Tag Archives: technical support

Resourceful Computer Users

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Computers will never be completely “Idiot Proof” because Idiots continue to be so resourceful.

The following is an excerpt taken from a Wall Street journal article:

  • Compaq is considering changing the command “Press Any Key” to “Return Key” because of the flood of calls asking where the “Any” key is.
  • AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.
  • Another Compaq technician received a call from a man complaining that the system wouldn’t read word processing files from his old (5.1/4″) diskettes. After trouble shooting for magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, it was found that the customer had labelled the diskettes, then rolled them into the typewriter to type the labels.
  • Another AST customer was asked to send a copy of her defective diskettes. A few days later a letter arrived from the customer along with photocopies of the floppies.
  • A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. Th customer asked the tech “hold on”, and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door to his room.
  • Another Dell customer called to say he couldn’t get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble-shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the “send” key.
  • Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water soaked the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.
  • A Dell technician received a call from a customer who was enraged because his computer had told him he was “bad and an invalid”. The tech explained that the computer’s “bad command” and “invalid” responses shouldn’t be taken personally.
  • A confused caller to IBM was having troubles printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it “couldn’t find printer”. The user had even tried turning the computer screen to face the printer – but his computer still couldn’t “see” the printer.
  • An exasperated caller to Dell Computer Tech Support couldn’t get her new Dell computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. Her response, “I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happened”. The “foot pedal” turned out to be the computer’s mouse.
  • Another customer called Compaq tech support to say her brand-new computer wouldn’t work. She said she unpacked the unit, plugged it in and sat there for 20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she pressed the power switch, she asked “What power switch?”
  • True story from a Novell Netwire SysOp:

    Caller : “Hello, is this Tech Support?”
    Tech: “Yes, it is. How may I help you?”
    Caller: “The cup holder on my PC is broken and I am within my warranty period. How do I go about getting that fixed?”
    Tech: “I’m sorry, but did you say a cup holder?”
    Caller: “Yes, it’s attached to the front of my computer.”
    Tech : “Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it’s because I am. Did you receive this as a part of a promotion, at a trade show? How did you get this cup holder? Does it have any trademark on it?”
    Caller : “It came with my computer, I don’t know anything about a promotion. It just has “4X” on it.”

    At this point the Tech Rep had to mute the caller, because he couldn’t stand it. He was laughing too hard. The caller had been using the load drawer of the CD-ROM drive as a cup holder, and snapped it off in the drive.

  • Another IBM customer had trouble installing software and rang for support. “I put in the first disk, and that was OK. It said to put in the second disk, and I had some problems with the disk. When it said to put in the third disk – I couldn’t even fit it in …” The user hadn’t realised that “Insert Disk 2” meant to remove Disk 1 first.
  • In a similar incident, a customer had followed the instructions for installing software. The instructions said to remove the disk from its cover and insert it into the drive. The user had physically removed the casing of the disk and wondered why there were problems. Say no more…

Rules for Computer Technical Support

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A peek into the thoughts of computer techs worldwide …an end user’s guide to technical services.

