Dead serious... This is the best one yet:
The guy has TWO Biostar M7MIA boards and one CPU and one stick of RAM. The CPU and RAM were confirmed good by my staff, yet the customer continued to get wacky errors as if the CPU were bad. The customer was thinking he had two bad motherboards. I sent him this email:
"We have only received two of these motherboards back as "bad" other than your last one. Both of those ran fine other than they would not run at the 266 MHz front side bus using PC2100 RAM and a 266 CPU. Furthermore, I own two of these boards and they both run ME 24/7 with no issues.
Here's where I am at: The tech that worked on that last board did not put any notes pertaining to what was wrong with the board he had replaced, but I would be inclined to think that if you have had two of these boards and you have the SAME PROBLEM TWICE that the problem is not the board, because what are the odds that of all of the M7MIA boards that we sell, how could you get two bad ones in a row? Default your BIOS settings. Your problem is NOT anythign you can fix with BIOS tweaks.
I noticed the Orb fan you requested was never shipped, so I am inclined to ask what kind of cooling solution are you using and are you certain that it is mounted properly and if it is mounted properly, did you remove the plastic film on the bottom of the heatsink to expose the included thermal compound? If your heatsink did not come with thermal compound, have you added any thermal compound of your own?"
He immediately responds:
"I am the best computer engineer in the country. I don't make the kind of mistakes that novices do, I have built over two hundred machines including the first computers ever made. I am an experienced and fully licensed with a degree in electrical engineering and a minor in computer science. I am using the fan that you sent. I noticed that you did not replace the defective cpu that had its rubber missing. it still has the rubber that I glued on; the diagnostics say that the board is ok. I an inclined to believe that there is something in the ide chip that doesn't like the hard drive."
Now of course, first I laughed. Then I got pissed because, not only is he insulting my intelligence and not heeding any of my recomendations, but he's also claiming that the CPU that HE peeled the rubber pads off was bad, even though we tested it good and he's saying that his problem is a compatability in the IDE controller even though I have two of these boards running with no issue.
I didn't take the "cool down break" I should have and fired off a response immediately:
"I was not questioning your ability as, but even the finest techs that I talk to on a daily basis make the most simple mistakes. More simple mistakes, more often than even the novice. Typically these errors are made because the technician thinks that they are too good to make mistakes. I learned to not have this attitude 6 years ago.
I will not respond further to your email until you apologize for insulting my intelligence."
I'll probably catch hell for that email. Oh well....
It just so happened that at the same time I was typing up the response, he was typing up an update for me:
"Added some none conductive silicone heat sink compound, seems to work now. sorry."
Ok.... Now what was I saying about proper cooling and thermal compound? Un-f*ing-believable!
I'm sure that the "best computer engineer in the country" knows that you have to use thermal compound of some sort when you are using a CPU that NORMALLY runs upwards of 60 degrees Celsius!!!! :|
The guy has TWO Biostar M7MIA boards and one CPU and one stick of RAM. The CPU and RAM were confirmed good by my staff, yet the customer continued to get wacky errors as if the CPU were bad. The customer was thinking he had two bad motherboards. I sent him this email:
"We have only received two of these motherboards back as "bad" other than your last one. Both of those ran fine other than they would not run at the 266 MHz front side bus using PC2100 RAM and a 266 CPU. Furthermore, I own two of these boards and they both run ME 24/7 with no issues.
Here's where I am at: The tech that worked on that last board did not put any notes pertaining to what was wrong with the board he had replaced, but I would be inclined to think that if you have had two of these boards and you have the SAME PROBLEM TWICE that the problem is not the board, because what are the odds that of all of the M7MIA boards that we sell, how could you get two bad ones in a row? Default your BIOS settings. Your problem is NOT anythign you can fix with BIOS tweaks.
I noticed the Orb fan you requested was never shipped, so I am inclined to ask what kind of cooling solution are you using and are you certain that it is mounted properly and if it is mounted properly, did you remove the plastic film on the bottom of the heatsink to expose the included thermal compound? If your heatsink did not come with thermal compound, have you added any thermal compound of your own?"
He immediately responds:
"I am the best computer engineer in the country. I don't make the kind of mistakes that novices do, I have built over two hundred machines including the first computers ever made. I am an experienced and fully licensed with a degree in electrical engineering and a minor in computer science. I am using the fan that you sent. I noticed that you did not replace the defective cpu that had its rubber missing. it still has the rubber that I glued on; the diagnostics say that the board is ok. I an inclined to believe that there is something in the ide chip that doesn't like the hard drive."
Now of course, first I laughed. Then I got pissed because, not only is he insulting my intelligence and not heeding any of my recomendations, but he's also claiming that the CPU that HE peeled the rubber pads off was bad, even though we tested it good and he's saying that his problem is a compatability in the IDE controller even though I have two of these boards running with no issue.
I didn't take the "cool down break" I should have and fired off a response immediately:
"I was not questioning your ability as, but even the finest techs that I talk to on a daily basis make the most simple mistakes. More simple mistakes, more often than even the novice. Typically these errors are made because the technician thinks that they are too good to make mistakes. I learned to not have this attitude 6 years ago.
I will not respond further to your email until you apologize for insulting my intelligence."
I'll probably catch hell for that email. Oh well....
It just so happened that at the same time I was typing up the response, he was typing up an update for me:
"Added some none conductive silicone heat sink compound, seems to work now. sorry."
Ok.... Now what was I saying about proper cooling and thermal compound? Un-f*ing-believable!
I'm sure that the "best computer engineer in the country" knows that you have to use thermal compound of some sort when you are using a CPU that NORMALLY runs upwards of 60 degrees Celsius!!!! :|
