My pet peeve, after many years of tech support:
“Not doing what I expected.” and “Not working.” are two very different things.
If the software is doing what it’s designed to do, then the fact that it doesn’t do what you want is not a bug.
We’re not going to code up a super-secret ultra edition just for you.
Cope.
Ah, I hear some good stories on this score. Apparently girls get “Can I speak to a technician please?” fairly often. For quite a period of time the night shift was staffed by two people only, one of whom was Daerlyn, when she would get the dreaded “Can I please speak to a TECHNICIAN?” line, she would say: “Sure!” and transfer the guy to the other tech… Jill.
Let’s not even start on the French-Canadian comments they get.
Sounds like me. The only time I ever call my ISP is to let them know things like ‘Your DNS server is down.’
They crack me up because for the most part, the Level 1 people don’t want to listen to me when they ask what the problem is, they just want to read their script and waste a lot of time with a ‘solution’ that does absolutely nothing to fix the problem, like telling me to repeatedly ‘power-cycle’ my ‘DSL modem’ and getting very angry when I tell them that rebooting my router will not put their DNS server back online.
Eventually when I get to someone who’s not just a script reader, they have the problem solved very quickly because they actually listen.
Course I’ve been on the other end of tech support too, and I know about the kind of idiots who don’t know why their floppy drive doesn’t work, and all the disks are coming out covered in an orange goo that strongly resembles melted American cheese. Because their four year old put special ‘disks’ made by Kraft in there.
What, you’ve never heard of a Kraft Mac’n’Tosh?
After I kept insisting that was not normal, the guy finally asked his kid if the kid put anything in there. The kid said ‘Disks!’ and when dad asked ‘What disks?’ the kid apparently went and got a Kraft Single from the fridge.
The guy was not happy that he’d have to replace the drive, nor was he happy that this damage was not covered under warranty.
I don’t know how to use your software so please don’t ask me. I can install it, troubleshoot it if it crashes, patch it, and upgrade it. Please don’t ask me why your CAD drawing are not scaled properly or how to automate some task in Excel. I’m sure I could sit down and figure it out, but that’s not my job.
The same goes for broken photocopiers, coffee machines, and keyboard trays. Please don’t assume I’m an extension of the facilities group just because I get down on my hands and knees under your filthy desk to hook up your PC.
An ex-boyfriend of mine was tech support’s worst nightmare. He would scream profanities at them when they couldn’t fix his problem, and the problem was usually something like, he called the ISP to bitch about his CD drive not working. Never mind that he bought a computer from some friend of his who builds computers in his garage – it must be Earthlink’s fault. As well, it must be Earthlink’s fault that he downloaded and installed a bunch of crap and ended up with about forty different viruses and spyware and everything else under the sun. It was also Earthlink’s fault when his pirated copy of MS Office quit working (because his friend uninstalled it). Hell, it was Earthlink’s fault when the printer ran out of ink. He called them at least once a week, ranting and raving about something they couldn’t have fixed even if they’d wanted to, demanding free months of service for their failure.
You have Bellsouth? I could tell you some stories.
Here’s a dirty little secret: they make us do that. In fact, working the BS DSL support, we could theoretically be fired if we didn’t do their bullshit script every time. It was the most pointless thing ever designed, and was always out of date and contained bad steps. A friend of mine proved by experimentation that it was both useless and time-consuming. They didn’t care. Moreover, they set time goals per call that were fundamentally impossible to met by following the scripts.
They once had a campaign where the managers (to build team spirit) did a few calls each week, according to the script exactly. They were supposed to give out the call times for them all. Lo and behold, the management mysteriously cancelled the idea after the first three days and never released the call times. :rolleyes: Of course, this didn’t change anything for us.
Eventually, they fired me and about 200 other people to move to a cheaper support vender. Y’know, the ones who don’t actually have techs there, just random Joes off the street.
But really, it gets hard to care about your management after a while, because you realize that not only are they fairly incompetent, they can’t handle the truth. They want to hear a pleasing lie rather than a painful truth. I just started my own company, and I’ve been tryign to go out of my way to thank people who tell me things I don’t want to hear. Its worth it.
