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(the following is translated from the original Spanish)

*headset rings, I unmute*
Me: Thank you for calling (ISP name) tech support, this is Fernando Calleja speaking, how may I help you?
Customer: ...yes. Hi. Yeah. I don't have any internet, this thing isn't working.
Me: Very well sir, we'll figure out what's wrong in just a second, may I please have your name and phone number with area code?
Customer: uh... yes.
Me: .... sir?
Customer: I don't have internet!!
Me: (gives up trying to fill the system with the guy's info) Alright sir, what seems to be the problem?
Customer: I'll tell you what the problem is, you people sold me a defective internet!
Me: I'm sorry... to..uh.. hear that, sir. What exactly is wrong with your (brand name) service?
Customer: My computer won't recognize this thing you gave me to connect to the internet. I want to look at the youtube thing and I can't cause you sold me a defective internet.
Me: Do you mean the router/modem, sir?
Customer: Sure, yeah, that thing. Doesn't work.
Me: Ok, let's check what could be wrong with it... do you have it in your line of sight? Can you please tell me how the LED lights on the front are turned on?
Customer: Uhh... no, I can't see it, it's still in the box.
Me: ....oh. Ok then, let's go ahead and open the box and configure your brand new modem, sound good?
Customer: Oh hell no, I ain't opening anything.
Me: ..... may I ask why, exactly, sir?
Customer: Cause I paid for a wireless connection, I don't want cables all over the place.
Me: That's quite alright sir, I can help you to configure your wireless connection right now, let's just go ahead and please connect the modem to the power outlet with the supplied--
Customer: WHAT?! NO! I'm not connecting it!
Me: ... sir?
Customer: Why are you tech people always so stupid? I bought a WIRELESS connection, alright? I don't want any cables, so just do whatever you need to do so I can watch the youtube.
Me: *mutes headset, looks around, roars with laughter, unmutes headset* Ok sir, for your computer to be able to connect wirelessly to the DSL service, we need to supply power to the modem.. so let's go ahead and connect it to the power grid right now, please.
Customer: NO! Why are you so fucking stupid?! *growls in exasperation* Listen to me... I bought a (sounds it out phonetically in Spanish) WIRELESS modem, that means NO CABLES, alright? So I don't need to connect anything to anything, alright? Just... ugh, never mind, I'll call again so I don't get stuck with a moron.
*click*

Well, I guess that dude won't be joining these forums any time soon

Reminds me of some douchebags I used to get when I worked summers as a telemarketer. I have something of a rural accent in Finnish that most customers find amusing and friendly (and are therefore more likely to buy what I'm selling ), but then there are the capital city yuppies:

Me: "Hello, this is [Real Name] from [Name of Company] Publications. I am calling you with a one-day only offer..."
Client: "Look, I don't have time to listen some hayseed. Goodbye!"
*click*

The term he actually used was quite derogatory, basically meaning a completely witless person from the countryside. It doesn't translate well...

Almost as annoying are little old ladies who are just so happy that somebody calls. Either they won't let you do your job and keep insisting that you listen to their entire life story and then some, or they let you tell them the offer, they sound interested, you're sure you're gonna get a sale... and then they say this:

"Oh, I'm not going to buy anything. But it was just so nice to hear such a nice young man talking. Thank you, bye bye."

Damn wrinkled old prune-suckers...

Calleja, if haven't already done so you should definitely submit that story to http://notalwaysright.com.

Oh, I get calls like that practically every day.

Me: "Thank you for calling Vonage Technical Support, my name is *InsertRealNameHere*, how may I assist you today?"

Customer: "It aint workin"

Me: "Ok sir, what isn't working and how is it not working?"

Customer: "The dang old Vontage (yes, they mis pronounce it all the time..) box isn't workin, I can't use mah phone"

Me: "You currently have no service sir?"

Customer: "Yea, nothin"

Me: "Ok sir I'll be glad to help you with that today, I understand your service is important to you"

*insert 3-5 minutes of me getting the customer's information so I can take a look at his account*

Me: "Yes sir, I do see your Vonage device is offline at the moment, let me just get some information from you so we can troubleshoot that for you today; Who is your internet provider sir?"

Customer: "Internet?"

Me: "Yes sir, who do you get internet service with?"

Customer: "Well we ain't gots no internet."

