I will NOT accept your solution!!

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Took a call about a week ago from a guy who had a Samsung Tablet. We have fewer resources to troubleshoot tablets than we do phones but since in a lot of cases, a tablet is similar to a giant phone I can get by.

So this guy starts in on me and he's one of "Those".

You know what I mean...

"This tablet sucks, it freezes sometimes, my email doesn't work, your company sucks, my bill is too high, your customer service is terrible, you f'ed up this and f'ed up that..." and so on and so forth.

I finally got him calmed down. Well, sort of. He was still upset but at least he wasn't cussing so I guess that' a good thing?

As it turns out his primary issue with the tablet was that his email has stopped syncing to his tablet. In simple terms: He wasn't receiving his messages. Not a problem, it's an easy fix.

The android email app is notoriously buggy, but in this case all he needs to do is remove the email account from tablet, readd it, sign in again and voila! He should have his emails.

His response: "No, I'm not going to be doing that."



You see he was worried that if he did that, he'd risk losing his valuable emails (which is BS because they are stored on a remote server that has nothing to do with his tablet) or he'd make things worse than the already were (again BS because if emails aren't coming in at all, how much worse could it get?).

I explained all this to him and he got more upset, started back in on the "Your company sucks" stuff and even added "and you can't even fix a damned email problem."

Well actually sir, we CAN fix it, but your dumb ass won't go for the solution. (Oh, how I wish I could have actually said THAT!)

I finally convince him there is no other way to fix the problem. He proceeds to cuss me out and hang up.

Seriously? Why the hell bother calling us if you aren't going to listen to what we say?

[Beowulf]

Most times, I think, these folks just want confirmation of the 'utter horribleness' of you company and tons of freebies. Because, y'know, you couldn't fix my problem without me expending any sort of effort. Isn't it supposed to be like magic anyway?
Peh.

[BPFH]

Isn't it supposed to be like magic anyway?

But of course.

Clarke's Third Law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

[Sheldonrs]

Odds are he'll do what you said but tell everyone HE figured it out all by himself.

[mathnerd]

I did recently tell a red checkmark rep that I would not accept their solution, but that was because the proposed solution was less than what I'd been promised two days prior and that promise was documented. I said they needed to honor at least one of the orevious promises, and I didn't care which one.

[panamared]

Have you considered resolving the call with "well that's the only way to fix it. Please call us back when you decide the time is right and you're willing to give it a try. Have a nice day." *Click*

[EricKei]

your customer is terrible

On that, we agree 110%, Sir!

[MoonCat]

He wanted you to "push the button at your end to fix it."

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

On that, we agree 110%, Sir!

Yep, pretty good freudian slip there, huh?

[Gilhelmi]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I know I read that somewhere but I can not recall where.

Extra cookies for knowing where it came from.

But ya, computers are like magic to me. I try and visualize and think about the electrons moving and realize that these things are crazy in their abilities. And how did we develop this level of technology in only 70 short years? (250 if you count the steam age, still a drop in the bucket of time)

[dbuzman]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Arthur C Clarke said this.

[Jay 2K Winger]

I occasionally get lusers like this at the ITSD. Part of my process involves shutting something down (be it the application or the computer itself), and they balk at that, refusing to do it because "I don't wanna lose my work" or whatever excuse they want to use.

I always have to explain to them that we MUST try the solution I'm suggesting first, because if I send it on to the tier 2 folks without doing so, they WILL send it back to me and ask the luser to try the solution anyway. Tier 2 and above will NOT work a ticket where these minimum solutions aren't already ruled out.

I get where the lusers are coming from. It's seen as an inconvenience to have to go through these steps (one time a luser told me it takes his system upwards of 30 minutes to reboot), but I look at it like this-- what's more inconvenient? Not being able to do your work for the rest of the day, or not being able to do your work for a half hour?

[Ironclad Alibi]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

I know I read that somewhere but I can not recall where.

Extra cookies for knowing where it came from.

It is the third of Arthur C. Clarke's three laws.

[dalesys]

Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

And neither can be distinguished from a rigged demonstration.

[earl colby pottinger]

What I hated

Too often in this situation the user never saved their work as they progressed along.

On more than one occasion I had users who claimed to have not saved anything for the last 3-5 days of work!

That right, they would be doing something like writing a report for school, or updating a spreadsheet for work (these were the days when software did not have auto-save or it was a option you had to turn on because floppies drives were so slow) and they never saved the work every couple of hours or so.

So resetting the machine meant days of work to re-enter all the work that was done. I in-fact saw this problem still more often in business where the person had not saved the work for that day, but they usually did not raise as much of a fuss because they would just end up being paid for the extra work.

But the people who never turned off their machines or saved their work for days on end --- it was always an emergency to get their work back.

Sorry, so sad, it was gone 95% of the time.