What is your most asked question as a Tech?

[volatile]

The one question that is always, almost without fail, is asked is:

"Why did it break?"

Then of course after I explain them that it is like any other device or appliance and is subject to breaking they always follow up with the remark:

"I just bought this ___ days/months/years ago. Why did it break already?"

No matter how many times I hear that question it always grates me. Obviously if computers never broke there would be no need for a repair center. Grr.

[Chanlin]

"Why do they make this so difficult?"

And my personal favorite.

After offering a perfectly (or several perfectly) viable solutions that the SC thinks are too much of a pain in the ass to deal with....

"So I guess I'm screwed then huh?"

I usually like to follow up with.... "Only if you completely ignore everything I just said, sure."

[volatile]

"Why do they make this so difficult?"

And my personal favorite.

After offering a perfectly (or several perfectly) viable solutions that the SC thinks are too much of a pain in the ass to deal with....

"So I guess I'm screwed then huh?"

I usually like to follow up with.... "Only if you completely ignore everything I just said, sure."

hahaha that reminds me. my favorite comment is:

"Why don't you tell "So and So" company to do something."

This is in reference to where customers think that we have some kind of inside connection or influence over some giant company like Sony and we can tell them what to do. Sony has that automatic update program like HP does and, well, for this one customer one of the updates kept disabling her wireless nic and corrupted her winsock information. We told her to turn off the automatic updates and wait until a fix is released. She then went on to tell us that we were scammers for "knowingly" selling products that were designed not to work and that we should pull the product or tell sony to stop releasing updates. Of course, hers was the only computer that ran into this problem but she seems to think that she was so important that Sony would have to do what she wanted them to do. I guess some customers assume we have a hand in producing the products we sell.

[FinderW]

The one I head the most is....

"I guess I should have backed up the hard drive huh?"

Followed by ....

"You can recover everything right?"

This is of course when the hard drive is making that oh to familiar clunking nose.

Finder

[MadMike]

When I suggest that the problem may be spyware, this is the most dreaded question:

"What's spyware?"

If someone doesn't know what spyware is, chance are they have a ton of it, and you're going to be in for a long night.

[protege]

At the bank, my favorite thing was always... "but I don't want to save my stuff on the server...I don't want anyone looking at it." Soooo you *don't* want to have it automatically backed up on a regular basis? Let me get back to you when the drive in your POS terminal fails. How about I call your boss and we have a conference call

"But I'm using Windows! Why can't I find software?" Uh, that's maybe because you're running 3.1 or 3.11 on a 3.86

"But that's too expensive" Why can't you just [patch it up]?" I can do that, but don't come back to me when that part fails again, and you have to either buy another one, or replace the unit, you cheap bastard.

[greensinestro]

My two favorites when helping a customer on internet issues:

"Why do you need to verify my information? It's my account." In turn, you want to say, "That's what you say, sir, but how do I know you're not pretending to be the account holder?

"I can't describe the problem. Can't you see it right there in front of you?" No, I do not have personal remote access to your computer, and therefore, just telling me "it doesn't work" without better information is not going to solve this problem.

[Aressel]

I guess I'm still a bit naive at times (Expecting to get an intelligent answer out of people that is). Less so recently.

Customer: My Computer is broken.
Me: What's wrong with it?
Customer: It doesn't work. (or something to that effect.)

Here I expect a reasonable answer, such as "It won't turn on," or "I can't connect to the internet," but way too often, no such luck. So, my standard question has had to become "What is it doing or not doing?"

Would anybody go to a mechanic and have a conversation like that, or a doctor? Unfortunately, I would expect that its all too common.

[greensinestro]

I

Customer: My Computer is broken.
Me: What's wrong with it?
Customer: It doesn't work. (or something to that effect.)

Here I expect a reasonable answer, such as "It won't turn on," or "I can't connect to the internet," but way too often, no such luck. So, my standard question has had to become "What is it doing or not doing?"

You know what? I'm kicking myself for not thinking to that one. I get that every day, "It doesn't work", and it's like pulling teeth to get the customer to describe what happens when they attempt to log on.

[volatile]

Actually I guess the most asked question for ALL techs would be:

Technician: *Insert something even remotely technical* (i.e. "You need to reinstall your video card drivers."

Customer: "What?"

[Aressel]

Another one just called in. (We had a power outage last night, so many computers damaged) This one described the problem at least

I suggest that it may be a motherboard/processor issue, but that we would have to do diagnostics to be sure. (Could just as easily be p/s or ram), and she asks me how much those parts would cost to replace.

Me: Depending on what you have, whether we can get the parts, etc. The price will be different.
Customer: Well, can you give me a price anyways?
Me: (Gives her a very general ballpark)

5 minutes later, she calls back and asks my boss the same question.

[Mr. Rude]

SC: Do you carry power supplies for laptops? I have a Dell

Me: *sigh*

[Racket_Man]

when I was doing tech support for IBM AS/400's years ago

I want to make my computer go faster. I know there is some system value(s) that you can change to make it go faster.

this statement came mostly from the catageory of user/sysadmin who THOUGHT they knew a lot more then they did. and they had read an article or two in some AS/400 magazine that hinted about get more out of your machine

my standard reply was: no there is no system value you can change to make your machine "go faster". there are however a few things you can look at to make sure your system is running smoothly but frankly speaking if you want a faster machine you will have to go to IBM and upgrade your processor options or you can completely upgrade your machine to the next configuration level

after having said that they would STILL insist there was a way to make their machine ":go faster"

having said that there was a company in the UK (I believe) that was selling a product that would bypass some of IBM's built in software speedlimits thus making the machine "go faster" but you still had to pay a good amount of money for this program. not long after thisw company introduced this product IBM brought out the big guns and shut them down for prying into IBM trade secrets

[Naaman]

"I just bought this ___ days/months/years ago. Why did it break already?"

Had a variant when I was working at the Game shop.

"My computer won't run <spankingly new game that hardware review site is using to stress test Uber system builds> and it's brand new!."

and the ever popular

" I shouldn't need to update my drivers, the computer's only 3 months old"

*sigh*

[JustADude]

"My computer won't run <spankingly new game that hardware review site is using to stress test Uber system builds> and it's brand new!."

My reply to that: "I don't doubt that, sir, but let me ask you something. Would you expect a Volkswagen Beetle to be able to haul a job-lot of I-beams just because it's brand new? No, of course not, you'd use a hemi-powered pickup, if not a flatbed."