John Schultheis: Computer Support Page

Various calls and notes to Tech Support, maintenance organizations or Customer Support groups.

Last Modified: August 13, 2000

"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history-with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."

--Mitch Ratliffe

The Top 12 Things You Don't Want to Hear From Tech Support

12 "Do you have a sledgehammer or a brick handy?"

11 "...that's right, not even McGyver could fix it."

10 "So -- what are you wearing?"

9 "Duuuuuude! Bummer!"

8 "Looks like you're gonna need some new dilythium crystals, Cap'n."

7 "Press 1 for Support. Press 2 if you're with 60 Minutes. Press 3 if you're with the FTC."

6 "We can fix this, but you're gonna need a butter knife, a roll of duct tape, and a car battery."

5 "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that."

4 "In layman's terms, we call that the Hindenburg Effect."

3 "Hold on a second... Mom! Timmy's hitting me!"

2 "Okay, turn to page 523 in your copy of Dianetics."

........... and the Number 1 Thing You Don't Want to Hear From Tech Support...

1 "Please hold for Mr. Gates' attorney."

Thanks to Taz and Terence Yee for this entry.

WHAT IF PEOPLE BOUGHT CARS LIKE THEY BUY COMPUTERS?

General Motors doesn't have a help line for people who don't know how to drive, because people don't buy cars like they buy computers, but imagine if they did....

HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"

Customer: "I got in my car and closed the door and nothing happened!

HelpLine: "Did you put the key in the ignition slot and turn it?"

Customer: "What's an ignition?"

HelpLine: "It's a starter motor that draws current from your battery and turns over the engine."

Customer: "Ignition? Motor? Battery? Engine? How come I have to know all these technical terms just to use my car?"

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HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"

Customer: "My car ran fine for a week and now it won't go anywhere!"

HelpLine: "Is the gas tank empty?"

Customer: "Huh? How do I know?"

HelpLine: "There's a little gauge on the front panel with a needle and markings from 'E' to 'F'. Where is the needle pointing?"

Customer: "It's pointing to 'E'. What does that mean?"

HelpLine: "It means you have to visit a gasoline vendor and purchase some more gasoline. You can install it yourself or pay the vendor to install it for you."

Customer: "What? I paid $12,000 for this car! Now you tell me that I have to keep buying more components? I want a car that comes with everything built in!"

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HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"

Customer: "Your cars suck!"

HelpLine: "What's wrong?"

Customer: "It crashed, that's what's wrong!"

HelpLine: "What were you doing?"

Customer: "I wanted to run faster, so I pushed the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. It worked for a while and then it crashed and it won't start now!

HelpLine: "It's your responsibility if you misuse the product. What do you expect us to do about it?"

Customer: "I want you to send me one of the latest version that doesn't crash any more!"

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HelpLine: "General Motors HelpLine, how can I help you?"

Customer: "Hi, I just bought my first car, and I chose your car because it has automatic transmission, cruise control, power steering, power brakes, and power door locks."

HelpLine: "Thanks for buying our car. How can I help you?"

Customer: "How do I work it?"

HelpLine: "Do you know how to drive?"

Customer: "Do I know how to what?"

HelpLine: "Do you know how to drive?"

Customer: "I'm not a technical person. I just want to go places in my car!"

Thanks to: Broderlig hilsen fra Frode F. Jakobsen, Vesturgata 26 a, 101 Reykjavik and Mark Edwards

More Technical Support Nightmares

This falls into the "Why did it have to happen on *MY* shift?" category.

A friend of mine is a chief engineer at SuperMac, and he related this story to me.

SuperMac records a certain number of technical support calls at random, to keep tabs on customer satisfaction. By wild "luck", they managed to catch the following conversation on tape.

Some poor SuperMac TechSupport got a call from some middle level official from the legitimate government of Trinidad. The fellow spoke very good English, and fairly calmly described the problem.

It seemed there was a coup attempt in progress at that moment. However, the national armoury for that city was kept in the same building as the Legislature, and it seems that there was a combination lock on the door to the armoury. Of the people in the capitol city that day, only the Chief of the Capitol Guard and the Chief Armourer knew the combination to the lock, and they had already been killed.

