I need some new pants, and because of the global health crisis, I want to buy them online instead of going to the shop I normally use. I’m a big guy, and the large brands don’t carry stuff in my size, so I Google around a bit. Finally, I find an online store that seems to be part of a regular shop several 100 km away that specializes in big sizes.

I find three pairs of pants quickly, but at the checkout, it becomes a bit difficult. They don’t accept Paypal. My options are an advance money transfer (which means almost no way to get my money back if the store stiffs me), a German thing called Nachnahme where you pay the delivery driver (which costs extra and is a huge hassle if you’re not at home or the driver doesn’t have change), or an invoice where you do a money transfer after your stuff arrives. I opt for the invoice.

One week later, no pants.

Almost two weeks later, I email them, and I get no response, so finally, I call them. The lady asks for my order details and looks up my order.

Employee: “Ah, yes. Didn’t you get our letter?” 

I check my inbox again. No email from them. I tell her that.

Employee: “No, not your email. We sent you a real letter — by post. Didn’t you get that? Did you give us the wrong address? You should have recognized it; it has our logo on the envelope and everything!”

Me: “I might have gotten the letter and thrown it out unopened because I mistook it for advertising. Why you didn’t just send an email?”

Employee: “Email is so complicated to use; we don’t do that here. Anyway, what we told you is that, as you’re a new customer, we won’t accept the invoice option.”

I politely told her to cancel my order. And I was tempted to tell her that, next time, she should just carve the response in a clay tablet and send that per Pony Express. But I guess she wouldn’t have understood the joke.

I am helping an elderly woman pick out a desktop PC.

Customer: “What kind of processor does it have?”

Me: *Seriously aging this story* “It has an Intel Core 2 Duo.”

Customer: “I’ve never heard of that. I’m used to computers with Microsoft Word as the processor.”

Me: “Microsoft Word is a word processor and is not the same thing as the processor that runs a computer.”

Customer: *Pauses* “I’d like to speak to another associate who knows more about computers.“

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

I work for a company that sold devices that attached to photocopiers for the purposes of client billing. Most of our clients were attorneys. I got a call one day from a FURIOUS attorney.

Attorney: “You people sold me this piece of s*** and it doesn’t work!”

He ranted on for a few minutes about how important he was and how we sold him defective equipment, and he was an attorney and would sue our company, yadda, yadda, yadda. I literally had to hold the phone away from my ear because he was yelling so loudly.

After his rant subsided, I asked him very politely to bear with me, as I was going to ask him some seemingly stupid questions.

Me: “Is it plugged in?”

Attorney: “Yes.”

Me: “Is it plugged into a power strip?”

Attorney: “Yes.”

Me: “Is the power strip plugged in?”

After about five seconds of silence, I heard in the background:

Attorney: “Who unplugged this thing?!” *Click*

Related:
The Wrong Outlet For Your Problems, Part 3
The Wrong Outlet For Your Problems, Part 2
The Wrong Outlet For Your Problems

I am fixing an issue with a client’s laptop.

Me: “Okay, so once I apply the fix, it’ll wipe all the data. Do you have it backed up?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “Are you sure? There’s no going back after I press this button.”

Client: “Yes, it’s all backed up in the clouds.”

The client says “clouds”, not “cloud”, which should make me question harder. I apply the fix.

Client: “Thanks! Now, where is my data?”

Me: “You’ll need to retrieve that from your cloud storage.”

Client: “What do you mean?”

Me: “You said your data was backed up in the cloud.”

Client: “Yes, so get it back for me.”

Me: “You need to do that. I don’t have access to your cloud data.”

Client: “But I don’t know how to do that, either.”

Me: “Just go to the cloud storage site and log in with your details.”

Client: “I can’t remember my login details.”

Me: “Do you have them written down somewhere?”

Client: “On my laptop!”

Me: “On the laptop we just wiped?”

Client: “Yes.”

Me: “…”

Client: “Will that be a problem?”

Related:
Head Up In The Clouds

The more you read this story, the worse it gets. But things can get so much worse with these 10 Stories About The Stupidest Tech Support Calls Ever!