Tech Support Gripes HERE!

TeamStrykerCore said:
Oh that is soo true. Public school systems have to be the worst for that. And also a lot of times the network admins are underpaid.

You can say that again. Im the Network admin for a public school. I support 500computers 8 servers all the network ect. and I get bitched at when it takes me two days to get to a call when I have 800 other things going on. I dont get paid enough for this job.
 
AcidTone said:
You can say that again. Im the Network admin for a public school. I support 500computers 8 servers all the network ect. and I get bitched at when it takes me two days to get to a call when I have 800 other things going on. I dont get paid enough for this job.


I hear ya. I used to have one of those jobs. School systems just dont get it sometimes.
 
AcidTone said:
You can say that again. Im the Network admin for a public school. I support 500computers 8 servers all the network ect. and I get bitched at when it takes me two days to get to a call when I have 800 other things going on. I dont get paid enough for this job.

I feel sorry for you, truly I do.
 
My favorite call was from a teacher who left me a voice mail saying there keyboard wasnt working. So I walked to the building grabed a spare keyboard and replaced the bad one. About an hour later after I got back from lunch I had another voicemail so I pop on speaker phone and started listening, mind you there was two other people in the office. The teacher who I had replace the keyboard for was who left the message. She was mad because i gave her a keyboard that was in a different language. Every one in my office was like wtf????? So I walk back over there and look at the keyboard some kid had poped off the keys and put them in a different order.

I got a good laugh at that one.
 
Forgot to add this in the last post.

I have a wireless connection at my house cause no other type of broad band is in the area. Most of this time it works ok but there are some time when nothing will work at all. This little story is about one of those weekends. So I was at home on friday after work just about to settle in and play some DAOC, I went to check my email and I got a connection refused error in firefox. So I figure my router needed to be reset, so i reset it and my bridge and try again nothing. I check my router to be sure that im getting an ip address and it was. So i go back up stairs and start playing with my system. In the mean time I get an instant message from my buddy. I was like WTF, so i try the interent again and nothing. My next move was to try and ping out and that worked fine. This is when i decided to call tech support. I explain what I had done ect. The tech tells me that I need to reset my router and bridge, I was like ok but i have already done that. Once that was done still coulndt browse (imagine that). and she tells me that its my equipment and they cant do any thing for me.

At this point I was majorly pissed but I went with what she said and started reseting all my equipment to factory defaults and settign up again (even though i knew it wouldnt help). So I had to run to my parents house and get the 24 foot ladder and get on my roof and reset the bridge, make sure it was getting signal from the tower (was getting 50%). Moved to the router reset it and got everything set back up with it. Tried to surf the net again and big suprise no internet. So I call tech support, I get the same girl she has me check my DHCP settings on the router ping out to there server and tells me that it is still my equipment. I told here that I had reset all my setting back to default reconfigured everything ect. She said well I cant help you you need to call back monday and talk to our network guy.

WTF????? Monday was 3 days away. Needless to say I waited till monday in the time between friday and monday there dhcp server stoped working so I had no connection at all. I called monday and 15 minutes after i called my connection was working with out any problems.

I guess they waved a magic wand and fixed my equipment.............
 
AcidTone said:
Forgot to add this in the last post.

I have a wireless connection at my house cause no other type of broad band is in the area. Most of this time it works ok but there are some time when nothing will work at all. This little story is about one of those weekends. So I was at home on friday after work just about to settle in and play some DAOC, I went to check my email and I got a connection refused error in firefox. So I figure my router needed to be reset, so i reset it and my bridge and try again nothing. I check my router to be sure that im getting an ip address and it was. So i go back up stairs and start playing with my system. In the mean time I get an instant message from my buddy. I was like WTF, so i try the interent again and nothing. My next move was to try and ping out and that worked fine. This is when i decided to call tech support. I explain what I had done ect. The tech tells me that I need to reset my router and bridge, I was like ok but i have already done that. Once that was done still coulndt browse (imagine that). and she tells me that its my equipment and they cant do any thing for me.

At this point I was majorly pissed but I went with what she said and started reseting all my equipment to factory defaults and settign up again (even though i knew it wouldnt help). So I had to run to my parents house and get the 24 foot ladder and get on my roof and reset the bridge, make sure it was getting signal from the tower (was getting 50%). Moved to the router reset it and got everything set back up with it. Tried to surf the net again and big suprise no internet. So I call tech support, I get the same girl she has me check my DHCP settings on the router ping out to there server and tells me that it is still my equipment. I told here that I had reset all my setting back to default reconfigured everything ect. She said well I cant help you you need to call back monday and talk to our network guy.

WTF????? Monday was 3 days away. Needless to say I waited till monday in the time between friday and monday there dhcp server stoped working so I had no connection at all. I called monday and 15 minutes after i called my connection was working with out any problems.

I guess they waved a magic wand and fixed my equipment.............

You should have called the chick and gave her a bitchin'!
 
I just got a call asking where a customer can go to get screws to hold their satellite dish onto their roof.

I said call 1-800-DIRECTV. Why the hell would you call DSL support to ask about your fucking satellite TV?
 
twyztyr said:
I just got a call asking where a customer can go to get screws to hold their satellite dish onto their roof.

