Computer Stupidities 18

A member of America Online called me (a member of the tech support staff for an Internet service provider with no affiliation with AOL) asking what her email address was. After figuring out she wasn’t registered with us, I politely pointed out that we were not America Online and she might get a better answer to her problem if she called the American Online support number.
Customer: “Oh, so I should call them?”
Tech Support: “Yes, they will probably be able to help you more than I can.”
Customer: “But you’re an Internet Service Provider! It says so right here in the phone book! If you don’t want to help me fine. Thank you, have a good day.” [click]

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Customer: “I’ve been signed up with your service for over a week, and have not been able to connect even once because of busy signals. If I can’t get any better service than that, I’m going to switch to another ISP.”
Tech Support: “Hmmm…that shouldn’t be happening. We’re no where near maxing out our dial up lines. Are you sure you’re dialing the right number?”
Customer: “I’m not stupid! I know my own phone number!”

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Tech Support: “Now click the ‘connect’ button.”
Customer: (modem dialing noises) “Hold on, I have another call.” (pause) “Hmmm. No one there. Ok, I’ll try this again.” (modem dialing noises) “Hold on, I got another call.” (pause)

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Tech Support: “What web browser are you using?”
Customer: “Aren’t you my browser?”

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Customer: “I am going to shoot everyone at your DSL office. Where are you located at, anyways?”
Tech Support: “Uh, for security purposes, just like this, our company states we cannot reveal our call center’s location.”
Customer: “I am filing a complaint against you with the public utilities commission.”
Tech Support: “You do realize DSL is not a public utility, right?”

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Customer: “I’m having problems connecting to the Internet through the University. I’ve just moved, and I’m not sure if the cables are connected properly.”
Tech Support: “Well, how are the cables connected now?”
Customer: “Oh, wait, this cord needs to be–” (click)
Five minutes later, she called back.

Tech Support: “We seemed to have been disconnected.”
Customer: “Right, I was moving these phone cords–” (click)
Five minutes later, she called back.

Tech Support: “Are you using a phone plugged into your modem?”
Customer: “Yes, I don’t have my other one hooked up yet–” (click)

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Several instances I had customers say something similar to this after a “no response from modem” error message:

Customer: “You are lying to me! Your ISP is down, and you should admit it! How dare you try to look at anything on my computer. I refuse! You are a stupid fool.”

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Customer: “How do I get online with your service? Do I need disks?”
Tech Support: “Well, I’ll give you a call back in about 15 minutes once I’m done setting up your account on our end, and then I’ll explain over the phone to you how to get online.”
Customer: “Wow! How do you do that!? I mean, you didn’t send me anything, and I don’t have to do anything? Don’t I have to, like, plug in the Internet or something?”

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Customer: “Hi. I’m the network technician for our enterprise, and I need to know how to connect to your ISP.”
Tech Support: “You registered for a dial-up 56K connection. Your login/password are [deleted]. Configure as DHCP client, and, just in case, the DNS is [deleted]. The phone number to reach our modem is 514-8….”
Customer: “I don’t want to talk with your modem! Don’t give me a phone number! I want Internet access! Give me the technical details.”

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A lady called, claiming to be a new member. I looked under the screen name she gave…couldn’t find her. I looked under her phone number…couldn’t find her. I looked under her name…couldn’t find her. I resorted to her credit card number…couldn’t find her. Finally, I asked her if she was sure it was America Online that she signed up for.

Customer: “Yeah. Well, it’s called E-World on my computer, though.”

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Got a call today from a gentleman who was upset because ABC’s “This Week with David Brinkley” show had run long, causing the first twenty minutes or so of a sporting event to be preempted, and he had seen AOL’s blurb at the end of the show.

Tech Support: “Well, sir, ABC News does have an area on AOL but we’re not affiliated with them…. I’m not sure I understand, why did you call us instead of ABC?”
Customer: “Well, things like this sure don’t make America Online look good!”

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Customer: “I am having some problems with my email account.”
Tech Support: “Who is your Internet provider?”
Customer: “I am not really sure but I think it’s ‘You’ve Got Mail’.”

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Customer: “It’s asking me for my username and passport. I don’t have a passport!”

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A lady bought a new computer from us. Two days later she called to say that her computer wasn’t working. She said it wouldn’t connect to the Internet. I asked her what happens after she double clicked on the globe, and she replied, “You mean I paid over two thousand dollars for this, and I still have to click on something to get on the net?” She was really, truly upset.

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Customer: “My phone line comes from the wall and plugs into my hard drive.”

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I was talking with my friend online one day, and he said something about he had to go delete some files because a web site had uploaded his whole hard drive. I told him that was impossible, because it would take months to upload gigabytes of information on a 56K connection. He said he had gone to a web site that had a link saying something like, “I have your hard drive, check it out,” and it pointed to C:\. It took me an hour to convince him that no one had uploaded his hard drive.

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Once I had a woman call me saying she couldn’t connect to her company’s LAN remotely. It turned out she had taken her network cable (RJ45) and somehow jammed it into her phone line connection (RJ11).

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On this call a customer was having problems with his fax modem. It took fifteen minutes for me to make the guy understand the concept that one must plug a phone line into the modem for it to work. At the moment he grasped this concept, all I got for a response was, “Oh, so I need to unplug my–” (click)

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This conversation occurred in our tech support chat area:

User: “My modem is broken, and I can’t get online with it!!! HELP!!!”
Me: “Does the computer you are using now have the same type of modem as the other computer you tried using before?”
User: “No, I only have one computer. Do I need to have two to get online?”
Me: “No, you’re online now.”
User: “Wrong. I told you. My modem is broken.”
Me: “If you weren’t online, you wouldn’t be able to talk to me. How did you get online if your modem isn’t working?”
User: “I used the CD player, but I’m not getting the sound.”
Further discussion revealed that he had bought a CD from us but thought his modem was broken because he was unable to connect without installing the client software. He believed that in an emergency, you could use the cdrom drive instead of the modem because, “They’re about the same size.” He also thought he ought to be hearing the words he typed, since his computer came with speakers, and the salesman who had sold him the cdrom drive had told him it would play music.