Me: "You have no internet access at the moment sir?"

Customer: "We aint got internet"

Me: "Ok sir you do realize you need a high speed broadband connection, either landline cable or dsl for Vonage to function, correct?"

Customer: "Nah I never knew that. That why when I plugs in mah phone here, I just get silence?"

Me: "Yes sir, we are a voice over internet phone company (i dont bother explaining the term voip to them), you need internet access to use our service, no computer required just internet service is the backbone of what we use"

Customer: "Computer? What's a computer?"

Me: *mute headset* i had to face palm, *unmute* *insert brief technological explaination of a computer, he seriously didnt know what it was, and this guy was in his 30s give or take*.

Customer: "Oh, well no one told me dat. Thank you, bye *hangs up*"

One of the best calls Ive ever taken

I've read something exactly like that on notalwaysright.

Calleja said:

(the following is translated from the original Spanish)

*headset rings, I unmute*
Me: Thank you for calling (ISP name) tech support, this is Fernando Calleja speaking, how may I help you?
Customer: ...yes. Hi. Yeah. I don't have any internet, this thing isn't working.
Me: Very well sir, we'll figure out what's wrong in just a second, may I please have your name and phone number with area code?
Customer: uh... yes.
Me: .... sir?
Customer: I don't have internet!!
Me: (gives up trying to fill the system with the guy's info) Alright sir, what seems to be the problem?
Customer: I'll tell you what the problem is, you people sold me a defective internet!
Me: I'm sorry... to..uh.. hear that, sir. What exactly is wrong with your (brand name) service?
Customer: My computer won't recognize this thing you gave me to connect to the internet. I want to look at the youtube thing and I can't cause you sold me a defective internet.
Me: Do you mean the router/modem, sir?
Customer: Sure, yeah, that thing. Doesn't work.
Me: Ok, let's check what could be wrong with it... do you have it in your line of sight? Can you please tell me how the LED lights on the front are turned on?
Customer: Uhh... no, I can't see it, it's still in the box.
Me: ....oh. Ok then, let's go ahead and open the box and configure your brand new modem, sound good?
Customer: Oh hell no, I ain't opening anything.
Me: ..... may I ask why, exactly, sir?
Customer: Cause I paid for a wireless connection, I don't want cables all over the place.
Me: That's quite alright sir, I can help you to configure your wireless connection right now, let's just go ahead and please connect the modem to the power outlet with the supplied--
Customer: WHAT?! NO! I'm not connecting it!
Me: ... sir?
Customer: Why are you tech people always so stupid? I bought a WIRELESS connection, alright? I don't want any cables, so just do whatever you need to do so I can watch the youtube.
Me: *mutes headset, looks around, roars with laughter, unmutes headset* Ok sir, for your computer to be able to connect wirelessly to the DSL service, we need to supply power to the modem.. so let's go ahead and connect it to the power grid right now, please.
Customer: NO! Why are you so fucking stupid?! *growls in exasperation* Listen to me... I bought a (sounds it out phonetically in Spanish) WIRELESS modem, that means NO CABLES, alright? So I don't need to connect anything to anything, alright? Just... ugh, never mind, I'll call again so I don't get stuck with a moron.
*click*

Click to expand...

Mav said:

Oh, I get calls like that practically every day.

Me: \"Thank you for calling Vonage Technical Support, my name is *InsertRealNameHere*, how may I assist you today?\"

Customer: \"It aint workin\"

Me: \"Ok sir, what isn't working and how is it not working?\"

Customer: \"The dang old Vontage (yes, they mis pronounce it all the time..) box isn't workin, I can't use mah phone\"

Me: \"You currently have no service sir?\"

Customer: \"Yea, nothin\"

Me: \"Ok sir I'll be glad to help you with that today, I understand your service is important to you\"

*insert 3-5 minutes of me getting the customer's information so I can take a look at his account*

Me: \"Yes sir, I do see your Vonage device is offline at the moment, let me just get some information from you so we can troubleshoot that for you today; Who is your internet provider sir?\"

Customer: \"Internet?\"

Me: \"Yes sir, who do you get internet service with?\"

Customer: \"Well we ain't gots no internet.\"

Me: \"You have no internet access at the moment sir?\"

Customer: \"We aint got internet\"

Me: \"Ok sir you do realize you need a high speed broadband connection, either landline cable or dsl for Vonage to function, correct?\"

Customer: \"Nah I never knew that. That why when I plugs in mah phone here, I just get silence?\"

Me: \"Yes sir, we are a voice over internet phone company (i dont bother explaining the term voip to them), you need internet access to use our service, no computer required just internet service is the backbone of what we use\"

Customer: \"Computer? What's a computer?\"

Me: *mute headset* i had to face palm, *unmute* *insert brief technological explaination of a computer, he seriously didnt know what it was, and this guy was in his 30s give or take*.

