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Wow... just... wow

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findinternet.jpg


... and I have to deal with these people all day

:(

Anyone else have any good stories/examples along these lines?
 
I want to, but unfortunately most people I deal with have no idea what sarcasm is. If I could, I would - believe me, heh.

There's also the fact if I was quality monitored I'd probably get a little flak for it, but hey it's all good.

edit: If anyone cares, I asked him what happens when he tries to browse and if he gets any error messages what do they say. He hasn't responded yet. Probably won't, thank god.
 
Hooker said:
Dude, be glad you won't have to deal with them on the phone :/

The thing is, I usually would. The program you see is a new thing that TELUS is doing, but you only get scheduled to work on it everyone once in a while so I'm usually on the phones. But yeah, you're right. In this case, this makes it a lot better.
 

SSGMUN10000

Connoisseur Of Tedium
I spoke to a lady yesterday who insisted for me to send tech out to fix or cable tv because it was out. The thing is she had no power where she said her cable tv problem was. I was trying to get it through her thick skull that I cannot send anyone out cause tech could not very problem or troubleshoot it if there was no power. She was being very insistant and serious about it.
 

jenov4

Member
Ahh, the good ole Customer Service stories. On my first day at work, I had a customer from Dallas threaten to fly over to Toronto (Where we're located) just to beat us up. All this because his website didn't load up.

Good times...
 

sefskillz

shitting in the alley outside your window
Discharger said:
edit: If anyone cares, I asked him what happens when he tries to browse and if he gets any error messages what do they say. He hasn't responded yet. Probably won't, thank god.

How can he respond, he can't find the internet!
 
Here's the final update: Larry has found the internet!

After 30 mins, he responded so I took a look at some of his PC settings and I noticed an issue with his network settings.

He had proxies enabled and we don't use proxies, plus proxy override was on and was set to "127.0.0.1;localhost" so I disabled proxies and had him remove that then reboot.

Worked fine after that and he said "I've got the page back , THANK YOU, OH GREAT One!"

Oh well, at least he was happy.
 

Tenguman

Member
I wish the government or some private buisness would take a week and create a large media blitz full of paper/tv/movie/street ads, jingles, celebrity endorsments, etc.....just to inform people that if your computer is acting funny, try rebooting. It'll save the sanity of countless people in tech-support

I can't count how many $%*&$ times people have called me like this:

"ACK! MY PROGRAM WON'T LOAD!! NOO!!!!"
"Did you try rebooting your computer?"
"No...lemme try.......Hey that worked!"

<<bangs head on desk>>
 

andthebeatgoeson

Junior Member
I think you guys are giving too much credit to the ease of using computers. People go from being stupefied by the on/off switch of their VCRs and DVDs to the complete clusterfuck that are computers. Hell, I know a lil about networking and my best solution to most bad problems is to turn everything (router, pc, modem, etc) off and turn it back on. Oh, and google.

At best, PC customer service is like doctors using medical speak. Except good doctors make an attempt to rid medical language from conversations with patients. Reboot isn't in everyone's vocabulary just like rebound doesn't mean grabbing the ball in medical lingo. Sometimes you have to dumb it down. Somethings SEEM simple when they are not. Just say turn your computer off and turn it back on.
 
I guess I'll post one last one for the road since you guys seem to be getting a kick out of this.

notokay.jpg


After talking to this guy for a few mins, I was able to establish he was having PC issues and referred him to his computer vendor as we can only support his internet connection, which was coincidently working fine. Still, I had to read the first bit of that so many times to understand what he was trying to say... man, I wasn't looking forward to talking to him. Thankfully his next few messages were a lot easier to understand.
 
Hamfam said:
Wouldn't he have to be connected to the internet to send that in the first place? o_O Oh the humanity.

Yes you are absolutely correct, but so far none of the customers I have talked to that say "I can't connect to the internet" or some variation of that have not been able to figure that out.