  • When a tech says he’s coming right over, log out and go for coffee. It’s no problem for us to remember 2700 network passwords.
  • When you call us to have your computer moved, be sure to leave it buried under half a ton of postcards, baby pictures, stuffed animals, dried flowers, bowling trophies and Popsicle art. We don’t have a life, and we find it deeply moving to catch a fleeting glimpse of yours.
  • When tech support sends you an e-mail with high importance, delete it at once. We’re probably just testing out the public groups.
  • When a tech is eating lunch at his desk, walk right in and spill your guts out and expect him to respond immediately. We exist only to serve and are always ready to think about fixing computers.
  • When a tech is at the water cooler or outside having a smoke, ask him a computer question. The only reason why we drink water or smoke at all is to ferret out all those users who don’t have eMail or a telephone line.
  • Send urgent eMail ALL IN UPPERCASE. The mail server picks it up and flags it as a rush delivery.
  • When you call a tech’s direct line, press 5 to skip the bilingual greeting that says he’s out of town for a week, record your message, and wait exactly 24 hours before you send an eMail straight to the director because no one ever returned your call. You’re entitled to common courtesy.
  • When the photocopier doesn’t work, call computer support. There’s electronics in it, right?
  • When you’re getting a NO DIAL TONE message at home, call computer support. We can even fix telephone problems from here.
  • When something’s wrong with your home PC, dump it on a tech’s chair with no name, no phone number, and no description of the problem. We love a good mystery.
  • When you have a tech on the phone walking you through changing a setting; read the paper. We don’t actually mean for you to DO anyhing; we just love to hear ourselves talk.
  • When we offer training on the upcoming OS upgrade, don’t bother. We’ll be there to hold your hand after it is done.
  • When the printer won’t print, re-send the job at least 20 times. Print jobs frequently just disappear into the cosmos for no reason.
  • When the printer still won’t print after 20 tries, send the job to all 68 printers in the office. One of them is bound to work.
  • Don’t use online help. Online help is for wimps.
  • If you’re taking night classes in computer science, feel free to go around and update the network drivers for you and all your coworkers. We’re grateful for the overtime when we have to stay until 2:30am fixing them.
  • When you have a tech fixing your computer at a quarter past one, eat your lunch in his face. We function better when slightly dizzy.
  • Don’t ever thank us. We love this AND we get paid for it!
  • When a tech asks you whether you’ve installed any new software on this computer, lie. It’s nobody’s business what you’ve got on your computer.
  • If the mouse cable keeps knocking down the framed picture of your dog, lift the computer and stuff the cable under it. Mouse cables were designed to have 45 lbs. of computer sitting on top of them.
  • If the space bar on your keyboard doesn’t work, blame it on the mail upgrade. Keyboards work much better with half a pound of muffin crumbs, nail clippings, and big sticky drops of Coke under the keys.
  • When you get the message saying “Are you sure?”, click on that Yes button as fast as you can. Hell, if you weren’t sure, you wouldn’t be doing it, would you?
  • Feel perfectly free to say things like “I don’t know nothing about that computer crap”. It never bothers us to hear our area of professional expertise referred to as crap.
  • When you need to change the toner cartridge, call tech support. Changing a toner cartridge is an extremely complex task, and Hewlett-Packard recommends that it be performed only by a professional engineer with a Master’s degree in nuclear physics.
  • When something’s the matter with your computer, ask your secretary to call the help desk. We enjoy the challenge of having to deal with a third party who doesn’t know anything about the problem.
  • When you receive a 30-meg movie file, send it to everyone as a high-priority mail attachment. We’ve got plenty of disk space and processor capacity on that mail server.
  • Don’t even think of breaking large print jobs down into smaller chunks. God forbid somebody else might get a chance to squeeze into the queue.
  • When you bump into a tech in the grocery store on a Saturday, ask a computer question. We work 24/7, even while at the grocery store on weekends.
  • If your son is a student in computer science, have him come in on the weekends and do his projects on your office computer. We’ll be there for you when his illegal copy of Visual Basic 6.0 makes your Access database flip out.
  • When you bring us your own no-brand home PC to repair for free at the office, tell us how urgently we need to fix it so your son can get back to playing DOOM. We’ll get right on it because we have so much free time at the office. Everybody knows all we do is surf the Internet all day anyway.

Calling Technical Support

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Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…Ring… Ring…

Thank you for calling Technical Support. All of our technicians are currently busy helping people who are even less competent than you, so please hold for the next available technician. The waiting time is now estimated at between fifteen minutes and eternity.

In order to expedite your call, please punch your 58-digit product identification number on to your telephone, followed by your product serial number, which can be found in a secret compartment inside your computer where, for security purposes, it is printed in the smallest typeface possible to prevent being seen.

Please note that you made need a size 11 3/4 torx screwdriver which may only be available from your original equipment manufaturer.

Do that NOW!

Thank you again for calling Technical Support. We recommend that you sit at your computer, preferably turning it on at some point, and have at hand all your floppy disks, CD-ROM disks, computer manuals and original packing materials in order to allow the technician to aid you in the unlikely event that he ever gets to your call.

If you were an inconsiderate jerk — we mean forgetful customer — and threw away your original packing materials, please call the company that sent you the computer and ask them to resend you the empty box with the plastic bubbles, fake popcorn and the wasted paper advertising that they recycle. We will hold your place in line on the phone while you wait for your boxes to be delivered. (yeah right !)

