Dumbest helpdesk/support call you've ever gotten? (or answers you've ever given/gotten)

[Skyclad1uhm1]

Dell support on a toasted processor fan (smoke coming from it):
Me: So all I need is you to send a replacement fan, I'll put it in myself.
Dell support: Ok, no problem. Btw, have you tried disconnecting the keyboard or monitor?
Me: *laughter*
DS: Yeah, I thought it was a bit strange too, but it says so on this list...


Broken NIC in a server:
Me: The moment you activate the NIC the system locks up, and the Event Viewer as well as the Dell tools show problems with the device.
DS: Have you tried running the restore CD?


After me sending a mail about a specific virus a user calls:
User: I think I may have that virus you mailed about.
Me: Why do you think so, did you get such a mail then?
User: Yes, but it was from my boyfriend, he can't have a virus, can he?

 

[sadb0i]

Originally posted by: mrlayance
Me: How can I help you
Person: I bought a laptop and just got it 3 days ago, the lable on the box says it was made in China.
Me: Yes
Person: Is it save to open the box? Could I get SARS?
Me: No, (and a a bunch of other stuff)

I really wanted to say, "Don't worry, it comes with Anti-Virus"

Nice.

 

[Javin]

Once, when stationed in Egypt:

Her: I think my computer has a virus.
Me: Why?
Her: When I plugged it in, it made a crackling noise, then a pop, and then smoke came out.
Me: That's not a virus. Did you plug it into your HandyMan?
(Handyman was what we called the converters from the 220v to 110v. All of our PCs were bought in America, shipped over, and configured for 110v. Each cable on the plug had a very large sign on it that said DO NOT PLUG INTO A 220v SLOT!)
Her: Yes, I did.
Me: Which slot did you plug it into?
Her: The one that says "220."
Me: Is there a lable on your plug?
Her: Yes. It says "do not plug into a 220v slot."
Me: But you did...
Her: I didn't think it mattered.
Me: Well, it does.
Her: Will the computer still work if I plug it into the 110 slot?
Me: No. You remember how the smoke came out when you plugged it in?
Her: Yes?
Me: Well, computers run on smoke. When you let the smoke out, they can't run anymore. You'll have to bring it in so we can put more smoke into it.
Her: Okay. Can you replace the smoke by this afternoon?



Another one. Keep in mind "He" is an electrical engineer with two PHDs.

Him: My computer's broken.
Me: What makes you say that?
Him: I was using it this morning, and when I came back this afternoon, the screen was black.
Me: Have you tried moving your mouse?
(slight pause)
Him: Oh.

Same guy, next day...
Him: My computer's broken for real this time.
Me: What makes you say that?
Him: The screen was black when I came in this morning. I tried moving the mouse like before, but nothing happened. So I pressed the power button on the computer and I could hear it starting up, but the monitor is still black.
Me: Did you turn off the monitor when you left yesterday?
(Slight pause, a click is heard, another pause.)
Him: Oh.

 

[OutHouse]

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
well i support field techs, and i had one call in and say he had a DOA drive. Turns out the dip sh!t just pulled a swappable drive out of a RAID 5 array without prepping it. This was at a national bank mind you, so he got fired over the phone.

I dont get it, i replace Raid5 all the time and have never had to prep a drive. What do you need to do to prep it?

 

[Extrarius]

Friend: "I'm getting really bad pings to just about everywhere, and tracert shows the problem is <some router on the opposite side of the country>"
ISP Tech Support: "We're working on it. It should be fixed in a few days"

Friend: "I'm getting really bad pings to just about everywhere, and tracert shows the problem is <some router on the opposite side of the country>"
ISP Tech Support: "Our line tests show your connection is fine"


Friend: "I'm getting really bad pings to just about everywhere, and tracert shows the problem is <some router on the opposite side of the country>"
ISP Tech Support: "We'll send a tech to your house tommorow"

Friend: "Is there any way to get the cap raised?"
ISP Tech Support: "We don't have a cap on our cable. Use this test <url to speed test that uses ~1 kb to verify several Mb speed>"
Of course, a different test on their site that used a large file showed the 2Mb cap perfectly.

 

[Muck]

Me: Well, hopefully there's no core damage and the CPU isn't fried.
Him: Yeah
Me: Ok, lets go ahead and put that fan back on the right way now. Just be careful.....
Him: Ok

Me: You got it??
Him: Almost

(a short pause)

*CRACK*

Me: Whoa

*CRACK*

Him: Dang it....

