Some phrases that make me clam up and REALLY stick to my guns.

[sld72382]

Now being the nice guy I am I generally like to help customers out and will bend the rules within reason as long as I know it makes them keep coming back as a customer.

However, there are some phrases SCs will blurt out that will make all of that go right out the window and make me stick to policy even more than before. Or, will make force my way ahead with my diagnosis…

Some examples:

1. My IT guy said it's this so you MUST look at that first!

In my years of field tech work and tech support, I have found that half of IT guys got their jobs not because they know what they're doing, but because a). They're friends with the owner, b). They got what they know out a cram session book or b). They know what buzzwords to spout.

When a customer spouts this, I simply will insist on doing my diagnosis and many times I will prove the IT guy foolish. Recently a customer’s CD drives went missing from My Computer. The IT guy at his job said “I can’t figure this out, it’s best to format.” All I did was delete the upperfilters and lowerfilters from the registry, reboot and his drives were back.

2. I don’t know anything about computers but…. I KNOW what the problem is!

No, you don’t. It’s like someone who doesn’t know anything about cars taking his car to a mechanic and demand him look at the transmission when it turns out to be a problem with a dirty air filter.

I had a customer whose Internet Explorer took 1-2 minutes to open. She insisted it had to be a virus, even though there were no obvious signs of an infection. When I opened up IE, there were 5 toolbars installed including MyWebSearch (a known adware but not a virus). Not to mention she had a ton of items running in the task tray. I let her know those needed to go. She said “I know that’s not it, I demand you run a virus scan!” I let her know I cannot proceed until those items are removed/disabled. So I remove all the toolbars from add/remove, clear startup in MSCONFIG and reboot. Suddenly, IE ran like a champ (and so was the rest of her computer). I did run a quick scan with Malwarebytes (back when we were allowed to use it) and nothing turned up.

3. Let’s pretend I’m at home.

A long time ago, we were told to take the customers’ word for it if they said they already performed the needed troubleshooting steps and had the serial number. Even if they were not at home in front of the unit.

However, we started getting burned over and over again by SC’s who felt they were too good to do over the phone troubleshooting. These people would give us bogus serial numbers just so we could send a tech out with parts to fix the machine. When the techs arrived, they found the issue that the client was having could be fixed by doing 10-30 minutes of over the phone troubleshooting. Since then, the customer has to be at home in front of the unit. No exceptions unless they have a service order from the store.

I had a client recently who said his computer wouldn’t turn on. His first mistake was saying his IT guy looked at it. Then he announced he wasn’t at home. He did NOT have a store service order.

Me: Sorry sir, I’m going to request you call us back when you’re at home so you can read off the serial number that’s on the unit.

SC: Look, just send a tech out, OK?

Me: Due to policy, I cannot send a tech out until we do some troubleshooting and verify the serial number.

SC: Well then let’s pretend I’m at home.

Me: Sorry sir, I honestly cannot send a tech out without you being in front of the unit unless you have a service order from the store stating what’s wrong.

SC: Again, then let’s pretend I’m at home and that I have a service order, OK?

Me: Again I cannot. Let me give your case number so you can call us back when you’re at home.

SC: I’m going to call back, and complain on you.

He complained, but it got nowhere because a sup told him I was only following policy.

[Fox One]

No, you don’t. It’s like someone who doesn’t know anything about cars taking his car to a mechanic and demand him look at the transmission when it turns out to be a problem with a dirty air filter.

Not to take the wind out of your sails, but as someone who's ASE-certified, that's a mechanic's wet dream right there. "Wait...you want me to turn a $30 filter replacement into a $2500 tranny job? Um...okay!"

[lordlundar]

Not to take the wind out of your sails, but as someone who's ASE-certified, that's a mechanic's wet dream right there. "Wait...you want me to turn a $30 filter replacement into a $2500 tranny job? Um...okay!"

This is true, but for techs:

1) We get paid the same, so being right is very important to us, and
2) We actually have enough pride in our work to want it to work right.

[draggar]

Not to take the wind out of your sails, but as someone who's ASE-certified, that's a mechanic's wet dream right there. "Wait...you want me to turn a $30 filter replacement into a $2500 tranny job? Um...okay!"

...and how many ASE certified people go to mechanics? Or better yet, what percentage of your average mechanic's clientele is ASE certified.

But - at least some techs can tell the difference between someone who thinks they know about computers and someone who really does know about computers.

There's a big difference between:

"The CPU (which became the most over-used acronym after Terminator 2) isn't interfacing with the video card bus well enough so that Windows isn't displaying anything correctly"

and

"I reinstalled Windows and I need help reinstalling the video drivers".

