A customer has brought in a laptop with obvious water damage.
Me: “Sorry, sir, our protection plan doesn’t cover accidental damage. It looks like this laptop was submerged in water.”
Customer: “It wasn’t accidental damage. I knew I bought the protection plan, so I threw it in a lake because I knew you guys would have to replace it.”
I work for an Internet service provider. A job shows up on my laptop in the morning, and it turns out a tech has been to the customer’s home before but wasn’t able to resolve the issue because the owner wasn’t home. I arrive at the customer’s home and she is there. After I introduce myself:
Me: “I just need to take a measurement at the side of the home to verify that the problem is in the house.”
I am basically double-checking that the other tech did his job correctly.
She flips her s***!
Customer: “No! The problem is in the house!”
Me: “Well, it will only take me a few seconds to verify.”
Customer: “Either you come inside immediately or I’m going to call your manager and give you s***!”
Me: “Okay, the problem is in the house. Have you unplugged all your phones?”
There was a short circuit, and it’s usually a phone or modem plugged in causing this.
Customer: “Of course, I did!”
She is rolling her eyes as if I’m an idiot.
Me: “Do you have a modem, and is it unplugged?”
Customer: *Kind of taken aback for a second* “I didn’t unplug my modem.”
Me: “Unplug it, please?”
I watch on my multimeter as the short circuit disappears. I tell her that was the problem. Still not believing me, she says:
Customer: “Hold on a minute. I’m going to verify with my phone.”
Sure enough, it’s working.
Customer: “Huh, you don’t know how lucky you are, because I was just going to yell at you.”
I smugly told her to have a nice day, went outside to my van, and charged her for every single thing I could possibly find related to the service call. I hope she enjoyed her bill.
I am taking a technical call, and I ask the caller to unplug their plug from the outlet.
Customer: “It’s screwed in! I can’t unplug it.”
Me: “Do you have a screwdriver?”
Customer: “No.”
Me: “Do you have a butter knife you can use?”
Customer: “Look. I’m not fancy like that. We don’t have a knife exclusively for butter!”
I’m helping a customer with their laptop at the big-box consumer electronics giant I work for. We have it plugged in behind the counter while we work on it. When they come to the front counter to check on our progress, I unplug it, bring it to the front counter, and start to explain what we have been doing. Their jaw hits the floor.
Customer: “It’s still running!“
Me: “Yes.”
Customer: “But it’s not plugged in!”
Me: “Laptops have a battery in them that, in this case, can run for about two hours.”
Customer: “I’ve owned this thing for a year and had no idea. That is amazing!”
Related:
Laptop Flop, Part 34
Laptop Flop, Part 33
Laptop Flop, Part 32
Laptop Flop, Part 31
Laptop Flop, Part 30
Way back in the day, I was in charge of checking out electronics returns when they came into our big box store. A customer came in to return a broken modem — a 28.8k. I told you it was back in the day!
At the time (I have no idea if this is still the case) we had to write down what the customer said was wrong, and as long as there was no obvious damage, we refunded their money.
The customer returning the modem said, with a deadpan look on his face:
Customer: “My son said this one doesn’t work because the dilithium crystals are missing.”
He pointed to a part of the modem where it looked as if one of the capacitors had broken off.
Me: *Stifling a giggle* “Can you repeat that for me, sir?”
He repeated himself with absolute conviction.
Whether he believed it or not, I let that one slide and gave him his money back. It’s one of my favorite stupid tech stories!
