Scottmon's Tech Support Woes

People bitch about tech support all the time. Let's hear from the other side of the coin. Scottmon is a regular on the RetroCrush.com boards and he often vents there about the fun people he deals with at his tech support gig. Here are some highlights. Enjoy. And be sure to visit www.RockAss.net.

Scottmon:

Things I wish I could say over the phone to customers. Based on actual experiences.

"You forgot the password that YOU chose a minute ago? Are you always this stupid or today special?"

"Ma'am, Left clicking doesn't mean moving your mouse over to the left side of your table!"

"When I asked how long was your phone cord, I didn't mean when did you buy it from K-Mart!"

"Sir, Could you find and press your shift key. Its on both sides of your keyboard and its labeled SHIFT!"

"Ma'am, I understand that you're upset, but if you'd just STFU, I could've solved your problem 20 minutes ago."

"Ok Mister Network Engineer, Its the internet, not a f****** print server."

"As a tech support guy, I'll be happy to fix your billing issue. Just gimmie your credit card number."

"Sir, If there are paramedics in your house attending to your wife, WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO FIX YOUR PC NOW??"

"We don't fix Sony PlayStations because we're NOT F***** SONY!"

"I realize that Tech support for this hardware is in India. I'm sure they don't like talking to you either, buttmunch."

"Umm. Everquest isn't working? But everything else is? Try using hammer. Now everythng will work equally as well."

"You have thousands of dollars in transactions online and you can't even spring for a ten dollar a month dial up service? I can fix this issue for you. Just gimmie your credit card number."

"You're good friends with the president of the company? And he'll hear about me? Hmm, good luck with that. The president is a woman."

I was working at a PC repair shop. We had an irate customer call about how his sound card doesn't work. So I listened to him cuss me out for a solid 5 minutes. I calmed him down long enough to do some troubleshooting. I asked him if he had his speakers plugged in to his sound card. He vehemently responded that he knew what he was doing. So as a spark of inspiration, I asked him to plug his speakers in to his voice modem jack.

Sure enough, he got them confused. I heard his audio Cd start playing as soon as he switched the jacks. He quickly said thanks and hung up.

Last year, I was doing phone tech support for internet net DSL. I often ask "How long is your phone cord?" I often get "3 months", "2 years" etc.... I've since learned to ask them if its about 14' or 6 meters.

The words I hate the most are "I'm an engineer." It means that he's totally messed it up because it doesn't operate as he would've designed it. I'd much rather deal with an 80 year old grandmother who's half deaf and doesn't know what a space bar is.

I got a network engineer on the phone once. He had all his certs and was well versed in corporate networks. I spent a half hour debating why the internet isn't like a corporate network. I finally asked him if his corporate network would survive a bomb attack. He said no. I said, then you now know the difference.

As posted at my workplace, I should "Speak Clearly and Professional."

How does one speak clearly and professional when stating the following...

"Mrs. X, your son has been downloading goat porn and has infested your PC with the spyware from hell."

"Reverend Y, Get off your fat ass and see if the mouse cord is actually plugged in to the computer. We can't send a tech out for that."

"Mr Z, threatening tech support with canceling your service is pretty friggin pointless."

"Mrs A, It may have worked before, but we don't support it. You got friggin' lucky."

Read indy comic hot shot Jeffrey Brown's story HERE
My Cousin's brutal tale of being a beat cop in NYC is HERE
Swimming with dolphins in Gay Hawaii is HERE.
Being Will Ferrell is HERE.

And of course all of my own work tales are HERE!
and my home page is HERE.