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Email from a customer:

We are going to have a second phone line put in for our computer. What steps do we need to take in order to switch our account over to the new phone number? And do we have to pay to have the account switched?
I mailed her back saying just to move the computer to the new line and conduct business as usual. She mailed back:

But what about receiving my e-mail? I thought it came to the phone number.

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I had been using the net for about nine months, and was spending a lot of time on it, so I decided to shift to a flat-rate provider, of which there was only one in our area. I headed on over to their site and spent half an hour trying to find a way to download the installation software. I got there in the end and tried to download the software.

Regrettably, it required a user name and password — more specifically, a user name and password for this ISP. In other words, you had to be a member of the thing to be able to download the software to become a member.

So I phoned their tech support (no other way of getting a setup disk. After only 45 minutes, I was able to talk to someone and persuade them to send me a setup disk. I also informed them of the error regarding their FTP server.

Some three weeks later (!) the setup disk arrived — it was an unformatted blank disk with a fancy sticker on it. So I tried again to download their software from their web site — no such luck. Another phone call to tech support. This time I got a fancy CD and another promise that the web site would be fixed.

As of a month ago, when a friend of mine was joining, some two years after I signed up, they still had not fixed their web site.

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One woman called a customer service number and said she always got a busy signal when her computer called the modem pool. She kept on calling and calling, complaining about busy signals. Finally, we decided to clue her in on an experimental phone number that pointed to a few new-at-the-time 14.4Kbps modems. But she insisted, “No, I can’t put in that number; I have to put in my home number.” No amount of reason could get her to understand that the computer at her home had to call the number of the modem at her service provider. Last we heard, she remained unconvinced, calling herself and complaining about the busy signals.

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My friend was having trouble with her dial-up connection and was convinced that she needed to type her new home phone number into some property dialog to get her connection to work. I told her I didn’t think that was important.

Her: “But how will they know where I’m calling from?”

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I work on the helpdesk of an oil company. One of our users, a very high level executive, is traveling throughout the United States and calls us, long distance, to ask a question about setting up his dial up networking connection: “Do I have to dial a ‘1’ before the number if I’m calling long distance?”

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Customer: “I need help with this dialer. The police have already shown up to my office twice today.”
Police? Ok, whatever.

Tech Support: “Ok, let’s check out the settings. Do you have anything entered for getting an outside line?”
Customer: “A nine.”
Tech Support: “Do you need to dial a 9 for an outside line?”
Customer: “I’m not sure. I think so.”
Tech Support: “Could you double check?”
Customer: “Sure. (pause) Nope. Turns out we don’t need it.”
Tech Support: “Ok. Then remove it. What do you have for the area code?”
Customer: “One and then [area code].”
Tech Support: “Uhm, you don’t need the one. Windows 95 automatically adds that.”
Customer: “Oh. So you mean…”
Tech Support: “Yes, your computer was dialing 911 and then the phone number.”

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Customer: “Do I need to call my phone company each time to let them know that I am going online?”
I am sure the phone company would appreciate her calling so that they could hold all her calls. Yeah, right!

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Tech Support: “May I ask the reason you are cancelling our service?”
Customer: “Yeah, I just moved, and the phone jack in my new house is too far away from the computer.”

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A woman called the ISP I work for asking to cancel her service. When I asked why, she said it was her company’s account and they hadn’t been able to connect since she started the job two weeks earlier. Standard practice, in such situations, is to persuade the customer to try fixing the problem in order to keep their business. She seemed open to this.

It turned out it was a simple username/password error. After having her make sure she had the right info and retype it three times, she finally noticed that she was putting three ‘j’s instead of two. This officially confirmed my suspicion that she was clueless. She seemed happy to be connected and asked what she was supposed to do next. I spent the next twenty minutes explaining her Internet browser and email program to her.

Tech Support: “Well, looks like you’re all ready to start using the Internet now.”
Customer: “That’s great, but I still need to cancel my account.”
Tech Support: (recovering from shock and gritting my teeth) “Can I ask why we went through all this if you were going to close your account anyway?”
Customer: “I don’t know. You said you wanted to know what was wrong. We don’t need the service.”

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Customer: “I’ve been sitting here for over twenty minutes with it saying I’m connected. When will it do something?”

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Customer: “I hit the ‘Open Connection’ button and the modem starts to dial. I hear some terrible noise, and when that’s over I hit the ‘Close Connection’ button. Then I start Netscape but it keeps telling me that it can’t locate the host.”

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One day I was in the school’s computer lab with my class, and one of the computers could not connect to the Internet. Since the lab attendant nowhere to be found, my teacher asked me to help with the problem.

My Teacher: “Maybe today is a bad day for Netscape.”
Me: “I think it’s a physical problem.”
My Teacher: “No, it’s gotta be Netscape.”
Me: “Yeah, you’re right.”
When my teacher left the room, I checked under the terminal. The phone cord had been kicked out of it’s socket. I put it back in. When my teacher came back into the room, he noticed it was working again.

My Teacher: “Well, Netscape must be feeling better now!”

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Tech Support: “Is your computer on a separate telephone line?”
Customer: “No.” (clicks the button to log on to our service)
Tech Support: “Well then we can’t–”
Customer: “It says ‘no dial tone’.”
Tech Support: “That’s because you’re on the line with me right now. You need to–”
Customer: “No, that’s not it. It does this all the time. I just have to try a few times, and it will let me through.”
Tech Support: “No, ma’am. It’s not even trying to dial right now because you’re on the phone with me.”
Customer: “It must be busy. I’ll try again later.”
I had given her my email address, and I got a letter from her the next day saying: “Thanks for the help, but I fixed it myself. It works fine now. Thanks for trying.”

