here in the midwest we are getting hit with storms, tornados touching down, hail and downpour by the gallon and I'm not exaggerating any of this and yet back to back to back calls: "I cant get online, my cable modem is blinking...yeah my internet is down" No sh** idiot look outside, do you see trees falling and high gust of winds?

This was my favorite "yeah my modem isnt working"
"yes sir we are experiencing serious outages in numerous areas"
"I got to get this project done for my business..."
"sir there is an outage right now, we will have technicians out soon as the
storm is over..."
"...I was just wondering if there's anything you can do right now...like reset my modem or ping it"

what I wanted to say "Yes sir let me summon the Gods of electricity by saying Shazam!! " There are you back on yet?


Sorry I'm just ranting right now at work.

LOL, its a real shame that most people only believe they know how to use a computer

you should have told him that hitting his computer with a heavy object will reset his modem

Tell him to switch to AOL

at leats you know what your doing, i call tech support for some things and i could say my hardrive fellout and the answeris still reinsall windows my favirote is when you call tem to get a password because you can't connect to the net and the send you an email

I'm surprised I came home and my modem was still on and my computer up and fine. My area of town got drenched and pummeled and I was trying to phone my roommate to tell her to turn off my computer and unplug my modem but she wasnt home. Came home and everything is in tact.

As far as tech support...I like helping and educating people but people take it too far: since its 24/7 and free they call you for the most irrelevant things: my taskbar is gone, there's no sound, my monitor is black, its says "this program has performed an illegal operation" I mean all I'm here to do is support their connection, make sure they can send/recieve email
etc not diagnose every nook and cranny of their PC. I do go out of my way to educate them on spyware, adware and popups even though its out of our support realm. People thank me when I give them an Internet Explorer alternative ie Mozilla or MyIE2 and Thunderbird.

jaz

Does your company provide tech support for Linux users?

--------------------------
Steve Stites

No we just do broadband tech support. (connectivity, email, signal diagnostics etc)

For some of what tech support has to put up with take a look at this site

http://rinkworks.com/stupid

My favorite is the one where the guy got the floppy out using a pliers and melted butter

those are funny...I get alot of these

me: "open internet explorer.."
customer " it says the page cannot be displayed"
me: "what web address is it defaulting to"
customer " what?"
me "what does it say in the web address bar"
customer "oh....about blank..."

I get those once a night.

I hate this one " I never had this problem with AOL"

I hate this one too

me "do you have a firewall..."
cust: What
me: do you have a firewall, like Zone Alarm, McAfee, Norton Internet security..etc
customer: no, I dont even know what that is
me: we I can't ping your computers network card to test connectivity
customer: oh, well let me shut down my internet security

DUH!!!!

on the flipside we do get the occassional network admins etc that call in and no more than you do but carry an arrogant attitude (some not all) telling you whats wrong with your network because they can't connect to it etc. "I'm an MCSE, MCP, CCNA ....blah blah blah.."
spare me the acronyms I watch the NBA on NBC so who gives a (fill in the blank) can you tell me why your cable modem is still on and I can ping it but you're saying you can't get out? Looking at the UBR I'm also showing your pulling an IP from our DHCP server....so MSCE your A.S.S back in your chair and figure out your problem ASAP!

sharper: nice link ,,, ill be reading those for the next month (or few days, depending on how bored i am)


jaz: i don't see why anyone would want to brag about how they are "trained" .... most rarely know more then "click here" and "click that"