I am a real live tech support person. And I live in Tech Support Hell. SAVE ME!!!! UPDATE: I have been saved!
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Me: OK, so the modem is now synched up, let's try going to Yahoo.com
Mr. Customer: Now where would that be? In programs?
(believe it or not, I had to spell Y-A-H-O-O for this guy...)
(Sound of frustrated customer after I ask her to do some "menial" task to determine the problem with her connection)
Mrs. Customer: You know, I'm not computer illiterate.
Me: *sigh* I know...
then the phone drops on the floor and I heard:
Mrs. Customer: Goddamn! What happened?
Me: OK, Mr. (Customer), can I please ask you to verify the last 4 digits of the social security # on the account?
Mr. Customer: SHIT!
Me: Nope, that's not it.
While setting up the Outlook Express, there is a step where you fill in the user name and password. This exchange could be with Any Customer Me: Okay, your username is ******** and the password is the word password
Me: That's all in lower case p-a-s-s-w-o-r-d.
Mr. ANY Customer: Should I type that in?
Me: Uhm, yeah... Let's type that in....
HOW ELSE IS IT GOING TO GET IN THERE????? All the computer fairies I have at my disposal for configuring my customers' computers have been dispatched to Oklahoma....
I don't know how many times I have gone thru this little dialogue, and each time I have the same conversation. I swear, at least once a day I experience this deja vu:
Me: OK, Go ahead and click OK.
Mr: Customer: Apply, or OK?
Me: OK
Mr: Customer: Not Apply?
Me: Hitting OK will apply the changes for you and then close the window.
Mr: Customer: Oh, OK
Many actually don't listen at this point and click apply anyway. How do I know? Well, I can hear them click twice, especially if they are on a speaker phone... Geez people, do you think I am lying to you? I want this fix to work just as much as you do, so why would I give you bad information???
Well, I guess I just got off the phone with today's non-believer...
I just want you to know, before I start writing this, that I am staying 45 minutes late (as of right now) so I can blog this while it is still fresh in my head. This guy was RICH!
Me: Thank you for calling (blah, blah, blah...)
Mr. Customer: Yeah, I was just talking to Roger in technical support and he transferred me to you. Why did he do that?
Me: I don't know.
Mr. Customer (with attitude): What?!?! What do you mean you don't know?!?!
At this point I was tempted to say "Look butthead, since you just came into my phone queue, this is the first I have heard of this, so how the fuck am I supposed to know wtf this call is about? How about you give me your damn ticket number, punk? And quit taking that attitude with me!" But instead I said:
Me: Well, I didn't talk with him and this is the first I am hearing of this, so did he give you a ticket number or anything like that?
Mr. Customer: What?
Me: A ticket number? A reference number? Some way for me to find out what kinds of troubleshooting steps have already been performed??
Mr. Customer: No
Me: OK, lemme pull up your account. Can I have your home phone number please? (< aside >and keep in mind that I work for a NATIONWIDE cable company and I am all the way across the country from this fella...< /aside >)
Mr. Customer: xxx-xxxx
Me: Uhm, and what was the area code for that phone number
(I was prompting him here, because I knew that this dumbshit was gonna go and tell me his ZIP CODE. And sure as the sun shines, what did he say?)
Mr. Customer: 34334 (or whatever it was)
Me: Uhm, I need the area code for your phone number.
Mr. Customer: Oh, that! It's XXX
And then I heard the toilet flush and commenced laughing as soon as my finger could hit the phone's MUTE button.
A little later when we were doing some troubleshooting he says (after burping in my ear):
Mr. Customer: Aww man! The lights on the modem went out again! Man that sucks!!
Me: Well, we may need to get a technician out there if the lights keep going out on the modem.
Mr. Customer: Let me try and see if its working now.
Me: You won't be able to go anywhere if the cable light is not solid on your modem (indicating that it is synched up with our network)
Mr. Customer: Well, I'm gonna try anyway
Me: OK, do as you wish.
Mr. Customer: Oh, I guess it looks like you're right.
NEWS FLASH: Tech support people usually know what works and what doesn't work. That is why we are TECH SUPPORT and you are the CUSTOMER!
Then after the lights came back on and he relaxed a little he tells me
Mr. Customer: My dotta light is flashing.
Me: Your DATA light?
Mr. Customer: Yeah, my dotta light.
Then even later in the call after the guy got pissed when the modem kept losing synch and he said:
Mr. Customer: I don't want that < ISP COMPETITOR > bullshit. You know that "LSD" stuff (< aside >Does he mean DSL perhaps?< /aside >)? I really like you guys with < ISP >. I have you guys for cable too. (< aside >REALLY??? I never would have guessed< /aside >) I am just pissed off cause I can't get my puh.... (dramatic pause) my Internet.
Yeah, right, it's the lack of the Internet that has you with your panties all in a bunch??? NEWS FLASH: You're all pissy with me 'cause you can't get your damned porn! If you would only have been smart enough to Right Click and Save those pics, you wouldn't be in this quandry now, would you? So when I was getting ready to schedule a tech to come to his house to try and fix the problem he announces:
Mr. Customer: That's it! The god-dammed modem's lights went out again!! God-dammit!!!
Click.
Oh well, I guess you don't get that truck roll you need and will have to resort to watching porn on the TV, just like you used to do in the olden days before the computer... Oh wait, that wasn't that long ago... LOL
Me: Thank you for calling < ISP >.net, this is Haywood. I can help you.
Mr. Customer: Wow! They said I was gonna have to wait 16 minutes.
Me: 16 minutes, huh. I can put you back on hold if you like.
Mr. Customer: Ha ha, no thanks.
As I say this, I hear my cubilcle neighbor laughing quite loudly. It seems he heard my comments...
