I told you it's NOT supported!

[sld72382]

So, on Friday, I get this call, it's the last one of my day.

Preface: we don't support guiding clients through setting up internal hardware over the phone, for obvious reasons. Only external hardware.

SLD: Duh.
SC: Persistent, manipulative asshole.

This guy reloaded windows on a fresh hard drive and still had the old drive with the dead copy of windows. He wanted me to show the him how to copy and paste data from the old drive to the new one. We can't assist with data transfer or retrieval over the phone but I can show him how too copy and paste maybe one file to show him how it's done. I figured he already had the new drive installed but it wasn't even installed in the case. This is where it got, well, sucky....

SC: I need you to guide me through installing this new drive as a master in my computer.

SLD: Sir, unforunately we don't support internal hardware over the phone, that needs to be done onsite or over the phone.

SC: If you are willing to cooperate, it's very important that we get this install right. Now tell me what plug I connect this drive to.

SLD: Sir, as I said before, internal hardware support is not supported here.

SC: Just tell me where it goes, in the middle plug or the top plug!

SLD: I'll give you this as it's a generic answer but any more support needs to be handled onsite or instore. On most IDE drives the master is usually the top plug. Now with that said, if you really want help with this, I can send an agent out or you can bring it to the store.

SC: Well now about the jumpers. A responsible tech will assist me here with making sure I put the jumpers in the right pins.

SLD: As I said before sir, I cannot provide assistance with this over the phone.

SC: Please be willing to cooperate with me here. Once again, the jumpers or either in the proper position or not and if you are responsible, you will help me through this.

SLD: Sir, on all hard drives the jumper positions are different, even on ones from the same company. Besides, as I said before internal hardware setup is not supported over the phone. I can't tell you any different.

SC: I want to speak to your supervisor now!

SLD: I can get my supervisor for you, but he's going to tell you the same thing as me.

SC: I'll just hang up on your ass and when I call back I'll ask for a supervisor then!

*click.*

I checked the notes later the next day, he never called back.

[otakuneko]

And imagine how dumb he'd feel if he'd just looked at the drive for the jumper setting.

Course, I would've stonewalled and become a broken record at the first "We don't support hardware."

"and if you are responsible, you will help me through this. "
Hah, yeah, I hated it when they said things like that. Yeah, if I was responsible, I'd be telling you to get someone physically there to help, not someone on the phone who can't see what you're doing and might miss something.

[Polenicus]

SC: Please be willing to cooperate with me here. Once again, the jumpers or either in the proper position or not and if you are responsible, you will help me through this.

Aaaaaand this is exactly why you, and virtually no other call center, WILL help with internal hardware installation.

Because the instant you DO help them, YOU become responsible, when genius boy manages to plug the brand new hard drive into the video card and fry both in the process. You have no way of knowing what he's doing or looking at... it's hard enough to guide them when they're dealing with a bright, clearly labelled environment like Windows, where the worst they can really do is mess things up badly enough to need a reinstall or restore.

[PepperElf]

yeah but then he'll screw it up and blame you for misguiding him.
and then he'll demand money for the mistake.

actually the best thing for him to do would ahve been to just slap the drive into a cheap case - they now make cases where you just drop the drive in a slot, leaving the drive mostly exposed... open it up as an external drive, and use it like that.

(at least they have the case in japan...)

but hey if he's so brilliant he'll figure that out himself

[earl colby pottinger]

Phone support

We did lots of hardware support over the phone till the day I told a customer to cut one of the TWO very large pads in his 1541 drive to change it's ID number.

Instead he cut 40, yes forty lines because of the SMALL pads around the ICs. It would not have been a problem if he had cut only one pad line. I got the blame and had to do the repair for free.

From then on I refused to help over the phone with any hardware mod that was more complex than changing jumpers. It was bring the unit in and be charged for the change, or open the unit yourself then bring it in and I would point out the changes directly to you.

If you could not figure out how to open the case yourself before bringing it in, then clearly you don't have the needed skills and you got no pointers from me.

If you sent someone else with the unit - likewise.

If the unit was not what you claimed it was (cloned boards for example) - again likewise.

It was amazing the number of people who begged for phone help, but when forced to come to the store still did one of the above wrong.

[sld72382]

Well it turns out he did call back. He said "that guy SLD was rude and refused to help me."

And of course he asked for a supervisor. The supervisor initially stood his ground about not giving setup help for internal hardware over the phone but then when the guy said he was going to the BBB the supervisor....

Yep you guess it....

Folded like a stack of cards, and proceeded to help the guy set up the drives. And in the process made me look like the asshole for following policy.

I am willing to bet money on it that he fries the drives, blames us and the public defense department will give this guy a free onsite appointment.

[wanderingjoe72]

First as far as supes are concerned, there is always somone above them. A simple mention or note about how they are going against policy and possibly exposing the company to lawsuits helps curb that behavior. (really it works)

We get the same thing on software. I will help you with our program, not your firewall, not your antivirus, not any third party program that is supposed to work with our software.

How many times do you get this?
cust: "This program is supposed to work with yours, why won't it?"
me: "well, the settings are correct on our program, you will need to contact the manufacturer for assistance"
cust: " I did and they said to call you"

Quit passing the buck! If you make a POS (and I don't mean point of sale) program, don't try to pass off customers to someone elses support. We will send them right back to you and show them why it is your issue.

Thank you.