Stupid Tech Support Calls – Part 2

Story 1

An man purchased a laptop from me. He called about a week later and said that it would no longer boot up. He brought it in, and I discovered that sixteen nicely drilled holes were in the bottom of the case. I asked him about it, and he said the machine was too hot sitting on his lap, so he had drilled these "air holes."

"Could that be the problem?" he asked.

Story 2

One day a customer called complaining that he just received his computer, but it won't turn on. When he first pushed the power button, the screen flashed and then everything died.

I couldn't do much over the phone, so I went to the customer's office. It was plugged in, everything was hooked up ok, but, sure enough, it refused to turn on. I decided to take it back and promised to deliver a new one as soon as possible. But when I went to pick it up, I couldn't.

Fearful of thieves, the man had fired some 24 inch bolts straight through the box, through the hard drive, motherboard, everything, locking it to his desk.

"Oh," he said, "I thought it was just the TV part that was important. Will my warranty cover this?"

Story 3

• Customer: "I need a new modem."
• Tech Support: "What's wrong with your current modem?"
• Customer: "The Internet light is not on."
• Tech Support: "Did you reset your modem recently?"
• Customer: "Yes I did, but what does it have to do with it?"
• Tech Support: "Well, resetting the modem wipes out your configuration profile, so we just need to reconfigure it."
• Customer: "Did you not hear me? The modem is broken, and I demand a replacement now!"
• Tech Support: "The modem is not broken. If you are willing to, we can configure it in about 2 minutes."
• Customer: "I want a new modem!"
• Tech Support: "We can't replace modems over a simple reconfiguration issue. All we have to do--"

CRASH.

• Customer: "Now it's broke! Replace the thing already!"
• Tech Support: "Ok sir, we cannot replace a modem that you destroyed, and your modem is past warranty, so you'll have to buy a new one anyway."
• Customer: "!*#$(*@#%!@&#$&*(!@#*$!@*^!@#$@" (Click.)

Story 4

While I was at college (back in the days of Archimedes computers), I often helped to teach new users the ropes while the teacher concentrated elsewhere. This one sweet girl was very new, and I didn't mind that she had no concept of the mouse, the screen, and whatnot -- she soon got good enough that I could leave her to do some task and help someone else. Pretty soon, however, she was tugging on my chair, and when I went to see what was going on, she said, "My bracelet is stuck in there."

Eh?

It was wedged into the floppy disk slot. Why? Apparently, the bracelet was annoying her when she typed, so she took it off. She found a small slot on the computer with a happy little door on it and just went ahead and shoved it in. Tech support had to rescue it by taking the thing apart.

Story 5

A customer had bought a computer from us about a year ago and a Voodoo 3 card just yesterday. He took it home and tried to install it but couldn't, so he brought them both in this morning. He ranted and raved, etc. He had reboxed the Voodoo 3, expecting a replacement, so we took the computer and the Voodoo 3 in the back and told him we would fit it for free. When we opened the box for the Voodoo 3, it was in a terrible state. The bit of metal that attaches the card to the case was taken off, and a wee heatsink had been scraped off the chip with a screwdriver. I reglued the sink and reattached the backplate. So we opened the machine, and tried to fit the card. Ack. Card is AGP, computer has exactly zero AGP slots. So we went back to the front.

• Me: "Sir, your computer has no AGP slots, and this is an AGP video card."
• Customer: "Yeah, but the card fit perfectly into the little white slot."
• Me: "Which white slot?"
• Guy: "There's five of them -- little white ones. There's a spare one."
• Me: "The PCI slot? Uhh...it shouldn't...let me check."

Sure enough, if you remove the heatsink and backplate, turn the card around, and really hammer it into the only free PCI slot, it will just fit snugly next to the hard disk.

We explained that the AGP card was completely destroyed and he had voided the warranty on it by hacking away at it with a screwdriver. The usual mad customer vs. techie exchange ensued, but he eventually backed down and bought the PCI version instead...and got us to fit it.