I just want to be delivered to level 2 for my work’s in house support in under half an hour. (Due to the idiots on the network, I understand why users aren’t allowed to change anything on their own, I get it. I have an intern manager bring a lab to a crashing halt because he “lost his Start” and my mom, who works pretty high up here, still uses a post it note with a line down the middle that has written instructions on “right click”, “left click” and “double click” stuck above her mouse pad. Everything takes a call to tech support.)
I don’t care if I have to repeat trouble shooting steps after I’ve already said:
-what the problem is/ what I need to accomplish
-what I have tried
-what error messages I get
I just want to be delivered to level 2 in under half an hour. (and no, I’m not lying, I have very little better to do than collect stats on my calls to first level tech support, since they tie up both my computer and my phone.)
I don’t want to have to repeat my sign in name more than three times. (abcde12fg. A. B. C. D. E. One. Two. F. G. A as in ass. B as in bullshit. C as in crap. D as in dingbat. E as in ebola. the numeral one, the numeral two. F as in fuck off. G as in Goddamnit.)
I don’t want you to update my profile, if it hasn’t updated the last 47 (I was making up to 8 calls a day for a while, I’m still not under once a week.) times I’ve called support, its not going to and waiting while some unknown, but useless, magic occurs while you mouth breathe into my ear for a minute and a half is annoying. (I’m in a nearly unique reporting situation that the profile drop downs can’t handle - they can either have my organizational info correct or my physical address and phone number, but not both.)
If you refuse to just look me up to hook in by NetMeeting, even though you are looking at the profile that has my name on it, and absolutely must have my IP, just ask for my IP. I have it memorized (because this is what I do when I have to call tech cupport a few too many times.)
“Do you have NetMeeting?”
“I have NetMeeting Open, set to accept all calls, allow control and my IP is <yodel>.”
“Can you open NetMeeting, I will wait while it opens.”
“Yeah. Its open. Do you want my IP?”
“Go to the toolbar at the top and click on Help.”
I do nothing but want to pound my head on the desk. “Do. You. Want. My. IP.”
“On the menu click on About NetMeeting.”
I hate you.
“Please read for me the numbers where it says IP Address.”
“My IP is <Y.O.D.E.L>”
“Now please go to Calls and accept all calls”
I have the script memorized, and they Will. Not. Miss a beat of it. I have watched my pointer move because I had set up everything to allow control to anyone who called into my computer and so the tech was controlling my desktop while he was telling me I had to go share my desktop and allow control. Which means he was looking at my screen while telling me I still had to go through the actions to give him acess to what I was seeing.
And he waited the appropriate seconds for me to do so.
I hate first level tech support. Hate, hate hate. Second level has been a dream every time I talk to them though. Once first level mistakenly delivered my problem to a man who had zero to do with it - but he not only fixed my problem but got the person in charge of call routing to rescript those issues so he wouldn’t be bothered again. While he was walking into the building from going to lunch. That’s support. Ten minutes later both I and the company are working more effeciently. I wonder what he does for his real job.
I needed that.
Not a good week to start me on this one.
I’ll just say I agree.
I’m not tech support… just the person who gets called by other people when they can’t figure out something (our tech support lady is incredible and I don’t mean it in a positive way).
This came to be, partly, because when I see someone having total stupid trouble with the computer I offer to help. Yes, I know, “never volunteer,” but hey, that’s something that applies to soldierin’ and I wasn’t allowed to by reason of gender!
One of the worst cases I’ve seen: a guy who had to compare two large lists. Some users do this by ordering them, printing one out and comparing the paper list and the one on the computer, marking common elements in both. Some are more sophisticated and know how to use Vlookup.
This guy would place both files on his computer desktop. Double click on file A to open it. Check one line. Mark it yellow. Close Excel. Double click on file B to open it. Look for the piece of data. If found, mark it yellow. Close Excel. Repeat.