Customer: \"Oh, well no one told me dat. Thank you, bye *hangs up*\"

One of the best calls Ive ever taken

Click to expand...

both of you put this in http://notalwaysright.com/ RIGHT NOW

tell em to take it back to the store and return them because of I-D-10-T errors

At least Mav's wasn't a rude motherfucker like Calleja's.

Those calls must have been prank calls. Come on, no person being able to use a telephone can be THAT stupid. Please tell me that they were just prank calls. Please...

why on earth would you prank call customer support? There are ten trillion other better places to call.

Andi said:

Those calls must have been prank calls. Come on, no person being able to use a telephone can be THAT stupid. Please tell me that they were just prank calls. Please...

Click to expand...

Eh, I could easily see how a country bumpkin, or someone equally unknowledgable about computers could confuse wireless internet with some kind of wireless cellular service. It's a simple mistake. When you work in support long enough, you start to see common user errors. While this one might be a bit more uncommon than most, I can kind of almost see where he's coming from.

Doesn't make it any less hillarious though.

When I was in college I had to take a required basic computer class. The first day of class the instructor started with "now this is a mouse. It has two buttons on top to click, right and left." And people in the class asked if he could slow down. It was the most frustrating class to sit through. I didn't have to do anything to pass the class, the instructor let people who knew anything about computers do whatever they wanted to.
And when I think people can't be that stupid when it comes to computers I am reminded they are. My brother in law couldn't connect to the internet. He said it was his computer. He called his provider and they said it was probably a bad modem so they sent him a new one. Still didn't work. I stopped by and saw the ethernet cable coming out the back of his computer and the other end just laying there under his desk. I asked why he disconnected it. He said "I didn't know it needed to be connected." This came after him telling me how tech support are a bunch of idiots because they couldn't fix his problem.

Crone said:

why on earth would you prank call customer support? There are ten trillion other better places to call.

Click to expand...

Why would you call a suicide hotline to get free phone sex? People are weird.

I wish I could share my stories but they're so ludicrous, no one would believe me.

Adammon said:

I wish I could share my stories but they're so ludicrous, no one would believe me.

Click to expand...

Oh I don't know about that. I get some of the stupidest calls.. Not really stupid people as they are just people without much knowledge of basic computer usage. But the calls themselves, with what people say, are hilarious.

The sad part is every call, at least for my company, is recorded yet we can't get copies of them. Which sucks cause I came up with a great idea, take these calls, make a website where you can listen to them (bleeping out any customer information for legal purposes) but just let anyone upload tech support calls.

You'd make a fortune off google adsense itself, let alone any kind of other advertising you might use.

Mav;259690][quote=Adammon said:

I wish I could share my stories but they're so ludicrous, no one would believe me.

Click to expand...

Oh I don't know about that. I get some of the stupidest calls.. Not really stupid people as they are just people without much knowledge of basic computer usage. But the calls themselves, with what people say, are hilarious.
[/QUOTE]

Ok here's one from my college days working for an ISP. Our area is mostly older people, just getting the hang of this whole "internat thang".

One woman calls, claiming she's having trouble with her mouse. I go through the usual getting account information and stuff, check the call logs, etc, making small talk about her job as a seamstress and how she loves to make dresses, her kids bought her a computer and she's just learning to use it and the weather here is lovely this week.

So, I get into the troubleshooting. I ask her what seems to be the problem and she says she finds the mouse hard to use. I ask her if she can just try moving the mouse back and forth and I hear her grunting and struggling on the end but she says, while awkward, she can move back and forth, the arrow on her screen just doesn't to be moving in synch with her mouse. Thinking that her mouse ball is dirty, I ask if she can flip over the mouse to see if there's a lot of gunk in the under side. She sets the phone down and I can hear her grunting again. She comes back to the phone a little winded and says "It's a little dirty". I suggest cleaning it out and explain how to slide open the ball holder.