It would also be helpful for you to refrain from sobbing while explaining your problem to the technician. Shouting obscene threats will cause you to be immediately disconnected and blackballed from further communication with Technical Support, not only from ours but that of every other electronics-related firm in the industrialized world. (we all talk you know)

Thank you once again for calling Technical Support. In order to enable us to better assist you, it would be helpful to know more about you and your equipment. Have you called Technical Support before? If you have, please press the numeral “one” on your telephone touch pad.

If not, press the numeral “two.” If you are not sure, using the letters on your touch pad, spell out the phrase: “I am confused and despondent and quickly losing the will to live.”

Once you have finished, hang up your phone and make arrangements to sell your computer because by the time the technician takes your call, it will be obsolete, and you will be too senile to use it anyway.

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Unfortunately, all of our technicians just went out for lunch. This means that to the estimated waiting time we gave you earlier, you may now add at least another two hours.

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Before talking to the technician about your problem and risking the possibility that you may be wasting his valuable time, please ask yourself the following questions:

  1. If my monitor screen is dark, is it possible I have forgotten to plug in my computer?
  2. Have I exhausted every possible means of help before utilizing the sacred, last-resort-only telephone option?
  3. Have I sent a fax to Fast Fax Technical Support?
  4. Have I consulted my manual?
  5. Have I read the Read-Me notice on the floppy disk?
  6. Have I called up my know-it-all geek cousin who I can’t stand but who can probably fix this thing for me in under five minutes?
  7. Have I given the central processing unit of my computer a good, solid whack?

If you can not honestly answer “yes” to all these questions, please get off the line immediately so that our overworked technicians can help those truly desperate customers whose suffering is so much greater than yours. You must be really be so bored that you have to call Technical Support just to have someone to speak to about geek stuff.

Thank you for calling Technical Support. You may not be aware that this week we are featuring a discount on a number of popular CD-ROM titles you may wish to purchase, If you would like to hear all 26,000 titles read to you, shout “Yes! Yes! Yes!” into the telephone now.

This will not cause you to lose your place in line for Technical Support; in fact it may jump you ahead of several other callers.

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Our System has been overloaded, and unfortunately you have lost your place in line. Please push “one” if you would like to be connected again to Technical Support.

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Our electronic sensors indicate that you are about to slump over and die from a massive frustration attack combined with severe dehydration from lack of food and water. Before doing so, please take a moment to place your telephone receiver back in its base and switch off your computer so as not to wear down its internal battery.

As a non-living person, you will have no further need of Technical Support and so we regretfully must remove you from our list of registered product users.

Remember, we valued your patronage and were happy to serve your needs. Do not hesitate to have your heirs or beneficiaries contact us should any further technical problems arise.

Calling for Technical Support

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Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring.. Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…
Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring… Ring…

Thank you for calling Technical Support. All of our technicians are currently busy helping people even less competent than you, so please hold for the next available technician. The waiting time is now estimated at between fifteen minutes and eternity. In order to expedite your call, please punch your 63-digit product identification number onto your telephone touch pad, followed by your product serial number, which can be found in a secret compartment inside your computer where, for security purposes, it is printed in the smallest typeface known to mankind. Do that now.

(Lengthy excerpt from Mahler’s “Lugubrious” Symphony in C Minor)

Thank you again for calling Technical Support. We recommend that you sit at your computer, preferably turning it on at some point, and have at hand all your floppy disks, CD-ROM disks, computer manuals and original packing materials in order to allow the technician to aid you in the unlikely event that he ever takes your call. It would also be helpful for you to refrain from sobbing while explaining your problem to the technician. Shouting obscene threats will cause you to be immediately disconnected and black balled from further communication with Technical Support, not only from ours but that of every other electronics-related firm in the industrialized world.

(Medley of Hootie and the Blowfish hits rendered by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir)

Thank you once again for calling Technical Support. In order to enable us to better assist you, it would be helpful to know more about you and your equipment. Have you called Technical Support before? If you have, please press the numeral “one” on your telephone touchpad. If not, press the numeral “two.” If you are not sure, using the letters on your touchpad, spell out the phrase: “I am confused and despondent and quickly losing the will to live.” Once you have finished, hang up your phone and make arrangements to sell your computer because by the time the technician takes your call, it will be obsolete, and you will be too senile to use it anyway.

