Funny and Humorous Technical Support Tales and Stories

This is from the days when we used to have WindowsNT 4.0.

There was this particularly smart fellow, who thought he knew all about computers. Reason for being smart..... Our boss was his elder brother.... :)

Now, on this particular day, he had to install IIS webserver on a NT 4.0 box, so I pointed him to the location where we had the installer and went off to have a meeting with my boss.

3minutes, and this guy is back. Tries to impress boss and make me look like a fool by saying: "The installer is corrupt!!"

Here's the enlightening conversation:

M: Me the fool

S: He the smart $#%

M: Why do u say so?

S: I tried http://localhost and get "Page cannot be displayed!!"

M: So did the install of IIS go without error?

S: Yes, no probs there.

M: So how come u say the installer is bad?

S: I cant see the page.....

M: Did u check to see if the service is running?

S: What service?

M: OK, tell me how u installed it....

S: Come I will show....

This was obviously with a lot of anger on the part of "S".... and a constant expression that I am so dumb .....

We, we walked to his "server" and he shows....

S: I go to the location where the installer is lying, and right click. then left click on copy. then, on my desktop, right click and then left click on paste. Then open IE and type http://localhost.... see, "Page cannot be displayed"

....

Till date i dont know where he ate off the section where he was to INSTALL IIS and check for the service to be running, and then open localhost on IE......

My room-mate, not the swiftest boat in the flotilla, sent me an email which included this line:

"How do I get spell check on my monitor?"

She even KNOWS what the differenc between a monitor vs. a computer is. She worked in an office for fourteen years as a receptionist. Can we say "too stupid to own a computer?"

A user called to say that she was having problems with her computer. Fortunately, she had already analyzed the problem, and announced confidently, "I have a short in my mouse pad".

I rec'd a call from a user who reported their printer was printing blank pages.

The user had gone home when I went on site, so I traded printers and tested theirs. It was fine.

Later I saw the person at their workstation and asked to look at the document.

It was an excel spreadsheet with a page and a half of data.

I looked at it in print preview and saw it was 2600 pages long!

They got this really pinched expression when I told the, "Your printer and computer are fine - they are doing exactly what you told them to do - print 1-2 pages of data and the rest in blank paper! Set the print range back to 1-2 pages and you'll be fine.

Note tht this is the same person who has at least 3 nearly consecutive visits to find out why their system won't boot - until the monitor is turned on.

i was talking my client through copying a file, and when i asked him to right click on the file he kept clicking, but nothing happened(according to him)

i couldn't do anything to help him till i went to his house,

he had been clicking to the right of the file!

Recieved a call from executive floor about a floppy being stuck in a drive. On occasion this has happened and with a little finesse, one can usually wiggle it out and no further problems exist.

By the time I got up to the 8th floor, not only was the floppy stuck in the drive... So was the letter opener.

M: Me

U: User

At one of my internships this summer I got this call from a user

M: Technical Support this is XXXXXX. How can I help you?

U: I cannot find the "E" for internet

M: Okay can you see your desktop?

U: Yes

M: Can you tell me what you see?

U: My coffee, my pen, my computer, my notepad, {etc}

M: Sir, I meant the desktop on your computer

U: Really?

M: yes sir

The conversation went on and I helped him make a shortcut of Internet Explorer. User had deleted the shortcut

After this call i could not stop laughing.

This person got a DAU error (Dumb Ass User)

So after reading so many of these tales, I have really found it interesting when I have to deal with a customer. This one call I got today while reading the tech tales really got me to want to send it.

Customer calls and says he can't seem to get pdf on a website. I told him that if he does not have a program to support this, then he can install it. He asked where he can get such program, and I told him he can google it, by typing either pdf or adobe. He said he could take care of it.

Within 5 minutes I get a call from the same customer. He says that he may have a virus or something because he can't open google. I ask him what is on his address bar, and he says www.google I tell him sir where is the rest of the site. He says oh, I guess I can take care of that, what is it dot com or dot net? I told him dot com. He said Ok, I can get to that page, thank you.