She listens to my instructions carefully and puts the phone down to clean out her mouse balls. I hear more grunting and more effort being expended then necessarily required to clean a mouse. Eventually she returns to the phone and I ask her to try again. She tries on her hand and explains that, there's no difference - it's still difficult to navigate.

At this point, thinking maybe it's a driver problem I ask her to follow me through the Control Panel by clicking on Start, going up to settings and to Control Panel. She's really hard at it now. I can her struggling like crazy, fumbling the phone, grunting and straining.

After a good minute or so, she says "This is really hard."

I respond "Yes, it takes a lot of practice but after a while it will be second nature. I just need you to left click on the start button at the bottom of the screen."

More struggling by which point I can detect an edge of frustration in her voice. I politely ask what is the hardest part of what she's doing (maybe I can find an easier way to do it).

She responds
At this point, I'm just flabbergasted. I mean, it all made sense upon retrospection but I'd never experienced anything of that sort. In my calmest, sweetest voice I explained that she was trying to do it the hard way and that was for more experienced users.
After that was done, she was incredibly happy and relieved and the mouse continued working happily ever after. I wonder if she ever brought it up with her kids...

I would never be able to do tech support, the first of those weird calls I would snap.

I would be awesome in tech support. I can totally deliver those "You are an idiot" explanations while laughing inside.

Amorous Wench said:

lol wut ?

Click to expand...

wut lol?

Andi said:

Those calls must have been prank calls. Come on, no person being able to use a telephone can be THAT stupid. Please tell me that they were just prank calls. Please...

Click to expand...

Sadly there are people out there like that.

I'm the go to guy at my company for computer stuff, despite not being all that proficient myself.

Here's small unimpressive list:

-I moved the server a few months ago, when my boss came in he couldn't turn his computer on (he knew the power supply was on the way out) so he asks me "what the hell" I did to his computer, because surely moving a different computer does that.
-Nobody understands that our copier can duplex. They all think I'm doing some weird thing with the software. They just can't comprehend that the copier itself is flipping the page and that you can do it in any application. "Even emails?"
-And of course, I've driven out to one of our facilities to troubleshoot why the printer isn't working, only to flip the power switch on.

Reading about these things gives me a warm fuzzy feeling inside. No matter how stupid I get, I'll never be bottom of the pile.

Adammon said:

Ok here's one from my college days working for an ISP. Our area is mostly older people, just getting the hang of this whole "internat thang".

One woman calls, claiming she's having trouble with her mouse. I go through the usual getting account information and stuff, check the call logs, etc, making small talk about her job as a seamstress and how she loves to make dresses, her kids bought her a computer and she's just learning to use it and the weather here is lovely this week.

So, I get into the troubleshooting. I ask her what seems to be the problem and she says she finds the mouse hard to use. I ask her if she can just try moving the mouse back and forth and I hear her grunting and struggling on the end but she says, while awkward, she can move back and forth, the arrow on her screen just doesn't to be moving in synch with her mouse. Thinking that her mouse ball is dirty, I ask if she can flip over the mouse to see if there's a lot of gunk in the under side. She sets the phone down and I can hear her grunting again. She comes back to the phone a little winded and says "It's a little dirty". I suggest cleaning it out and explain how to slide open the ball holder.

She listens to my instructions carefully and puts the phone down to clean out her mouse balls. I hear more grunting and more effort being expended then necessarily required to clean a mouse. Eventually she returns to the phone and I ask her to try again. She tries on her hand and explains that, there's no difference - it's still difficult to navigate.

At this point, thinking maybe it's a driver problem I ask her to follow me through the Control Panel by clicking on Start, going up to settings and to Control Panel. She's really hard at it now. I can her struggling like crazy, fumbling the phone, grunting and straining.

After a good minute or so, she says "This is really hard."

I respond "Yes, it takes a lot of practice but after a while it will be second nature. I just need you to left click on the start button at the bottom of the screen."

Click to expand...

Be glad she wasn't using a real live mouse *laughs*

I mean, "turn it over and see if it's a little dirty" and "see if the mouse's balls are dirty and clean them" might have been a bit too much for the little mouse *laughs*.

