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  • I hate fanboys

    A customer I am currently dealing with would clearly prefer to be using the crap produced by our competition instead of the gear we make. But the powers that be at the customer have chosen to purchase our stuff instead.

    While being vague to protect my employer, the situation is like this: We sold them Box A and Box C. They bought Box B (which sits in the middle) from the competition, but we sell it also (and I'm very familiar with it.) They also own the competition's version of Box C (which I'll call C2), which my customer would much prefer to be using.

    Box A won't talk consistently with Box C, but will talk with C2. Customer suspects Box C, and frankly I don't blame them at first. However, I pull logs from Box B, and because I'm so awesome, I figure out exactly what the problem is, and it's in Box B. Because they bought B from the competition instead of us, the competition needs to fix it. I explain all this in excruciating detail to the customer. It's a veritable masterwork of technical writing; explaining all the hexadecimal log fields, going over all the steps in the protocol that Box B is screwing up, the whole works.

    The dialog then goes like this:
    Me: SC, forward this e-mail to your Box B supplier; they'll know what it means and can start fixing your problem.
    SC: Please Fix A.
    Me: The problem is B, which we didn't sell you.
    SC: I'm waiting for you to fix C.
    Me: C isn't broken; I've found the problem, and it's B.
    SC: I won't buy anymore C until you fix it.
    Me: *silence*

    I don't give a *bleep!* what he buys or does not buy. I work in defect/warranty support, not sales, and they pay me twice a month, no matter what he chooses to do.

    If he's waiting for us to fix the problem, he'll be waiting a long time.

  • #2
    Everyone one is fucking computer genius. I have made a living for the last 20 years because of fucks who dont know what they are doing.

    I have friends who are great car mechanics, who laugh at me when I get like this because they say "Now you know how we feel"....

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    • #3
      We're currently going through a similar pissing match with the guys who made our printing plate engraver. In the 7 years I have worked here in IT, that engraver has probably been down more than it has been up. They are always blaming the computer as the problem. We swap out cards (and computers) as needed, but there is always one common denominator...

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      • #4
        I would be willing to bet that they are so insistent that you fix it because B is no longer under warranty/service plan.

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        • #5
          Maybe "please unplug Box B and see if that solves your problem"?

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          • #6
            Quoth TheSHAD0W View Post
            Maybe "please unplug Box B and see if that solves your problem"?
            Then they may do what a client of mine did.
            Unplug either Box A or C, then complain that nothing changed.

            Fortunately, for that site, on very good terms with the head. I went in after hours one day and unplugged Box B, moved Box A and C on the shelf they were on in the process of unplugging Box B. PITA called me later that day to gloat that both Box A and C had been replaced, and that I had better shape up in my work.

            Head overheard PITA gloating, and after dressing him down, in front of everyone, and while still on the phone with me (speakerphone), marched PITA to the tech closet and showed him that Box B was not on.


            PITA had been making unfounded snarky comments at Head and his family for several months at that point and Head had finally had enough.
            I personally found it amusing that after PITA left, or was let go (I never got a straight answer from my contacts about that), that a cursory review of his work showed lots of errors, monies missing, forged invoices from PITA to clients, but logged invoices for less, forged invoices to PITA for work never done, etc.

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            • #7
              Quoth suburbandecay View Post
              We're currently going through a similar pissing match with the guys who made our printing plate engraver. In the 7 years I have worked here in IT, that engraver has probably been down more than it has been up. They are always blaming the computer as the problem. We swap out cards (and computers) as needed, but there is always one common denominator...
              I assume a printing plate engraver is like a printer.

              The printer is always the problem. There has yet to be a printer invented that won't randomly stop working correctly for reasons nobody can determine.

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              • #8
                Quoth Pipthepirate View Post
                I assume a printing plate engraver is like a printer.

                The printer is always the problem. There has yet to be a printer invented that won't randomly stop working correctly for reasons nobody can determine.
                Printers are born of the devil. No one wants to pay good money for them so they are always cheap pieces of crap (consumer printers anyway)

                And we have four plate engravers from two different manufacturers. The pair with the issue come from a manufacturer out of Britain that has been bought and sold a few times and I am certain they feature "the finest in Lucas Electrics".