True, #2 may not know a lot about computers but they know what's wrong.

[Slytovhand]

"Screen go black..."

(actually, it was doing that to me the other day wouldn't load XP (which, TBH, is probably a good thing ), but I could get it to run in safe mode (barely)... I'm assuming it's cos it was loaded onto F:.... (doesn't matter - deleted partitions and started from scratch anyway...).

I sort of loathe those #3's!!!! My weekend CW had that the other night... some customer wanted him to breach the privacy laws "just for him"... yeah - right!!! And why am I doing this favour for you - at the risk of my job and a $25000 fine?

Tell me - if you're getting paid by the hour (rather than by the job) why not do what the customer thinks first? Then, after you've wasted a few hundred of their dollars, then do the 5 minute job you know it really needs?? (or, at the very least, ask them "Well, if you know what the problem is, why don't you fix it then? What??? You don't know fuck about computers?? Oh - then STFU and let me do my job")

[sld72382]

Tell me - if you're getting paid by the hour (rather than by the job) why not do what the customer thinks first? Then, after you've wasted a few hundred of their dollars, then do the 5 minute job you know it really needs?? (or, at the very least, ask them "Well, if you know what the problem is, why don't you fix it then? What??? You don't know fuck about computers?? Oh - then STFU and let me do my job")

The customer pays a flat rate or it's included in their computer service contract if they buy a "premium" version.

As we work hourly and have a handle time our floor manager gets on our ass about, it's best to do go with what I feel is the actual solution, not the client's fantasy fix.

[lordlundar]

Tell me - if you're getting paid by the hour (rather than by the job) why not do what the customer thinks first? Then, after you've wasted a few hundred of their dollars, then do the 5 minute job you know it really needs?? (or, at the very least, ask them "Well, if you know what the problem is, why don't you fix it then? What??? You don't know fuck about computers?? Oh - then STFU and let me do my job")

Reason 1:

We actually have enough pride in our work to want it to work right.

Reason 2:

Here's the scenario. You have a computer in front of you and more machines coming in at about the rate of 1 per hour. You can do a quick fix and move on, thus keeping on top of things and everyone being happy. The other choice is you do their recommendation, FUBAR the machine, spend 2 days fixing the mess, then get so far behind it's a miracle to catch up while you are getting yelled at from the moron, the other customers waiting in line, and your boss, who has threatened to fire you for incompetence. What would you do?

Reason 3 Specifically to the response to the customer:

That's called the quick and easy way to get fired. Most tech centers are dependent on A+ certification from their techs, and they know a large part of it is how they deal with customers.

Reason 4:

We want this moron GONE and to never return if we can help it. We do his solution and he's back complaining and gets a free repair. We do it right and he'll declare he'll never return because he was ignored and the problem is resolved.

[sld72382]

Here's the scenario. You have a computer in front of you and more machines coming in at about the rate of 1 per hour. You can do a quick fix and move on, thus keeping on top of things and everyone being happy. The other choice is you do their recommendation, FUBAR the machine, spend 2 days fixing the mess, then get so far behind it's a miracle to catch up while you are getting yelled at from the moron, the other customers waiting in line, and your boss, who has threatened to fire you for incompetence. What would you do?

That's the reason why I go with my gut feeling rather than listen to a customer. You said it right there.

[CorDarei]

As an "IT guy",

When I troubleshoot something for a client remotely, I work with what I have. If the customer isn't being honest with me, then me telling him that such-and-such is the cause and him taking that explanation to someone who can service the device under warranty, the fault doesn't fall at my feet, but the customers.

As we all know, SCs like to elaborate things...

/and as far as I know, I don't think I've been wrong in any info I've told the client to pass on to whatever support rep they need to talk to, whether it be their computer vendor, printer vendor, or whomever. (at least... a client never told me I was wrong :P)

*edited to add*

I have found that half of IT guys got their jobs not because they know what they're doing, but because a). They're friends with the owner, b). They got what they know out a cram session book or c). They know what buzzwords to spout.

And I think most of the other people who work in IT on this forum didn't get their job because "they're friends with the owner" or b or c

[technical.angel]

And I think most of the other people who work in IT on this forum didn't get their job because "they're friends with the owner" or b or c

Totally agreed.

[Fire_on_High]

When a customer spouts this, I simply will insist on doing my diagnosis and many times I will prove the IT guy foolish. Recently a customer’s CD drives went missing from My Computer. The IT guy at his job said “I can’t figure this out, it’s best to format.” All I did was delete the upperfilters and lowerfilters from the registry, reboot and his drives were back.

