So I got a call today asking about one of our products.





––-





Caller: Do you have a product that can capture still images (frames) from a video ?





Me: Nope, sorry, ours doesn't do that.





Caller: I know, but where can I get one that does?





Me:    Uh, perhaps you should try googling it?





Caller:  can't you just give me a suggestion? I don't own your product but you should know where I can get one that does what I want!





Me:    We aren't "The Internet" tech support.





caller:  *CLICK*





Me:
Post your tech support stories!



 

I was on internal Tech Support back in the day and the
same department would call every night about something
stupid.  i.e.  printer doesn't work......"check the paper"?.......Oh, you're so smart......
So, after hundreds of calls over several weeks, we used to make up
stuff.
1.  Check your data monochrom.......
2.  Reboot your electrostatic proximter....
3.  Your modem is not firing on all circuits ....
4.  Your CRT has alamanleft......

I wasn't good at the acronyms but my cohort was an expert.

OK, this isn't a tech support story, and I appologize for the drift, but the previous poster making shit up made me remember something.

As a cop, one of the things I frequently have to do is direct traffic at a crash.  Most people understand that when they see three cop cars, two firetrucks, and an overturned vehicle on the side of the road, that there has been a traffic crash, and they should simply follow the directions / signals of the guy wearing the pretty vest and waving the flashlight.  But not everyone.  Invariably, I have person after person stop, roll down their window and ask "Officer, what happened?' while traffic backs up even further behind them.  Eventually, to keep from strangling these people, I just started making shit up:

Driver:  Officer, what happened?
Me:  Shark attack  .  Worst I have ever seen.
Driver:  
Me:  Please keep driving.  Have a nice day.

I'll just leave these here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q8DriPCX2o

That made me laught, thanks

1988 I worked for WANG computers as a customer engineer, fancy name for a geek squad guy except I had a territory that I covered with customers that paid for on-site support

I had one where we kept getting calls about random characters racing across the screen of a computer for no reason at all like what happens when you hold the space bar down and it just keeps adding spaces. It was always the same user a secretary and we replaced everything, keyboard, monitor, CPU, you name it we replaced it all this problem went on for MONTHS we could not figure out why the cursor would just take off the across the screen. we never were able to reproduce the problem.

Then one day I was standing there with a coworker and we were talking to the office manager standing by the desk with the problem computer when the secretary shouts out,  there!! is just did it again!!! did you see it????

My buddy noticed that when it happened she was leaning forward over her keyboard, don't remember what she was doing just that she would lean forward and you guessed it her boobs were pressing down the spacebar on her keyboard. When she did it the second time I caught it and we both had to walk away because we were about to die laughing. We had to talk to the office manager to tell her what the problem was and that she had to stop leaning over her keyboard the office manager was the one to have to tell her that her boobs were too big and that she had to move the keyboard forward.

That was the funniest call I ever been on.............

pics?

I was tech support/lan admin guy for years so i have tons. One of the earliest was "my computer isn't working!!!"



Turn the monitor on.

You just made my day.



 

1988,    no such things as cell phones back in the stone age..........

One of the ladies out on the floor wanted a new mouse recently because her's "opened icons way too slow".

This is  a no-shit story. It really happened to me.

I was visiting in the home office of a company I did some work for. A (cute but very ditzy) woman from a neighboring office ran in in a tizzy, crying "IneedsomecopypaperanditsalmostfiveoclockandIcan'tgettothestoretobuysome... can I borrow some from you?"

I looked her in the eye and said, "Why don't you call Staples and have them fax you some? It costs more but you can order exactly as many sheets as you need."

She got the AHH HAAAHHHH! look in her eye, said, "OMYGODthankyouthankyouthankyou..." and ran out of the office.

I looked at my boss and said, "Sometimes I just hate being me."

Oh God, where do I begin?



My favorite?  Fucking with people.



Me: Operations, this is Nick.

Customer: "Yeah, my server's search function isn't working.  Can you guys take a look?

Me: "Definitely.  I'm going to have to transfer you up to Level 2 tech support, though."

Customer: "Thanks."

*transfers the call back to myself*

Me: "Operations, this is Nick."

Customer: "Wasn't I just talking to you..?"

Me: "Yep!  I had to transfer you up to Level 2 which meant that I had to change hats. "

Yeah no shit. If I had a celly camera back in the day, I would have some crazy pics. Had a hard drive spontaneously combust inside a PII Compaq. THAT was fun.



 

Unfortunately, this is copied verbatim from my IM log on Tuesday

That technique is actually a valid one. I believe that people get mentally derailed when you hit them with such disinformation. If you try to tell them the truth, they just ask for more info.

On speakerphone one day about two weeks ago.



Idiot: "Did you reboot the Internet again?"

Me: "Yes. After it comes back up I'm going to separate land from sea and light from darkness. Then on the seventh day I'm gonna chill."



My boss (CFO) was sitting in my office when I got that call. He had to leave the room he was laughing so hard.

You want a picture of his WANG?

I had a user come up to me the other day and ask for a blank sheet of paper. After a quick convo, I realized he did not want a piece of paper, but rather needed to know how to open a blank MS Word document. I had to take a early lunch after that.

When I was in college, I worked in the AV department and would deliver
TVs/VCRs to classrooms. While I was walking to class, a
teacher who recognized me as one of the AV geeks ran over and asked me about her "broken" TV/VCR. I decided to help her and she takes me into a full classroom and she start complaining out loud about broken equipment and then tries to show me that it's broken. I just leaned over and pressed the power button on the VCR, looked at her and smiled and walked out. She never complained again.




 

a while back I worked for an ISP, our COO called up our Internal Support (as differentiated from our much larger External Support) and told them that he needed a new hard drive, as his was full. They thought this was surprising because the drives were plenty large enough, but they went up to check it out anyway. They take a look and he had his entire desktop covered with file icons and folders. When he ran out of room for new icons on his desktop, he presumed he had no more room on the drive. He had no concept of storing files anywhere else, despite the shortcuts on the Start menu for exotic locales such as "My Documents".

This was the COO for a national internet service provider.

The managers here insist on hiring the most inept, computer illeterate employees on the face of the planet like its a requirement.
There are many days that I want to go home and drink myself into a coma.

"my wireless keyboard/mouse isnt working" - ok, change the damn batteries!
"my computer isnt working"- ok, define not working? Is it locked up? Did it clock out? Did it go for a cigarette break? Please define "not working"
"this window popped up" -ok, what does the window say? "something about.." NO, exactly what does the text say?
"my computer is slow, I think I need a new one" - oh really? What programs are you running? "well, I have 6 pages on the internet open, quickbooks, word, excel, outlook, and the calculator" - shut some of them down.

In for the lulz

911 Operator here, so we're the 'tech support' for everything in society.  Or that's at least what some of our callers think.

"My powers out."  Um...try calling the power company.
"My cell phone will only call 911."  Just because it can, doesn't mean you should.  Try calling your provider.
"My cell phone will only call 911, can you order me a pizza."  Yes, it has happened.
"Can you take me home/airport/bar." - Funny, I don't remember seeing the word TAXI on our cruisers.
"What time is it?" There was some lady who called EVERY night on third shift asking this.
"I'm locked out of my car."  Sorry, because citizens have chosen to SUE US for damaging their vehicle while attempting to unlock it FOR FREE, we no longer provide this service.  Try Pop-O-Lock or a towing company.

And after hearing about it on the Internet, I received a call from a lady complaining that her fast food order was wrong.

That's why we learn how to ask the right questions so people will tell us what's wrong. And think, if they knew what to do, you and I would be out of a job.