I begin chuckling to myself whilst I hang up and within a minute the phone rings and the tech in the other cubicle is saying, "No sir,www.google.com is all together."

what a day in tech support land.

I used to work as a PC tech for a large company

I set up a computer for a new employee in the IT department. The PC was set up with Windows 2000 on two logical partitions C and D. All of the applications and the windows profile information were stored on D. (This was done as a carry over from the days of Windows NT when NTFS would not support the bigger hard drive sizes.) 2 hours after the new employee starts The help desk received a call that the machine will not start up. Investigation revealed that the client had reformatted the D drive to install linux on it because he did not think he needed both drives for windows.

Just had this conversation with a user:

Me: Ok, go ahead and login to Windows for me.

L: Ok.

---- a couple of minutes pass -----

Me: Are you logged in yet?

L: Yes.

Me: Ok, please click on start and do this and this.

L: I can't, there is no start.

Me: What do you see?

L: It says, "To begin please click your user name."

Hmm... maybe in this case the proper answer to "Are you logged in?" would be NO?! Or maybe, "How do I do that?"

But of course not, she just sits there in silence and I am expected to be a telepath. Apparently any amount of technical training also qualifies one for ESP.

Had to write in about an admin assistant here whose mouse suddenly stopped working... We told her to try disconnecting the mouse, plugging it back in and rebooting (Win98). She called back 10 minutes later saying she was able to unscrew the mouse but now wasn't able to get it screwed back in again. We sent someone over to check on her, and sure enough she had bent all the pins...

We ended up giving her a USB mouse as a replacement.

I used to work in Tech Support for a medium sized University in Upstate NY (for those who are wondering which medium sized university, it's the one that boasts a vastly over-sized football "dome"). I was fixing a client's computer, and ended up with quite a perplexing problem. (M$IE would open for about 1 second, then close itself). I tried just about everything I could, and was still unable to figure it out ... this is the comment I logged into our call tracking system

Summary of everything done so far:

- Disabled system restore

- NTFS cd virus scan

- Removed spyware with Ad Aware

- Removed spyware with Spybot

- Scanned for and found no spyware with CWShredder

- Installed windows updates (from safe mode)

- Ran ad aware and spybot in safe mode

- Reinstalled IE

- Reinstalled TCP

- Reinstalled network card

- Uninstalled programs that have caused network problems in the past

- Ran a Windows Repair from install cd

- ran a registry cleaning tool

- Port Scanned the computer

- Ran Pest Patrol (yet another spyware cleaning tool)

- Ran winsock fixes

- and if I could have found a partridge in a pear tree, I would've tossed partridge eggs and pears at the computer in the hopes that it might fix it.

I used to be in tech support for a company that made and serviced networking equipment. This is back in the stone ages when a 9600 modem was state of the art. Anyhow, I'm working one Saturday and it was a little crazy, equipment was going down everywhere and since we serviced companies like Mastercard and EDS, we were scrambling to get techs out ASAP. During this chaos, a customer from a smaller company calls in and isn't ready to troubleshoot the problem. The customers are all supposed to have serial numbers ready and be close to the equipment. She was in another room and couldn't tell me the serial number or even the make and model of the unit. When I asked her to get this information she says hold on and I figured she walked away. Without pushing mute, I say: "Oh yea because I have all F*ckin day". Next thing I know the lady starts yelling "I'm sorry but I'm new and here all by myself, you don't have to be so mean".

Needless to say she got excellent service for the rest of the call and we solved her problem quickly over the phone.

My co-workers found the whole situation very funny and the story ended up getting around. Thankfully my boss understood the kind of day we had and merely asked me to sign up for customer service training.

A few months later, the instuctor used this example in my customer service training thankfully leaving out my name, as what not to do when having a bad day.