Then again, I remember one woman who asked me if her ADSL connection would work without power. I sort of hung my head for a moment then said "Will your computer work without power?". At least at that point she realized she'd asked a dumb question and said so.
 

Jim Bowie

Member
"the chuckle and that happens that the tech that I had on the phone said are no longer funny"?

I don't understand... what is he saying? Maybe the "wowrm" got to him?
 
iapetus said:
I'm confused. Why did you black out 'Ellison' in the first picture? :\

The last name on the first pic is not Ellison. I'm just blacking out any last names and my employee number just to be safe.
 
Discharger said:
The last name on the first pic is not Ellison. I'm just blacking out any last names and my employee number just to be safe.

I think that's suppose to be a joke. Larry Ellison is the CEO of Oracle.

BTW, I have a story too. I had a client who called me one night because she didn't know how to get to the card reader attached to the computer. Basically, I had the autorun turned off on her computer and because of that, she was stumpted on how to access anything! She didn't know about My Computer icon on the desktop at all! She's scheduled to take a AutoCAD course at a local university this fall BTW...... X_X
 
Well in that case, I'm a dumbasx!

Knew of Oracle and I know what it is/what they do, I just didn't know the CEO's name. Oh well, most of iapetus' humour tends to go over my head.
 
Aren't you scared of someone reporting your pictures to Telus' call center? While you blocked out names, you would be listed in the log as someone assisting with the incident number. Are you stupid?
 

sc0la

Unconfirmed Member
Discharger said:
Yes. Actually, I hadn't thought of that. Well, I'm going to fix the pics a bit and up them back up.
*right click* *save as* *repeat*

heehee blackmail >:]

;)
 
It's all good - even though I know you're joking there's no way I'd catch any crap for this. The main thing I'd get an earful for is not protecting customer confidentiality and I accomodated for that first. While I vented a little, I didn't say anything that would embarrass the company. Hell, any person doing tech work for an ISP in north america has probably brought this type of thing up at least once. They may just not have done it in public as I did.
 

iapetus

Scary Euro Man
I have to ask, do you ever feel tempted to give these people deliberately bad advice that will prevent them from owning a computer that they're clearly unequipped to own? And possibly enter them for the Darwin awards? "I see. Well, your bingotogo is probably getting stuck in one of the cables. Unplug all the cables from the back of your PC one by one and stick them in your mouth and blow down them. Make sure you get lots of spittle in there - it's good for them. Especially that big one plugged into the mains."

How do you resist these urges?

[NB: Kids, don't try to clean your power cable by salivating into it. And if you do, please get your parents to sue Microsoft, not me.]
 
iapetus said:
I have to ask, do you ever feel tempted to give these people deliberately bad advice that will prevent them from owning a computer that they're clearly unequipped to own? And possibly enter them for the Darwin awards? "I see. Well, your bingotogo is probably getting stuck in one of the cables. Unplug all the cables from the back of your PC one by one and stick them in your mouth and blow down them. Make sure you get lots of spittle in there - it's good for them. Especially that big one plugged into the mains."

How do you resist these urges?

[NB: Kids, don't try to clean your power cable by salivating into it. And if you do, please get your parents to sue Microsoft, not me.]

YES, all the time. I vent any chance I get where I can get away with it. Usually when we go outside for a 15 min break that's what we end up talking about - what we wish we could have said. I keep wishing they'd put an option on the IVR that says "If you are okay with analysts using sarcasm, press 3" and since most of them spam all the buttons anyway you'd get a few where they'd hit it by accident and then BOOYA it's all good. (this won't happen however as recently our IVR became voice activated, so the likelyhood of someone saying "sarcasm okay" or something like that is probably less than zero)
 

Screaming_Gremlin

My QB is a Dick and my coach is a Nutt
I'm confused. Why did you black out 'Ellison' in the first picture? :\

Haha. Larry Ellison came to talk to our school last year (Oracle donated a million dollars worth of database software or some crap like that). He spent the entire time bitching about Microsoft. He came off as an idiot, although he was amusing. It was funny when he talked about how Oracle's stock price went up when his sail boat went missing during a storm near Australia.
 

maharg

idspispopd
Discharger said:
Then again, I remember one woman who asked me if her ADSL connection would work without power. I sort of hung my head for a moment then said "Will your computer work without power?". At least at that point she realized she'd asked a dumb question and said so.