So, this officer of the government of Trinidad continued, the problem is this. The combination to the lock is stored in a file on the Macintosh, but the file has been encrypted with the SuperMac product called Sentinel. Was there any chance, he asked, that there was a "back door" to the application, so they could get the combination, open the armoury door, and defend the Capitol Building and the legitimately elected government of Trinidad against the insurgents?

All the while he is asking this in a very calm voice, there is the sound of gunfire in the background. The Technical Support guy put the person on hold. A phone call to the phone company verified that the origin of the call was in fact Trinidad. Meanwhile, there was this mad scramble to see if anybody knew of any "back doors" in the Sentinel program.

As it turned out, Sentinel uses DES to encrypt the files, and there was no known back door. The Tech Support fellow told the customer that aside from trying to guess the password, there was no way through Sentinel, and that they'd be better off trying t o physically destroy the lock.

The official was very polite, thanked him for the effort, and hung up. That night, the legitimate government of Trinidad fell. One of the BBC reporters mentioned that the casualties seemed heaviest in the capitol, where for some reason, there seemed to be little return fire from the government forces.

O.K., so they shouldn't have kept the combination in so precarious a fashion. But it does place, "I can't see my Microsoft Mail server" complaints in a different sort of perspective, does it not?

Thanks to Mark Edwards for this entry.

More Idiots for Tech Support

I worked with an individual who plugged their power strip back into itself and for the life of them could not understand why their computer would not turn on.

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1st Person: "Do you know anything about this fax-machine?" 2nd Person: "A little. What's wrong?" 1st Person: "Well, I sent a fax, and the recipient called back to say all she received was a cover-sheet and a blank page. I tried it again, and the same thing happened." 2nd Person: "How did you load the sheet?" 1st Person: "It's a pretty sensitive memo, and I didn't want anyone else to read it by accident, so I folded it so only the recipient would open it and read it."

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I recently saw a distraught young lady weeping beside her car. "Do you need some help?" I asked. She replied, "I knew I should have replaced the battery in this remote door unlocker. Now I can't get into my car. Do you think they (pointing to a distant convenience store) would have a battery for this?"

"Hmmm, I dunno. Do you have an alarm, too?" I asked. "No, just this remote 'thingy,' " she answered, handing it and the car keys to me.

As I took the key and manually unlocked the door, I replied, "Why don't you drive over there and check about the batteries...it's a long walk."

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Tech Support: "What does the screen say now." Person: "It says, 'Hit ENTER when ready'." Tech Support: "Well?" Person: "How do I know when it's ready?"

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My friend called his car insurance company to tell them to change his address from Texas to Vermont. The woman who took the call asked where Vermont was. As he tried to explain, she interrupted and said, "Look, I'm not stupid or anything, but what state is it in?"

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Several years ago we had an intern who was none too swift. One day he was typing and turned to a secretary and said, "I'm almost out of typing paper. What do I do?" "Just use copier machine paper," she told him. With that, the intern took his last remaining blank piece of paper, put it on the photocopier and proceeded to make five blank copies.

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I was working the help desk. One day one of the computer operators called me and asked if anything "bad" would happen if she dropped coins into the openings of her PC. I asked her if this was something she was thinking of doing. She said, "never mind" and hung up. So I got out my trusty tool kit and paid her a visit. I opened her CPU case and sure enough, there was 40 cents.

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One of our servers crashed. I was watching our new system administrator trying to restore it. He inserted a CD and needed to type a path name to a directory named "i386." He started to type it and paused, asking me, "Where's the key for that line thing ?" I asked what he was talking about, and he said, "You know, that one that looks like an upside-down exclamation mark."

I replied, "You mean the letter "i"?" and he said, "Yeah, that's it!"

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This person had a broken lamp which he wanted to discard. Unfortunately, the power cord ran under his refrigerator, making it impossible to move the lamp while the cord was attached. He decided to cut the cord, since the lamp was unusable anyway. He didn't remember to unplug it first. I found him in the hallway rolling back and forth.