I am the tech support department for a small company with seven offices scattered around the state. One of our sales staff had a laptop with no display backlight. I had him send it to me while he was on vacation. I got the part, got it fixed, and sent it back in a laptop box I had sitting here for the purpose of shipping laptops. I got the following call the day he received it:

S: I got my laptop, and it works fine. I think you sent me the wrong one though.

M: What do you mean, sent the wrong one?

S: I don't think it's the right laptop.

M: Why do you say that?

S: Well, it's a Toshiba laptop, but it came in an HP box.

I'm not tech support, I tried it in high school but quickly realized that $12K a year for talking to ID10Ts couldn't compare with $150K a year for carpentry. I've forgotten the detail stuff but still generally know my way around a computer.

I'm on a number of Yahoo groups. Awhile ago I came back from a week vacation and loaded my email to discover a controversy that had developed while I'd been gone.

Apparently one list member wanted to unsubscribe from a particular (high-volume) list, and had posted a message saying "Please unsubscribe me". The moderators and main posters had each(!) replied to his message "Unsubscribe yourself! Instructions are in the group's signature."

One problem: The instructions in the group's signature didn't work. They said "Email groupname@yahoo.com with Unsubscribe in the subject". The proper way to unsubscribe is to send a blank email to groupname-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com.

After that, the hapless list member had replied to every message that came across the system "Why won't you let me unsubscribe?" "Please unsubscribe me!", getting angrier and more profane every time. And all the other members were laughing and mocking him, "He's so stupid he can't follow simple instructions right there in English." "He's so spoiled he WON'T follow simple instructions if he thinks we'll do it for him!" The moderators were saying "If it were anybody else swearing at us I would ban them, but banning HIM would mean he wins!"

I emailed him privately with the correct unsubscribe instructions, and he thanked me profusely and was never heard from again.

And the punchline: The other members continued mocking him for TWO WEEKS before somebody noticed he wasn't there anymore.

Epilogue: I emailed the moderators that their instructions didn't work and they didn't believe me. When I finally convinced them (it took about four emails, each of which held a link to the Yahoogroups help page with the correct procedure on it), they updated their instructions to "Send a blank email to groupnmae-unbusscibe@yahoo.com".

Oy vey.

My wife recently bought a new car, and part of the deal closing was a presentation by a guy hyping the dealer's service department. He brought a fancy laptop with cordless optical mouse, and launched into his spiel.

Immediately he had trouble controlling the mouse. The pointer was jumping all over the screen, and he couldn't hit what he wanted. He apologized every time this happened, saying he got a bad computer.

Now, I'm a nice guy and didn't want to interrupt him, so I suffered through this for several minutes until I couldn't stand it any more. I told him to stop moving the optical mouse over the printed sales contract! He switched to a sheet of blank paper and was amazed at how much better the mouse worked.

Toward the end of his sales pitch, Norton Anti-Virus started popping up 10-15 windows warning him to update the software and the virus definitions! I offered to uninstall Norton, but thought better of it.

(We didn't sign up for any of his service plans - just took the car and drove home.)

I currently work as a developer and webmaster for 1 college in a small university. I spent several months rolling our a new website and was very proud of my accomplishment. I get a call one day from a furious faculty member wanting to know why ***.com (a completely different site) doesn't work. She copied the Dean of the College and wanted to make absolutly sure that everyone knew my creation didn't work.

I politely (this was the tough part) explained that I only deal with our website and not every website on the Internet. I did a whois on the site and gave her the contact info for the other site.

Well, I work for a computer company's Helpdesk, who's name is synonymous with hell, and well, I can get some pretty interesting calls - one of the ones I got yesterday (08/18/05), and well, This was a nice wireless networking one.

Anyways, the customer had moved houses from one location to the next, and called up because they were experiencing trouble with their wireless router. - Anyways, the laptop they were trying to connect was getting the "page cannot be displayed" - Anyways, go through some troubleshooting, and determine that the computer can connect to the router, but the router cannot connect to their dsl. - But their other computer could connect.