I said call 1-800-DIRECTV. Why the hell would you call DSL support to ask about your fucking satellite TV?

you work for SBC? SBC has a package you can get which combines satellite tv, phone, and dsl in one
 
Stang Man said:
you work for SBC? SBC has a package you can get which combines satellite tv, phone, and dsl in one

No, I work for Verizon. Verizon has that shit too, we call it the "Encore" package.

SBC uses Dish Network, we use DirecTV.
 
Personally I am on both sides of the fence.

As a user our DSL provider at home has been advertising that we would be getting "double" the dsl speed in the next few months (it has been over 2 years without any type of speed increase. But yet they are now advertising 8Mb...and still havnt upgraded from 1.1Mb to the "new and improved 2.2Mb". I fought for 3 weeks with "tech support" with my internet not working at all. They kept telling it was my stuff and I had the SAME virus that caused the same problem on 2 windows XP machines a linux machine and 2 freeBSD full patched 4.9 machines. Finally got them to replace the DSL modem like i told them to and the problem went away.

As a "tech", I personally am sick of people wanting me to work and do "phone support" for free just because I am "young". I personally try to stay away from phone support at all costs knowing that I could do the same thing in less than 30 seconds.
 
I love the it when the customer calls in because they cannot authenticate and it ends up that another DSL ISP has taken over the line without permission. Earthlink does it all the time. That shit is funny as hell from this side, I would hate to be the one it happened to though.
 
kcthebrewer said:
I love the it when the customer calls in because they cannot authenticate and it ends up that another DSL ISP has taken over the line without permission. Earthlink does it all the time. That shit is funny as hell from this side, I would hate to be the one it happened to though.

That would suck to troubleshoot from the tech side.
 
TeamStrykerCore said:
That would suck to troubleshoot from the tech side.

I'm actually on hold with our provisioning department at this very moment attempting to figure out such an issue. I have at least one of these every day. You can't even imagine how much it sucks.
 
While I'm waiting, I also remembered another thing that pisses me off to no end.

I've got your entire ticket history in front of me, I don't need you to spend 20 fucking minutes relating every detail of every call you've ever made to us for shit that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. If your email settings are fucked, I don't care if you had a technician come out to fix your blinking DSL light three weeks ago.
 
twyztyr said:
While I'm waiting, I also remembered another thing that pisses me off to no end.

I've got your entire ticket history in front of me, I don't need you to spend 20 fucking minutes relating every detail of every call you've ever made to us for shit that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. If your email settings are fucked, I don't care if you had a technician come out to fix your blinking DSL light three weeks ago.

yup, and when we say we're gonna have a tech go take a look at the line... they're not coming to your house to install your shit, so stfu and stop telling me you were getting your dsl installed by somebody.. That and people always like to get their shit up and running before their activation date. We fucking told you, it will be turned on on X day. That doesn't mean 3 days before or 6am on X day. they have until midnight and there's nothing I can do about it, so for a 2nd time, stfu!


and I hate people, they have the option of having a technician install it all for them (for a fee, i think like 150 bucks), or they can install it themselves. they always choose to install it themselves and bitch and complain when they can't do it.

fucking pathetic, these directions are so simple, they were tested on monkeys.
 
Stang Man said:
yup, and when we say we're gonna have a tech go take a look at the line... they're not coming to your house to install your shit, so stfu and stop telling me you were getting your dsl installed by somebody.. That and people always like to get their shit up and running before their activation date. We fucking told you, it will be turned on on X day. That doesn't mean 3 days before or 6am on X day. they have until midnight and there's nothing I can do about it, so for a 2nd time, stfu!

and I hate people, they have the option of having a technician install it all for them (for a fee, i think like 150 bucks), or they can install it themselves. they always choose to install it themselves and bitch and complain when they can't do it.

fucking pathetic, these directions are so simple, they were tested on monkeys.

Customer: "Can you push my service ready date up?"
Me: "If you pass the challenge of fear."

I also hate people that ask if we can somehow magically bypass the queue for another department. If I could get through faster, I would just to get you the fuck off my phone.

Basically, I pretty much hate customers.
 
I do level 2 (tier 2) tech support for RR
that means i'm in canada, in an outsourced call center. You might need to know what a few abbrivriations are to understand this properly: t1 t2 t3 is different departments - t1 and t3 are in the local office. t1 is usually billing and simple tech support, t3 is supposadly higher level than us, that doesn't mean they actually know anything more than us, they just have more access to stuff and the authority to tell customers their computer is busted or they need a truck roll or whatever. t2 is us, 'national help desk'. Lots of the people that work here are complete morons, i enjoy listening to them giving out bad information to customers! UDI is a web based tool that lets us pull up the status of a cable modem. 'Sub' is short for subscriber, or 'sub email account' as opposed to a master email account... CPE is customer premesis equipment or something, basically any device that is plugged into the modem - the router, computer, xbox, digital phone, whatever.