*CRACK*

*CRACK*

Me: Go ahead call me back when you're done, alright??
Him: Yeah, I just keep slipping.

It was like witnessing a stabbing death over the phone. I ended up voiding the warranty on both parts when I got them back. CPU core was annihalated. And the board *suprise* had several cut traces.

 

[rudder]

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
well i support field techs, and i had one call in and say he had a DOA drive. Turns out the dip sh!t just pulled a swappable drive out of a RAID 5 array without prepping it. This was at a national bank mind you, so he got fired over the phone.

I dont get it, i replace Raid5 all the time and have never had to prep a drive. What do you need to do to prep it?

maybe it wasn't hot swappable.

 

[dquan97]

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
well i support field techs, and i had one call in and say he had a DOA drive. Turns out the dip sh!t just pulled a swappable drive out of a RAID 5 array without prepping it. This was at a national bank mind you, so he got fired over the phone.

I dont get it, i replace Raid5 all the time and have never had to prep a drive. What do you need to do to prep it?

maybe it wasn't hot swappable.

That's a possibility...

 

[dquan97]

Originally posted by: rudder

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski
well i support field techs, and i had one call in and say he had a DOA drive. Turns out the dip sh!t just pulled a swappable drive out of a RAID 5 array without prepping it. This was at a national bank mind you, so he got fired over the phone.

I dont get it, i replace Raid5 all the time and have never had to prep a drive. What do you need to do to prep it?

maybe it wasn't hot swappable.

That's a possibility...

 

[guyver01]

i had a customer send me an email saying:

"I cant remember my password, so i cant read my email. Can you please reply to this with my password?"

the account he was sending from was the account he couldn't receive email for.

 

[Muck]

One of my favs......

Had email correspondence with this guy. Really hammering us. Going on and on about how our Athlon CPU killed his Asus board and how we should have to pay for both. He refused tech support. Finally give him my manager's number. He calls up and he and his wife start really laying into my manager. They're tag teaming him. Really vulgar and such. So the stage was set.

Anyway, we get him to send the parts back for testing, even though the board was purchased elsewhere. CPU and fan are still mounted to the board. Fan's on correctly. So I fire it up and no POST. But now I notice something oozing from the CPU socket and notice a smell. I remove the fan. It's SUPERGLUE. Apparently, this jackass cracked his ceramic Athlon in half somehow and decided that glueing it back together would work just fine.

And I gotta give him credit. He did a damn good job putting it back together. You almost couldn't see the crack. It was flawless .

I can't express the joy and laughter this brought to the room on a Friday afternoon. Of course, the guy angrily denied it all and was enraged that we weren't replacing either part. The board itself was a piece of sh*t and wasn't worth $30. To top it off, the azzwipe slammed us on resellerratings afterwards. :disgust:

 

[Rufio]

AHHHAAAHHAHAHAHAHHA

 

[sadb0i]

This just happened like 2 minutes ago.

Me: Can you DOUBLE LEFT-CLICK Internet Explorer on your desktop?
a few secs go by...
Her: umm...I think I right clicked it.
Me: No maam, please double left click it.
a few more secs go by...
Her: So I single left click it?
Me: DOUBLE LEFT CLICK.
Her: Got it!

Me(to self): kill me God.

 

[Kyteland]

I forget which site I got this from, but it was great!

A support representative friend of mine came up to me one day and said that he thought he had done something wrong. He had been walking a novice Mac user through rebuilding her desktop. She tiresomely questioned every direction the technician made. After half an hour of patiently talking her through what should have been a one minute process, she finally stated, "Oh! Now it says, 'Are you sure you want to rebuild the desktop on the disk XXX?'"
Tech Support: "Ok--"
Customer: "Oh, now there's something like a spinning barber pole on the screen."
Tech Support: "You didn't press 'OK' did you?"
Customer: "Yes. You said 'OK'."
Tech Support: (acting alarmed) "I just said 'Ok,' I didn't mean for you to press 'OK'!"
Customer: (panicking) "What should I do now?"
Tech Support: "Run! Get out of there! Run! Run!"
The next thing he heard was the phone hitting the floor, the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps, and a door slam. After numerous calls over the course of an hour, the customer finally answered the phone. She had waited outside for an hour -- when the computer didn't explode, she went back inside and unplugged it.