Bell goes off in my head - got cust to trace the cable from the other computer to the router - went to the dsl modem instead...they had just plugged their wireless router into the wall, and expected it to work - "but thats the way it was before!" - ah well...I always say people should have to write an IQ test before they are allowed to buy a computer.

I was recently demonstrating Google Earth to a friend of mine one evening. I was showing the view of my home when they stopped me and asked, "But it almost 11:00 pm. Why isn't it dark?"

Apparently they though Google Earth provided live satellite imagery.

I work for a small Internet Wireless provider / helpdesk company that supplies High Speed internet access for Hotels and Resorts all across the Eastern US of A. Thought I'd never get a call to put onto this web site, but, alas!! Just received one!

We have a Peer monitoring system that goes out and automatically pings the Static IP of a specific hotel, to check whether the system is up or down.

Had noticed that at a particular hotel, it was showing up as Red, on the monitor. Ended up calling the ISP, thinking there was a problem there. NOPE! Everything running properly on thier end, but they noticed the modem was offline.

Contacted the Hotel directly, and the lady at the front desk had no idea what to look for. Unfortunatly I did not have info of what specific to look at either. So I called the ISP back, and had them call the Hotel directly.

Ends up that the modem had been completley unplugged, and that the Gateway/Router that we hooked to it, had been completely disconnected from the modem and set off to the side!!!! Nobody could get connected from the hotel!!!

WTF???!!

We all had a good laugh once the equipment was back up and running. Some people....... :-)

This isn't really something that happened to me, but something that happened to my fiance. It's not really a tech related thing I guess, but anyways. A elderly lady went into his TV repair Shop ( he had this shop some years ago) and said her TV quit working, when he opened it up he said he found money in the set it self money probably worth close to hundreds. She said " well when I want to watch a pay per veiw movie I just put my money in their to pay for the movie. thats what I thought I had to do.."

I just thought everyone would get a kick out of this one lol

One day an employee brings in his personal computer for me to "check out" (being the SysAdmin of the company). While working inside the computer I noticed a white powdery substance but thought nothing of it at the time. After fixing his computer (invalid master/slave IDE configuration) I brought it back to his desk and asked "What is that white powder all inside the computer?"

His reply? "Oh that's poison. I purchased the computer at a yard sale and when I brought it home it was full of roaches."

I used to work for Austria's biggest internet provider, Telekom Austria. I was usually working evening shift, which started at 6 p.m. and ended at 10 p.m. Usually, this was the time of the day, when stupid users came home from work, and didn't have anything better to do than to torture us with their mostly stupid questions. Here are some of my favourites which I was happy to be able to experience myself:

1.) One evening, an older lady called. She told me she had an DSL-account and had heard, that DSL was a very fast internet connection. As I did not wan't to discuss about what "fast" really meant, I just told her she was right. Her next statement made me press the mute button immediately. I never ever would have expected this statement of hers. She told me: "Well, so in this case, I suppose it is totally normal that my modem is smouldering...." ....

2.) A male customer called, because he was having trouble connecting to the internet. I asked him to tell me what was displayed on his monitor, and he told me: "Why... Philips" !!!

3.) An all-time classic, that obviously happens to every support technician. A customer called, and before I could even welcome him, he told me: "I've been working with networks for years, and I'm a specialist, so don't fuck with me! I can't connect to the internet, but my settings are all okay. It must be your fault". I thought: "Well, another idiot, but let's take a look." I said to him: "Well, in this case, please run ipconfig and tell me your current IP address." Now, take a wild guess what that dork answered: "What is an IP address? I've never heard of this before..."

Yeah, sure, specialist...

4.) This one was especially funny for a colleague of mine and myself. It was new year's eve and I had to work (*grmpf*). Since I knew I'd leave the company in some weeks time I decided to have a nice evening with my 3 colleagues who were present. I brought some six-packs of beer along, and for some hours we had a quiet evening with only a handful of customers calling. I mean, to be honest, would you call your provider's hotline at 9 or 10 p.m. at new year's eve? Well, if you would, get a life *gg*. However, some time between 9 and 10 the call frequency rose. Since I didn't really want to talk to any of these pricks, my colleague and me decided, that we both take a call, then I'd transfer it to his line, he'd put up a conference between the 3 of them, and hit the mute button. Then I plugged my headset into his phone, and we listened for some minutes as the comedy unfolded.

Customer1: "Hello, my account number is.."

Customer2: "No, no, MY account number is.."

Customer1: "I can't connect to the internet, can you..."

Customer2: "I don't get any e-mails, would you..."

Customer1: "What are you talking about, are you kidding me?"

Customer2: "Hey, don't get mean!"

Customer1: "I want you to solve my problem NOW!"

Customer2: "I don't care about your problem. I called because I have a problem..."

This went on for about 5 minutes, until those two guys discovered, that they were BOTH customers. My colleague and I were literally ROFL at that time.

Ok, I work for a cell phone company in customer service. One of my responsibilites is to help customers with technical problems that they are experiencing. This is one of those stories.

My customer called in as her phone was not able to process calls or text messages. I began with having her power off and power on her phone (this usually works), then progressed into further steps. After five minutes I determined that the problem was with her phone, and not with the network.

At this point I should also mention that I am an ordained minister, as it becomes relavant.

Me: I apologize ma'm, but you would have to take your phone into a service center to have a technician look at it.

Cust: I don't want to.

Me: I understand, but there is no way for me to fix your phone without seeing it.

Cust: Isn't there anything that you can do? Even if you are making it up I'll try it.

At this point I figured that I had to screw with her, she basically asked for it.

Me: Well, we could try to exocise your phone.

Cust: Like it needs to go jogging?

Me: No, exorcise, preformed by a priest or man of the cloth.

Cust: Are you kidding?

Me: Yes, but you did say anything, and I am a Minister, so you're in luck.

Cust: Ok, you're right. What do you want me to do?

Me: Place your hand on your phone.

Cust: Ok.

Me: Repeat after me "Lord, lord, lord. Please expunge the demons that inhabit this device so that they may trouble your pious subject no longer. The power of Christ compels you!"

Cust: Repeats what I said. long pause. Now what?

Me: Turn your phone off, then back on and try it again.

Cust: Holy crap!

Me: What?

Cust: It's working!

Me: Now you're kidding.

Cust: Call me, it's working.

At this point I do call, and low and behold, the phone is magically working! Her phone worked for around three hours and she did have to take it into a technician, but oh the laughs my coworkers and I have over this one.

I do tech support for a dialup internet company. First thing saturday morning I get a call from a guy wanting to setup. Our setup cd simply uses the windows wizard to put a connection on the computer, it doesnt install any software. The only thing you really need to do is enter your UN and PW, and select your modem off a list. Easy enough.

This guy calls and I ask him which one of the selection says 'modem', rather than WAN miniport. He says there isnt one and sure enough, there isn't. I tell him there is not a modem installed on the computer and make sure there is a port in the back to plug the line into. Sure enough there is and he informs me that he just installed the modem from another computer he pulled it out of. Thinking he obviously knows a bit of computer knowledge, I pull up the modem diag and it shows the modem listed as "not present." I tell him to try reinstalling the drivers, and as a last resort, try it on a different slot.

He gets the bright idea to try the different slot while I'm on the phone with him, something I'm not accustomed to and which we do not support, but I humor him. It goes something like this...

M me

C customer

C ok, hold on a sec, let me try that real quick

M sure, no problem

about five seconds later I hear the hum of an electric screw driver and think 'surely he didnt get the computer turned off that quick...' I make a comment to my manager about it and we laugh.

about a minute later he comes back on the phone

C I can install it on any slot right?

M sure, as long as it fits...

C k, hold on a sec

he goes back to doing it for about two minutes and I'm about to hang up, when I hear him start cursing. this peeks my interest

C it looks like its freezing on me now

M did it load at all?

C no, its stuck on the screen saver, but its one I havent seen before

M whats on the screen right now?

C it just says "no signal"

I pause for a second, put the call on mute, and proceed to laugh for about thirty seconds.

M did you turn the power off on the PC before you pulled out that modem?

C no, no, I just got the computer from dell but I know what I'm doing

M ok, best bet is just to go down that list of slots and see if any of them make a difference, and if not, give dell a call(proceed to give him dells tech number)

C sure, no problem man, thanks

It took me a good ten minutes for everyone to recover from this. The guy literally tried to hot swap his modem on his brand new dell...

This one is kind of a joke I played on family members. One night I went down to their computer and changed the source off all the desktop icons they cherish soo much. The next day I'm off doing other things when I get a call saying "WHEN I CLICK INTERNET EXPLORER ADADOBOE PHOTOSHOP OPENS UP!!! We have a virus that is making all of our programs open wrong!!" I had to sit there and calm them down for five min. explaining how icon targets can be changed without changing the individual icon....Some people should learn a little more about computers.

Coos Bay is the "code name" for the Intel SCB2 Server Motherboard. Don't know anything about the SCO/backup thing.

Coos bay?

Okay, I will admit that I don't know what a COOS Bay (Sp?) server is...

I even tried to look it up on the internet, but can't find it. Anyway, my local ISP/server host has one, and they are quite proud of the fact. Has a gajillion byte drive and can run any O/S on the planet. It can replace my back-up tape drive (which has failed). All I need to do is push my hosted server backups there instead of writing to tape. So this is how it goes:

M = Little old me, ignorant in all matters

C = COOS Bay Lord God and Commander of...Me

C: What you need to do, see, is issue the 'backup' (plus switches) command on your SCO server and that will send your backups to my (trumpet blasts) CO-CO-COOS BA-BA-AY SER-SER-SERVER (those were echoes).

M: SCO 5.0.5 doesn't have the 'backup' command.

C: Yes it does, I have a highly paid consultant telling me on very good authority that in fact it does.

M: Well, I have both the commands listing, and an "I just tried it and it doesn't exist", authorities telling me it doesn't. I also did a 'find' on the server, and it's not found.

C: And now I'm telling you that it's there. Just set it up and when my guy is here next week we'll get it going.

M: I'm not going to argue with you. I'm going to tell my supervisor that we're at an impasse and she can decide.

C: She'll tell you the same thing. It's a very common command.

So I tell me supervisor. She has been 'wowed' by the COOS Bay talk, and doubts my every word. "Just try it", she says. So I try it, to humor her. I also do lots of research. I suppose some 3rd party software probably uses the 'backup' command, but it's not standard. The following week the jackas- ,er, ISP manager calls back:

C: So you got it all set up?

M: No, not possible. Let me talk to your consultant. We should probably use rcp, or ftp, or mount a partition on your COOS thing to my SCO (...Interrupted)

C: I don't know why you're being so stubborn. Just do it.

M: Okay, I just did it. It says "not found sh".

C: Then get me your supervisor on the phone. This is ridiculous. (I transfer him, gladly).

A bit later, my supervisor says she can't understand why I'm being so contradictory. I tell her it's because I'm being given fictional instructions. She says this ISP guy is VERY knowledgable and I need to find out how I'm misunderstanding his instructions. I say 'okay'.

I never called him back, and found another way to backup the system. Life went on without the aid of a COOS Bay...go figure.

Anonymous Tech Supporter

Just had a call from a hotel guest.

Our company provides wireless access for hotels all across the eastern usa.

There was a gentleman staying at a certain hotel, and had stayed there last night, and had working internet then.

He had registered for only one night, then decided to stay an extra night.

The username/password that was issued to him was only good for one evening, and of course tonight, he couldn't get access.

So he called me up, and I looked at the appropriate info. Told him his username was expired, and go down to the front desk, and have them issue you a new one.

He then said, "Oh, not a problem at all! The girl at the front desk sounded very HOT over the phone, and I wanted to go check her out anyhow!!!!!" Just made my night.