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I work for an ISP. This one happens to me almost daily.

Tech Support: “What Internet software are you using? Internet Explorer or Netscape?”
Customer: “I’m using (name of ISP).”
Tech Support: “No, when you try to access the Internet, what do you click on to sign on?”
Customer: “(name of ISP)!”
Tech Support: “If you were to try to sign on to the Internet right now, what icon would you click on?”
Customer: “I can’t sign on, I only have one phone line.”
Dings and dongs sound from error messages popping up on the customer’s screen.

Tech Support: “If you were not talking to me right now and walked up to your computer because you wanted to get on the Internet, what is the first thing you would do?”
Customer: “I click on ‘Netscape’.”
Tech Support: “Ahhh, you have Netscape.” (Then, with great hesitation…) “What version?”

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A friend of mine and I were talking about AOL.

Me: “AOL is notorious for slow Internet connections.”
My Friend: “Yeah I’ve been thinking of switching to Internet Explorer. The Internet is free on that program.”
Me: “Well….”

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Me: “I can’t seem to connect to the Internet. Any problems there?”
Tech Support: “What lights on your modem are on?”
Me: “‘Power’ and ‘Network’.”
Tech Support: “Okthen, it’s something with your system. Do you use Netscape?”
Me: “My Linux server doesn’t get a temporary IP address, and there’s no PPP0 connection.”
Tech Support: “We only support Netscape.”
Me: “A web browser wouldn’t work. I can’t even do a ping to you or somewhere else outside my network.”
Tech Support: “A ping? Are you sure you use Netscape? We only support Netscape.”
Me: “As a matter of fact, my Windows 98 machine runs Internet Explorer, but it always worked fine. I really think something else is wrong. A ping is a signal send to see how the connection between two machines is. I can’t seem to get a connection between you and me.”
Tech Support: “You really should install Netscape. It’s on the install disk which came with your modem.”
Me: “Ok, never mind.”

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I do some unofficial tech support for friends around campus. One day, a couple of my female friends asked me to look at their computers. The symptom: “They’re broken.”

After much tinkering and safe-mode booting, I saw that many, many weird (and obsolete) network drivers and protocols have been loaded, causing the computers to freeze at the Windows login screen while they looked for a whole mess of NICs that weren’t there. I fixed it and asked how so many of these things had been loaded.

My friend: “Joan and I got bored, so we went into the network settings and added a bunch of things we didn’t really understand.”

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Customer: “Ok, I just signed up for a SLIP account. Is there an icon that’s supposed to appear in Windows?”
Tech Support: “Did you install the SLIP software?”
Customer: “What software?”

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Heard from a customer, while I was setting up his new T1 line:

Customer: “This is a Mac. It doesn’t need an IP address.”

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I work for a prominent online service and was talking with a fellow employee. He asked me where he could find QuickTime for Windows. I told him to try apple.com. He had a puzzled look on his face for several seconds. Then he meekly said, “You do mean the net site, right?” I said, “What else could I mean?” He replied, “I thought you meant like command.com — the DOS file.”

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A man called, and he was EXTREMELY upset. He was yelling and carrying on, very angry with his last ISP. He wanted to know our prices and services, so as always I told him what we offer and what we could do for him.

Customer: “Well, good, I’ll go with you. I was using that *^@#$%ing AOL, and I hated them &^$@#%*s!”
Tech Support: “What was the problem?”
Customer: “Well, EVERY single time I signed off AOL, this smart-@$$ guy kept telling me ‘goodbye’ in this smart-@$$ tone, so I canceled them!”
It was really painful to repress my laughter.

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At the time, I was a junior in high school sitting in our recently built (and still to this day broken) Novell network. After about ten minutes of the first day I began playing with the instant message features built into Netware 4. It didn’t take long for everyone else to start using this constantly.

Later in the week, our clueless sysadmin (who was a welding instructor before he was promoted to district wide technology head) had botched up several student accounts, rendering them unusable. When the student raised her hand to complain about the login window rejecting her password, the teacher blaimed all of the “instance messaging” flying around, “bogging the network,” and that our messages “had too many misspellings which were confusing Netware.”

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I work on an ISP help desk and got this call once. This is my work log, with the names edited out and clarifications made:

August 1998:
User cannot connect.
User has MAC.
User is getting: “Failed” when trying to connect.
I can connect with this ID.
User is running 8.0, 8.1, and 8.5 beta OS.
User says he cannot connect now with any OS.
User reports connection problems throughout the past week.
Frequently he tries to connect, and it says he is connected, then he
gets disconnected.
He says it takes a couple of retries and reboots to connect for sure.
User says he cannot get into email.
User opened his browser, and he is not connecting.
User says information occasionally disappears from his configurations.
User reports: “His website is private. And the Government has scanners
on the Internet that scan people’s computers. He can always tell
when he is being scanned, because his computer starts running
really slow.” He would not confirm if, when this happened, he just
pulled the plug. After that, he seems to lose information in his
Interner/Browser configurations.

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Customer: “When I bought my modem, it came with a phone cord, right?”
Tech Support: “Right.”
Customer: “So I plugged it into the one modem jack and the other end into the other modem jack. Was that right?”
Tech Support: “No, that’s not right.”
Customer: “I didn’t think so. I get ‘No dialtone’.”
Tech Support: “Right. You need to plug one end of the cord into the modem, in the jack marked ‘Line’, and the other end into the wall.”
Customer: (skeptically) “So I need to leave one jack open?”
Tech Support: “Er, yes.”

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Customer: “I’m no computer whiz, but I was wondering which end of the phone cord goes into the wall and which one goes into the modem.”

