Me: “Thank you for calling [Tech Support]. How may I help you?”

Customer: “My landline phone is not working. It’s got no dial tone.”

Me: “Oh, I know what you mean; it can be a hassle.”

(We go through troubleshooting.)

Me: “Is one end of your phone cord plugged to the phone port?”

Customer: “Yes, it is.”

Me: “Is the other end plugged to the modem?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Well, that’s why you have no dial tone; let’s insert that end to the back of the modem just like we did with the phone.” *after several minutes of trying to walk the customer through*

Customer: “I don’t know how to do it; send someone over!”

(I send a lot of password resets by email. I highlight the password in bold, to make it distinct in the message. I get this response on a regular basis:)

Email: “How do I enter a password with those dark letters?”

(I work for a call center that does tech support for the devices the company makes and I help with the printer calls. Sometimes customers wish to register their products.)

Me: “Thanks for calling [Company]. This is [My Name] speaking; how may I help you?”

Customer: “Yes, I’m trying to register my printer and I’m having trouble. I type in my username and password and it says it’s invalid.”

Me: “Have you ever registered a [Company] product before?”

Customer: “No, this is my first time… I just bought this. I want to know why it says my information is invalid. It doesn’t even recognize my email when I try to recover my password.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but you would have had to register a product with us before for that to work. You want to click on the left there, where it mentions new registrations or says, ‘register now.’”

Customer: “I don’t have time for that. I just want your stupid page to accept my username and password. Can’t you help me do that?”

Me: “You can’t recover something that doesn’t exist.”

Customer: “You just don’t want to help me; get me in touch with someone who wants to do their job.”

Me: “No one here can help you with that. You need to create a new account if you wish to register your product since one did not exist before.”

Customer: “I’m through with you not helping me. I’m going to call back and get someone who knows their job.”

Me: “You can certainly do that. Is there anything else I can do to help you?”

Customer: “No.”

Me: “Then thanks for choosing [Company]; have a good day.”

(I’m a network administrator for a medium-sized company, and we use Microsoft Outlook for our corporate email. One day, I get a call from one of our employees:)

Caller: “My email isn’t working! I can’t send or receive anything!”

Me: “Okay, let me check a few things.”

(I check the network account for the user, and also the email server. Everything looks okay. I send a test message to trace and it appears to go through.)

Me: “Did you get the message I sent?”

Caller: “Yes, I got that, but I still can’t get into my email.”

Me: *very confused* “Are you getting any kind of error message?”

Caller: “Yes! I entered my phone number and it says my account isn’t found!”

Me: *light bulb going on* “Okay, you’re trying to get into your Gmail account. I can’t help with that.”

Related:
Email Fail, Part 23
Email Fail, Part 22
Email Fail, Part 21

(I have interesting problems with my phones. For example, I once had one that would only call out, but couldn’t answer calls. I had one that wiped all my cloud and wouldn’t allow me to add anything back. Most recently I had a phone that wouldn’t play any audio. With all of them, I usually spend about two hours on tech support to get them to understand the problem and then they have to send me out a different device. Basically, I think I have a note in my account that “customer has problems we’ve never heard of.” Last night, my phone randomly stopped playing the audiobook. I look over it and try a soft reset, a soft power off, and then a delete and reupload for the app. Nothing’s working, so I decide it must just be the app and decide that I’ll just listen to music. That also isn’t working, so I call tech support, which then directs me to the online support because it’s after hours, so all of this conversation is typed out.)

Me: “My audio isn’t working on any of the apps on my phone. I have tried a soft reset and a soft power off.”

Tech Support: “Okay. Could you try holding the power button and the Apple button to get this to power off?”

Me: “I’ve already done that and since I’m on the phone with you, on the device, which isn’t working, I don’t think that would be a great idea.”

Tech Support: “Oh, you’ve already tried that?”

Me: “Yes.”

Tech Support: “Have you checked to make sure that the vibrate button is not locked? Sometimes that happens.”

Me: “I’ve checked that. This has happened before to a different phone and I know there was a way they remotely got in and fixed it.”

Tech Support: “Could you check to see if the volume is down really low on your settings?”

Me: “My volume is the same on all my apps. It is at a very high level. It is not coming through.”

Tech Support: “Have you tried putting it in a bowl of rice?”

Me: “How would that help?”

Tech Support: “Well, if you got the phone wet it would hurt the speakers.”

Me: “I didn’t get the phone wet; it just randomly stopped doing the audio.”

Tech Support: “So, you haven’t tried the bowl of rice?”

Me: *realizing this guy has no clue what I’m talking about* “Yeah, just tried it. Didn’t work. Can you remote in and fix it?”

Tech Support: “I need you to go to settings and make sure everything is clicked to volume and not to vibrate because that confuses the settings, as well.”

Me: *extremely frustrated at this point* “NOTHING IS ON VIBRATE! MY AUDIO STOPPED WORKING!”

Tech Support: “The audio isn’t working?”

Me: “No. It. Is. Not. Working.”

Tech Support: “You might have to go to the actual store and have them fix it.”

Me: “Yeah, okay, whatever.”

Tech Support: “So glad we fixed it! have a great night.”

(Thankfully, I called in the morning and they were able to remote access and fix it within ten minutes. That was quite possibly the most frustrating tech support that I ever had to endure!)