Their method for backing up the mailbox will work, but you can do it also by finding where the Store Folder is located (go to Tools>Options then click on the Maintenence tab and then the "Store Folder" button. This will show you where the mail is being stored. To save the mailbox, click in the box and then highlight the whole thing and copy it to the clipboard. Once in the clipboard, paste it into an Explorer window (Windows Explorer, not Internet Explorer) and then hit Enter and you will be in the Store Folder. Close Outlook Express and then backup the folder to a CD-R or whatever. If you are unable to restore it after backing it up, ensure that the files are not marked as "Read Only"...
Me: Thank you for calling < ISP >.net, this is Haywood I can help you.
Mrs. Customer: I just restarted my computer and now I need to get on the Internet
Me: Now, did you "restart" your computer, or "restore" your computer?
Mrs. Customer: What's the difference?
Me: "Restart" is to restart the computer, as in to turn it on again. "Restore" is to delete everything and take the computer back to the condition it was in when you brought it home from the store.
Mrs. Customer: Oh, then I restored it.
Me: OK....
Some more random customer comments and the things I would love to have said to them...
Mr. Customer: My Internet doesn't want to connect.
wtf? Your Internet? It doesn't want to connect? What does that mean exactly? Unfortunately for me I am often forced to translate the speech of adults into terms that a child can understand....
Mr. Customer: Hello, who was I just talking to?
Me: I don't know, but you are talking to Haywood now.
How the hell am I supposed to know who you were just talking to? Have you no idea how a call center works? Did you catch a name? Of course not!
(After finishing up with the troubleshooting she asked this):
Mrs. Customer: Is there still a guy there.... His name started with a "W"...
Me: Um, you got me....
Like I am gonna know everybody whose name starts with a "W"? That's like asking someone who you just found out is from Canada if they know your Uncle Max from Winnipeg. The world is small, but its not that small...
I'm not quite sure who ISC is, but if they do not want to reveal this "secret" information to their customers (and the public in gereral), they shouldn't have put their Knowledge Base on a publicly accessible web server.... Anyway, this is an easy fix for a not-so-common problem in OLE...
Error 0x800c0131: Unable to send mail in Outlook Express.
I remember hearing that we went to the moon with only 32 KB of RAM. That is pretty cool. These days tho, with all the bloatware, and system crashes and exploitable bugs, it seems that every OS sucks. Brought to you by iMovie Retro TV...
This guy was having enough trouble searching the internet, due to pages not loading thanks to his firewall (Norton), and what do you think he was searching for? There ought to be a law... Or at lease a test.
Mr. Customer's son: We need to re-download our cable Internet. Our computer just got erased and we need to put it back in there.
Me: Okaaaaaaaayyyy....
Me: Thank you for calling < ISP >.net, this is Haywood I can help you
Mr. Customer: OK, I am a dumb shit.
Me: Heh, well at least you admit it Mr. Customer: Well, I am having a problem with Oulook Exploder
Me: Hahahaha, is this Internet Exploder or Outlook Express?
Mr. Customer: Yes.
Me: Let's check your cookies
Mrs. Customer: It's too late for candy tonite
Me: Do you have a ticket number?
Mrs. Customer: What? I gotta stand in line now?
Me: That's a good one!
Mrs. Customer: Well, I'm a little punchy here...
Me: What version of Windows is this?
Mr. Customer: Windows 97?
Me: Uhm, they never made a Windows 97, could this be Windows 98?
Mr. Customer: Pardon me, yeah, that's it!
Wow. 2 zone alarm calls in a row. Both could release/renew their IP addresses and were not pingable. And both were fixed easily with the same procedure...
All we had to do was set it (ZA) to not load at startup.... Both had the new version (3.0, I think):
Get to the control center (right click the icon and go to "Restore Zone ALarm COntrol Center"
In the Overview section, click on the Preferences tab
Uncheck Load Zone Alarm Pro at startup
Say Yes to the popup and then reboot
I get these alot. People for some reason presume that they can just make up any old username in their email program, and that will work.... OK, this one took the cake! She knew that she was allowed to have up to 7 email addresses so she set up 7 different Identities in Outlook Express. She started out the call telling me about what she had done. Well, then when I was trying to explain to her that what she did won't work, she came back at me with "I just set up each Identity because I am able to have 7, right? I do get 7 Identities, right?"
Ugggg...
So I splained to her that "Identities" are only a software thing in Outlook Express and what she needs to do is set up additional usernames in her account with us, her ISP. So she proceeds to tell me that what she did was create 7 new Identities with all the new email addresses she wanted, and I am thinking "Oh G-d, I'm having deja vu all over again"...
So after I put it a little differently, "You have to sign up for these other email addresses you want on our website". And she went "Oooooooooooooh..." So we went to the website and I had her sign in to add those emails.
Me: Now go ahead and login with your email address and password. Do you know your email address?
Mrs. Customer: Yes, and let me just say, that I thought it was funny when I signed up for it initially.
Me: So go ahead and type it in. It should be d-u-m-b-b-i-t-c-h @ < ISP >.net (for those playing along at home, that was inputted without the dashes)
Mrs. Customer: OK, and my password is **********. Should I hit "Submit" now?
Me: Yup
Mrs. Customer: OK now what?
Me: Click on that link to "Add an Email Account" and put in the new username you want and enter a password between 6 and 12 characters.
The kicker for this, and that is not to say that her login of "dumbbitch" isn't funny enough, is that she proceded to tell me that the reason she had to get the new email address was because she is applying for a job at the Sheriff's Department and she can't put that address on her resume. Well, duh!!!!!!! Dumb Bitch.... LOL
And my co-workers who read this blog can confirm that we really have a customer with that email address and that I am not making this stuff up! Truth really is stranger than fiction....