That mouse story is... that's just so interesting. I can't get after her for ignorance, because that really does make sense due to her line of work. Innocent mistake, but so strange.

i working in the same field, and I can feel your pain, calleja.
It was yesterday at 23:45, 15 minutes before the end of my shift.
A young woman calls and explains she has problem connecting the computer with the router via wi-fi. She tell me that she already called that day because of phone problems and a colleague told her to reset the router. The phone work, but she has problems with the internet now. I ask her what she typed in as passphrase, but it is the same written on the plague on the back. So I want her to connect the router with the computer via LAN to proof if it even possible to open a website with a cable. It doesn't work but I could ping the router and I start to think something with the computer must be wrong.
I check with her some basic stuff on her computer and start to get frustrated because I can't find the problem. I ask her again what the LED´s are doing and she tell me that all LED's working fine and only the LAN LED's are out. After I told her to switch the cable to another slot, she tell me that the Internet is now available. The router have to be broken so I tell her i will send her a new one. suddenly, out of the blue, she announce that I don't have to send her one, because my colleague already did that.

I could strangle her for that, I spend over 17 minutes trying to connect a router, that was already identified as broken by a colleague.

plus, it's called a "mouse" and mice scurry around on the floor . . . man, you know a button-less mouse that you place on the floor could maybe really work.

Gruebeard said:

plus, it's called a "mouse" and mice scurry around on the floor . . . man, you know a button-less mouse that you place on the floor could maybe really work.

Click to expand...

A quick google reveals they already exist.

*tears up blueprints*

Well, there goes my future fortune.

God I'm glad I don't do tech support anymore. I had to go through the whole Blaster virus problem with XP. It caused everyones computer to restart if they weren't up to date, which was nearly everybody. It was absolute hell for a few days.

Worst was when I had a guy tell me he was going to drive down and kill me. His dialup modem was dead, probably got hit by the lightning storm the night before. After trying to reinstall the drivers, I couldn't get it to recognize at all. He got all pissed and tried telling me I broke his computer. I ended up just adding a modem on a generic open port he had. It obviously didn't work, and he got so pissed he said "I'm going to drive down there and beat the life right out of you." Not the best thing to hear on a Saturday when you are alone in the building. But he never showed up, and we canceled his account.

A few months ago we moved our lab to a new location that wasn't set up as lab space, but was cheap. Among the 1001 frustrations: there were ethernet and phone jacks all over, but when I looked in the maintenance closet, there were just dozens of cut cables hanging out of the ceiling, all identical Cat5, nothing labeled. Good job for a contractor to handle, but the theme here is: cheap.

My bosses were confused as to why they couldn't just plug their phones and computers into the wall and have it work. Over the next week they were a little frustrated it was taking me so long to get specific jacks working :explode:. Not to mention, I had to learn the arcane art of programming a used phone system we got on ebay, the concept of which was impossible to explain to them. Add fax line, alarm line, and DSL to the mix and it was a big clusterfuck that went completely over their heads.

They're great microbial geneticists, but have always had university IT departments to do every little tech thing for them for the past 20 years.

I always like to tell the "other side of the fence" story. Like I said in the "what you do" thread, I worked as an electrical and computer engineering prof for 3 years. All of us were extremely knowledgeable about computers. Hell, we designed hardware and software ourselves. Yet the IT guys still talked to us like babies, and worse yet, we all experienced times when we knew what was wrong, but explaining it to the IT guys was like talking to a wall. They had this hardcoded procedure, and they'd be damned if they let some prof tell THEM what was wrong. 99.99% of the time, if they'd just listened, they could've saved us both a ton of time.

ME: <detailed explanation of what's wrong complete with diagnosis and solution>
IT: Pbbbt. You're so cute when you try to talk IT. Let the big kids handle it.
[2 hours later]
IT: Well it turns out the <> needed to be <>.
ME: Oh, you mean like I said 2 hours ago?
IT: What? Oh you're so cute, tiny.

I appreciate the idiots they have to deal with daily, but if someone knows what they're talking about, it never hurts to listen. Why did I call IT in the first place? Padlocks on cases and common login passwords controlling admin privileges.

Like Nick Burns, your company's computer guy?