here's some classic tickets i had to save in my email because they were so funny:

cannot get online since last night
reset modem in udi
it wants a wireless key for a 2wire router
sub is at the desktop computer right now but is also reading me stuff on the laptop screen apparently
she doesn't believe me about the wireless key actually being needed
because it worked at a truck stop or something...
'if the desktop works it wont ask for a wireless key on the laptop'
she's restarting the computer for some reason
on the DESKTOP:
winipcfg:
accton en > ip 67.11.245.96
??? (she can't have a router then... that matches the only CPE in UDI and it only has one modem, but she says the wireless was installed)
release / renew > same ip
loaded IE
it crashed right away
disabled browser extensions in IE
or not
can't get control panel up
explorer crashed
explained to sub she's probably using a neighbors wireless connection or something, she doesn't even have a router
she doesn't believe me of course
sub wants to talk to local office
xfer t1
 
set up OE
took a few minutes to find it...
removed existing account
added new account
entered email address... or not
educated customer on the @ symbol. and the shift key.
apparently she was leaving that part out.
also spelling out 'dot' instead of just putting a '.'
still doesn't work after fixing all that
and she managed to cancel the wizard
started it over
finally worked
got to server name screen now (28 minutes so far...)
sub is now putting spaces instead of hyphens
fixed that
sub can't click on the second box... oh she got it!
hit next. got error.
well server is spelled wrong, but thats not the problem... fixed that
still invalid server name error when hits next
sub wasn't putting a dash or hyphen still, she was putting commas or something
sweet! got to next screen (35 minutes...)
entered password. its probably wrong
hit finish. (37 minutes...)
send/recv
stuck at password now. what a surprise.
re-entered the password
got sub a new password
tried to explain the concept of me resetting the password.
vfy mac
reset password
gave sub new password
sub typed it in
didn't work
but i just tested it on our end and it works...
got sub to re-enter it. (46 minutes...)
didn't work
checked the username
its correct
re-entered password
didn't work
????????
i dont *think* she could have entered the password wrong 3 times in a row...
tried re-entering the username
didn't work
re-entered password (attempt 4)
worked!!!!!!!!!!
suggested send a test message to self
explained where to enter the email address. went over what her email
address is again. (no dont put a space... no dont spell out dot... )
hit send
"no matches found" (email address in "To:" is wrong)
went over the email address again
same error again
sub's children screaming. sub gets me to hold to go beat them again.
re-entered email address
send!! (1 hour 2 minutes...)
no match found for "test" ?
sub was putting the subject into the cc: box apparently
explained that the subject goes in the subject box.
it worked!
send/recv
sub cant find inbox now but she just told me it says inbox with a (1)
beside it?
did u click on the word inbox? "no.."
send/recv > got test message back
resolved (1 hr 6 min)
 
things that piss me off:

1) customers that ask 'right click or left click' constantly
2) customers that sit there forever without saying anything when you ask them to do something
3) customers that cannot find the start menu, or items in the start menu, or their toolbar or items in the menu
4) customers that 'accidentally' close the window, lose the window, type things into the wrong box, etc
5) customers that get pissed off when we ask for their email address because they can't check their email right now
6) customers that wont give us their info without complaining they gave it to someone else or typed it into the phone earlier
7) customers that ask for a supervisor. our supervisors are 'administrative' or 'clerical' and rarely fix anything.
8) customers that get stuck on step one of the outlook express wizard 'enter your name'
9) customers that ask what to do when the only options are 'next' or 'cancel'
10) customers that give you their zip code when you ask for their area code
11) hawaiians. maloha? shut up... and quit saying 'ya' after every sentance.
12) people in the south that keep saying "y'alls internet" or "say what now" or "do what now"
13) people who answer the question "what type of modem do you have" with an answer such as "your modem", "you installed it", "road runner", "y'alls", "the one with the lights", "the black one". "i dont know" is only acceptable if you have an Ambit cable modem, the only company too embarassed to write their name on their products.
14) people who tell me their operating system is "DELL", "Office 97", "windows 95", "windows 97", or "road runner"
15) people that say the road runner isn't running
16) people that call us when their computer is frozen up
17) people that call us about spam or virus emails. especially the ones that say 'road runner removed the following attachments because they contained viruses, the original message is as follows... 'blah blah blah open the attached document or your account will be disabled, from road runner team'. They dont seem to understand that its a fake email, not really from us, no your account is not disabled, how the hell could you receive email if it was? JUST DELETE IT. (why doesn't road runner just delete the damn message? would save them millions of dollars in tech support fees...)
18) people that put me on hold to answer their other phone, call waiting, yell at their kids
19) people that conference me into a call with microsoft or dell.
20) 'technicians' that call me and ask for the IP address or host name or subnet mask or other settings that can be left blank or set to automatic.
21) people that put me on a crappy speakerphone
22) people that have phones with background noise louder than their voice
23) people who claim they can't hear me and i need to speak up. talking on the phone for 8 hours a day is bad enough, i REALLY dont want to be yelling into it. if you're deaf, get a hearing aid or a phone with volume adjustment!
24) people I can't hear because they've been transfered so many times the call is probably routed through india, or their phone is just crap again. or their face is so fat their cheek is blocking the reciever.
25) people that read me their phone number too fast, or say 'oh' instead of 'zero', or start reading me off case numbers or giving me their address or last four of their social right away.
26) people that read me their MAC ID without using the phonetic alphabet. how the hell am i supposed to know if you're saying '8' or 'a', 'd' or 'b', etc?
27) the one guy that said 'x as in eskimo'
28) people that get a dialog box with two options that dont matter, like sending an error report or not sending it, or displaying secure items or not displaying them. I tell them to click either one, it doesn't matter. they can't decide and ask me again?
29) people that give me the email address of the account holder when i specifically asked for "YOUR" email address. Especially because I'm not allowed to say its for a customer satisfaction survery which i'm actually graded on, and obviously would be of no use to someone who i didn't talk to...
30) people that make me miss a ride home or take my lunch late when i specifically tell them "I'm off in 15 minutes' or whatever. take the fu*king hint and call back with your 20 other problems. i WILL hang up on you with no warning if you start wasting my time.
31) people that call from work or their car for issues they dont understand and they need to be at home to troubleshoot. especially the ones that try and call someone at home to get me the info i need or wait until they drive home! just get someone at home to call, duh!!
32) people that have a router but dont know it or lie about it. or they can't find it but its within 6 feet.
33) people who's only problem is that the only light on the modem is the one that says 'standby'
34) people that have disabled their local area connection, especially if they ask how that happened
35) people that dont understand that 'network cable unplugged' means the cable is unplugged or possibly loose. just check the damn connections already.
36) people that dont know their phone number
37) people that install a firewall and block everything from connecting until nothing works anymore, then complain to us.
38) people that install spyware removal utilites i've never heard of.
39) people that plug in a USB cable and ethernet cable to the modem at the same time.
40) people that reinstall windows, then get pissed off at me because all their old E-mail is gone
41) people that take more than two tries to enter their password correctly
42) people that still enter stmp or smpt instead of smtp when it's spelled correctly on their screen right beside the box they're typing into, and I ALWAYS use the phonetic alphabet and tell them to enter it 'as it appears there' or 'spell it the same' or whatever
43) people that keep saying 'hello?' every time theres 5 seconds of dead air during the call
44) people that have me on hold as the call comes through
45) aol customers that leave out the @aol.com when they give me their email address
46) people who have computers that take 5-10 minutes to boot and complain the internet is slow. or even worse, they complain their computer is slow because of road runner.
47) people that ask me if i can see their screen right now
48) pepole that can't use webmail because of their popup blocker, and dont think the message 'a popup was blocked' might have something to do with it
49) people that can't find the information bar, address bar, tools menu, or other stuff in IE. Or people that claim they can't type into the address bar in IE because its got stuff in it already.
50) people who refer to IE or OE as Internet Express
51) people that give me their mailing address when i ask for their email address
52) people that dont understand that the activity light not flashing on their modem doesn't mean the road runner service is down.
53) people that call me with their computer turned off
54) people that insist on relaying all my directions to a third person at the computer. Or even worse, their phone is in another room and they have to keep putting me on hold to do anything.
55) people who put their cablemodem in a closet where they can't reach it or seal it in a wall in their basement. lol.
56) people that tell me i sound tired or bored or whatever right at the start of the call. thanks, now if anyone monitors that call, i lose marks for not 'sounding interested'.
57) people that can't read the labels on the lights on the cable modem
58) pepole who say Road Runner is not working when the problem is that internet explrer wont load, their computer wont boot, or their homepage is down.
59) people who have their screen at 640x480 and can't find anything without scrolling for 5 minutes
60) people with more than one device in device manager that needs the drivers installed, and they call us first?
61) people that read me the entire text of the new hardware found wizard, or OE new account wizard, or error reporting wizard, etc.
62) people refered to us by aol tech support because 'they can't ping the AOL EDGE server' (whatever that is). why the hell can't they just ping google or yahoo like everyone else? we all know AOL support doesn't know what ping does anyways, since this often has nothing to do with the problem...
63) people that refuse to disable their firewall without a major arguement because 'it always worked fine before'
64) people who tell me their email address is 'all lowercase' (or uppercase)
65) people that interrupt me to ask what i'm trying to explain to them already
66) people that give me a phone number that doesn't work, i read it back to them, verify it, ask for another, and they give me the same one again.
67) people that hang up on me while i'm saying my closing script.
68) the fact that the activation wizard activation.rr.com has never worked properly on XP SP2. It would take 5 minutes to fix so the ActiveX was possible to install. Does RR fix it? No! Lets let them call in and we can pay the tech support guys $7.50 per call to manually do it 500 times a day. How long have we had this problem now? 6 months? a year?
69) when the local office sets up a new account for a customer because they changed their mailing address or got a new modem. since the email accounts and our password reset system is tied to accounts and the modem MAC ID on the account which is now blanked out. The email acounts still exist but we can't reset the password anymore. the local office has to delete them for us, since they're the only ones with access, but they never understand the problem and just keep transferring the customer back to us because its an email issue.
70) when i hear the tech beside me referring a customer to microsofts 'free support number'. free? lol.
71) people that give me advice on how to improve the IVR. (press 1 for billing, 2 for sales...). Or if they expect me to do something with their complaints about our policies. I can't tell them this is going into a ticket that nobody will look at. EVER. But its true...
72) when someone waits on hold 20 minutes to talk to the local office for an issue they can't help with, supposedly, get xfered to me after 2 minutes of talking to the local guys, and i get to inform the customer that hey, your account is disabled, your local office handles that one. oohh except its against our policy to tell them that, only the local office can tell them its disabled. so now i xfer them back to the local office, and hope the clueless morons there notice the account is disabled this time before dumping the customer back on us again. yes, i can give the customer a 'refrence number with my notes in it', but half the local offices dont even have access to that system, so its useless.
73) the fact that customers get 10mb of email for $50 per month? well i guess they can set up 5 accounts, but still... i dont know whats worse - the amout we rip them off, or the fact they dont know better and get a gmail or even yahoo account!
74) Road Runner Dial Access - not compatible with windows dial up networking. you NEED to install our dialer software first, and sign up on our web page, which means you must have a working internet connection to download it initially... This is fun to explain to people that are travelling and too stupid to go find a wireless access point somewhere.
75) People that put a password on their identity on outlook express, forget it, and call us. Luckily the registry editor is 'out of scope' so we can't spend 10 seconds fixing this... same problem with content advisor in IE.
76) people that dont want OE to remember their password, for added security, but dont realize you can just hit cancel and read the email still... duh.
77) people that refuse to bypass their router because its too complicated, no matter how many times i explain it, they just dont get it.
78) people that have to ask me which one is the power cord on the modem or router. wtf? the one with the electricity in it? the one that doesn't look like a TV cable or a phone cord!
79) people that think a USB cable looks like a big phone cord, and waste my time
80) people that actually use a regular phone cord instead of an ethernet cable. amazing. sometimes they even jam the usb cable into the ethernet plug. mostly hawaiins do this. mostly.
81) having to ask customers if their connections are secure when our tools indicate a bad signal or whatever, as if the coax cable could unscrew itself and cause this?
82) having to say 'i can help you with that' no matter what stupid thing a customer says at the start of the call. i've honestly told them right after that, "and by help, i mean transfer you to the local office, since that issue is handled by them"
83) having to check if the DNS and DHCP services are started when theres no related errors on an ip renew.
84) having to do an ipconfig /renew when a local area connection > repair fails right away. i guarantee you the only time this happens is when its going to give you the 'operation attempted on something that is not a socket' error
85) having to run winver to ensure the customer doesn't have sp2 when their local area connection says 'enabled' instead of 'limited / no connectivity' or 'connected'
86) people that want to go over their account settings in OE when i already know whats wrong or is not wrong from the error message. sure, lets waste some more time...

