I'm not sure... I still waiting.

Is your system dialing up?

I,m not sure. I'm waiting for the counter to finish.

The counter?

yes, it's in the middle of my screen, I've been wainting all nite, but nothiung's happening.

What does it look like?

Well, it says "Connected to Netnitco" and has some #'s
19:40:45

Do you see the close button ?

Yes

Click that please and Dble click the big blue E on your desktop....

Oooooh you're so smart, there's my pages.

Click.........

end Paraphrased call
:eek:

hmm, lemme think of another one to get people going:

i could tell you the one about all the support calls we got from the 2000+ users that the internet proxy was down, we told them that people were looking at far too much porn and we had to shut it down until people became a little less excited.

the proxy got fixed today so we cant use that excuse anymore :-(

or what about:

the guy that couldnt turn his machine off so he wasnt pressing the power button hard enough!!, lmao

or the guy that pulled his machine forward cos he couldnt see the screen and unplugged one of the only local printers (paralell) we have in the whole plant from the port.

or what about the guy that we asked to press the "paper feed" button...

im in support, people are really stupid... ive not met the end of it yet, but im sure ill go insane before retirement !!

Originally posted by Jason_Berresford
A while back I worked at a Cable Provider/Cable Internet.

We have one customer that would phone every wenesday night. The conversation went something like this:

me: Hello .. ******* Cable Vison How can I help you

Her : My Shows aren't on

Me: What show is that?

Her: My Game show is suppose to be on and its not

Me: What game show is it... what time is it suppose to be on ?

Her: Its Who wants to be a Millionair, and its on at 8:00pm Tonight


Me: ** Long Pause** What time does your clock say?

Her: 9:00pm .** pause** .. Sorry bye

:eek:



:laugh:

Not sure how funny this is .. But its a good Head basher for Tech support guys.

It was a fairly slow night and I received a call from a customer that was having a problem getting onto the internet.

I did the standard drills, TCP/IP, Nic card, Config files, restarting .. ect... For about 45 min, after all that time I told the customer that I would need to send out a computer tech to replace the Nic card and to setup his computer again. After booking a time he hung up, and I continued my endless pile of paper work. About 10 mintues later he phoned back.. and he said

"My modem has smoke coming out of it again"

Me: Smoke? .. Again?

Him: Yes, earilier I spilt some water on my modem and it started smoking, and now its doing it again.


Needless to say .. I instructed the Customer to come by the office and pick up a new Cable modem.

hehehe These are great!! I want to get a support job just so I can have some stories!!! Hey, you know who is really cool for support? Dell's 99% automated phone system. It's always like:
Did you know that most of the tools that our technicians use to help you are available on the web...........(long pause)......(now time for annoying, but cheerful voice).........THEY ARE!!
AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!! anywho......

Originally posted by Jason_Berresford
Not sure how funny this is .. But its a good Head basher for Tech support guys.

It was a fairly slow night and I received a call from a customer that was having a problem getting onto the internet.

I did the standard drills, TCP/IP, Nic card, Config files, restarting .. ect... For about 45 min, after all that time I told the customer that I would need to send out a computer tech to replace the Nic card and to setup his computer again. After booking a time he hung up, and I continued my endless pile of paper work. About 10 mintues later he phoned back.. and he said

"My modem has smoke coming out of it again"

Me: Smoke? .. Again?

Him: Yes, earilier I spilt some water on my modem and it started smoking, and now its doing it again.


Needless to say .. I instructed the Customer to come by the office and pick up a new Cable modem.

hehe... hmmm.... what if instead of smoking... if it was on fire?


----------------
"My modem is on fire again..."

Me: On fire? .. Again?