MOOOOVE!

fade said:

I always like to tell the "other side of the fence" story. Like I said in the "what you do" thread, I worked as an electrical and computer engineering prof for 3 years. All of us were extremely knowledgeable about computers. Hell, we designed hardware and software ourselves. Yet the IT guys still talked to us like babies, and worse yet, we all experienced times when we knew what was wrong, but explaining it to the IT guys was like talking to a wall. They had this hardcoded procedure, and they'd be damned if they let some prof tell THEM what was wrong. 99.99% of the time, if they'd just listened, they could've saved us both a ton of time.

ME: <detailed explanation of what's wrong complete with diagnosis and solution>
IT: Pbbbt. You're so cute when you try to talk IT. Let the big kids handle it.
[2 hours later]
IT: Well it turns out the <> needed to be <>.
ME: Oh, you mean like I said 2 hours ago?
IT: What? Oh you're so cute, tiny.

I appreciate the idiots they have to deal with daily, but if someone knows what they're talking about, it never hurts to listen. Why did I call IT in the first place? Padlocks on cases and common login passwords controlling admin privileges.

Click to expand...

At some sites they are told to dumb down their talk to customers. Now that is not to say you should treat the customer like an idiot but to a certain point they just may come across that way with out actually trying to. Also some sites demand certain procedures be done before the person moves on so they may have just been trying to follow procedures but than again they could have just been jerks.

I can't remember any bad stories from the 4 years that I worked for Directv customer support. I think I blocked them out.

The only one I remember was a guy who started screaming as soon as I answered the call. He told me he was missing the season premier of the Sopranos. At first I try to help, but he keeps getting more belligerent. Finally, he tells me he is going to choke me if I don't get the show on. I blow up. I tell him that I have his credit card info, his SSN, and his street address and I know plenty of folks that would like that information. He hung up.

Towards the end of my time there, I would get a person pissed off to the point they would ask for a supervisor. I would ask them to hold while I transferred them. I would either transfer them to the spanish-speaking call center or to a sex line. The quality folks could not tell where the call was going. I found this out after I was a call was audited and the lady said I did a great job handling a difficult customer!

My current job I don't get too many disgruntled customers, thank goodness. I've had my fill of retail.

My job I set appts. & then someone goes out to meet them. The only resistance I get is when it's a married couple who refuses to have their spouse there. Usually that means they're trying to get something done behind their back. Though recently I did get a customer who demanded we send a white guy out to his house.

Being "talked down to" is one of the big reasons why I don't bother trying to call support anymore... I just try to figure it out on my own, with the aid of a handy Google search.

After moving into my apartment a month ago, I noticed a problem with my internet connection... it would keep going out intermittently. I had determined that it had to deal with either the modem, or the line coming in from outside. The first guy came and replaced on of the connecting cables (wall -> modem), but that did not fix it. The second guy came when I wasn't at my apartment (because they scheduled it for the wrong time) and blamed it on my router since I wasn't there to tell him otherwise.

The third time around, I got them to switch out the modem. That wasn't the problem, either, so at least at this point I know it's the connection from the outside. I get Time Warner to come out a fourth time, at which point the guy stopping by actually listens to me and fixes the connection outside, and now it's running fine.

What's the point in telling this story? I knew that one of two things was having problems, and instead of testing the lines and the modem and fixing it on the first (if not second) try, it took four visits for the problem to be resolved, all because they wouldn't fully listen to what I was able to figure out. At least Time Warner does free house calls, and I'm not out of $300 or something

Amorous Wench;259666][quote=ZenMonkey;259663][quote=Crone said:

why on earth would you prank call customer support? There are ten trillion other better places to call.

Click to expand...

Why would you call a suicide hotline to get free phone sex? People are weird.[/QUOTE]

lol wut ?[/QUOTE]

seriously, what?

People call suicide hotlines to get free phone sex. I find this weird.

What was difficult about that?

Amorous Wench said:

I guess I just cant grasp the concept of that in my mind, unless it's some fetish I haven't heard about?

"Phone fuck me or I kill myself!" ?
"Harder bitch, or I slit my throat!" ?

Click to expand...

It's kinda win win if he's feeling down.

A lot of tech support is now done with a script, and they have to run down each thing because they are being recorded. It doesn't matter how much you know, or what you've already done. If they don't do it they get a warning.