to be continued...
 
Creamy Goodness said:
things that piss me off:

SNIP!

to be continued...

WOW, you have described nearly almost EVERYTHING!

"network cable unplugged" what's that mean? ---- Can they make it any clearer??
huwhat now? ---- Damn old fucking Texans

I don't understand what's so hard to comprehend:
on the SBC Member Agreement page, there's one page that states the following page is going to be verifying the account information (Name, Telephone #, Address, etc etc), and it asks:
"Do you authorize SBC to fill in the information automatically?" [ ] Yes [ ] No

People have such a fucking hard time with this it is ridiculous, they ask:
Well, which one should I do? Which one would you do? What if I want to change it? Will I have to type it out then if I say no?

STFU ALREADY AND JUST DO IT
 
yeah roadrunner customers have free AV & firewall 'ez armor' available on the rr homepage, they have to click a button that says 'download, a $99 value'
they always get that far, then argue with me about it "it's supposed to be free, i dont want to get a bill". wtf? VALUE, not CHARGE... idiots
 
This entire thread made me giggle. I've been through all of this, plus some.

Why, just today this lady had an DJ890C upstairs near her router and wanted to print "wirelessly" "over the network" (a term i'm sure she had not concocted herself) "from anywhere". My explanation of "this is not a network printer and is therefore unpossible" left her stunned. But she does it at her home up north!!!!

IT'S HOOKED UP TO ANOTHER COMPUTER UP NORTH!!!!! And jet direct prices are coming down :D

I love it though. Every day is a new thing.
 
Creamy Goodness said:
things that piss me off:

to be continued...


WOW i agree with almost all of those. Especialy when people ask "what should i choose" on questions that i clearly cannot answer. Like in our program you can set permissions for every user... "What do i want?" "i don't know you tell me". Or the network cable unplugged one gets me all the time.... :(

OR "How do i do <blank>" "click on, blank then blank" etc etc "oh i'm not at my computer right now"
 
Creamy Goodness is my hero.

We had an agent that started putting song lyrics in his tickets in lieu of troubleshooting steps. That was amazingly funny, though I'd imagine it'd be a real bitch for the next person that took calls from those customers.

Another one wrote "Customer still affected by outage. Actually, he's not. I lied because I don't care. I hate Verizon and am going to work for SBC. Later." That was the last ticket he filed.
 