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I was in a car dealership a while ago when a large motor home was towed into the garage. The front of the vehicle was in dire need of repair and the whole thing generally looked like an extra in "Twister." I asked the manager what had happened. He told me that the driver had set the cruise control, then went in back to make a sandwich.

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I called a company and asked to speak to Bob. The person who answered said, "Bob is on vacation. Would you like to hold?"

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I rented a movie from Blockbuster. Before the movie begins a message comes on the screen saying, "This movie has been altered to fit your television screen."

Comment from person: "How do they know what size screen I have?"

Thanks to Darryl Dawson for this entry.

Tech Support Call

Tech Rep: "Hello. Tech Support; may I help you?"

Caller: "Yes, well, I'm having trouble with WordPerfect."

Tech Rep: "What sort of trouble?"

Caller: "Well, I was just typing along, and all of a sudden the words went away."

Tech Rep: "Went away?"

Caller: "They disappeared."

Tech Rep: "Mm. So what does your screen look like now?"

Caller: "Nothing."

Tech Rep: "Nothing?"

Caller: "It's blank; it won't accept anything when I type."

Tech Rep: "Are you still in WordPerfect, or did you get out?"

Caller: "How do I tell?"

[OUCH, oh-oh. Well, let's give it a try anyway.]
Tech Rep: "Can you see the C:\prompt on the screen?"

Caller: "What's a sea-prompt?"

[Uh-huh, thought so. Let's try a different tack.]
Tech Rep: "Never mind. Can you move the cursor around on the screen?"

Caller: "There isn't any cursor: I told you, it won't accept anything I type."

[Ahoy--at least s/he knows what a cursor is. Sounds like a hardware problem. I wonder if s/he's kicked out his/her monitor's power plug.]
Tech Rep: "Does your monitor have a power indicator?"

Caller: "What's a monitor?"

Tech Rep: "It's the thing with the screen on it that looks like a TV. Does it have little light that tells you when it's on?"

Caller: "I don't know."

Tech Rep: "Well, then look on the back of the monitor and find where the power cord goes into it. Can you see that?"

[sound of rustling and jostling] [muffled]
Caller: "Yes, I think so."

Tech Rep: "Great! Follow the cord to the plug, and tell me if it's plugged into the wall."

[pause]
Caller: "Yes, it is."

[Mm. Well, that's interesting. I doubt s/he would have accidentally turned it off, and I don't want to send him/her hunting for the power switch because I don't know what kind of monitor s/he has and it's bound to have more than one switch on it. Maybe the video cable is loose or something.]
Tech Rep: "When you were behind the monitor, did you notice that there were two cables plugged into the back of it, not just one?"

Caller: "No."

Tech Rep: "Well, there are. I need you to look back there again and find the other cable."

Caller:[muffled] "Okay, here it is."

Tech Rep: "Follow it for me, and tell me if it's plugged securely into the back of your computer."

Caller:[still muffled] "I can't reach."

Tech Rep: "Well, can you see if it is?"

Caller:[clear again] "No."

Tech Rep: "Even if you maybe put your knee on something and lean way over?"

Caller: "Oh, it's not because I don't have the right angle--it's because it's dark."

Tech Rep: "Dark?"

Caller: "Yes--the office light is off, and the only light I have is coming in from the window."

Tech Rep: "Well, turn on the office light then."

Caller: "I can't."

Tech Rep: "No? Why not?"

Caller: "Because there's a power outage."

Tech Rep: "A power--!?!" ...[AAAAAAARGH!]

Tech Rep: "A power outage? Okay, we've got it licked now. Do you still have the boxes and manuals and packing stuff your computer came in?"

Caller: "Well, yes, I keep them in the closet."

Tech Rep: "Good! Go get them, and unplug your system and pack it up just like it was when you got it. Then take it back to the store you bought it from."

Caller: "Really? Is it that bad?"

Tech Rep: "Yes, I'm afraid it is."

