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Why isn't my phone working?

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  • Why isn't my phone working?

    Customer called in to report that her phone wouldn't dial out. She said she was getting a Switch Recorded Message (the official name of those fun "We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed" messages) when she tried to dial a number. I asked her if it was happening on all numbers and she said so far she had only tried one number. I asked her for the number so I see if it was her line or the person she was calling and got a rapid busy signal. I told her I'd need to get another number to call me back on so we could troubleshoot since she was on her mobile phone at the time, and she told me the number she just gave me was her home phone.

    Me: So this is the number that you can't dial?
    Customer: Yes.
    Me: And you can't dial it from your handset?
    Customer: Right.
    Me: Well, you can't call from your mobile phone and I can't reach it from my landline, you should probably call your landline provider.
    Customer: Well, I know the phone isn't cut off, I paid my bill. It has to be your service.
    Me: Okay, I want you to try something for me. Pick up the receiver and tell me if you hear a dialtone.
    Customer: No, there's nothing.
    Me: So it seems our service is working fine. I really think you should contact your landline provider and see if they're having an outage.
    Customer: Look, there's no way there's anything wrong with that line. It was working yesterday!
    Me: But... I can't call it, and you can't call it, and there's no dialtone. It sounds like your landline service isn't working.
    Customer: Well fine! I'll call them and they'll tell me everything is fine and then I'll just wind up calling back and maybe I'll get someone else who can help me!

    Sometimes I could just cry.
    "You are loved" - Plaidman.

  • #2
    Ah yes, in their twisted little world the customer is never wrong.

    I get this and similiar situations at least once a week. And the customer never dialed a wrong/not working/ whatever number the problem is always ours and never something they did wrong.

    I had one just last week where he said the switch recorded message was taking minutes away from his account. So I called the line and got an answering service that said "I'm sorry but this number is no longer active. The new number for [name deleted] is [number deleted] thank you and have a nice day."

    This of course is not a switch recorded message but an actual answering service. But would the customer take my word for it...... I'm sure you can guess.
    Last edited by Chanlin; 02-20-2007, 08:50 PM. Reason: grammatical mistake and clarification.... sigh I really ned to learn to proofread

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    • #3
      I love when they call in for help, not knowing enough about a product or technology, you take the logical troubleshooting steps, and basically make it obvious that the problem is not on our end, yet they want a tech out, etc. It gets even more fun when I mention they'll be charged $29.95 or can get our wire maintenance plan if its something on their inside wiring. My last customer like this refused the plan, and refused a tech, and had me transfer her to customer service to "disconnect" her services, which never happened.

      I'm a little fuzzy on this one, but she couldn't make calls or recieve calls. I called her and it rang, then she picked up the phone, I heard a click and then the call dropped. I confirmed she had picked it up after hearing it ring in. I had her unplug that phone and let it ring, and it went to an answering machine. But of course, it couldn't be her phone itself.

      Or the lady I told yesterday that despite what email issues she had in Outlook Express a month ago, the error message she was recieving today was because of AVG Antivirus. Sure she had a problem then, it got fixed and worked, and now there's another problem. Yesterday is not today.

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      • #4
        I had an elderly lady come tromping into Chesterfield once, brandishing some old Western movie at me.
        OL: Old Lady
        RJ: Me
        OL: This damn thing doesn't work in my DVD player!
        RJ: *thinking* Oh, shit... *said* Alright, let me see it. *pop it out of the case, which was open, flip it over* Hmmm... no scratches... let me see if it works in my DVD player... *pop it into the in store player, wait a bit, starts up just fine* I can't find anything wrong...
        OL: It doesn't work on my player. All I get is a black screen
        RJ: Does your player have a parental lock out?
        OL: What's that?
        RJ: *explain about the DVD being unrated, and how the player might just not play it because of that*
        OL: Is it dirty?
        RJ: Not to my knowledge, but Western is hardly a genre I watch. Because the company that made the movie released it as unrated, the coding in the movie trips the parental filter in your player, most likely.
        OL: Well, how do I fix it?
        RJ: Do you still have the instructions? Somewhere in there, there's probably a page that tells the default code, and how to change it.
        This conversation went on twenty minutes or so, with me refusing to do the return, as it obviously was not the DVD at fault. Lady gets angrier and angrier, until Third Key walks up, she asks him, he repeats, and she goes on her way, happy as a lark.
        RJ: What did you tell her differently?
        TK: Nothing.
        "I call murder on that!"

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        • #5
          But he was a MAN and thus, a God when it comes to technical matters.
          A person who is nice to you, but not nice to the waiter is not a nice person
          - Dave Barry

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          • #6
            "It was working yesterday!"

            Ah...the war cry of the terminally dumb.

            By its very definition, a problem is something that was working and is now not. I do not know why they feel the need to tell me that.

            I think I could have figured out that it was working previously, and now it is not, which is why you have CALLED TECH SUPPORT!
            Stupid Things

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            • #7
              I have problems like that all the time with people since I work with faxing. They always want to believe it's the hardware's fault when it's their phone lines.

              I had one guy who refused to listen to me when I told him that he could not receive faxes with his voice mail picking up.

              I explained to him no less then 4 times that when voice mail picks up on the line the call is routed to the phone company and the fax machine has no way of monitoring the line.

              He kept telling me I had no idea what I was talking about, asked me if I was "sure I'm not in sales", and asked me to get someone else. I told him I would not get anyone else and that I have been here for over a year and I know what I'm talking about and everyone else would tell him the same thing but if he wanted to he could call back and be told the same thing.

              He got mad at me for telling me to call back saying that it wasn't his fault I didn't know what I was talking about and I should get him real tech support.

              It ended up he called back and talked to several other females who he ignored. Then he talked to a guy and believed everything that was said.

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              • #8
                She said she was getting a Switch Recorded Message (the official name of those fun "We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed" messages) when she tried to dial a number.
                Does that name cover my favorite, "We're sorry, when placing a local call it is now necessary to dial the area code first"? Which for some reason comes on even though I *did* dial the area code... and hanging up and pressing "redial" connects!
                Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

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