To be fair, phone lines do carry enough electricity to run a phone without plugging it into an outlet. It's hardly a stupid question, just ignorant.

And I hope you're not the one who I got on that service who insisted that a UPnP IP was perfectly normal and that I "was connected" even though I kept telling him I was using my neighbor's internet via wifi.

Whoever that was should have been fired. He seriously had me considering a switch to Shaw. Got on the phone service, they figured out that whoever had set us up when we moved hadn't fixed up our OCA account for the new area, and it was fixed in about 10 minutes.
 
maharg said:
To be fair, phone lines do carry enough electricity to run a phone without plugging it into an outlet. It's hardly a stupid question, just ignorant.

And I hope you're not the one who I got on that service who insisted that a UPnP IP was perfectly normal and that I "was connected" even though I kept telling him I was using my neighbor's internet via wifi.

Whoever that was should have been fired. He seriously had me considering a switch to Shaw. Got on the phone service, they figured out that whoever had set us up when we moved hadn't fixed up our OCA account for the new area, and it was fixed in about 10 minutes.

Yeah, phones work without power and since ADSL works through the phone lines, that's likely why she asked. As I said, pretty much right after she said it (I responded right away) she realized what she said and told me "that was a really dumb question, wasn't it?". I had no issues with her - it was a dumb question and she realized that. That makes her 10x better than most people I talk to as they wouldn't realize the mistake period even after I informed them. I don't want to come across as someone always in BOFH mode - I will if someone is becoming irate for something I don't consider a valid reason, if they're just being a dick to me or if they are pretty much refusing to do anything I suggest because they're too lazy. If it's just some joe blow who wants to get his adsl working and is willing to work with me to get there I'll give it all I can. That is the reason is why I get to work on special projects like eCare and such.

As for your question, no, that wasn't me. If you were asking about an issue with wireless internet though, there only a few of us that currently support that at the moment (although I imagine that going to change as "TELUS Home Networking" is really taking off). I've been messing with wireless way before TELUS started supporting it about 2 months ago, so I've got a pretty good grasp on the situation. I can't really say much about what that analyst did since I haven't seen the ticket on our system, but it sounds like it's someone who didn't know a lot about how wireless works before they were trained on it and since they haven't taken a lot of calls on it didn't know how to handle the situation/hadn't thought of that possibility.

As for calling in on the phone and getting the issue fixed - it's likely you got another one of the small number of us that support wireless (or someone who like myself knew about wireless outside work/didn't know about wireless, but decided to troubleshoot what he could and OCA accounts are something you deal with regardless of if you've got wireless or not) as we are all cross-trained and do multiple things depending on how busy the various queues are or how many people are staffed. For example, I support phones, dial up, adsl, home networking, eCare, telus games, desktop backup, cityplace centre in toronto, plus a few things that we are conducting employee trials on that I can't mention until they go live for the regular public. If you want, PM me and I'll give you my contact info - as long as I'm working at the time, I can definitely help you out.
 

maharg

idspispopd
Discharger said:
Yeah, phones work without power and since ADSL works through the phone lines, that's likely why she asked. As I said, pretty much right after she said it (I responded right away) she realized what she said and told me "that was a really dumb question, wasn't it?". I had no issues with her - it was a dumb question and she realized that. That makes her 10x better than most people I talk to as they wouldn't realize the mistake period even after I informed them. I don't want to come across as someone always in BOFH mode - I will if someone is becoming irate for something I don't consider a valid reason, if they're just being a dick to me or if they are pretty much refusing to do anything I suggest because they're too lazy. If it's just some joe blow who wants to get his adsl working and is willing to work with me to get there I'll give it all I can. That is the reason is why I get to work on special projects like eCare and such.