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A user who is attempting to dial in from home calls in for help. Nothing works. No matter what communications port he tries, no matter how he sets up his software, nothing works. This goes on for most of a day, as the user calls, is given something to try, tries it, calls back, is given something else to try, etc.

Finally, on about the eleventh call, our intrepid support person hears some odd noises, and asks out of simple curiosity what they are.

Customer: “Oh, that’s traffic outside the phone booth.”
Tech Support: “Phone booth?”
Customer: “Yeah, I don’t have a phone in my apartment, so I’m calling from the phone booth on the corner.”

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Modems and pay phones don’t mix. I hotwired my laptop in to the mouthpiece of a payphone and proceeded to do system maintenance on a customer’s machine. The sheriff arrived shortly afterward and proceeded to interrogate me. Someone had called complaining that I was using a computer to steal money from the pay phone.

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Customer: “My dial up is not working.”
Tech Support: “Well, what kind of error are you getting?”
Customer: “Well, I’m not exactly sure, but it tells me my personal identification is wrong.”
Tech Support: “Ok, I need you to open up the program.”
Customer: “Whoa, hold on a second.” (fumbling around) “Ok, I got it open. Sorry, I have the computer on the seat next to me, and I’m driving.”
Tech Support: “Uh. Well, you should really pull off the road, and we need the modem plugged into a phone line.”
Customer: “Ok, I’ll pull off at this gas station, but I’m not sure if I can hook up to the pay phone.”
Tech Support: “That’s not going to work. Can you call us back when you are at a regular phone line?”
Customer: “Oh, sure, I can call you back when I get home. But can I at least check my email while I’m on the road?”

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A customer had a problem logging in.

Tech Support: “Can you describe the cables connected to your computer, please?”
Customer: “I’ve only got the one cable connected to the computer.”
Tech Support: “Is it the power supply?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Tech Support: “You don’t a phone line connected to the modem?”
Customer: “Yes, it’s connected.”
Tech Support: “To a phone jack?”
Customer: “Yes…that’s how it gets power. My battery is dead.”
Tech Support: “That’s not a phone jack. That’s a power outlet. You have to have the modem conceded to a phone jack. The thing you connect a phone to.”
Customer: “I thought it was funny that they talked to each other over the power lines.”

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Customer: “I can’t connect to you over the Internet.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what account name are you registered under?”
Customer: “No, I’m not registered. I just made up things when it asked for my username and password.”

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Tech Support: “Well, let me look up your account information to make sure we have the correct password.”
Customer: “Ok.”
Tech Support: “Hmmm…let’s re-enter your password.”
Customer: “Ok.”
Tech Support: “All right. Your password is ‘XYZ123’.”
Customer: “Oh, that’s what I have written down, but that’s not not what I put in.”
Tech Support: “What did you put in?”
Customer: “‘FURBY’.”
Tech Support: “Why did you do that?”
Customer: “Because I didn’t like yours.”

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We started an ISP service at our company, and I was one of the people assigned to customer support. One customer filled out a mail-in form, and in the requested password field, he had filled out, “Mother Maiden Name.”

We thought it was a bit of an odd password, but we entered it into the system. The next day he called up, saying he couldn’t log into his account.

Tech Support: “Ok, you typed in your username ‘Bob1,’ right?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Tech Support: “And you typed in your password ‘Mother Maiden Name,’ right?”
Customer: “No, that’s not what I wanted. I wanted you guys to use my mother’s maiden name for the password, not ‘Mother Maiden Name.'”
Tech Support: “Oh. Ok. Well, I’ll go ahead and change it, and you should be able to log in just fine. What’s your mother’s maiden name?”
Customer: “I can’t tell you that! That’s my password!”

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I’m an audio/video technician for an educational medical school in Philadelphia. One day a professor wanted to use Power Point for a presentation. We were able to borrow a laptop from the Information Tech Department. I brought it in, set it up, booted it, and it came up with a password screen. I explained to the professor that I had to call up the Information Tech Department to find out the password, but the professor told me not to bother.

He tried his own name and password. And he kept trying it, repeatedly, for the next hour. I explained to him that this would not work, but he was insistent and kept trying. So I just sat back and laughed to myself.

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I caught the end of one of those cable TV Internet programs. In the last five minutes, the host said, “Every week we get thousands of pieces of email asking ‘How do I get online?'” Neat trick.

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Customer: “I’m having problem with my modem account.”
Tech Support: “Ok, tell me exactly the part you are having a problem with.”
Customer: “Well, I think you need to give me an account.”
Tech Support: “Well, what kind of account do you need? An email account, Unix account, or Novell account?”
Customer: “I need a carrier account.”
Tech Support: “What do you mean a carrier account?”
Customer: “When I try to dial in, it tells me ‘no carrier.’ Can you give me a carrier account?”

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One employee couldn’t log in to her new computer account and asked me for help. I asked all the routine questions, including, “Are you sure this is the right password?”

Her: (exasperated) “I’m sure it’s the correct password. I typed in the one I saw (another co-worker) use to login to her machine.”
Me: “And what password was that?”
Her: “Five asterisks.”

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Tech Support: “Thank you for calling; may I have your name please?”
Customer: “Yes, but before I do I just want to tell you that this software sucks! I have never dealt with such a ****** company, and I am just calling so you can cancel my account!”
Tech Support: “Ok sir, how long have you been a member?”
Customer: “Three months, And I have only been able to log on once!”
Tech Support: “Ok sir, before I cancel your account may I ask what the problem is that you’ve been having?”
Customer: “Yes, every time I go to type in my password it won’t let me!”
Tech Support: “It won’t let you? What does it do when you try to type in the password?”
Customer: “All the ******* thing does is ding!”
Tech Support: “Sir, are you in front of your computer now?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Tech Support: “What screen is in front of you right now?”
Customer: “The welcome screen, why?”
Tech Support: “Could you please hit your tab key and try typing your password.”
Customer: “Ok, but it is not gonna………SON OF A *****!! IT WORKED!”
Tech Support: “Ok sir, now would you like me to cancel your account?”
Customer: “Heck no, I want online!”