Have you ever had that particular thing go to shit before? I found out about it a while back as a way to get Ghost to make bootable hard drive to hard drive copies to work on 2k.

I've had to do it 3 times. Twice worked flawlessly, once resulted in a bootable OS that froze trying to get to My Computer and didn't seem to have mapped anything but C: and in general, was simply so flaky I had to start again. Ganking the registry entries again didn't make it normal.

Right now I'm at a place where I have everything set up and ready to go for making a permanent ghetto recovery partition, but I'm scared spitless to take out the entries on my live install to make the backup, in case that happens again. I wasn't sure if it was a bad clone to begin with, a fluke, or what.

This hard drive is in good shape, not so much the source on the failed try, fwiw. What are my chances of problems if I just go ahead and wipe the entries to make the copy already?

(As for why...if you just do hard drive to hard drive copy with Ghost, it still treats the partitions as if they have their original letters, and if C: is corrupted or virus infected, then 2k won't boot at all, as it can't find anything it needs like the pagefile. By wiping the registry entries, when you boot the cloned install it'll quite happily decide it's C: after all and then you can just set the rest up under Admin Tools.)

[sld72382]

And I think most of the other people who work in IT on this forum didn't get their job because "they're friends with the owner" or b or c

Notice I said "half," there are some pretty damn good IT guys out there, it's just that many of the stories client's tell me are pretty damn crazy.

Now some real crappy IT is actually my call center's IT guys. They upgraded the computers to XP SP3 but kept IE 6, one time they locked us out of using task manager (which led to lots of complaints and they relented), and one time they re-imaged the PCs using an image from a malfunctioning computer resulting in one of the programs constantly crashing. This is another topic for another day, but I will say their crappiness is the result of not getting paid enough to care (they get paid less than many of the phone reps do).

[HawaiianShirts]

1. My IT guy said it's this so you MUST look at that first!

In my years of field tech work and tech support, I have found that half of IT guys got their jobs not because they know what they're doing, but because a). They're friends with the owner, b). They got what they know out a cram session book or b). They know what buzzwords to spout.

Yeah, I met a few customers like that. In my experience, the poor IT guy who made a recommendation is being horribly misquoted by the SC, but most who say they have an "IT guy" really have a friend or relative who knows just a little more about computers than they do.

It's like my grandma. She can use Windows, Word, and web browsers with ease, but she can't change settings without help. I can change settings. In her mind, that makes me a computer genius man. Then I go talk to a real IT guy (or girl, in this case) at work, and she starts talking about the code in one of the programs I use. Talking to her, I feel like a chimp with a calculator.

Then I've met some self-proclaimed "IT professionals" as computer customers that really make me cringe. Like the one who, after claiming to have some kind of computer certification, asked a co-worker, "What's the difference between an HP Intel processor and a Toshiba Intel processor?" Or the web developer who asked me if he could buy a computer without the RAM because he didn't need RAM for writing HTML. There were others, but those are the ones I remember most.

SC: Well then let’s pretend I’m at home.

Me: Sorry sir, I honestly cannot send a tech out without you being in front of the unit unless you have a service order from the store stating what’s wrong.

SC: Again, then let’s pretend I’m at home and that I have a service order, OK?

The response I wish you could have given to this guy: "Okay. I'm pretending you're home. Now I'm pretending that I've fixed your computer. Is there anything else I can pretend to help you with today?"

[protege]

Totally agreed.

Agreed here too. Yep I serve as the "IT Guy" of the office. However, I was originally hired on as an accountant/analyst. One hard drive replacement later...and I found myself responsible for *all* of the equipment. Oops

And no, I don't know everything about computers. Sure, I can fix them, and built or rebuilt several, but I never claimed that I know it all. At least I have job security--if I go, the only other option...is to call our 3rd party tech, who charges about $150 an hour

Edit: Here's something else to think about. Because I serve as "internal" tech support, I have to do whatever my boss tells me. It doesn't matter if I think he's on crack, or if I know that his "solution" won't work. If I don't do it, he can always write me up insubordination, or possibly terminate me. For example, he brought in his computer from home (yes, I know), and told me to fix it. Problem? The screen was "acting up." No other description than that. So, I fired that heap up, everything was normal, etc. I tell him that, he got upset since he was "paying me to fix it." What? No asshole, you're paying me to fix the *office* computers. But no, I couldn't tell him that. Ended up sitting there all afternoon, for the sole purpose of looking for the problem. Hey, he told me to do it

[Ironclad Alibi]

Ended up sitting there all afternoon, for the sole purpose of looking pretending to look for the problem while playing his games and looking through his picture collection. Hey, he told me to do it

I fixed it for you.