As for your question, no, that wasn't me. If you were asking about an issue with wireless internet though, there only a few of us that currently support that at the moment (although I imagine that going to change as "TELUS Home Networking" is really taking off). I've been messing with wireless way before TELUS started supporting it about 2 months ago, so I've got a pretty good grasp on the situation. I can't really say much about what that analyst did since I haven't seen the ticket on our system, but it sounds like it's someone who didn't know a lot about how wireless works before they were trained on it and since they haven't taken a lot of calls on it didn't know how to handle the situation/hadn't thought of that possibility.

As for calling in on the phone and getting the issue fixed - it's likely you got another one of the small number of us that support wireless (or someone who like myself knew about wireless outside work/didn't know about wireless, but decided to troubleshoot what he could and OCA accounts are something you deal with regardless of if you've got wireless or not) as we are all cross-trained and do multiple things depending on how busy the various queues are or how many people are staffed. For example, I support phones, dial up, adsl, home networking, eCare, telus games, desktop backup, cityplace centre in toronto, plus a few things that we are conducting employee trials on that I can't mention until they go live for the regular public. If you want, PM me and I'll give you my contact info - as long as I'm working at the time, I can definitely help you out.

No, I had no issue with wireless. I was using my neighbor's wireless because *my* internet wasn't working. This guy completely shut down the whole thing by assuming that because my modem's lights were all green and windows was using a UPnP address (as in, the address range Windows falls back on if it can't find a DHCP server), I must have internet, even though I told him I was using alternate means of getting on the internet.

It was very frustrating.
 
dude i worked in a call center for an ISP 3 years....trust me i feel your pain. TRUST ME I oh so feel your pain... you just wanna choke the piss outta those dumb fucks after so many idiotic questions...then scream to the top of your lungs while throwing your pc and its parts as far as you can see, and walking the hell out. if only you didn't have bills to pay.
 
maharg said:
No, I had no issue with wireless. I was using my neighbor's wireless because *my* internet wasn't working. This guy completely shut down the whole thing by assuming that because my modem's lights were all green and windows was using a UPnP address (as in, the address range Windows falls back on if it can't find a DHCP server), I must have internet, even though I told him I was using alternate means of getting on the internet.

It was very frustrating.

Okay, now I get you. Even though you said that your connection wasn't working and you were leeching a neighbors wireless, he didn't listen? Wow, that would piss me off too. I've never heard the term UPnP used that way (I was thinking universal plug n play, not a 169 ip like you were referring to in this case) but it makes sense now. Since I started working at TELUS, I've had to call in a few times to get my connection fixed (you can't place reports about your own connection) and one of the times, I told the person I worked at the helpdesk but they ignored it and kept asking me a whole bunch of stupid questions - it was pretty annoying, but what can you do?
 

maharg

idspispopd
Discharger said:
Okay, now I get you. Even though you said that your connection wasn't working and you were leeching a neighbors wireless, he didn't listen? Wow, that would piss me off too. I've never heard the term UPnP used that way (I was thinking universal plug n play, not a 169 ip like you were referring to in this case) but it makes sense now. Since I started working at TELUS, I've had to call in a few times to get my connection fixed (you can't place reports about your own connection) and one of the times, I told the person I worked at the helpdesk but they ignored it and kept asking me a whole bunch of stupid questions - it was pretty annoying, but what can you do?

That's what the 169 IPs are. Part of UPnP is autogeneration of IPs on an ad-hoc network (one without a central router dishing out IPs). Ie, so that you can plug your fridge and your microwave into the same hub and have them talk to each other without any third party involved.

I know I've had telus tell me they're actually error codes, but that's not the case. Basically a UPnP compliant device must first check for a DHCP server, and if it can't find one, it will then choose a randomly generated IP on the 169.254/16 subnet and use an ARP packet to determine if it's in use, and if so continue generating new ones.

See this for a powerpoint that goes through it (look for the colourized text). It's also in the UPnP spec on page 9 of this pdf.
 
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