As one who has called the help desk recently and complained about being stepped through a stupid rote checklist of stupid troubleshooting tasks, only to discover that when asked if my network cable was plugged into the machine found out that it was not only unplugged but wrapped multiple times around my foot and casters of my office chair…I humbly apologize 
I’m just the family tech support, but my parents and aunt are totally clueless. I’ve finally got my parents trained to unplug and reset whatever’s not working right, but they’re both terrified of the computer.
Oh but my aunt… Ah my aunt. She’s had a computer for years which is great, really it is. She started out with Macs, but she’s been with Windows now for over five years. The latest computer meltdown came when she tried to burn some cds. Her cd burner wouldn’t cooperate, and I wouldn’t drive an hour to come fix it. When I finally did come(not just to fix the computer thankfully), she discovered that she’d been trying to make CD’s with blank DVD’s.
Oh, but she’s got it all worked out now. She wants to buy a new Mac laptop, never mind her Dell is only two years old, and all of her software is PC. She’s decided her only problem is that she learned on a Mac, so switching back should resolve all of her difficulties. I’m afraid I burst her balloon. I’m mean like that.
-Lil
Customer: “My cable box is broken.”
Me [cable company CSR]: “Is the red light on?”
Customer: “Yes, but the green light is off. You need to send out a technician.”
Me: “Our cable boxes have red lights on them. If the green light is off, it’s not our product.”
Customer: “My cable isn’t working, the light is off, send out a technician!”
Me: “I am happy to do that, but if they don’t find a problem with our equipment we’ll charge you for the visit. And our equipment seems to be working, since the red light is on -”
Customer: “Send a technician!”
Ah yes. Almost forgotten. A couple of jobs back I was a tech in a local computer shop. Billy Bob brings in a computer and gives his speal that we repaired it a month ago and it’s broke again and he wants it fixed under warranty. Boss man checks it in and puts it in my queue since I did the origingal work on it. I get to it and read the ticket and my spidey/tech/bs sense goes off the scale. Looking at the case(mini tower) I know I’ve never seen this computer before and the name on the ticket instantly brings up memories of the first incident. It had come in and when I opened it up the hard drive was laying loose on the bottom of the case (desktop). The parts on that ticket had been a set of rails to mount it in a full size bay. Called boss man back and pointed out the lack of said drive rails. He politely called the Billy Bob and pointed out the error and inquired if they wanted us to repair it anyway. That’s why he’s the boss man and I’m kept locked in the back away from the general pubic.
I hear you.
I have to do this all the time.
“I need you do this.”
But I already did it and it didn’t work.
Please, lets give it a try?
I told you I already did that. It’s a waste of time. Page someone!
“Humor me. Lets do this. If I page someone, I have to tell them I did this with you”
OK, I’ll do it.
.
.
.
.
Hey, it worked!
Just once I would like to say "If you know more about this than me…FIX IT YOURSELF!!!"
Don’t fuck with your DNS and WINS settings. Do not change them because someone else has different ones. Don’t put the external DNS in the secondary slot, and don’t put the DNS server you use at home in the settings. And when you do those stupid things, DON’T LIE ABOUT IT!
Don’t start up your own DNS, tell it that it is authoritative for the main company domain and then don’t add just one or two records in it. When you do this don’t be surprised that you can’t get to most company websites even though you cleverly left the real DNS as the secondary DNS. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS TECHNICAL, DON’T GET OTHERS TO CHANGE THEIR DNS TO YOUR CRAPPY TEMPORARY ONE.
Oh, and above all, do not switch an active directory integrated DNS to traditional Master DNS even if you change it back right away. If you need a dump of all the records, there are much easier ways to accomplish that and they don’t screw up my entire network. AND WHEN YOU DO THIS VERY STUPID THING, DON’T LIE ABOUT IT.
Please do tell how I managed to save your job?
BTW I can take a major credit card over the phone 
Dear Users,
In the future, to ensure that we handle your support request in the timely manner, please have the following information available:
#1. The exact error message. When we say ‘exact error message’ we mean the EXACT, WORD FOR WORD, ERROR MESSAGE YA DUMB FUCK. If, dear user, you are incapable of writing down the error message (most likely because you are an illiterate fucktard who lucked into turning the PC on), please have the error message on the screen so you, or someone with more than a first grade education, can read it to us.
#2. The exact steps you used when you received the error. Note, it is not always possible to remember the exact steps, we do understand that, but we need enough information to at least try and recreate the error. Informing the support department that you received an error when running a revenue report, when our software has 40 FUCKING REVENUE REPORTS isn’t going to help. We need to know, as close as possible, exactly what you were doing when the error occurred.