Haha yeah I haven't decided what i'll be doing on my last day, i imagine it will be a good day for me and a bad day for Road Runner subscribers... When people quit where I work, they usually pull some shit like mass E-mailing everyone instructions on how to fuck up the phone systems or bypass the firewall, plus they screw with customers all day, hanging up on them or seeing how much bullshit they can say to them without getting caught. This could be avoided by say, paying us a reasonable wage, not writing us up for stupid things all the time, not making us deal with back-to-back calls EVER, not scheduling people for shifts they dont want, not sending people home to make it more busy every time we have 30 seconds between calls... man i hate this place. I'm not even allowed to do anything online that involves filling in a form. I got in huge shit once for downloading powerstrip to fix the refresh rate on my monitor when i got stuck on a computer with some bad video drivers. Anyhow, I should really get back to the guy I got on hold right now, I think i'm done "reinstalling his TCP/IP".
 
Creamy Goodness said:
Haha yeah I haven't decided what i'll be doing on my last day, i imagine it will be a good day for me and a bad day for Road Runner subscribers... When people quit where I work, they usually pull some shit like mass E-mailing everyone instructions on how to fuck up the phone systems or bypass the firewall, plus they screw with customers all day, hanging up on them or seeing how much bullshit they can say to them without getting caught. This could be avoided by say, paying us a reasonable wage, not writing us up for stupid things all the time, not making us deal with back-to-back calls EVER, not scheduling people for shifts they dont want, not sending people home to make it more busy every time we have 30 seconds between calls... man i hate this place. I'm not even allowed to do anything online that involves filling in a form. I got in huge shit once for downloading powerstrip to fix the refresh rate on my monitor when i got stuck on a computer with some bad video drivers. Anyhow, I should really get back to the guy I got on hold right now, I think i'm done "reinstalling his TCP/IP".

Wow. This place is nowhere near that bad. I'm glad I don't do your job.

There are some guys here that say they're planning to publish all the company's information on Broadband Reports when they quit. I hope I'm not here when that happens. It'll be chaos.
 
twyztyr said:
Wow. This place is nowhere near that bad. I'm glad I don't do your job.

There are some guys here that say they're planning to publish all the company's information on Broadband Reports when they quit. I hope I'm not here when that happens. It'll be chaos.

yah, we're not allowed to post on there
 
Creamy Goodness said:
Haha yeah I haven't decided what i'll be doing on my last day, i imagine it will be a good day for me and a bad day for Road Runner subscribers... When people quit where I work, they usually pull some shit like mass E-mailing everyone instructions on how to fuck up the phone systems or bypass the firewall, plus they screw with customers all day, hanging up on them or seeing how much bullshit they can say to them without getting caught. This could be avoided by say, paying us a reasonable wage, not writing us up for stupid things all the time, not making us deal with back-to-back calls EVER, not scheduling people for shifts they dont want, not sending people home to make it more busy every time we have 30 seconds between calls... man i hate this place. I'm not even allowed to do anything online that involves filling in a form. I got in huge shit once for downloading powerstrip to fix the refresh rate on my monitor when i got stuck on a computer with some bad video drivers. Anyhow, I should really get back to the guy I got on hold right now, I think i'm done "reinstalling his TCP/IP".
Nice WOW all i have to say is LOL

Tell him to go "wireless"

No sir we are setting you up with our new wireless service. Now go ahead and
unplug all wires from your computer.

Mr says? Everything?

Yes all wires.

Their you are now on our wireless internet enjoy.
 
Im a Operations Engineer for a ISP.. for a Special Interest Group.. and we have 1 Rule: FIX IT!
So we have unlimited Resources, and no rules. to get things fixed for customers.. and business accounts.. We surpass both Tech 1, Tech 2, and Escalations... so by the time they get to us... they are good and pissed off! And you think by the time they managed to get passed 2 levels of support. then a escalations group. and VP.. they would be fixed.. and fully troubleshot... but there is always human error. and stupidity., I could go on and write Novel on the shit storms i have had to deal with in the passed.

My Gripes:
Tech that work below me....!
- If i have to teach another tech how to use a computer, and simple tools.. (such has, how to copy and paste!) Im probably going to choke them with their mouse cable
- One would assume a Techinical Service Rep.. could be a bit more Techinical with Troubleshooting.. and documenting..
(ex. Customers Internet isnt turning on, and get a flashing thingy message on screen.........) WTF does that mean!! - i should punch you..
- Level 1 support should be called: Secretaries - Thats all they do.. verify, document the problem. and transfer
- Level 2 support... they troubleshoot the problem.. confuse the Customer.. Confuse themselves.. document issue in a confusing manner then send a ticket to escalations..
- Escalations tech- encyrpts the poorly made trouble ticket... a. figures out that ticket is junk and sends it back with fix.. b. network issue and sends to NOC . These are known as true Techinical Secretaries..
- NOC techs - after sitting on forums and myspace and friendster all day.. and they finally get a ticket.. they knit pick the smallest information that was left out( mind you they can easily look it up themselves), and then send ticket back to Escalations to verify information.