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A gentleman called tech support, as he was having problems uploading his newly-made web page to his shell access. He told me the error message he was receiving: “User anonymous access denied.” I explained to him that in order to log in to his shell account he needed to supply his username and password. He got very upset, claiming to be a “network administrator” and that he knew what he was doing, and obviously the problem was on our end.

I tried explaining the situation to him several different ways, but he was insistent. Finally, I asked for his password and told him to hold on for a moment. I logged into his shell access and told him (more irately than I should have to a customer), “I’m on your shell account right now. If I wanted to, I could have a web page up in your account in 15 seconds.”

He was so upset at my “refusal” to help him, that he said he’d call back when a “more qualified” techie was working.

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A customer called our PC tech support line. She had problems getting her modem connection to work correctly.

Tech Support: “Our dialup connection settings have changed recently. We have an instruction sheet which tells you how you should set up your connection. Have you followed those instructions?”
Customer: “Oh, I have those instructions, but I couldn’t understand a word of them, so I just installed the connection my way. Now it prompts me for a host name. What should I enter?”
Tech Support: “Um…there is nothing you can enter there. Logging in like that doesn’t work any more. You really should follow those instructions.”
Customer: “I cannot understand them! I just did it my way, and I need the host name.”
Tech Support: “Ma’am, there is no host name you could enter that would work.”
Customer: “Some help line this is. You don’t know your own host name.”

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I work for an ISP. One day a woman called, furious.

Customer: “I bought the Internet the other day, and it ain’t workin’.”
Tech Support: “Well, ma’am, can you explain what’s happening?”
Customer: “Well, I called that number that you gave me, and it don’t do nothing.”
Tech Support: “What do you mean?”
Customer: “When I call it, all it does is squeal in my ear!”
Silence.

Tech Support: “Ma’am, do you have a computer?”
Customer: “Computer? Hell, I pay you twenty dollars a month! I don’t need a computer!”

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I’ve worked closely with the sysops of a local BBS, who are always amazed at the users that download a file from the system, decide that it’s not what they expected, and return it by re-uploading it.

——————————————————————————–

While managing files for a site that offers a large number of shareware programs and game demos, I personally observed at least two people who had downloaded software and then contacted tech support to ask where they could upload it again so others could have a turn.

——————————————————————————–

I’ve lost count of the number of people who I’ve heard ask tech support if they can download with their computer off. Often they just assume that they can, but then ask if they will be charged the regular hourly rate. I witnessed at least one individual asking if he would get in trouble for downloading with the computer off, thinking he was the first to have discovered this amazing loophole.

——————————————————————————–

I had a customer who called to get our BBS number. I gave him the information and told him about setting up his modem. The caller said impatiently, “Yeah, yeah, I got it,” and hung up. Later that day he called back, saying he had been trying all day but could not get through to our lousy BBS. I checked but the system had plenty of lines free. I asked him about his modem settings. He didn’t have a modem. He had spent the day calling the BBS from his telephone.

——————————————————————————–

My son said he wanted to order something online. He asked me how to pay for it, and I informed him we could pay online. He said there was just one thing he couldn’t figure out — where the slot for the money was.

He cracked up after I gave him further information and wondered whether or not this story could be used on Computer Stupidities.

——————————————————————————–

Tech Support: “Ok, sir, to finish opening your account, I will need you to provide a credit card number.”
Customer: “All right, hold on.”
[some rustling sounds]
Customer: “Ok, do you have it yet?”
Tech Support: “Well, no, You haven’t given it to me yet.”
Customer: “Sure I did. I just stuck it in this slot in the front of this computer.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Hi. I’m trying to buy something on the Internet, and the web site wants my credit card.”
Tech Support: “Ok. If your positive it’s a secure connection, and you’re on a reputable dealer’s site, go ahead and enter the numbers.”
Customer: “Well, every time I insert my credit card, nothing happens. Now it’s stuck.”
Tech Support: “What?! Insert your card? What do mean it’s stuck?”
Customer: “It won’t come out of the slot.”
I decided to see exactly what she was talking about. My fears were confirmed when I arrived at her cubicle. She had been trying to slide the card into the floppy drive and managed to push it all the way in. I decided to have fun with her and told her it was being electronically sent over the line to the web site. She stared at me with a look of shock on her face, and said something I’ll never forget: “Is that what they mean by ‘Credit card transactions can take twenty-four hours to process.’?”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Wait, if there’s so much info available on this service, are you sure it’ll fit onto this little slot on my computer?”
Sure just STUFF IT in there!

——————————————————————————–

Cut from our support log — note that this is the entirety of the message:

This is the 1ST time on america online. I”m as clueless as a pole right now, & I would be so happy if You could heLP me a little with my cluelessness Maybe a hint or two.

——————————————————————————–

We were having problems with one of our workstations — it wasn’t communicating well over the LAN, and we kept getting ethernet timeouts. We tried replacing the transceiver, but that didn’t help, and we tried shortening the network between that workstation and the next (we were on the old thinnet lines then) but that didn’t work either. We’d even recently installed a repeater to help with some of our LAN problems, and that didn’t work. I knew what the problem was — we’d had it before with one of out other workstations. It was a bad network chip in the workstation, and all we had to do was call the DG Field Engineer, and he’d come replace the system board and that would be that. But my boss wouldn’t do it. It’s not like it was going to cost us anything, we had a flat fee maintenance contract, but the guy just wouldn’t call the FE and get it fixed, swearing that it was something else and that we’d find it if we just kept looking. So I was sitting at my workstation, with my usual Incredible Hulk GIF background, and we were working on the problem. We tried something (I don’t remember what it was, now) and then tried to transfer a big file from that workstation to the server. And we started getting the usual network timeouts.