#3. The user code and password of the person who received the error, see also rule #2. We realize that in many cases the person who encountered the error is not the person who calls in the case. That is fine as long as you gather information so we can actually troubleshoot the issue instead of OPENING A GODDAMNED CASE THAT IS NOT SOVABLE BECAUSE YOU DO NOT HAVE ANY INFORMATION. An additional note, if you are the on the IT staff and do not have the information, HOW IN THE FUCK DO YOU KEEP YOUR JOB YOU FUCKING JACKASS?
#4. When speaking with a support technician please be honest at all time. When the support technician asks if anything on the system has changed this does mean ANYTHING. While you might not think that installing the new server/router/software package/OS update or any other modifications you have made are not the cause of the issue, please, for the sake of all that is holy, TELL US EXACTLY WHAT YOU CHANGED. This will aid in the resolution of your problem and will also help you, since we will be less inclined to call your boss and explain to him or her exactly how you FUCKED UP YOUR NETWORK.
An additional request, ff you email in a screen shot of the error it is helpful if you also include WHAT YOU WERE DOING WHEN THE GODDAMNED ERROR OCCURED. An email with a screenshot and no other information is not helpful and will be sent directly to the bit bucket.
Thank you,
Support
The ISP I have in Spain is relatively new; it’s owned in part by several regional governments (internet by radio, they figured it could be a good way to get coverage to remote areas faster than the cable network grows). The other option in that village is dial-up. For the first three months: every time my connection went down, I’d give it half an hour and then if it wasn’t back up, call. I know I wasn’t their only customer, but another was City Hall (which doesn’t work at the same hours I’m home) and the rest were apparently too used to being ignored or too shy to call CS.
They’d say “oh, we don’t have records of an outage… let me check… oh dear, yes, that repeater is down!” They’d give me an ET (usually less than one hour), thank you, bye.
After a while I noticed a pattern in when the outages happened and told them. They changed their procedures, so that when the weather conditions were those I’d noticed as causing outages, they’d keep pinging that repeater to make sure it was fine. My amount of tickets took a dive I so love good customer support!
My first memory of tech support…
Once upon a time, many sawgrass seasons ago, the office computer in my private company had two 8 inch floppy drives and ran CP/M. (Yes, really, kiddies.) To open the “office system” (heh) you turned the machine on, inserted a floppy with the “system” on it, typed [CompanyName], and hit RETURN. If you were lucky, you got a lame, first generation task manager to initialize.
(Anybody else remember that the ENTER key used to be labeled RETURN? Same time frame was also pre-mouse.)
I usually started the beast up first thing in the morning, but one day I was distracted by some important task on the other side of the office. My (now X) wife wanted to do something on the computer, so I was instructing her by talking across the room.
“Turn it on-- the big red button on the front. No, front. Top right corner. Yes, if you hear noises, that’s good. Means it’s running.”
“Now put in the floppy labeled [whatever]. Yes, push it into that slot. Right there, on the front of the machine. OK, either slot-- that one is fine. Push it until it goes ‘click’. Now close the door. Push that tab thing down. Yes, right there over the slot.”
I can hear funky noises from across the room.
“No, now push that button under the slot, take the floppy out, and turn it over. Yes, I know you just put it in, but take it out. Now put it back, label side up. And close the door again.”
“Now just type [CompanyName] then RETURN.”
“Well, do it again. [CompanyName] then RETURN.”
“Yes, spelled just like on the big sign out front. [CompanyName] then RETURN, for cris’ sake!”
“Well, it works for me every damn time. Do it again!!”
Degenerates into a shouting match, me repeating the seemingly simple instruction, her insisting she’s done it with no result. Finally I yell “God DAMN IT!! WHAT the hell have you done to the stupid machine?” and run across the room to see for myself. There on the screen, in repetition after repetition from top to bottom, are the words
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return
[CompanyName] return…
sigh…
My biggest peeve is when a secretary calls for his/her boss.
“Her computer isn’t working. Please send someone. Thanks.”
I have to tell these people…these same people…over and over again that I can’t send a tech without more information than ‘computer isn’t working’. Then I have to call the boss, which is never easy because these bosses aren’t real good at returning phone calls, and get more information. 9 out of 10 times it’s something simple I can handle over the phone.
This site is great for some “Tech Support” laughs:
Google Startup page. Boss loves that it squeezes a little xtra out of the customers. Now I get to keep working weekends. On to the bitching:
-When you call, don’t just keep talking over me. I’ll be less likely to help, and more likely to say you need an expensive tech call.
-I’M STILL NOT DELL!! Don’t yell at me because of your own frustrations. see previous comment.