Myself and another coworker who’s also good with computers started helping him, then we took turns: one of us would be with him while the other one continued working in a document explaining how to do such things as “open a file once you are in Excel”. Then we did not give the document to this guy: we gave it to one of his subordinates, and told her to use it to lead him along every time he needed to compare lists, since he was clearly incapable of learning the process. She wrote us a few days later thanking us for the checklist, it had really come handy.
No, he was not able to delegate the task on her, either… he was one of those guys who think that you have to do personally anything that’s been put in your job description. Checking the accuracy of Production data was in his, so he “had” to do it himself.
Tech Support is soldierin’!
THANK you! Man, if my last boss had been able to do that, the last six months I spent in the company wouldn’t have been hell for myself and the other 3 people who were supposed to “help him” (i.e., he wasn’t technically our boss, just the guy who gave us work and then refused to take any results we came up with)
Inspired by the thread title …
What I hate about you
You wanna fight
Tell me I caused all your problems bitch at me all night
Keep yellin’ in my ear lyin’ about shit you don’t wanna hear
Cuz it’s true that’s what I hate about you
What I hate about you
You really know how to whine
Computer go
up
down jump around
Feedin’ me some line
Keep yellin’ in my ear lyin’ about shit you don’t wanna hear
Cuz it’s true that’s what I hate about you
that’s what I hate about you
that’s what I hate about you
that’s what I hate about you
What I hate about you
You keep me on the phone all night
Never wanna let me go
You know I wanna kill you right
Keep yellin’ in my ear lyin’ about shit you don’t wanna hear
Cuz it’s true that’s what I hate about you
that’s what I hate about you
that’s what I hate about you
…
Ah, the heady days when I made extra cash as an ISP support tech…
I worked for a third-party support company (the people big companies like AOL, AT&T, GTE farmed out tech support to before they discovered cheaper workers overseas). And I was good. I assumed intelligence until caller proved otherwise (which could be as little as one sentence). I could walk someone through the DNS configuration in dial-up networking from brand new to fully configured, from memory, with a little old Granny who’s never used a computer before in scant minutes. I had AT modem codes memorized for all those flakey compression schemes coming out in the mid-to-late 90s. And I could hear the most blatant, flat out lies and not bust out laughing.
Here are some of my favorite stories:
– A customer canceled his account because his laptop had been stolen. He was calling back to re-activate it. Account activation required a certain level of authentication, requiring either a user’s “personal phrase” or the credit card number used to activate the account (both stored in our customer database). He didn’t remember the phrase, and the credit card was his wife’s. He, being the important businessman that he was, had tried to take care of this from his cell phone on the drive home. I suggested that he call back when he could give us the credit card number. He said that wasn’t good enough, and I must reactivate his internet.
“Sir,” I said, “without authenticating your identity, I have no way of knowing if you are the valid account owner or the thief who took your laptop.”
He decided letting us verify who he was might be a good idea, and hung up to call back later.
– I was on a “double jacked” call with my manager for evaluation. He plugged a headset into my phone to hear the call and to see how I did. Once he was ready, I took the next call in the queue.
Me: Blah blah opening spiel, how can I help you?
Caller: How do I find sex movies on the internet?
{note: it was a requirement of our script to restate the problem. I fudged it.}
Me: So…you’re looking for media files on the internet?
Caller: Yes. I want to see these sex movies that are on the internet.
{I hemmed and hawed, then sent him to the ISP’s search page}
Me: You can use this to search for anything you want.
Caller: So I just type sex movies in this little box?
Me: Yes sir. Anything else I can help you with? {thankfully, no}
A while after this, while telling the story, I suspected that it may have been a “ringer” call (pun slightly intended). It’s just too weird of a coincidence that something that blatant would come up for my evaluation call. In the three years I worked there, I never got a similar one (although I don’t doubt that they happen).
– Due to a massive accident on the highway, I ended up being over an hour late to work. After the requisite talking-to by my supervisor, I sat down at a cube in a bad mood, grimaced at the queue, and took my first call.
