A day in the life of a cell phone tech. (8-21-2007)

[draggar]

I swear, all the intelligence left our cutsomers *and* my fellow employees. I wonder if the brain fairy stopped by last night? I should have asked them if they got their quarter from the brain fairy (reference anyone?).

Headser cover
A customer comes in demanding that we replace his phone, for free (without the service plan) because the headet port cover won't go down all the way.

No, it wasn't sticking out, it was going in, just stuck out the slightest bit like *many* of them did. Of cource, the customer is shouting 'this piece of $h!t won't work because of this" and so on.

Grow up.

Potpurri of tickets
* Backlight goes out after it's been on for a few seconds.

Yes, people. This is normal. Unless you have it set to "always on" (which it wasn't) it will go out when the time that it is set to passes. Set it to always on if it bothers you, just don't complain to me about battery life.

* Antenna doesn't work

The customer wants for us to just test the antenna an the sales rep wants to know why we can't test just the antenna. No phone, just the antenna.

Um, NEXT??

* Phone does no thave a battery!

Wonderful! Here, Mr. comissioned sales rep, DO YOUR JOB AND SELL ONE. They lost the battery, you SELL them one.

* Phone is missing the SIM card.

Coincidently, this is the same phone as above. Again, SELL THEM A SIM CARD. YOU ARE COMISSIONED!!!

* Phone will not make or receive any calls.

Anyone want to guess? Talonect? Yes, the account was turned off due to non-payment. (Yes, this happens a lot).

While discussing this over email, a friend of mine in Tier II support (second tier, calls are escalated to them).

* Cannot access the web.

No one set web services up on the phone, at all. So, the person who set up the account missed this, the customer service rep who initially took the call missed it and so did the person in Tier I support!!!

* Keyguard locks the keypad

OMG! Imagine that, when the keyguard is on, the keypad won't work! NO SHIT PEOPLE! That's what it is for, and WHAY WAS IT SUBMITTED TO ME????

* No sound when it is mute mode

Do people know what mute means? It means no sound. No noises, this includes anything that makes noise, like RINGERS.

* I don't like the ringer!

Customer wanted for us to return his phone because he didn't like the sound other people heard when they called him. Yes, your phone makes that noise.

* I just bought it off of eBay, what do you mean it is stolen?
* I just bought it at the flea market, what do you mean it's stolen?

Yes, we had not one but TWO of these today!!!
How can people be so naive that they think nothing ever sold is stolen, especially though venues that are so hard to trace as eBay and a flea market?

* Email, email, email

How many times do I need to tell the reps that I CANNOT DO ANYTHING WITH EMAIL??? This requires information that I do not have access to, they need to call tech support!!

* MySpace doesn't work

Most cell phones don't fully support PHP, let alone something as complex as MySpace. If it's that important, get a PDA phone or a laptop.

The same with eBay, Paypal, and your bank (these are also because of site security).

* Customer lost the headset that came with the phone.

Please refer to the statements about batteries and SIM cards, Mr. COMISSIONED sales rep.

[draggar]

I was off yesterday, but today proved to be interesting.

Pay your damn bill!

A phone was left over night. The ticket says "can't make or receive calls". OUt of habit, I check the account status, yep,it's off due to non payment. We see this so often that we don't even test the phones first. In fact, if they can't receive calls, the first thing I do is dial *720 (talk) to reset call forwarding. These two insanely simple tricks eliminate about 75% of the phones with these issues.

Don't lie to us, or the police

Later on, we had a lady march in demanding where her replacement phone was. We see that it was ordered on the 19th, OK, today is the 23rd it should be here, but we don't have a phone with her name on it. No biggie, a lot of times people can't get the name that's on the account right. I look up the account. Huh, no service plan so she paid for a replacement. Oh, wait, no she didn't. Looking at the notes, she refused to pay since it was under "manufacturer's warranty" (one, we're NOT the manufacturer and two, the phone was WAY out of the one year warranty period). She refused to pay but demanded we order her a phone as she marched out (on the 19th).

She demanded to speak to the manager, OK, MOD comes over (very cool lady) and all she gets out of her mouth is "HOw can I help you" and the customer explodes at how f-ing rude she is, how the customer is "suffering" since her phone doesn't work (the issue was something minor, the phone DOES make and receive calls), swearing yelling, insulting and so on. The MOD tells her to either leave or she'll call the police. The lady continues her tirade. The police come in and the lady plays the victim role, starts crying, acting all sweet, and sniffling that we cannot help her because she needs a phone to be in contact with her sick and dying grandmother (complete BS). The police didn't know what to do until several customers told them she was full of it and one of the other techs actually recorded her explosion on her phone (legal in this state in a public place without permission). Heh, everything quickly changed after that.

So, what's do you want me to do?

Our new wireless data services' speed are not conisistent. It depends on traffic, signal strength, and the network. Obviously, the weaker your signal, the slower your speed will be.

A customer comes in, regular jerk, and marches to the tech room. Wants to know why he can't get fast speeds with his aircard. He checked the coverage map, but it says he's in a weak coverage area and the best connection he can get is 20%. He wants to know what I'm going to do about it.

Um, nothing since there's nothing I can do about it?

He's whining and complaining at how is DSL is faster, blah blah blah. So I asked him how long has he had the card? He said about a week. So, I told him that if it wasn't up to his expectations, he could return it to where he got the card and get a refund on the card and unused service. He was taken back.

What did he expect me to say? Here, let me go out to your local tower and boost it up, just for you. Don't people realize that if it was that simple, it would already be boosted up?

Learn what 3-5 business days mean!

Our replacement orders take 3-5 business days. If we order a phone on Monday, it will be here between Thurs and the next Tuesday. 99% of the times it's 3 business days. Why is it people think if a phone is ordered on a Saturday, 3 business days later is Monday, and they're there right at opening! First, you don't count the day it was ordered, nor do you count Sat, Sun and holidays. Plus, WE HAVE NO CONTROL OVER WHEN UPS WILL DELIVER IT.

Only 5 days left in this tech room! Only 5 days left in this tech room...

[BookstoreEscapee]

I should have asked them if they got their quarter from the brain fairy (reference anyone?).

are you sure they're even worth a quarter? I think some of them should get