Caller: "Well, all right then, I suppose. What do I tell them?"

Tech Rep: "Tell them you're TOO STUPID TO OWN A COMPUTER!" [slam]

Thanks to Darryl Dawson for this entry.

Cupholder

This came from a Tech Rep from Australia.

Caller: "Hello, is this Tech Support?"

Tech Rep: "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 Rep: "I'm sorry, but did you say a cup holder?"

Caller: "Yes, it's attached to the front of my computer."

Tech Rep: "Please excuse me if I seem a bit stumped, it's because I am. Did you receive this as part of a promotional, 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 promotional. It just has '4X' on it."

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

Thanks to Darryl Dawson for this entry.

MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMPUTING

1. When computing, whatever happens, behave as though you meant it to happen.

2. When you get to the point where you really understand your computer, it's probably obsolete.

3. The first place to look for information is in the section of the manual where you least expect to find it.

4. When the going gets tough, upgrade.

5. For every action, there is an equal and opposite malfunction.

6. To err is human . . . to blame your computer for your mistakes is even more human, it is downright natural.

7. He who laughs last probably made a back-up.

8. If at first you do not succeed, blame your computer.

9. A complex system that does not work is invariably found to have evolved from a simpler system that worked just fine.

10. The number one cause of computer problems is computer solutions.

11. A computer program will always do what you tell it to do, but rarely what you want to do.

Thanks to Taz for this entry.

Complaints Department

One of my friends works in the customer service call center of a national pager company. He deals with the usual complaints regarding poor pager operation, as well as the occasional crank caller demanding to be paged less often, more often, or by more interesting people.

The best call came from a man who repeatedly complained that he was being paged by "Lucille". He was instructed that he would have to call her and tell her to stop paging him.

"She don't never leave no number, so I can't call her back," he said.

After three such calls, someone thought to ask how he knew it was Lucille if she didn't leave a number.

"She leaves her name" was the reply. After establishing that the customer had a numeric-only pager, the light bulb came on. "How does she spell her name?" the service rep asked.

"L-O-W C-E-L-L"

Thanks to Keri Johnson for this entry.

A Little Technical Support Humor

A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was "running it under Windows." The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door. But that's a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window, and his is working fine."

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Tech Support: "OK Bob, let's press the control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter 'P' to bring up the Program Manager."

Customer: "I don't have a 'P'."

Tech Support: "On your keyboard, Bob."

Customer: "What do you mean?"

Tech Support: "'P' on your keyboard, Bob."

Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"

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Overheard in a computer shop:

Customer: "I'd like a mouse mat, please."

Salesperson: "Certainly sir, we've got a large variety."

Customer: "But will they be compatible with my computer?"

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I once received a fax with a note on the bottom to fax the document back to the sender when I was finished with it, because he needed to keep it.

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Customer in computer shop: "Can you copy the Internet onto this disk for me? So that'll get me connected to the Internet, right?"

Tech Support: "Yeah."

Customer: "And that's the latest version of the Internet, right?"

Tech Support: "Uhh...uh...uh...yeah."

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Tech Support: "All right...now double-click on the File Manager icon."

Customer: "That's why I hate this Windows - because of the icons - I'm a Protestant, and I don't believe in icons."

Tech Support: "Well, that's just an industry term sir. I don't believe it was meant to-"

Customer: "I don't care about any 'Industry Terms'. I don't believe in icons."

Tech Support: "Well...why don't you click on the 'little picture' of a filing cabinet...is 'little picture' OK?"

Customer: {click}

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Customer: "My computer crashed!"

Tech Support: "It crashed?"

Customer: "Yeah, it won't let me play my game."

Tech Support: "All right, hit Control-Alt-Delete to reboot."

Customer: "No, it didn't crash-it crashed."

Tech Support: "Huh?"

Customer: "I crashed my game. That's what I said before.

I crashed my spaceship and now it doesn't work."

Tech Support: "Click on 'File,' then 'New Game.'"

Customer: {pause} "Wow! How'd you learn how to do that?"

