Wow.

Yup, seven years phone tech support for Dell in their server support group gave me just a few stories to tell as well ...

Oh my god. These are just too damn funny for words.

I read some of these to my mom and she said "These are the kinds of stories you would hear about on shows like "World's Dumbest" with how stupid some of the people are in these stories."

yeah, pretty much

SOOOOooooooo... I laughed my ass off!

People can be so very very stupid...

V.

I've dealt with people like that my entire life.

Bunners

my definition of tech support is unfucking what stupid people fucked up

just sayin

that does sum it up...

V.

your manager seems alright.

he was ok. then again these stories were written over 20 years ago and I've slept since then.

Tech support is something I could never do. I don't have the temper for it. Just last weak I nearly screemed after.. well, I told the customer, clearly and documented, that some piece of code had to be called synchronously. Later an error ticked was open and after some digging.. It was called asynchronously. Wasted half a day on this. Doing that on a regular basis.. uuuuuugh. The less I have to do with customers the better

I did tech support at IBM from 1997 to mid 2000... it's been a while and I'm a LOT older now with even LESS tolerance for stupidity

The last one is indeed failure to communicate on multiple layers and it's cultural. Being a Russian IT, I can vouch for it. First, general level of ability to understand manuals (and foreign language) is shot, becuase the format of manuals they were used to is completely different. Modern formal manual, with formal statements, icons, etc , was like sumerian tablet for them.

And they got used to fact that if they are formally in their right, everyone would try to screw them over, there will be no fair service, so why bother with being honest?

Today many became more.. metropolian, but such samples still exist further from central cities here.

I appreciate that Russian is a LOT different from American English (which is slightly different from British English just to complicate matters)
but I was trying to convey that the kids mother was not communicating honestly with the kid or his grandmother.
If memory serves (doubtful after 21 years) I had to explain that (his mothers name redacted) refused the billable status and had the unit returned unrepaied.
had she authorized the repair, it would have been fixed the first time around and would not have been sent in soo many times.

I was Warranty Repair hotline, any physical damage cause through abuse or neglect was repaired on a per charge basis, Billable, pay for the fix.
his mother refused, so it did not get fixed.
There was nothing I could do that would have gotten the unit fixed as I did not make the decision that it was billable for abuse or neglect.
The Memphis IBM Thinkpad Repair Facility decided that.

on a side note, 10-15 years ago I tried to learn Russian, but never could find anyone to practice with, and lost interest.

On my first ship I did a few months working on the IT/CACS (Command and Control System) section of the Weapon Engineering department, supporting the Ops Room. I had a mantra I would say, with coffee in hand, every morning: "Every day's a PICNIC." (Problem In Chair Not In Computer).

at IBM we called those PEBKAC errors, or alternately ID-ten-T errors

Pebkac - Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair
ID-ten-T is self explanatory with the numbers instead of the letters

My favourite fault log entry was from replacing a key unit on a radar monitor due to "disconnected bandwidth between BC's resulting in unstable Command Unit Telemetry". Took my chief about two seconds to work out I'd written in code "Clumsy brainless c**t spilled coffee on millions of pounds worth of kit".

*facepaw*