After the ticket has been bounced around back and forth like a pinp pong ball.. the problem has a resolution.. customer is already steamed.. and then its sent to my dept.. which for the most part.. can diagnosis the fix the problem 10x faster then it wouldve took a Network Engineer with their CCNA and 26 character titles, whatever.. bottom line is.. its common sense.. its a network.. its a modem.. its a computer... quit confusing the damn issue with anything else.. troubleshoot the problem... and fix it.. but whatever.. Now that i have to pick up the pieces.. diagnosis the problem.. pick thru horrid documentation.. and then call teh customer.. and fix the problem. Now.. here;s the fun part.. customer is heated.. doesnt want to troubleshoot.. wants to take the company to court and wants me to give them credit... All of which, never happens.. I clearify tell them.. they can buy 100 lawyers and attorneys to take a multi-million dollar company to court over a pc-related issue that they were confusing has a network problem.. And as for the issue with credit.. credit is only deserving to the ones that deserve it. And if you arent willing to help me, help you fix the problem.. then you dont deserve credit. One of two things happen.. they want a supervisor.. or i fix the problem... and if they ask for supervisor... i tell them.. i have no boss.. i am my boss.. and i will fix their problem.. After I fix the problem.. they can take it up with myself about the problems they have had with me.

As you see, i am a very bitter employee.. I am a game art and designer that works abroad.. but not working full time in the field.. and im stuck working for a job that pays the bills..and pays very well.. so ill ride this out til my head explodes...

*Ok, im going back to work... *
 
Where I recently worked, there was only two of us (and the IT director who, bless his heart, did a lot of dirty work right with us)... So 90% of our calls means we had to go somewhere. No big deal, I loved walking and it was the only place I've ever worked where I didn't care that we didn't use remote admin stuff. (Well, for other dealers we did)..

So anyway, we fixed a lot of home stuff for big-wigs in the company.. They'd buy computers, bring them to us, and we'd fix them. Most recently, the company owner bought 10 of those Acer Ferrari laptops which have a VERY annoying startup noise... Oh well, he's a cool guy, so we didn't mind doing stuff since he bought us lunch all the time.

What really pissed me off is we had a huge shoutcast problem and there was this one guy we had fired because he kept going to other computers to play different streaming eurotrash shit. According to squid's log, he'd average 4-5GB a day over our poor DSL line.
 
-------------------------------------
HP Support
I had a bad modem, but I couldn't get authorized to replace it until I reseated it.... So I walk this "systems admin with 20 years experience" through it because he didn't know how to do it on HP Systems....

ME: "Ok shutdown the computer...."
Him: "Ok it is off" (after about 45 seconds)
Me: "Ok unplug the power cord" (15 seconds)
Him: "ok done"
Me: I walk him through opening the case and reseating the modem (including grounding himself)
Me: "Ok now turn the machine back on..."
Him: "But I never turned it off"
---------------------------------
2:55am HP Call Center:
Me: Intro script
Lady: "I am not going to give you any of my information. I know that I am out of warranty, you don't need my serial number. You are going to give me a free warranty and help me or send me to someone who will"
Me: Normally I'm a pretty nice guy, but this lady pissed me off and I had 5 minutes left on my shift. "Ok, I'll transfer you right over". Then I proceed to transfer her to the Spanish Only Queue. "I'm sure you'll get all the help you need"

---------------------
NMCI Pre-Deployment Manager /w EDS/Dell
Installing a bunch of computers on a military base.
One of the field techs put the users old harddrive into the new machine without any screws or anything. The tech moved the computer a couple feet after powering it on and the drive fell and grounded itself and ended up shorting out. And this user somehow was not on the network backup. Several years work of data was lost.

---------------------
Recently, dealing with Apple Support.

If the computer locks up every 3 minutes regardless of what is going on, lcoks up during hardware test, and sometimes wont power on, do not tell me to try an erase and install AGAIN. It didn't work the last 7 times, it wont work now. And stop with the bullshit that the engineers think it is software because I mentioned I had a script that runs "ditto -rsrc xxxxxx".
So after a hard drive, memory, 2 cpu's, 2 motherboards......
Them: "Please take it to an Apple store, they might find something else wrong with it".
Me: "I don't think you understand, this is a machine used in business, we can not take a production unit away for two weeks for a store to tinker with it"
Them: "It isn't a matter of your circumstances, it is a matter of us doing what we tell you"
Me: "Oh? In that case forget repair, just get me a whole damn new computer."
Them: "Apple.com allows you to or-"
Me: "Get me to Customer Relations, NOW"

Ultimately the company is getting a new dual-core G5 with much better specs than the previous machine. and a fresh warranty. And I got to hear CR ream the tech on the phone for being a jerk.

--------------------------
About a year ago, Xerox Service:

The Sun Ultra2 which acts as our RIP for this Docutech 6180 production printer was locking up periodically. After several weeks of their service going back and forth between hardware service and software service the problem was unresolved. Big meeting. So I get brought into it to see what is going on. My first question: "Did anyone check the system log?". The blank stares were awesome. So they follow me to the machine and print it out and highlight where there are CPU faults right at the same time the machine freezes. So I tell service to get a new CPU in this machine. The service manager says "Those arn't awlays accurate errors".
Me: "Well do it. If it doesn't fix the problem I'll pay for it out of my own pocket".