Boss: “Have you tried it without that background?”
I gave him the most incredulous look ever, and he just said, “Just humor me, will you?” and insisted I try it. So I did. And of course, it didn’t work.

——————————————————————————–

Here’s a silly incident which happened to me when I was trying to renew my account in a local ISP in Malaysia. I was trying to renew my account, and after consulting my computer dealer, I had to do it through the bank. Two days after I sent the money, I checked if my account was rebalanced and renewed. It wasn’t. My account had been terminated once last year — I was not even informed, and I only knew this after a ten minute session with technical support. I wasn’t enthusiastic about seeing another reoccurence, so I sent a message to the ISP, stating, “I reviewed my account but it seemed that it had not been updated yet. Please do it so as it may be an inconvenience if my account is terminated without notice again like the last time.”

It may apparently be a simple request, but the ISP botched it. They thought I was asking them to terminate my account — and send a notice about it. I was given a notice politely telling me that my account would be terminated within three days.

——————————————————————————–

I work at an ISP, primarily in tech support, but I do sales sometimes. A woman called to sign up for Internet access a few weeks ago. After taking some information, I asked her what she wanted as her login name. She supplied me a name, which I checked in the system, and replied, “I’m sorry, but that name has been taken. Try something else.”

The woman became very upset, insisting that she needed to use that name and no other. I was curious enough to ask why, and the story came out. It seems this lady had just purchased her computer, and it booted into Windows 95 where it asked for a password to go with the login she had supplied me.

After having tried numerous passwords, she finally decided that she needed to sign up for Internet access so that we could supply her with a password to login to her own computer!

Struggling to contain myself, I suggested that she tried pressing ‘Cancel’, which would pop her right into Windows 95. Once she realized she didn’t need a password after all, she hung up on me.

——————————————————————————–

I was working tech support for a university when I got this call:

Tech Support: “Hello, tech support.”
Customer: “I am ready to send.”
Tech Support: “What?”
Customer: “I am ready to send.”
Tech Support: “What are you ready to send?”
Customer: “The file I am uploading. I am ready to send.”
Tech Support: “Ooooh-kay…what are you sending?”
Customer: “I am submitting a file to you. I selected ‘upload,’ and it said, ‘Ready to receive, waiting for signal,’ so I called you, giving you my signal, so you can begin getting it.”

——————————————————————————–

Once while working in a tech support outfit that supported most of Oklahoma, a caller complained that she was not able to login. She complained that her password was not being accepted. We tried turning off the caps lock, but that didn’t work either. So I changed her password to “3tza45bx.”

Tech Support: “Ma’am all done, your new password is 3-t-z-a as in apple 4-5-b-x.”
Customer: “Ok, let me try it again.”
A flurry of key tapping.

Customer: “It’s still not working.”
Tech Support: “Ma’am, could you read back to me what password you wrote down?”
Customer: “sure, 3-t-z-a-a-s-i-n-a-p-p-l-e-4-5-b-x.”
Good thing I hit that mute button quickly before I burst into laughter.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t log in to my account.”
Tech Support: “Ok, let’s look at your configuration.”
Customer: “Ok…but I know that my User ID is case sensitive.”
Tech Support: “Yes it is. Ok, what does it say in the ‘User ID’ field?”
Customer: “‘Case Sensitive’.”

——————————————————————————–

I was once discussing computers at a party with a very snooty girl. She was quite intoxicated and decided it was time for a game of “I’m more intelligent than anyone else in the room.” She started going off on a rant on how Microsoft Network was much better than any other Internet provider. Naturally, I asked why. Her reply was (my paraphrasing):

“During data transfers, both the transmitting and receiving computers usually are running on Windows 95, and by using MSN, you insure full compatibility throughout the transaction and thus can upload and download much faster than with any other provider.”
And furthermore,

“I use only Microsoft apps at work and often want to download my files from my employer’s network. I can only use MSN because otherwise I would not be able to manipulate any of the downloaded files at home.”
As soon as the urge to ram her drink up her nose subsided, I excused myself and kept at least ten people between us for the rest of the evening.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Is there a place I can go in the computer to make the phone line better?”

——————————————————————————–

Some poor old lady called up because she was trying to answer the questions in order to register with our service.

Tech Support: “I’m sorry ma’am, but you’ll have to register before using the service.”
Customer: “Really? Well, I tried. I mean, I answered all the questions. It was a little noisy but I answered all the questions.”
Tech Support: “Noisy? How could it be noisy? Your modem dialed, connected, and brought up the questions, right? Then what did you do?”
Customer: “I picked up the phone and answered everything on the screen. There was a lot of static, but I figured they could still hear me.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t get any web pages.”
Tech Support: “Ok, can you send and receive email?”
Customer: “No, I can’t.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what kind of connection do you have with us?”
Customer: “T1.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what kind of router do you have?”
Customer: “Router? I have no idea. What’s a router?”
Tech Support: “Would you happen to know the IP address of the router?”
Customer: “Ummm, no…I don’t know that kind of stuff.”
Tech Support: “Is there anybody there that would know?”
Customer: “No, the office is closed; I’m the only one here.”
Tech Support: “Then I’m sorry, I think you will have to have your network administrator call us.”
Customer: “I am the network administrator.”
Tech Support: “And you don’t know what kind of router you have?”
Customer: “No, I never had to know that before; is your server down?”
Draw circle. Bang head here.

——————————————————————————–

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Someone here at work once asked, eyeing the blinking lights on the transceiver next to him, “Do I have to wait until the Ethernet is free before I can hit return to send my email?”