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                • #9
                  "There is the strong smell of politics in the room, Sir!"

                  In the latest development, we (BigCorp Support) have been instructed by the Powers That Be to simply close our case. I sense that management at the customer has been alerted, and certain incriminating correspondence, demonstrating alarming pig-headedness, has been forwarded. (Thankfully, some customers realize that it does not pay to treat vendors disrespectfully; insisting "the Customer Is Always Right" does not, in fact, actually work, and is usually counter-productive if you have actual problems to solve.)

                  Not a peep from them since.

                  And, in other news, I no longer work for tech support. I've taken a new job as a pre-sales architect. In a fascinating twist, this part of my company is vendor-agnostic, and I've been signed up for a conference in May held by the very competitor that would have been a dirty word in my old team.

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                  • #10
                    double 'grats! Spineful upper management and (I assume?) a promotion!

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                    • #11
                      Quoth Pipthepirate View Post
                      randomly stop working correctly for reasons nobody can determine.
                      It's called "Planned obsolescence" ^_^ Besides, if they're cheaper to replace than to fix, people will do so (q.v. LCD screens, especially on small items like calculators).

                      They DO make big sturdy tough as nails printers that last for years with no major issues...But their base cost is 10 times the "el cheapo" ones. I used to work at a print shop with six of them all in a line, that held two thousand sheets of paper each in the caddy, that we used for mail merges (ugh) and the like. We would typically have all of them running on the same job simultaneously. Worst issue we ever faced was a paper jam, and even that was maybe once every week or two (while churning out copies/printouts at that rate). Made me really, really hate Word's Merge technology x.x Compared to, say FoxPro, our alternative (and this was in the early 00's!), it was easily 1/5 of the speed and capacity. Unfortunately, some custy's insisted on sending us mailing lists that were in a Word-compatible format (that could be converted to FoxPro but it would take forever) instead of just plain text or Excel...

                      For the record, the REAL printers were downstairs
                      Last edited by EricKei; 04-09-2013, 05:34 PM.
                      "For a musician, the SNES sound engine is like using Crayola Crayons. Nobuo Uematsu used Crayola Crayons to paint the Sistine Chapel." - Jeremy Jahns (re: "Dancing Mad")
                      "The difference between an amateur and a master is that the master has failed way more times." - JoCat
                      "Thinking is difficult, therefore let the herd pronounce judgment!" ~ Carl Jung
                      "There's burning bridges, and then there's the lake just to fill it with gasoline." - Wiccy, reddit
                      "Retail is a cruel master, and could very well be the most educational time of many people's lives, in its own twisted way." - me
                      "Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down...tell you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens...makes her a home." - Capt. Malcolm Reynolds, "Serenity" (2005)
                      Acts of Gord – Read it, Learn it, Love it!
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                      • #12
                        Quoth EricKei View Post
                        It's called "Planned obsolescence" ^_^ Besides, if they're cheaper to replace than to fix, people will do so (q.v. LCD screens, especially on small items like calculators).
                        That's exactly what happens. Printers have come down so far in price, that it's usually not worth it to fix them. Locally, I can buy a new one for about the same price (or less) than the repair shop will charge to fix an old one.

                        Where I work, we run off a lot of reports. Our printers usually don't last longer than 2-3 years. Either they wear out, or it becomes uneconomic to fix them. So I'll bring them home, fix them myself, and give them away. For example, I have an old HP 4100 that came from work. It got 'retired' because it was having network issues. The card failed, and we couldn't get a new one. I removed the dead card, set it up using the parallel port, shared it over my home network...and it works fine.
                        Aerodynamics are for people who can't build engines. --Enzo Ferrari

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                        • #13
                          Quoth sms001 View Post
                          double 'grats! Spineful upper management and (I assume?) a promotion!
                          Yes, I did indeed get a promotion, although that was entirely unexpected when I applied for the job; I was just ready for a change. (Every tech job save one I'd ever had since High School nearly 20 years ago has been tech support at some level or another.)

                          I was getting burnt out, and I knew it; so I figured I had better find a new job before my management figured out that I was tired of solving the same problems repeatedly for over a decade. I probably had some time left, as I was, dare I say, legendary in my company for my mastery of my tiny little corner of the tech universe, but one can only coast on reputation for so long.

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