Him: Yes, earilier I spilt some water on my modem and it got caught on fire, and now its doing it again.:angry:
-----------------
:eek: :bawling: :blush::cartman:

Originally posted by xtstrike
hmm, lemme think of another one to get people going:

i could tell you the one about all the support calls we got from the 2000+ users that the internet proxy was down, we told them that people were looking at far too much porn and we had to shut it down until people became a little less excited.

the proxy got fixed today so we cant use that excuse anymore :-(

or what about:

the guy that couldnt turn his machine off so he wasnt pressing the power button hard enough!!, lmao

or the guy that pulled his machine forward cos he couldnt see the screen and unplugged one of the only local printers (paralell) we have in the whole plant from the port.

or what about the guy that we asked to press the "paper feed" button...

im in support, people are really stupid... ive not met the end of it yet, but im sure ill go insane before retirement !!

Yeah, *pause*... but that only happens to people in the UK, right?

i hope nobody is actually making these up, i mean everything ive said has happened in at least the last month, ive got more from before that, but these are the recent ones.

there must be more, i mean you people run web hosting companies, you MUST get hopeless people at least once a day?

we need more :-)

I remember that a long time ago, before that internet exist.
I use to make technical PC service. One day.. a girl call me telling me that his FD don't work.
I go.. Open his PC and I see that the FD is full of cookies.
And I told you do you have childs? she say me no. because your FD is full of cookies. And she say me yes.. the PC is asking me about cookies and I put it in the FD.
(I don't know if anybody remember a virus called cookie that is like a pacman asking for cookies).
There I have to explain to that girl that the PCs don't need food :)

Don't know about everyone elses buy my are dead real. I mean I don't remember all the details.. but they are real :)

Several years ago, before I got into the web hosting business, I worked for a local computer store doing primarily sales but spent a few hours a week in the service department. The store was in a big college area (we were in Hadley, Massachusetts, just outside Amherst, where there are 5 colleges in about a 20-mile radius), so we often got people coming in who knew a lot about computers. We also got a lot of people coming in who thought they knew a lot about computers.

One afternoon a guy came in and handed us a list of parts he wanted to purchase. Basically what he wanted to buy was a complete computer, except he just wanted the parts. We told him that for $20 extra we'd put it together for him, but he insisted he knew what he was doing and wanted to assemble it himself.

So, off he went with about $4000 in top-of-the-line components (nothing but the best, he said).

A few days later, this guy walks back in the door, this time carrying the computer he'd so diligently put together. He walked up to the counter and said "This stuff you sold me is junk - none of it works at all! I want my money back, here's your computer."

Well, we instantly realized that something wasn't right, because we'd sold him really good stuff, fully tested, and everything worked fine before it left the store. So we took the computer into the back room, pulled the cover off, and as soon as we did you could smell scorching.

I'm peering into it, trying to see the problem, and our lead tech came over and leaned over my shoulder and started laughing! I asked him what it was, and he said "You haven't spotted it yet? Look closer." So I looked, and damned if I didn't see it in very short order:

The guy had screwed the motherboard down to the backplate with no stand-offs at all! As soon as he plugged it in and hit the switch, the thing shorted out and the motherboard literally welded itself onto the backplate!

We pulled it apart and tested it, and *everything* was fried - the motherboard, processor, RAM, all the cards, everything. The only things that survived were the hard drive and floppy drive.

We never laughed so hard, I'll tell you. Of course the warranty doesn't cover human error, so that guy might as well have thrown 4 grand out the window for all that computer was worth.

And all that because he didn't want to pay us the $20 we would have charged to assemble it for him.

Even now I just have to laugh, because I have never before or since seen anything like that.

When we went back out into the showroom and asked him if he'd noticed the little plastic clips that were in with the motherboard packaging, he said yes, but didn't know what they were for and didn't think they were important. We calmly explained that they're called stand-offs and they're designed to separate the motherboard from the backplate so that it won't short out when power goes through. He just kind of stared at us and said "so you'll replace everything?"

I think they guy nearly had a coronary when we said no.

Never saw him again, but the computer store still has that motherboard and the backplate it's welded to (or at least they did last time I was in about a year ago).

Jason