——————————————————————————–

I was on the phone to one of our users who is based at an office remote from HQ. Historically they have suffered from slow network ever since we introduced the WAN.

Her: “…system time is 15:51…”
Me: “Hmmm. It says 15:54 on my machine. The clocks at your site must be a little slow.”
Her: “Maybe that’s why the network is so slow here.”

——————————————————————————–

Back in my college days, I was a resident assistant in one of the dorms on campus. One of my residents (not the brightest crayon in the box) came to me asking for help as she had been attempting to connect to the Internet with no success. I sat down at her desk, and, noticing that there were only a printer cord and power cord coming out of her computer, I asked if she had an ethernet card and if she had activated her data line.

“Ethernet card? Data line?” she asked. “What’s that?” I took a deep breath and calmly attempted to explain to her how to hook her computer up to a network. I finally told her to take her roommate with her to the on-campus PC store and tell them that she wanted an ethernet card for her computer.

Two hours later, she knocked on my door again and told me that she had gotten the ethernet card, had it installed, and gotten her data line activated, but was still having problems getting online. I went back to her room, and, sure enough, she had the card but still hadn’t plugged it into the data jack.

Me: “So, were you going to plug this in?”
Her: “Well, I got the card. Isn’t that all I need?”
Me: “No, you’ll need some cable to plug it into the data jack.”
Her: “I don’t need to plug it in!”
Me: “Why is that?”
Her: “Don’t you know anything? The Internet isn’t in the wall! It’s all around us!” (waves arms and looks in awe at the ceiling) “You can’t even SEE it! I don’t think you’re as smart as everyone thinks you are if you don’t know that.” (gives me a crusty glare)
Me: “So…how does your computer FIND the Internet without some sort of connection to it?”
Her: “Computers just KNOW this kind of stuff.”
Me: “Your roommate has an ethernet connection through the data jack. The rest of the floor has their computers plugged into our data lines–”
Her: “Well, that’s just because you’re not as in touch with your computers as I am. If you all were good friends with them, they would just take you to the Internet without having to plug them into the phone jacks. You know, I don’t think that’s a very humane thing to do to your computer, and I don’t know that I like such a cruel person touching my stuff.”
I could do nothing but look at her blankly for a few minutes before quickly retreating to the privacy of my room to laugh hysterically. She gave me five minutes before knocking on my door again. I told her if she left me alone with the computer for a while, when she came back, she’d be able to connect. After my many assurances that I wouldn’t do anything “cruel and unusual” to her precious computer, she left the room to go to class. I bought some cabling, plugged everything in, adjusted her settings, and went back to my room to call my brother to tell him the story.

——————————————————————————–

Half a year ago a customer sent in a message saying that he wanted another email address, and he wanted to know how much it would cost. I replied that customers were allowed up to five for no added charge. All I needed was a name and a password for each account.

I have changed the names in the following exchange to protect the idiotic.

Customer:

Oh, then I would like Jane Doe for my wife, John Doe for my son, Jennifer Doe for my daughter. I’ll ask them what passwords they want and send you another message.

Me:

I’m sorry, in my earlier email I was not very clear. I apologize for any confusion. I will try to be very clear in this message so that there will not be any problems, but if you do have any, you can always call.
All email addresses must be between four and twenty characters. A character is any lower case letter, number, the dash or -, and the underscore or _. You CANNOT use any spaces or other special characters. The same rules apply for your password. Here are some examples to help you in your selection.

The usernames of: Jane Doe, John Doe, Jane_Doe, and John_Doe are NOT usable because of the capital letters and the spaces.

These would be fine: janedoe, johndoe, jenniferdoe

Or you could use: jane_doe, john_doe, jennifer_doe

If you wanted something shorter, you would need to use middle initials since your first initials all start with the same letter. For example, if your son’s middle initial was “p” you could use: jpdoe

Their first names would normally be another good alternative, but someone else already has “john”. So you could use “jane” and “jennifer” but NOT “john”. “johnny” has also been used, but “jonathan” has not.

Do you have any further questions? If this is not clear to you, you can call during office hours and ask for me, or call after hours and get whoever is on 24 hour tech support.

Customer:

I think I have it now. How about this:
jane, with the password of as4you*
bunny, with the password of ^to^
johnny, with the password of astronaut!

Are those okay?

Me:

As I said in my last message, there are no special characters allowed, so the passwords given are not usable. Just so we are clear, when I say special characters, I mean ~!@#$%^&*()+=`[]{};:'”,./ and ?. NONE of these can be in the username OR password.
Also, you can not use “johnny” because someone already has it.

If you can get me usable passwords for “jane” and “bunny” I will put them in the system immediately. Then we will only have to worry about your son.

Customer:

Oh. Now I get it. Then I want to use these:
jane doe with the password of supermom
kitten with the password of kitten, unless they can’t be the same, then I’ll use daughter starranger with the password of blaster

Can you tell me how to set those up?

Me:

I put “starranger” in the system with the password you listed. The instructions on this page are how to set up the extra email accounts on your computer: (url)
If you have ANY trouble with this, or if ANY error occurs, call out help line. The number is xxx-xxxx. All of us can help you with setting up these email addresses. Just print out this message and have it with you when you call. This is a 24 hour tech support line. In fact, I suggest you call and let us lead you through it step by step over the phone. It will be much easier.

The bad news is there is still a problem with the other two addresses. “kitten” is being used by someone else already, and I can not put in “jane doe” because of the space.

In case you still wanted them, I did put in “jane” with the password of “supermom” and “bunny” with the password of “daughter”. Are those okay?

Customer:

I don’t know what is happening! I set up johnny, with the password of astronaut, just like the instructions said, and it always gives me an error saying that the password is bad! What is wrong!
I don’t want to try and set up kitten and jane till you tell me what is wrong.