Caller: {stream of profanity}, can’t get online, {more profanity}, talked to 5 techs today, getting password error when connecting, now I’ve got to reset my {more profanity} password. Do it!
Me: Ok, well I need to connect to a different system to make that change, it’ll take a minute. While I’m doing that, could you check whether your caps lock light is lit on your keyboard?
Caller: {long silence}
Caller: {modem squeals, followed by a bit more silence}
Me: {grinning silence}
Caller: {much subdued} If i have any other problems I’ll call back.
I was in a bit of a better mood after that.
– Caller is having problems connecting, it turns out his modem isn’t responding, and it “worked fine yesterday”. We did a little hardware support, so I went through the various troubleshooting steps we cover, and this thing refused to admit it existed.
Caller: {idle chit-chat while rebooting after latest config change} Say, how’s the weather out there? We had this wicked thunderstorm last night, a huge bolt took down the phone pole outside my house. They just got the phone lines working.
Me: Um…is your modem connected directly to the wall, or do you pass it through a surge protector?
Caller: Right to the wall.
Me: You may want to take you computer to a hardware tech, it wouldn’t surprise me if your modem has scorch marks on it…
– A public service announcement to callers: just because you’re on a cordless phone and you have to wait for computer reboot, please don’t take the phone into the bathroom with you. I will gladly wait listening to the blissful silence of your desk while you go phone-free. Thank you.
Truer words have never been converted to electrons and flung across the internet…
Oh, and I think this would be a good time to include my signature…
:eek: I had almosy the same call once, but in my case the customer reported scortch marks around the jack in the back and that the phone card was melted to said jack. Luck the whole computer didn’t fry, and that their house didn’t burn down.
For those of you who get frustrated at having to go through the phone-monkey’s script to get some real help, just remember that for every person who truly knows what they’re doing, there are ten who are utterly convinced that they know what they’re doing, but who in fact cannot operate a digital watch.
My favorite story from my husband’s tech support work is the oft repeated scenario:
Tech: Now, hit the enter key.
Moron: (sounds of frenetic typing resembling all those monkeys trying to recreate Hamlet) It didn’t work!
Gee, not even a passing comment? Oh well, I guess this is the pit and if you can’t say something bad about someone, don’t say anything at all.
I’ll keep telling myself that, anyway. 
I just want to say I really appreciate the periodic tech support rant threads. Not only do I find them endlessly amusing, but when I was having major, major problems with my ISP earlier this year, I kept them in mind.
I made six calls on December and about 8 calls in January. Nobody knew what the problem was with my modem. All I knew was that it didn’t work. They walked me through their script, realized that didn’t help, promised they’d send a technician (they never did) and I would be forced to call them again later that week.
As we rounded the “six weeks without stable Internet access” corner, I was becoming very, very angry. But I realized that the nice men and women who talked to me were not at fault. They were just doing what they could. I thought about the rants of people who do tech support and customer service who were verbally abused by the customers and swore I would never put somebody through that.
So when I reached my breaking point, I cancelled Adelphia, and got Verizon DSL, rather than talk to one more clueless person. And hey, what do you know? My DSL modem works like a charm.
snork! I’ve had that call. Many, many times. I could tell you many stories from when I did tech support for Microsoft.
But I won’t.
Instead, I’ll tell you about when I did printer support for a Very Large company. My job was essentially to replace paper and toner in printers. And to do low-level troubleshooting. One problem we often had was when too many print jobs would get spooled to a printer, and it would cease to print. The only way to fix it was to clear the queue. Of course, any print jobs already there would be lost.
Easy enough, right? Just send your job to the printer again. Wrong. “After sending my 300 page very-important-to-the-company document to the printer, I closed it.”
So open it again, right?
Wrong. “I was printing it. Why should I have to save it?”
So the entire future of the company rests on a 300 page document that you never bothered to save?
I’ll cut them a break, though. It’s not like these people worked for IBM or anything.
Oh, wait – they did work for IBM.
Fucking morons.