Most Ridiculous Reasons to Call Tech Support

[gunsage]

Fortunately I didn't have to deal with this customer directly...I probably wouldn't have been able to hit my mute before laughing my ass off. Anyway...

Me:
Tier 1 Rep who was actually nice and not cold-transferry:

Me: "X Company level 3, this is Sage."
T1: "Yeah, um...I have a customer on the line that, well...get this..."
Me:
T1: "He says that his...phone service...is impacting his Internet service..."
Me:
T1: "...Well, what are your thoughts? Is that even possible?"
Me: (Looking over account to verify everything is correct) "Um...well, no, theorhetically, it's not possible. How is he claiming this?"
T1: "He said anytime he boots his computer now, he's getting a black screen saying something about Windows failing to load."
Me: "Wh...what?! Really?!" (I couldn't contain myself...I busted out laughing)
T1: "ya rly"
Me: "Well, what he might want to try is popping in his Windows installation CD and trying the recovery console. However, chances are he's going to need to take that puppy to the shop."
T1: "Yeah, he's convinced it's his phone."
Me: "Right, because he's running our 'Black Screen Internet Service,' right?"
T1: "Heh, exactly."
Me: "Yeah, he'll probably have to have that professionally looked at."
T1: "Well, alrighty. I'll tell him...again. Thanks!"
Me: "No problem."

[FrancoTek]

I really dislike these kinds of people. They always blame the provider, when 90% of all problems with internet not working is because of the computer, or the customers hardware. Most of the time our network is up and running smooth, maybe once a month, one (out of many servers) will go down for a couple minutes and this usually affects only a small portion of our customers.

[gunsage]

My coworkers and I were discussing this a little the other day...why is it that as soon as the customers choose an ISP, they immediately assume we are responsible to EVERYTHING that happens to their computer? I mean, really, let's think about this for a second. If you buy a Wii, you would expect Nintendo to support it. I mean, that makes sense. If you buy a computer from someone, you would expect that at least to some minor degree, they could take a look at it or refer you to someone who could. But why, out of AAAAAAALLLLL the people you could call, would you contact an ISP technical support group to fix a software/hardware issue?

If we gave (or sold) you the software/hardware, fine. For example, if your modem's on the fritz, yes, that's our problem. But if you're getting spam? Not our problem. Adware? Not our problem. Computer won't play a game? Guess what? NOT OUR PROBLEM, ACTUALLY! Come on people...use what little gray matter you have left!

[deafcat24]

He also was told, by his college (Chubb) that DOS was obsolete.

Really? Troubleshoot a HDD without DOS then. (Hell, remember the days when you could choose who your DOS was from? MS-DOS, DR-DOS etc..)

MS-DOS obsoluete?

Man I used it in Vista this week trying to get a program downloaded from Windows Update. In fact Microsoft's instructions took me there.

Didn't help though, got the fix downloaded from Microsoft's website. It was working until I used a last command on the instruction page that told me access denied.

Fortunately the update was not critical as it took me two days to figure out how to fix it. I e-mailed Microsoft Support on Wednesday. Never got an answer until today, with the person wondering why I hadn't responded on how his fix went.