Next day, new Sparc CPU arrives, I install (made fuss with service that we didn't trust them to do it), and the system still has not locked up since.
-------------------------

I have plenty of idiot users too. I love it when our ISP hosted POP3/SMTP e-mail server was down, and a few hours later after it is fixed I get an e-mail "Hi Sean, Just sending you an e-mail to let you know the e-mail is down".

Or after working on a problem for the first time ans asking "when did this first happen" and get "oh constantly for he last 8 months".

Constantly teaching people people how to sort column in Excel, manage the size of their .pst files, etc.

Oh, one user could no comprehend that in Word (and many other apps) that pressing "Insert" will go into overwrite mode. He asked me twice a day for a week to look at his computer because the keyboard was broken again.

----------------

I'll post more later. I have enough to write a book.
 
TeamStrykerCore said:
These are definately great reads. I'd vote for a sticky. Just because.

A thread on tech support gripes will never need to be stickied because there will always be another story to tell from someone. I'm betting it doesn't drop past page 2 for the next month.
 
These are awesome. If some of you saw most post in genmay we had the salesman in here the other day who had a hissy fit about his laptop and he wouldnt even look at my boss or me. The look of fear in his eyes was priceless.
 
I can't believe noone has mentioned the dreaded passwords, or maybe most of you don't deal with it. I work for a bank's IT department, needless to say we have a lot of passwords. Not a day goes by where 10 people call because they screwed up this or that password, an it locked them out of the system. I got a great one the other day.

Them: "Yes, Hi, can you reset my password for me, I changed it this morning and I forgot what I changed it to."
Me: "Ok, I reset it to xxxxxxx"
Them: "Thanks"
*2 minutes go by.....*RING*
Them: "Hi, I forgot what you told me you reset it to..."
*Smacks head*

Another time....

Them: "Hi, its me again, I messed up this stupid password AGAIN!" (How come anytime someone can't figure something out, the something is stupid and they aren't?)
Me: "Ok, hang on a second while I reset it for you"
Them: "I don't know why we need so many stupid passwords anyway, its just a hassle for us".
Me: "Well, we tried giving everyone full access to our banking accounts system, and we were going strong with the whole "honor system", but 5 minutes later we realized it was stupid."

One time I even had someone say this.

Them: "Well can't you just set the password to such and such? I don't care who knows it or if you know it or whatever, I just want to get into my system!!!"
(That lady was a lawyer, and I died a little inside....)


Other gripes:

People who can't read an error message that is still on their screen.

Them: "It says something or other has caused a problem and will shut down"
Me: "Great, you read me every word of that sentence EXCEPT the important one, the name of the file thats causing the problem....."

Or the ones who just keep clicking until it goes away.

Them: "I spent 3 hours working on this word document and now it didn't save!!"
Me: "Did you get any error messages?"
Them; "Well when I first openned it I got some error message about read only mode, but I got that to go away by just clicking something. Then when I tried to close it, I got some other message about something, but went away when I clicked 'No' i think."

Finally.....

Why is it that ANYIME I tell ANYONE that I work in IT, their immediate response is

"Ohhh IT huh? You must make a lot of money, computers are the future. Anyway, on my home PC I get this wierd thing....."

Thanks right, I spend 40 hours a week working on computer problems, anxiously awaiting going home and talking to some stranger about their personal PC problems.
 
Funny gripes

I get paged on my office phone and tech support cell phone plus my work cell phone.

So Im on the phone and i keep hearing ringing all day. I can't check it because im talking to someone already.

It takes me 1 min to figure out what has happened.

I check the caller ID and the same person has dialed 20 times withing the last hour and a half.

I go to my telnet program and grep the radius log. I then proceed to our ticketing system and lookup the phone number. Sure enough they just signed up for a new dialup account.

Insteadl of dialing their dialup number which is ***-9999 the dial ***-1999 which is the support numbe. Im the only support mind you.

I get about one of these a week and everytime the phone rings off th hook more than usual. I just shake my head. I call the number (if im lucky before i've got unavailable nubmers and i have to wait to catch it until they call in.

Sir ... Ma'am Your dialing my support line. Do you just realize how many times you have called me?

Reply

It won't click on... says page cannot be displayed mail.blah.net server not responding.

Yes ma'am / sir i know this. Like i said your dialing "blah" number. Please follow x steps to fix it.

Your SERVICE sucks... Can't get good internet. My internet doesnt work. I can't even get yahoo. Yes sir / ma'am being connected to the internet would help with all of those things wouldn't it.

Then it boils down to me saying.

Sir/ Ma'am/ What do you want out of this? I can help you get your connection going but none of this is helping. So can we start troubleshooting or do you want to callback later when its more convenient for us to talk rationally.


Then one of the TOP moments of my day TODAY!

Guy walks in smelling like smoke

Drops a box of 900 mhz wireless equipment on my desk
Says i don't want my contract gets cocky
Walks out of my office
Peels out of parking lot.

Perfect friday going on here!
 
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