OHN
join:2003-02-05
Appleton, WI
kudos:1 | reply to sapo
Re: [Rant] I am so fed up with phone tech assholes I don’t take any of that personally. Even if I had done it already and then some, I still do it when they ask. Not worth me stressing over it. Also, I don’t think any of us are above making newb mistakes now and then. I do let them know what I did but do it again if they ask me too. I also let them know the other things I did and many times that is enough to gauge that I know what I am talking about and move me up to the next level. Put the ego aside and it makes things much simpler.
Recently I asked someone to check the date and time on their machine. They told me they did check it but I knew they did not. You could tell by their tone they thought it was stupid of me to ask them to check it. They said they did do it just to get me to move up to next step because “they knew computers”. I then went in to more complex troubleshooting and 30 minutes in I decide to connect to their machine. I then see the date and time were wrong. What would have taken literally 2 minutes to resolve took about an hour because of their stubbornness and pretending to do what I asked them to do. Just my two cents. |
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KearnstdElf WizardPremium
join:2002-01-22
Mullica Hill, NJ | said by OHN:I don’t take any of that personally. Even if I had done it already and then some, I still do it when they ask. Not worth me stressing over it. Also, I don’t think any of us are above making newb mistakes now and then. I do let them know what I did but do it again if they ask me too. I also let them know the other things I did and many times that is enough to gauge that I know what I am talking about and move me up to the next level. Put the ego aside and it makes things much simpler. Recently I asked someone to check the date and time on their machine. They told me they did check it but I knew they did not. You could tell by their tone they thought it was stupid of me to ask them to check it. They said they did do it just to get me to move up to next step because “they knew computers”. I then went in to more complex troubleshooting and 30 minutes in I decide to connect to their machine. I then see the date and time were wrong. What would have taken literally 2 minutes to resolve took about an hour because of their stubbornness and pretending to do what I asked them to do. Just my two cents. LOL at check time and Date resisters , God I have seen so many people gripe over that step and it solves so many certificate errors for websites. Sometimes I just have them run the windows Time Update.
The farthest I took a Linux user in internet support was ifconfig to see if they had a valid IP and DNS info.
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[65 Arcanist]Filan(High Elf) Zone: Broadband Reports |
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OHN
join:2003-02-05
Appleton, WI
kudos:1
1 edit | I use Linux and OS X as well as Windows and find it funny when helping Linux and OS X; many of them get defensive and feel persecuted because they assume you are a Windows user. Instead of accepting the fact the issue may be on their end.
For example, someone is having issues with flash on Ubuntu. I let them know Linux is not supported but let them know the issue is on their end since they insisted the issue was with our flash account statement. Even gave them links to the Linux forums that had troubleshooting tips. I could not provide technical support because Linux is not supported even though I know it pretty good. They respond with "Typical. Always blaming the Linux community". Change Linux to OS X for another example. One person could not open a PDF file. Their browser said the file was corrupt or damaged. I told them to ensure they have the latest version of Preview or Adobe. They insisted the PDF was corrupt because their Mac said so and wanted us to fix it. They responded with “We Mac users are always getting blamed for issues". Once they updated the issue resolved of course.
One time I was helping someone troubleshoot an iPhone issue. I asked them for a screen shot of the issue and saw they had hacked the iPhone. Somehow their fonts were affected and made larger even though they did not make that specific modification. I let them know we could not assist in troubleshooting a modified iPhone. His response "You need to know what you are talking about. Hacking my phone has nothing to do with it. I did not even change the display or font or anything that would affect it. You just look for the easy out". Little does he know I have used iPhone since the original one came out and also hacked them frequently for learning and friends use on other networks. |
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| reply to Kearnstd
said by Kearnstd:said by OHN:Recently I asked someone to check the date and time on their machine. They told me they did check it but I knew they did not. You could tell by their tone they thought it was stupid of me to ask them to check it. They said they did do it just to get me to move up to next step because “they knew computers”. I then went in to more complex troubleshooting and 30 minutes in I decide to connect to their machine. I then see the date and time were wrong. What would have taken literally 2 minutes to resolve took about an hour because of their stubbornness and pretending to do what I asked them to do. Just my two cents. LOL at check time and Date resisters , God I have seen so many people gripe over that step and it solves so many certificate errors for websites. Sometimes I just have them run the windows Time Update. The farthest I took a Linux user in internet support was ifconfig to see if they had a valid IP and DNS info. Those of us who've done technical support and usually also needed technical support. There a are a certain customers (users) that we can rely on the give correct information. And there are the 95% clueless ones - which I'd wished I'd had a script for.
Try telling them to " Type TYPE errors.log"
"Type what log?" "The log named errors.log "
"What errors do you want me to type into the log?"
"No just type the log out so we can see it."
""How do I do that?"
"Type TYPE ERRORS.LOG".
"I typed: "TYPE ERRORS.LOG" and it didn't work""
"What did it say?"
"File TYPE not found".
"No you were only supposed to type in the word TYPE" and then the name or the error log."
"What's the name of the error log file?"
"Is Pam working tonight. Yeah she'll be back a a couple of minutes? "
"Have her call me."
And, of course was the customer who said his mini-computer was a lemon because it keeps crashing. And by gosh it does, but it looks like a normal power-down and I can nothing interesting in crash file.
However, it's not too bad "because I'm always right in here when it crashes"
"What are you doing in the cold, noisy computer room all of the time?" "Reading the manuals - you know - to learn more".
"Are the manuals on the drives?"
"No, they're on top of the computer."
"Is the console key in the "off, local, local lock, remote, or remote lock" position?"
"The local position."
"Switch it over to lock". "OK" "Call me when it crashes again".
Was up solid for months and didn't crash anymore.
There was a reset button on a panel at the top of the computer. His was reading the manuals stretched over the computer and occasionally was pressing the reset button with his ample belly.
I had him change to switch to "lock" which disabled the local reset button.
This had been going on occasionally for months and we were about to try and get the vendor to replace the machine. The hardware vendor had been out several times to run diagnostics on it off-hours, and there was never a problem. I flew their to see if I could find the problem, and as soon as I saw him there reading, I then had idea what Could be causing it.
I've been on both sides - and neither one of them is fun. But, you gotta work the system.
For more incredible support tales. Ne sure to read the Sharky's column in computer world. You can look at current, back issues, and stuff submitted but not used at:
»blogs.computerworld.com/sharky |
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