 

[sadb0i]

Originally posted by: Kyteland
I forget which site I got this from, but it was great!

A support representative friend of mine came up to me one day and said that he thought he had done something wrong. He had been walking a novice Mac user through rebuilding her desktop. She tiresomely questioned every direction the technician made. After half an hour of patiently talking her through what should have been a one minute process, she finally stated, "Oh! Now it says, 'Are you sure you want to rebuild the desktop on the disk XXX?'"
Tech Support: "Ok--"
Customer: "Oh, now there's something like a spinning barber pole on the screen."
Tech Support: "You didn't press 'OK' did you?"
Customer: "Yes. You said 'OK'."
Tech Support: (acting alarmed) "I just said 'Ok,' I didn't mean for you to press 'OK'!"
Customer: (panicking) "What should I do now?"
Tech Support: "Run! Get out of there! Run! Run!"
The next thing he heard was the phone hitting the floor, the sound of rapidly retreating footsteps, and a door slam. After numerous calls over the course of an hour, the customer finally answered the phone. She had waited outside for an hour -- when the computer didn't explode, she went back inside and unplugged it.

HEHE

 

[MonkeyHwk]

Every semester when the new Freshmen start we always get a deluge of phone calls about them not being able to check their voicemail.

Me: "OK, you're using the last five digits of your phone number as your extension?"
Clueless N00b: "Yes." (9/10 they think the last 4 digits is their extension, which is why it doesn't work)
Me: "And you're just using 8 as your password?"
Clueless N00b: "Yes, but it's still not working."

So, I conference us together with the VM system and let him push the buttons.

Me: "OK, now just enter 8 for your password and push pound. <insert the sound of about 7 button strokes at 1-2 second intervals> What was that?!? You just need to put in 8!"
Clueless N00b: "I did. 34448....that's E-I-G-H-T!"
Me:"...."

And they wonder why they're going to find my lifeless body hanging from my phone cord one of these days....

MonkeyHwk

 

[DaveJ]

We had a user once that called the Helpdesk and complained because her Mac keyboard also had a keypad, and it was too confusing to have TWO places to type numbers in... :disgust:

One of our techs offered to go over with a hacksaw and solve the problem...

Dave

 

[sadb0i]

User called in and I had to walk him through order a serivce voe a website.

Him: I want to continue further, there's this button that says continue. Do I click that?

Me: Oh dear God!

 

[PCMarine]

This Thread is Officially Over.

 

[SonicFlux]

Have you noticed after introducing the dreaded "right-click" term to end-users, they freek and must continue to ask if they should right-click?

me: click Start then right-click My Computer
user: right-click you say?
me: yes
user: ok, done! (user is feeling quite proud at this point)
me: now click Properties
user: um, right-click?
me: no, just left-click

And the problem only gets worse when you introduce double-clicking!

me: ok now go back to your desktop and double-click Internet Explorer
user: ...is that with the right mouse button?
me: no, just do it like you normally would
user: it's not opening now :Q

This is when I've realized I've blown the user's mind with too many technical terms, and I have to start over again.

 

[Argo]

I'm a software developer and every once in a while when there's a crash in our software the user would send us the list of their registers. You know the hex values that come up if your program crashes. Our support promptly passes these issues to me or one of the other engineers.

When we ask what exactly was the user doing when the crash occured I get prompt reply: "Can't you figure it out from the values I sent you?" I think the Matrix gave people an impression that all programmers can read binary code

 

[NogginBoink]

I think my favorite was the call I got about the vice-president not being able to get his email.

Okay, so I looked up the customer to see the vice president of which company couldn't get hise email.




My customer was the office of the Vice President of the United States.

 

[hevnsnt]

Here are my top 3.

1) "I can't get my cd to play. Then when I eject the CD it is gone" Turns out she was cramming the CD in the small space between the CDROM and the case. She wondered why she had to push so hard to get the cd in.

2) "I can't get my Oatmeal to work" It took me about 5 minutes to figure out what this person was saying.. Turns out he was trying to use the program that sends notes to his buddys (email)

3) One of my buddies answered a call, and asked for employee ID, the person keyed it into the phone again.. He told them, "No, I am a person, TELL me your ID" and they keyed it in again. Beep-Boop-boop-beep. lmao