Me: “Internet helpdesk, how can I help you?”

Customer: “I can’t connect to the internet.”

Me: “How long has it been since you last connected?”

Customer: “I was connected until a few minutes ago.”

Me: “Have you changed anything in your network?”

Customer: “Well, I was downloading some movies over the net, but the download got too slow. I called a friend of mine and he told me that some movies could’ve gotten stuck in the cable. So I cut the cable to see if I could yank it out of there. I didn’t find anything, so I taped the cable back together. Now, can you get it back to work?”

Me: *grimace*

Customer: ‘What’s a colon?’

Tech Support: ‘It’s the key next to the ‘L’ key on your keyboard.’

Customer: ‘How do you spell ‘L’?’

Source

Customer 1: “… ah, okay. Thanks for your help.”

Me: “That’s what I’m here for.”

Customer 2: “I need help…”

Me: “… and that is how it’s done.”

Customer 2: “That was simple. You made me feel dumb.”

Me: “That’s what I’m here… I mean…” (I didn’t know what to say from there)

Customer: “I want a computer where I can type in Russian and it will print in English.”

Me: “Sir, I’m afraid we don’t have Russian keyboards.”

Customer: “No, that’s fine. I’ll just tape Russian letters on.”

Me: “Sir, it will still be an English keyboard.”

Customer: “Okay, so what if I glue the letters on?”

Me: *thunk thunk thunk* “Still English.”

Tech Support: “All right…now double-click on the File Manager icon.”

Customer: “That’s why I hate this ‘Windows’–because of the icons–I’m a Protestant, and I don’t believe in icons.”

Tech Support: “Well, that’s just an industry term sir. I don’t believe it was meant to-”

Customer: “I don’t care about any ‘industry terms’. I don’t believe in icons.”

Tech Support: “Well…why don’t you click on the ‘little picture’ of a file cabinet…it’s a ‘little picture’, okay?”

Customer: *hangs up*

Tech Support: “So you’re having issues picking up your wireless signal … how many connections are there?”

Customer: “There’s two other networks but only one bar on each … those are my bad neighbors.”

Tech Support: “So the good signal isn’t there? Hmm, your modem might be off; can we check that?”

Customer: “Modem?”

(Tech support troubleshot that for a while before realizing the guy had never paid for internet before and didn’t own a modem.)

Tech Support: “Sir, when you said the other connections were your ‘bad neighbors…’ Did you mean that the good neighbor with the good signal isn’t there?”

Customer: “Oh, he moved?”

Customer: “Hello, is this Tech support?”

Me: “Absolutely, is there an issue I can help you with?”

Customer: “Yeah I want you to take over my computer and tell me what’s wrong with it. It’s all crazy.”

Me: (Thinking about how “all crazy” actually constitutes as a good description of a problem in most cases) “Okay ma’am well I assume you’ve had us remote control your machine again, so go ahead and open the program for me and I’ll try to connect. What’s the IP address?”

Customer: “No, you can’t have my IP.”

Me: “Well it’s impossible to help you without it. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do something to your machine.”

Customer: “No, you don’t understand. My ISP or whatever stopped giving me internet so I need you to do it some other way.”

Me: “Ma’am, without internet I can’t just .. beam into your computer.”

Customer: “Man, those guys control EVERYTHING!!”

*click*

Technician: “Good morning, *** Technical Support.”

Caller: “Is this technical support?”

Technician: “Yes.”

Caller: “Can I have your phone number please?”

Technician: (Confused) “What number did you phone in on?”

Caller: “Can I have your phone number please?”

Technician: (Thoroughly confused) “It’s this number, it’s the number you’ve just dialed.”

Caller: “Thank you. Goodbye.”

Source

The customer needed help adding his music into his iTunes library. I showed him how, and this is what happened:

Customer: “… Uggghhh!”

Me: “What happened?”

Customer: “Well, I’ll be honest. It’s adding my porn.”

Me: *silence* “Oh….”

Customer: “Please make it stop! I don’t want porn on my iPod!”

Me: “Click the little X near the top.”

Customer: “Okay, it stopped.”

Me: “Try adding the My Music folder again.”

Customer: “It’s doing it again! Oh God!”

Me: “Okay, uh… let’s just move it from your My Music folder to a new folder in My Documents.”

Customer: “Okay, I’ll do that.”

(few seconds of silence pass while he moves the files)

Customer: “Oh, man. It’s gonna take 24 minutes for all the files to move.”

Me: “Twenty-four minutes? Are you sure?!”

Customer: “Yes, I’m sure.”

(I show him how to do some other unrelated action while the porn is moved)

Customer: “Alright, great. Now that we’re done concealing my shame….”

Tech Support: “What seems to be the issue?”

Customer: “I dropped my [product] in salt-water.”

Tech Support: “Okay, just so you know, that does mean the warranty has been voided, so we won’t be able to replace it for you.”

Customer: “I figured as much. I was just wondering what I can do to increase the chances of getting it to work again.”

Tech Support: “You could try leaving it to dry on a towel for a few days.”

Customer: “Yeah, I’ll do that; I also ran it under some tap water, to rinse all the salt water out.”