Worst tech support incidents

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

Ok, everyone's got a story to tell.  Here's my first one.

This is back in the early 80's when the mac was B&W with a little 7 inch screen (or was it 9"?) anyway, I was working as a software developer and I doulbed as the tech support guy when I was in the office.  This guy bought our software package and called complaining that the disk wouldn't fit on his MacIntosh.  He had to "cut it" to size and it still wouldn't work.  I asked which version of the program he purchased, and told me the "one in the gray box" (they were all gray boxes).  When he described the floppy, I realized he had purchased the Apple 2C version in a 5 1/4 inch disk and no the Mac Version.  That's why the disk didn't fit and it was the first time in my life I had ever heard anyone "cut a floppy  disk to size."  I exchanged his "faulty" software and after I hung up I just couldn't stop laughing. 

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

oops, forgot to mention the ever so popular "where's the any key?" 

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

I worked for a certain large computer retailer as a tech.  one night this lady calls up saying that she set her computer up for dial-up, but now can't use her house phone.  I go through basic troubleshooting with her.  She says she ain't an idiot and that the thing has broken her phone.  We are known to get some bad systems occasionally, so I tell her to bring it in.  She brings it in and puts itup on the bench.  I connect it up, verify that the system works, I even connect to her dial-up for her.  I look around and finally assk her where are you plugging your phone into.  She says in the other phone slot.  Looking again I inform her that that was the LAN connection, she says yeah the land phone.  I say nooo, "The broadband connection, you know C*x Cable."  She promptly started shutting the system down and kept apologizing for the phone call.  She boiught us some pizza.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

I have two, actually, both from the mid-late 1980's when I worked for a now-defunct accounting software company (Armor Systems) in Florida. These were the days when owning a 386 computer with a 40MB hard drive was a big (expensive) deal:

The Floppy

Received a call about a crashed hard drive - wouldn't boot. Customer had replaced drive, reinstalled O/S and our software, and was trying to restore backups of the data, but the floppy wouldn't load (yep - it all fit on a 5.25" floppy in those days!). Customer was dutifully backing up daily - a rarity in those days - and even taking the floppies home so a fire couldn't kill the data either. A model customer! I asked about leaving the floppies in a hot car and all the other things that might cause a problem and the guy says to me "Nope. All's I do is just bring it home and put it on the fridge so I don't forget it in the morning".

"Put it on the fridge?" I ask.

"Yeah, I just stick it to the fridge with a big ol' magnet. That way I see it when I get my lunch."

The Factory

Lady calls up screaming - she uses our software to do payroll for her company and some others her boss owns - and can't get into the data files of one of the companies. It's our fault, of course, crappy software, had problems before, we're idiots, blah blah blah. Takes fifteen minutes to get - as Paul Harvey would say - "the rest of the story". (Don't know who Paul Harvey is? Sheesh, kids these days!)

The story: Lady works in a big steel building and there had been a bad thunderstorm. Lighting had hit the building, traveled through the electrical wiring and into her computer. Sparks fly out of the keyboard and "knock her out of her chair". Computer has smoke pouring from it and someone uses a fire extinguisher on it, spraying white powder everywhere. Smoke subsides, but computer still reboots, although it's making "a strange noise now" and "the screen looks a little funny".

Yep, must be our fault!

I love these stories, and have told them many times over the years. What makes them so great is that they're almost unbelievable, but I was there, on the phone, listening and trying not to laugh!

--Steve

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

How many people out there have ever used the approach of "If it ain't broke, fix until it is."? 

1. Service Techs - That same company I worked for, sounds similar to Worst Buy, had a sub-contractor to do all the TV, microwave and dvd player repairs.  It would seem that they would return stuff back to our store within 24 hours saying that it was tested for 48 hours and worked fine, verified by these tech (then listed the techs).  We send it back, they send it back.  BTW, it costs the store a minimum of $25 just to have them look at it, which they obviously weren't.  You know a carefully applied voltage to just the right component and the nasty gram "How did you test it, we can't even get it to turn on."  Problem solved, new component arrives.  Old one junked.  Cost to the store around $200.

2.  Computer cleaning - Customer brings in computer complaining of a horrid odor coming from it when turned on and bugs coming out of it.  Interesting new approach to computer has a virus, right.  Opened it up and what should appear before my eyes, but a dead mouse and some maggots and flies.  It would seem that "Pooky" the pet mouse made a new house equipped with its own heater.  No idea how it got in there, but I wasn't taking it out.

Viinnie

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

My favorite one was the lady whose Novell server was down. She was the queen of "PANIC!" but this one was the chart topper - even from her!

She called me up on the phone all frantic - "GOT to have you come down right now! The server is down and nobody can work!" - Well, I was already booked up for the afternoon so I explained that to her and explained an "expedite fee" to her. She said she didn't care what it cost (isn't that the best kind of customer?) so I started walking through troubleshooting the situation over the phone.

I asked her to look at the server & see what lights were on - she proceeded to tell me that the power light was on and the disk light was flashing... then she said the hub was lit up like a christmas tree. Her PC wouldn't come up to the login prompt so I asked her to reboot the server. She waited about 30 seconds and said - "It's back up now and we still can't access it" - yeah right. It takes WAY longer than that to reboot a Novell server that wasn't shut down properly. Time to transfer her to the boss to discuss fees & payment.

A couple of minutes later I heard him laughing his a$$ off! He laughed so loud I could hear him through 2 walls into the repair center so I went up to his office and he explained that while he was on the phone with her she suddenly stopped talking about the billing and said "Oh wait, the server's back up now - and the lights just came back on too... Oh.. uh... Thanks - I guess we don't need you after all" <click> 

Turns out there was a car accident 1/2 block away and they nailed the light pole. The power was out to the building. I wouldn't have believed it except I was the tech on the phone with her. Another funny thing - it was HER business. She owned it lock, stock, and barrel!

