Technical Support Horror Stories

My favourite was a secretary who called out a service engineer I know (at some expense) to inspect a computer because she said there was nothing on the screen. When he got there he turned the computer on and removed a "Post-It" note from the top left corner of the screen, where it had been obscuring the flashing cursor. Another time, he was told "Oh, yes, we have back-ups", and was shown floppy disks pinned to a notice board.

"I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens" the woman replied. "Foot pedal?". "Yes" the woman said, "this little white foot pedal with the on switch". The *Foot pedal* it turned out was the mouse.

Only two years ago, most calls came from technologists seeking answers to complex problems, but now most questions are so basic that they could be answered by opening the manual. One person called Dell's toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her laptop. When told that the directions were on the front page of the manual. The woman replied angrily, "I just paid $2000 for this damm thing, and I'm not going to read a book."

It seem that if there is a manual and a phone side by side the phone wins every time. One frustrated customer called Compaq they had unpacked their new Contura plugged it in and nothing had happened for 20 minutes. When asked what happened when they pressed the power switch, they asked "What power switch."

Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people have called to ask where the *any* key is, that Compaq is considering changing the command to *Press Return Key to Continue*.

Some people can't figure out the mouse, one complained it was hard to control with its *dust cover* on, which turned out to be the plastic bag it was packaged in. Another said that the mouse didn't work when he held it up to the screen and clicked the buttons.

Disk drives are another bugaboo, a customer was having trouble reading word processing files from diskettes, After trouble shooting for magnets and heat the technician asked what was being done with the diskettes. One of the responses was, "I put a label on the diskette, and put it in the typewriter...."

At AST, a customer dutifully complied with a request for a copy of the defective floppy disk. A few days later a letter from the customer arrived, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy. And at Dell, a technician advised his customer to "put the troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door." Asking the technician to "Hold on" the customer put the phone down and was heard walking over and closing the door to his room.

The software inside the computer can be equally perplexing, a Dell customer called to say he couldn't fax anything. After 40 minutes of trouble shooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the screen and pressing the *send* key.

Another Dell customer needed help setting up a new program, so the Dell technician referred him to the local Egghead. "Yeah, I got me couple of friends." the customer replied. When told that Egghead was a software store, the man said "Oh, I thought you meant for me to find a couple of geeks."

Not realising how fragile computers can be, some people end up damaging them beyond repair. Like the man who had a dirty keyboard, he soaked it for 24 hours, then removed all the keys and scrubbed them individually. He called AST to say that it no longer worked.

Sometimes it works the other way round, a technician tells of the time he had to calm down an enraged customer because the computer had insulted him, it had told him he was *bad* and an *invalid*.

There are also the lonely hearts who seek out human contact, even if it is a computer techie. One man from New Hampshire calls Dell every time he experiences a life crisis. He gets a technician to walk him through some contrived problem with his computer, apparently feeling uplifted by the process.

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