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I had been doing Tech Support for Hewlett-Packard's DeskJet division for about a month when I had a customer call with a problem I just couldn't solve. She could not print yellow. All the other colors would print fine, which truly baffled me because the only true colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow. For instance, green is a combination of cyan and yellow, but green printed fine. Every color of the rainbow printed fine except for yellow. I had the customer change ink cartridges. I had the customer delete and reinstall the drivers. Nothing worked. I asked my co-workers for help; they offered no new ideas. After over two hours of troubleshooting, I was about to tell the customer to send the printer in to us for repair when she asked quietly,

"Should I try printing on a piece of white paper instead of this yellow paper?"

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A man attempting to set up his new printer called the printer's tech support number, complaining about the error message: "Can't find the printer."

On the phone, the man said he even held the printer up in front of the screen, but the computer still couldn't find it.

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And another user was all confused about why the cursor always moved in the opposite direction from the movement of the mouse. She also complained that the buttons were difficult to depress. She was very embarrassed when we asked her to rotate the mouse so the tail pointed away from her.

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An unfailingly polite lady called to ask for help with a Windows installation that had gone terribly wrong.

Customer: "I brought my Windows disks from work to install them on my home computer."

Training stresses that we are "not the Software Police," so I let the little act of piracy slide.

Tech Support: "Umm-hmm. What happened?"

Customer: "As I put each disk in it turns out they weren't initialized."

Tech Support: "Do you remember the message exactly, ma'am?"

Customer: (proudly) "I wrote it down. 'This is not a Macintosh disk. Would you like to initialize it?'"

Tech Support: "Er, what happened next?"

Customer: "After they were initialized, all the disks appeared to be blank. And now I brought them back to work, and I can't read them in the A: drive; the PC wants to format them. And this is our only set of Windows disks for the whole office. Did I do something wrong?"

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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 username 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."

**********

Email from a friend:

"CanYouFixTheSpaceBarOnMyKeyboard?"

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After experiencing difficulties with his computer, a poor, incognizant user called the system maker's technical support line for assistance...

Technician: Hello. How can I help you today?

Customer: There's smoke coming from the power supply on my computer...

Technician: Looks like you need a new power supply...

Customer: No, I don't! I just need to change the startup files...

Technician: Sir, what you described is a faulty power supply. You need to replace it...

Customer: No way! Someone told me that I just had to change the system startup files to fix the problem! All I need is for you to tell me the right command...

For the next ten minutes, in spite of the technician's efforts to explain the problem and its solution, the customer adamantly insisted that he was right. So, in frustration, the technician responded...

Technician:I'm sorry. We don't normally tell our customers this, but there's an undocumented DOS command that will fix the problem...

Customer: I knew it!

Technician: Just add the line "LOAD NOSMOKE.COM" at the end of the CONFIG.SYS file and everything should work fine. Let me know how it goes...

About ten minutes later, the technician received a call back from the customer...

Customer: It didn't work. The power supply is still smoking...

Technician: Well, what version of DOS are you using?

Customer: MS-DOS 6.22...

Technician: Well, that's your problem. That version of DOS doesn't include NOSMOKE. You'll need to contact Microsoft and ask them for a patch. Let me know how it all works out...

When nearly an hour had passed, the phone rang again...

Customer: I need a new power supply...

Technician: How did you come to that conclusion?

Customer: Well, I called Microsoft and told the technician what you said, and he started asking me questions about the make of the power supply...

Technician: What did he tell you?

Customer: He said my power supply isn't compatible with NOSMOKE...

Thanks to Russ Lucas and Joel Zussman for this entry.

Feedback or comments? Mail to: John Schultheis /

John Schultheis: Computer Support Page

The Top 12 Things You Don't Want to Hear From Tech Support

WHAT IF PEOPLE BOUGHT CARS LIKE THEY BUY COMPUTERS?

More Technical Support Nightmares

More Idiots for Tech Support

Tech Support Call

Cupholder

More Tech Support True Stories

MURPHY'S LAWS OF COMPUTING

Complaints Department

A Little Technical Support Humor