After I worked in tech support, I moved to customer service for the same company(an ISP and phone company). We were bought out by a larger company, and they took the ISP portion to their main location. Anyway, the phone portion had done some changes to their switch that for one reason or another caused a steady beeping tone if you had a voicemail. Normally after a couple seconds it goes away, ours didn't. So all of our dialup customers that had voicemail were freaking out because the modem could never get a dial tone, and wouldn't dial. Add to this the company that took over our ISP didn't have enough people to handle all the normal calls, people were facing hour long waits just to have to call back again.

The fix would only take a couple seconds to do, but no one knew what the hell was going on over there. They were working on a script and doing what they always did. We told the people in charge of ISP support, but the word wasn't getting out. I told the others in customer service to just send the calls to me. If it was a problem with voicemail, I would fix it. If it wasn't I'd send em off to tech support.

I ended up getting written up because I wasn't following proper procedure and wasn't answering regular customer service calls like I was supposed to.

TLDR - Sometimes it's that the employees have to work through certain steps or they get written up, not that they are necessarily looking down on you.

Amorous Wench said:

I also (wrongly?) though you were talking about an actual specific incident.

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I've encountered numerous incidences of this. Not quite how you describe it though.

Amorous Wench said:

Did I pull a ThatNickGuy ?

Click to expand...

No, I was purposefully oblique in this case, for the shock value. It's still true, though.

Amorous Wench said:

Re: Fade

You're tiny? Just how tiny? <3

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I just meant that they seem to view my knowledge of computer tech that way.


I realize you phone guys have a procedure you need to follow, and I respect that. But in-house guys, I'd expect a little leeway from. It's another reason I like my Mac. I'm effectively off the grid, but I can still use the Windows network, since Mac supports SMB messaging.

ZenMonkey said:

People call suicide hotlines to get free phone sex. I find this weird.

What was difficult about that?

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I'm sorry. My brain just abdicated. I mean, I trust you, but wait, what?

(also my original post was sarcastic, but you knew that. )

fade said:

I realize you phone guys have a procedure you need to follow, and I respect that. But in-house guys, I'd expect a little leeway from. It's another reason I like my Mac. I'm effectively off the grid, but I can still use the Windows network, since Mac supports SMB messaging.

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Yeah, in-house is different. The only time I get pissy with people is when I get the "why the hell is this not working again!" or "how long is this going to take this time?" It tends to be a thankless job though. At least for me, I sit in a basement and don't hear a thing from anyone unless they are complaining about something.

Tech people do tend to be stubborn though. My cousin was having his satellite internet installed the other week. The tech that came to install it couldn't get a good signal. My cousin used to install dish network, and he asked the guy if he had the tool that tells where to point the dish (I forget what he called it) was set to the right settings and the guy brushes him off with a "yeah, yeah." An hour and a half later he hears a "Fuck me!" coming from the roof. The tech had the wrong setting and wasted all that time cause he was too stubborn to double check it.

Ross said:

At least Time Warner does free house calls, and I'm not out of $300 or something

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My company gives a free install the first time but any other visits are $99. You should hear the customers howl and scream over that.

Crone said:

I'm sorry. My brain just abdicated. I mean, I trust you, but wait, what?

(also my original post was sarcastic, but you knew that. )

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Yeah, I've been teh snarksauce lately.

Long story short: people will make up a story about themselves (oddly, across different people the fake stories tend to be very similar, which is why with training and a little experience it becomes very easy to spot one) in order to get the crisis line worker to say certain things. They'll fake being shy or unsure to get the well-meaning worker to say sexually explicit things. Like:

Caller: "I didn't think I was gay but, um, I had a dream...you know....."
Worker: "A wet dream?"

Like that. It's totally messed up and I developed a particular vendetta since my very first call, when I was still in training and totally nervous, was one of these fuckers. Once I got good at identifying them I would take the opportunity to mess with their heads until they hung up. (Never if I had another call or anything like that, of course.) It actually felt like a kind of sexual assault to me, before I got inured to it. To the point where I once happily pointed out to a caller that I could hear him fapping.

First level customer support is the worst. They don't know anything except what's on their sheet most of the time, and refuse to pass you on to the next level until replied to their questions.

One time, my cable modem was broken after lightning struck my place and had unplugged it to play safe (never smart to leave such appliances plugged in). These modems are replaced for free by my ISP so I called them to have it replaced. That's when the trouble started.

For starters, none of the options which I had to pick from were suitable. Well, in the end I went for "I don't have any internet connection" which was technically true. Little did I know that this was a very very bad decision to make.