RJ

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

Ah Netware servers, my bread and butter in the late 80's early 90's.

I had a customer call me with an "emergency" as her server was down and nobody could log-in.  She was frantic that her boss was going to chew her a new one if some things didn't get done and that this problem happened right after I had left OVER A WEEK AGO.  I head on over and look over the problem and found her network coax cable at her workstation was "compromised". (back in the days, a lot of installs had a coax cable that was a single circuit, cut it somewhere along the line, the whole thing was down).

Another recent one was a woman shows up to my office claiming her laptop was not working and that she needed a new one because this one didn't work.  She said she was working on the airplane and suddently it just powered off and wouldn't come up.  Sure enought it didn't power up.  I opened up the laptop and found coffee stains everywhere inside the machine.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

HAHAHAHA - Thinnet issues!

Had a school in SE Oklahoma that kept having those issues. The counselor would unplug her machine & take it home to do some work and she kept unplugging the cable from the T instead of the whole T from the computer. Her PC was the last one on the network.

After 3 different service calls just to plug in a T connector, showing them the problem, & charging them a flat hour service call ($90) they finally began to start looking for it and plugging it in themselves. 

The gal that was the secretary had her PC set up as the Lantastic server and she'd always call and say "I reboosted the mainframe and it still isn't coming up for anyone else" 

We eventually upgraded them to 10BaseT, a dedicated server, & Novell 4.11 and they were the NDS master for the district. Funny thing too... once they were upgraded they never had another problem. It just ran & ran & ran & ran. I miss the Novell days. Servers wtih 3+ years of uptime.

RJ

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

wow Lantastic!!!  Had one customer that ran it forever because he had a custom app made that would only run on that platform (to this day, I don't know why).  They had the old 1Mbit cards that used the 15 pin connector (or was it 9 pin?). 

The longest un-interrupted netware server I ever had was 7 years and change.  Only took it down because of a hurricane threat.  That customer, against my advise, switched to the NT platform shortly aftewards and regretted it with service calls.  But he wanted MS.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

It was the 15pin aui pre 802.11 spec.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

It' not "pre 802.11"... 802.11 refers to wireles... it's part of the 802.3 ethernet spec.

RJ

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

Good thing the mind is the second thing to go when you get old. You are 100% correct.

However what I meant to type (first thing waz the fingers) was the 802.1 spec which was the 1mb version and pre-dates 802.3

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

I am the IT manager for a company that owns 10 convenience stores with PC based point of sale software.  I got a call from a store early one morning . The manager said the computer wouldn't turn on when she pressed the power button.  I went through the basics over the phone and could get nowhere.  I drove 1 1/2 hours to the store, walked in, hit the power button and turned the computer on...everything was fine.  The manager kind of giggled stupidly and said she must not have pressed it hard enough...because she didn't want to break her new fake nails... (the same nails eventually ruined a touch monitor!)

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

While assigned to a certain ship, I was tasked with replacing some hardware in a semi critical computer.  Everything was going so well that I didn'tnotice that the case speaker had fallen on the hard drive.  Darn things stick prety good too.  Didn't think anyting of it until we trunedthe system back on and found out that I had successfully wiped out all 4 years worth of test data, but I managed to leave all the installed games intact.  I got fired and congratualted all in one shot.

The electronics store I worked for had a POS system that was managed by contract with E@S.  Everytime the tech bench terminals went down, we spent on average of 1 talking to E@D trying to get them to fix the problem.  The problem was a faulty HDD, but they would have no part of our diagnosis.  So a week alter they send out a tech.  We took great interest in watching the "Master" at work.  After fighting with the system for 3 hours he told the hard drive was bad and he would have to order one and have it sent to us, for us to install.  I, to this day, question why a tech bench has outsourced tech support.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

I use to work for a company that had service contracts with congressional offices on capitol hill.  I was called in to find out why a customers Novell server kept going off line around the same time every day.  I would get the call they were down...rush over and by the time I would get there they would be back up again.  Customer demanded I investigate until problem was found and resolved.

I looked at everything, the server seemed fine to me, I was perplexed.  It was getting late so I started packing up to leave when the cleaning lady came in to vacuum....and yes...she unplugged the server from the UPS to make room for her vacuum cleaner....the same way she had every night that week.
 

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

Had a similar incident, but it was because the cleaning lady was plugging in her vacumm on the UPS outlet.  It would trip the breaker and shut down the server.  What I couldn't believe is why she insisted on using the same plug each night for 4 nights.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

We had a UPS that started to fail - with the usual beep, beep, beep noise.

One of thes secretarys had the maint people unlock the door and she unplugged the UPS to make the noise stop.

When the 5th floor LAN went offline it was now 'IT"s fault for not having a reliable network.

[SAT (aka GANDHI)]

I use to work for a company that had service contracts with congressional offices on capitol hill.  I was called in to find out why a customers Novell server kept going off line around the same time every day.  I would get the call they were down...rush over and by the time I would get there they would be back up again.  Customer demanded I investigate until problem was found and resolved.

I looked at everything, the server seemed fine to me, I was perplexed.  It was getting late so I started packing up to leave when the cleaning lady came in to vacuum....and yes...she unplugged the server from the UPS to make room for her vacuum cleaner....the same way she had every night that week.
 

Same cleaning lady must've worked for Bell Helicopter in Building 1, Legal Dept... Their CD-ROM file server kept crapping out overnight... because the cleaning folks would unplug it and it wouldn't start back up correctly... We solved that by wrapping the drop pole (pole from the ceiling to the floor that had the power in it for the cubicles) and the power cord in duct tape to keep them from unplugging it.

RJ