Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 6

I work in tech support.

Me: “I want you to open whatever Internet browser you normally use; for example, Firefox, Chrome… whatever it is you use to get online.”

Caller: “I just use my email. Should I open up Hotmail?”

I next make the mistake of explaining that the Internet browser is what they use to get to Hotmail and they should open that. After about five minutes, I finally have them inside of an unknown browser, looking at the Hotmail site, presumably.

Me: “Okay, now, at the top of your page you should have two bars. One is your address bar — which probably has ‘www dot hotmail dot com’ in it — and the other one is a search bar. I want you to delete everything in the bar that says ‘www dot hotmail dot com’, type in ‘[web address]’, and then hit ‘enter’.”

Caller: “Okay, I did it.”

Me: “Awesome. Now, on this page, you should see—”

Caller: “No, I see [lists off a page of BING search results].”

Me: “All right, it sounds like you did a search instead of going to the webpage. What do you see at the top of your page?”

They list off the search results again.

Me: “No, above that.”

They list off about five million different toolbars.

Me: “Okay… and above that?”

They finally see the address bar.

Me: “All righty. In that bar, I want you to type in ‘[web address]’.”

Caller: “Should I delete what’s already in there?”

Me: “…yes. Delete that, and let me know when you’ve done that. Okay? Now type in this…”

Caller: “It just brought me back to the same page! Are you sure that’s right? I don’t think that we need to do that anyway.”

Me: “Yes, I’m sure. Okay, let’s do this. Go back to your email. I’m going to just send you an email with the link inside.”

Caller: “Well, how do I get back there?!”

Related:
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 5
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 4
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 3
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet, Part 2
Sooo Not Ready For The Internet