You see, each department has their list of questions to ask. In this case, the reason for not having internet were, according to their list, nearly always the fault of the user and their computer (which is probably true?). Despite telling the idiot that lightning had struck, he was convinced that it was caused by my PC. After telling the retard that neither my PC nor two laptops had internet, he was then convinced it was my router. Despite telling the utter brain dead GIMP that the lights of the router were out, he said that their software claimed it was shown to be fully working *facepalm*. IT. WAS. UNPLUGGED.

I was so close to driving to their tech support center and waiting for the staff entrance for his shift to end to beat the answer into his face. The damn modem was dead, fried, deceased, kicked the bucket, this was a very EX-MODEM. It took me HALF AN HOUR and $20 in phone charges to finally made it clear to him that the modem was as dead as a brick. The moment he said "okay, let me make an appointment for you" I ran out of phone credit and the phone disconnected.

So I raced to my brother, used his phone, ended up with a different person, told him to switch me to his colleague, he refused saying that he could not do this. So he checks his database, and then ... proceeds to go down the same damn list of questions again. Another 20 minutes at the end of which I'm swearing and cursing and threatening. I think I may have said something like "If you don't come to replace my damn modem, I'll come round to where you work and bash the damn thing over your head to make sure you see first hand it's BROKEN". Oddly enough, he suddenly understood it was broken *facepalm*.

So yeah, first layer support is terrible. To quote a friend who worked in support: "only idiots work in first level of support, because it's minimum wages and if you're smart enough to know what you're talking about, you're not going to stay there".

I can give you a story from when I was the head book guy from my local Border's a few years back.


First of all understand that working in a bookstore can make you incredibly callous and hateful at the best of times just due to the sheer idiocy of the questions, but this one was..special

Customer: Sir? I'd like to know if you could help me find a book
Me: U..ok. Do you have the title?
Customer: No...
Me: Ah, alright. Do you have the author?
Customer: No...no I don't have that...
Me: O..k. This might be a longshot...but do you happen to known the ISBN?
Customer: What?! I'm not giving you my social security number!
Me: Erm...no no, the ISBN is like a tracking number for a book, it's above the barcode on the back.
Customer: Don't try to lie to me, god dammit! I know you're trying to get my info so you can charge my credit card for all your shit, and I won't have it. I want to talk to your boss and then I'm calling the police.
Me: .....You're serious? Alright then /transfer the manager

20 minutes pass by

Boss: Kevin, could I speak to you?
Me: Is this about the guy who wanted to call the police?
Boss: Yes, office now.
Me: Listen, I'm sorry and I-
Boss: Kevin, there's a list of numbers we don't take calls from anymore, I'm kinda amused you don't know it
Me: ....oh god. Who or what is this person?
Boss: That would be James, who lives at The Ancora Psychiatric Hospital.
Me: So I was talking to a legitimate lunatic instead of the undiagnosed ones we usually get?
Boss: More or less, could you spread the word to the rest of the sellers about the call sheet?
Me: Yess'm.

Once again, I revel in the "I don't deal with customers" aspect of my job. I'm so, so sorry for those of you that do.

Fun Size said:

Once again, I revel in the "I don't deal with customers" aspect of my job. I'm so, so sorry for those of you that do.

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I luckily don't have to either. The head of pre-press does though, and he has to deal with all kinds of ridiculous demands.

And crap like:

C: "Why was there a price change on my order? We agreed on 5 euro per 1000 labels!"
M: "Yes but you only ordered 2000 labels"
C: "So?"
M: "Erm that comes to 10 euro. One single printing plate costs 12 euro and we need 6 so without the printing, cutting and packaging, let alone staff wages, we'd already be spending 72 euros to print it. We'd actually end up paying 10 times more than what you'd pay us!"
C: "Erm so what? We agreed on that price!"
*facepalm*
(in case you're wondering, those prices are set with a minimum order amount to avoid such cases. You need to order at least 30.000 labels for it to become profitable)

sorry to hear that you had problems with costumer support Icarus. if you had talked with me, and told me your modem is broken, I would have send you a new one right away. Why discussing with one customer if you can help two more in the same time ? But judging from your post you were charged for support so they probably just want to keep you in line for money. Your provider isn't by any chance a big company with a magenta T ?