(Rangoon Opera Company’s classic 1963 recording of Wagner’s “Ring Cycle” in its entirety)

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Unfortunately, all of our technicians just went out for lunch. This means that to the estimated waiting time we gave you earlier, you may now add at least another two hours.

(Wayne Newton singing “Danke Schoen” 1,743 times)

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Before talking to the technician about your problem and risking the possibility that you may be wasting his valuable time, please ask yourself the following questions: If my monitor screen is dark, is it possible I have forgotten to plug in my computer or, alternately, that I have been suddenly struck blind? Have I exhausted every possible means of help before utilizing the sacred, last-resort-only telephone option? Have I sent a fax to Fast Fax Technical Support? Have I consulted my manual? Have I read the Read-Me notice on the floppy disk? Have I called up my know-it-all geek cousin who I can’t stand but who can probably fix this thing for me in under five minutes? Have I given the central processing unit of my computer a good, solid whack? If you can not honestly answer “yes” to all these questions, please get off the line immediately so that our overworked technicians can help those truly desperate customers whose suffering is so much greater than yours.

(Recording of Tibetan monks performing a six-day chant celebrating the reincarnation of one of their recently deceased colleagues into the form of a salamander.)

Thank you for calling Technical Support. You may not be aware that this week we are featuring a discount on a number of popular CD-ROM titles you may wish to purchase, such as the best-selling Porn Doubler, which allows you to access erotic material from the Internet twice as fast. If you would like to hear all 26,000 titles read to you, shout “Yes! Yes! Yes!” into the telephone now. This will not cause you to lose your place in line for Technical Support; in fact it may jump you ahead of several other callers.

(Tape loop of background music from the soundtrack of Johnny Mnemonic starring Keanu Reeves.)

Thank you for calling Technical Support. Our electronic sensors indicate that you are about to slump over and die from a massive frustration attack combined with severe dehydration from lack of food and water. Before doing so, please take a moment to place your telephone receiver back in its base and switch off your computer so as not to wear down its internal battery. As a non-living person, you will have no further need of Technical Support and so we regretfully must remove you from our list of registered product users. Remember, we valued your patronage and were happy to serve your needs. Do not -hesitate to have your heirs or beneficiaries contact us should any further technical problems
arise.

Access Denied

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This guy calls in to complain that he gets an “Access Denied” message every time he logs in. It turned out he was typing his user name and password in capital letters.

Tech Support: “OK, let’s try once more, but use lower case letters.”

Customer: “Uh, I only have capital letters on my keyboard.”

Technical Support Request Form

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 1. Describe your problem:

 2. Now, describe the problem accurately:

 3. Speculate wildly about the cause of the problem:

 4. Problem Severity:

    A. Minor__
    B. Minor__
    C. Minor__
    D. Trivial__

 5. Nature of the problem:

    A. Locked Up__
    B. Frozen__
    C. Hung__
    D. Strange Smell__

 6. Is your computer plugged in?
      Yes__ No__

 7. Is it turned on?
      Yes__ No__

 8. Have you tried to fix it yourself?
      Yes__ No__

 9. Have you made it worse?
      Yes__

10. Have you had “a friend” who “Knows all about computers” try to fix it for you?
      Yes__ No__

11. Did they make it even worse?
      Yes__

12. Have you read the manual?
      Yes__ No__

13. Are you sure you’ve read the manual?
      Maybe__ No__

14. Are you absolutely certain you’ve read the manual?
      No__

15. If you read the manual, do you think you understood it?
      Yes__ No__

16. If ‘Yes’ then explain why you can’t fix the problem yourself.

17. What were you doing with your computer at the time the problem occurred?

18. If you answered ‘nothing’ then explain why you were logged in?

19. Are you sure you aren’t imagining the problem?
      Yes__ No__

20. Does the clock on your home VCR blink 12:00?
      Yes__ What’s a VCR?__

21. Do you have a copy of ‘PCs for Dummies’?
      Yes__ No__

22. Do you have any independent witnesses to the problem?
      Yes__ No__

23. Do you have any electronics products that DO work?
      Yes__ No__

24. Is there anyone else you could blame this problem on?
      Yes__ No__

25. Have you given the machine a good whack on the top?
      Yes__ No__

26. Is the machine on fire?
      Yes__ Not Yet__

27. Can you do something else instead of bothering me?
      Yes__