-We may have a similar name to another company (who stole our name, btw), but when I tell you it’s not our tech that came out there, I’m serious. Our policy is not to remove the PC from your house. Your guy came and took the PC with him, and his name wasn’t any tech employed by us, EVER! Stop harassing me about your computer.
-No, I will not recommend hardware/software for free. As a one-time gimme, I did this, and now the person calls constantly because it’s not working. We didn’t install it, nor did we buy it for you from the store. The product has its own tech support, whom I’m sure is worth the $3.99 a minute or else they wouldn’t charge it.
You know, companies that have suck technical support tick me off for two reasons. One, as a (potential) customer. Two, because people end up calling random other technical support lines in desperation and saying “Well, you know computers, right?” Right, but being free technical support to the world is not a good business plan.
I know Microsoft/Apple/Dell/whatever has long waits and often bad techs, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to troubleshoot every problem on your computer just because our software’s installed. Oh, you think it’s related? Lucky for me, there’s a handy setting in our software that completely disables it. Did that fix it? No? Well, not our software.
Megadittoes. Tell me what you’re trying to do and tell me what the system is doing in response. Do not speculate. You’re wasting time, mine and yours. I can count the number of times the speculation has turned out to be correct on the stump of one missing finger.
I was going to write something very much like this.
I, too, am Tier Three. Most of the time (not always; see first response above), by the time you get to me, you’ve gone through Tier One and Tier Two and all the obvious things have been attempted. You are talking to me because I’m the Adept and I know more about the system than anyone else short of the Guru who wrote it. (Occasionally even a little more. The Guru doesn’t always know what happens to the system after it’s been released into the wild.) I’m not here to help you with simple problems; when I get involved, it’s because something warrants my attention.
Now, I can handle an ignorant user. I know how to translate techspeak into simple procedures. I know how to interpret nontechnical descriptions of symptoms into system behavior. I am very good at knowing when to cut short an unproductive email or phone exchange and schedule an in-person visit in order to circumvent a communication issue. In this kind of situation, I have the patience of Job.
But what burns my gut is when Tier One doesn’t do their job: when I get a case that should have been handled by the front line, at least preliminarily, or investigated for appropriate triage. And when I do Tier One’s job, perform the initial analysis and add notes to the ticket and transfer it back with detailed instructions about what needs to happen and why, I do not want to see the ticket come back to my queue without comment. And when I tell the Tier One analyst what is going on and what needs to be done about it, I especially do not want to see that analyst disregard my analysis and clumsily attempt to repeat my investigation.
I am the Adept. That’s why I’m Tier Three and you’re Tier One. I would not have provided you with detailed notes unless I expected you to read them and pay attention. Stop wasting time going over the same ground. I told you, it’s not an application error, it’s a network configuration problem for the remote user. Stop asking questions about the application. Stop it! Okay, fine, I’m contacting your supervisor. Hey, you got written up because you’re incompetent? Too bad. You were. Learn from it. Because if it happens again, you’ll deserve your discharge.
This is a daily goddamn problem.
Word.
One more word of advice: If you see me online at two in the morning, it’s because one of your coworkers woke me up to fix an urgent problem. I know you get really bored on third shift at the call center, but do not start sending me IMs to see “what’s up.” I still have to be in the office at 8:00 to write more documentation that you’ll never read.
Off topic, because I haven’t been Tech Support since NCR discontinued its Unix minis (with dumb terminals): From the thread title, I thought that fluiddruid was providing a space where the Tech Gods of the Dope (Jerry Davis, Sean Phelan, et al.) could divest themselves of the annoyances that come into their lives trying to make the SDMB experience of the Teeming Millions less of a hassle. And that would be a fun thread to read!
Some of the 3K’s are still humming, frighteningly enough. I get to 86 the last of mine next year. The NCR folks tell me that we’re not their only remaining support contract.
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Remember when I said I’d be more than happy to help you fix your laptop? Remember the first thing I said? BRING YOUR POWER CORD. Yes. Sounds familiar now? Good. Good. Now, here’s your laptop back, because I can’t work on a powerless laptops. No, I don’t have extras of your type of computer, because almost every damn model difference for every manufacturer has its own uniquely shaped power cord.
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Remember the second thing? Yes, I need your Windows set-up CD. I don’t have a copy of the Windows Home, the Windows Professional, the Windows Business, the Windows 2000, the Windows XP SP1, the Vista Beta, the Vista Small, the Vista Magnum, the Vista Computer Takeover, gah… NO, without that CD, I can’t fix your computer.
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No. No matter how much you need it, I CAN’T fix your computer when it has no power. No, there’s no way I can get your data off the disk when there’s NO POWER.
If we form an army, this t-shirt will be a part of the uniform: