Adventures in Tech Support - NEW Episode!!!

[Scutter01]

What a great way to start my Monday morning. I got yelled at by a customer who said I was "being unresponsive" to their issue and that they were very unhappy. Their internet has been down for a little over two hours and no one has called them back to try to fix the problem. Here is the problem with this:

A) They did not follow the correct procedure to open an emergency after-hours service ticket with my company, but instead e-mailed me directly (I'm not on-call).
B) THEY E-MAILED ME.

For those of you who are not computer literate, let me break it down for you. If you have no internet access, YOU CAN'T SEND AN E-MAIL EXPECTING SERVICE. It's like sending a letter to the Postmaster complaining that the postman hasn't picked up your mail in a month, and then yelling at the Postmaster for not receiving it.

Are you kidding me?

 

[KLB]

You are supposed to be psychic. Duh!

 

[Scutter01]

You are supposed to be psychic. Duh!

The thing is, we actually have a monitoring service as one of our offerings. If your stuff goes down, we'll get an automatic notification. They chose not to subscribe, of course.

 

[KLB]

The thing is, we actually have a monitoring service as one of our offerings. If your stuff goes down, we'll get an automatic notification. They chose not to subscribe, of course.

Why would they need that? You are psychic!

You know what is funny? I had to correct one of my vendors once about the same thing in reverse. They would send emails to inform my sites about outages and ask questions of them. I had to point out that since their line was down, they couldn't get the email. Duh!

 

[Mad Macs]

The thing is, we actually have a monitoring service as one of our offerings. If your stuff goes down, we'll get an automatic notification. They chose not to subscribe, of course.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Been there, dealt with that.

 

[churchmouse]

What a great way to start my Monday morning. I got yelled at by a customer who said I was "being unresponsive" to their issue and that they were very unhappy. Their internet has been down for a little over two hours and no one has called them back to try to fix the problem. Here is the problem with this:

A) They did not follow the correct procedure to open an emergency after-hours service ticket with my company, but instead e-mailed me directly (I'm not on-call).
B) THEY E-MAILED ME.

For those of you who are not computer literate, let me break it down for you. If you have no internet access, YOU CAN'T SEND AN E-MAIL EXPECTING SERVICE. It's like sending a letter to the Postmaster complaining that the postman hasn't picked up your mail in a month, and then yelling at the Postmaster for not receiving it.

Are you kidding me?

It should be obvious why this society is slipping towards the brink. If sense were common we would all have it.

 

[Mad Macs]

The thing is, we actually have a monitoring service as one of our offerings. If your stuff goes down, we'll get an automatic notification. They chose not to subscribe, of course.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA Been there, dealt with that.

 

[yeahbaby]

I work technology in higher education. Talk about drama when the profs technology is not working for them, or they do not know how to use technology. Oy vey!

 

[Scutter01]

You know, it's one thing to yell at me for a mistake I made, but it really suck to be yelled at for something over which I had no control and had absolutely no way of knowing about.

 

[hoosierdoc]

People go to another hospital for care and get mad when I ask about their medical problems because "that should all be in the computer from last time"

 

[WebSnyper]

You know, it's one thing to yell at me for a mistake I made, but it really suck to be yelled at for something over which I had no control and had absolutely no way of knowing about.

It's time to remind them of the process and how there is a process to avoid a situation where someone is not available, etc. I deal with this stuff alot as well. Always fun when someone doesn't follow the processes put in place to help them and thinks 1) Email is a way to request urgent assistance, and 2) they don't have to report issues through the proper channels.

 

[printcraft]

Tell them you sent a reply email almost 2 hours ago with a solution but they obviously have not bothered to read it.

 

[CountryBoy19]

Email is not dependent on a functioning internet connection if they have a smart-phone. My wife emails me all the time from places that don't have ANY internet what-so-ever... so I disagree with your analogy of sending a letter to the postmaster...

That being said, I don't know all the details so I cannot say if this person was emailing from a smart-phone or from their "non-functioning internet connection"...

 

[Scutter01]

Email is not dependent on a functioning internet connection if they have a smart-phone. My wife emails me all the time from places that don't have ANY internet what-so-ever... so I disagree with your analogy of sending a letter to the postmaster...

That being said, I don't know all the details so I cannot say if this person was emailing from a smart-phone or from their "non-functioning internet connection"...

I thought it was evident from the context, if not the detail, that the reason I didn't receive their missive was that they attempted to send it over their non-working internet connection, and then they ripped me a new one for not receiving it. However, even if their internet was working, I likely wouldn't have seen or responded to it until regular business hours anyway since I'm not on call and we have an after-hours emergency procedure for that to promptly alert the person who is.

 

[Hop]

This is one thing I DON'T miss because my company switched all field service IT support to HOURLY with nobody on-call. Bwahaha.

I'd be meeting AT&T at 1AM then getting woke up a few hours later when some silly report didn't run. No, don't miss that at all.

 

[CountryBoy19]

I thought it was evident from the context, if not the detail, that the reason I didn't receive their missive was that they attempted to send it over their non-working internet connection, and then they ripped me a new one for not receiving it. However, even if their internet was working, I likely wouldn't have seen or responded to it until regular business hours anyway since I'm not on call and we have an after-hours emergency procedure for that to promptly alert the person who is.

Ah, I see what you meant now... the context didn't make it clear that you had not, in fact, received their email. The way I read the situation was that you DID receive their email and that is how you were made aware that they emailed you their problem instead of following the after-hours tech-support procedures.

 

[wtburnette]

It's time to remind them of the process and how there is a process to avoid a situation where someone is not available, etc. I deal with this stuff alot as well. Always fun when someone doesn't follow the processes put in place to help them and thinks 1) Email is a way to request urgent assistance, and 2) they don't have to report issues through the proper channels.

That was the worst thing about working support (aside from user stupidity), was when people didn't follow the support procedures. Never failed that people would call one of the support team directly, instead of using the support line and get all bent out of shape when no one contacted them right back. Even worse when management decides to be complete idiots and get on our cases about it, even when we had no way of knowing about the issue. I finally got to the point at one job where I decided to turn the voicemail off on my work phone. The greeting said this mailbox does not accept messages, if this is a support issue, please contact the helpdesk. My boss didn't realize it for 3 whole years...

 

[findingZzero]

Sounds like an IT whiner circle jerk to me. If we knew how to use these things you'd be out of a job. Ctl-Alt-Del. I need a bigger screen. I'm already at the ed..

 

[Scutter01]

Sounds like an IT whiner circle jerk to me. If we knew how to use these things you'd be out of a job. Ctl-Alt-Del. I need a bigger screen. I'm already at the ed..

So, you just came here to insult us, then? Nice. You sure showed us how much better you are.

 

[findingZzero]

So, you just came here to insult us, then? Nice. You sure showed us how much better you are.

Nope wasn't my intention.
did I leave this out? Sorry.....lighten up or I'll believe you are the surly IT dude......


I get itchy when everyone agrees in a thread. Who speaks for the user..................