Me:

Sir, as I stated in my earlier email, johnny is not available.
Why don’t you call the 24 hour tech support line so we can work this out faster than through email? Believe me, it will be easier.

Customer:

I CAN’T CALL THE HELP LINE!
I don’t get home till you are closing! There won’t be anyone in the office!

I WANT to do this over the phone but CAN’T because you close so early!

Me:

Sir, as said many times before, this is a 24 hour help line. Even though we are only in the office from 9am to 6pm, the help line pages us. In fact, this week is my rotation with the pager so any time from now till Sunday you can speak with me. This will be to your advantage since I’m familiar with the situation.

Customer: (sent to my boss, then forwarded to me)

I have sent several email messages to your tech support and received NO REPLIES!
All I want is a few additional email addresses, and I learned from your site that I can get four more for free. But when I send email to the technical address, I get no answers.

Can you help me?

Me: (to my boss)

He is lying through his teeth. Here are his letters and my replies.
(I included the emails here)

My Boss:

Okay. I’ll call him.
That was the end of the email exchange for a while. My boss called the man and asked him if he had ever gotten any replies from the tech mail address. The customer denied that he had. So my boss read him one of my replies and asked if the customer had gotten it. He denied that he had, so my boss read him his next email and asked why he was replying to mail he never got.

The man then broke down and explained that he was:

Confused by my telling him that some names were not available.
Could not call the tech support line since it was only open on the weekdays during office hours.
Found the instructions on our site too confusing.
My boss then spent over three hours on the phone leading the man through setting up the other email accounts.

The next day the man called tech support to complain that he had changed the mail accounts to “johnny”, “jane doe”, and “kitty” and that they had stopped working, so he was going to call on the weekend to have us help him again. He never called back about the email.

Three months later, his computer broke down, and he brought it to the shop. I worked on the machine. He had “uninstalled” some software by deleting the directories and then wondered why the computer would not boot up. He remembered seeing many of the programs putting things into the “windows” directory, so he had deleted as much of that as he could.

Miraculously, re-installing Windows fixed his machine. When he came in to pick up the machine, I asked about the other email addresses. He said they were too much trouble for him, and that he just started using hotmail instead. I told him that that was probably a better choice for him.

But it gets better.

Throughout the next five months, we had no less than two calls a month from this man. His settings, including the DNS numbers, email addresses, home page, and so on, would mysteriously change. He blamed viruses, his kids, the weather, and everything but than himself.

One day he called to cancel. He explained that his son was moving away to college and would have access there, and so since his Internet access had only been for his son, he would no longer need it.

We threw a small office party after he hung up. We shredded his account on the server and sighed a great sigh of relief. Three days later he came in with a laptop. He wanted his account back.

Apparently he had terminated his account because his son was taking the computer with him to college. But this guy’s job, “a sensitive job with the federal government,” required him to have Internet access from home, and apparently it had been this way all along. His boss had apparently asked him what was going on when email to him suddenly started bouncing. So he was supplied him with a laptop so he could continue working at home.

We set up the laptop for his account, and he took it and went home. Less than an hour later, he called. He had changed his access phone number, his primary DNS number, his WINS numbers (which we don’t even use), his password, his email server names, and his email address, and had put a password on the laptop that he did not remember.

We fixed it over the phone. The whole time he denied having changed anything but admitted to “checking on the settings.” It took over two hours.

We are hoping for an act of nature, or that he will get fired and they will take back the laptop.

——————————————————————————–

We sell routers, some of them equipped with built-in wireless access points.

Customer: “YOUR CRAPPY ACCESS POINT IS A WORTHLESS ****! I CAN’T BELIEVE I BOUGHT IT! I WANT MY MONEY BACK!”
Tech Support: “What seems to be the trouble?”
Customer: “I CAN HARDLY CONNECT TO IT WITH MY LAPTOP! EVEN IF I STAND RIGHT NEXT TO YOUR **** MY LAPTOP STILL SAYS CONNECTION QUALITY BAD. HOW CAN YOU SELL THIS CRAP?”
After about 15 minutes of ranting and trouble hunting, we finally concluded that:

The customer bought the entry-level model of our router.
That model does not have any built-in access point.
When the customer activated his laptop’s wireless client, it did, however, still manage to connect to an access point.
The access point his laptop connected to was found out to be his neighbor’s wireless access point.
His neighbor’s house was a good distance from his, hence the low connection quality.
Even though he bought a router from us and an Internet connection from a provider, he didn’t actually use them.
We doubted his neighbor would appreciate this, if he found out.
And the customer’s reaction to this news?

Customer: “BUT HOW CAN YOU ALLOW THIS TO HAPPEN! I THOUGHT YOU HAD A FIREWALL IN YOUR CRAP! IT SHOULD HAVE STOPPED MY LAPTOP FROM DOING IT!”

——————————————————————————–

One particularly innovative user decided he didn’t want to spend the $200 for a modem with adapter to connect his Visor to his cell phone, let alone more for a wireless modem. Ever creative, he proposed the following solution: use a serial cradle, a null modem, a serial cable, his 56K USR modem, a borrowed analog-to-digital phone adapter from the office, and a handmade cable from Radio Shack parts to bridge to A2D box and his cell phone. He was good-natured when I said it wouldn’t work and agreed when I pointed out how cumbersome it would be to carry around two pieces of additional gear both requiring AC power even if it could work. I must say, though, that it was one of the most resourceful and innovative solutions I’d ever heard.

——————————————————————————–

When ISDN was offered publically, we had this one customer who had to get it right away. We configured an Ascend Pipeline router for him and went out to his site to hook it up and make sure it was working. A week later he called in yelling and screaming that his ISDN was down. Instead of traveling fifty miles out to his site to fix it, we opted to step him through it. We got to the part in the configuration that said “Your IP address,” and he had in 127.0.0.1 (which is an IP address designated for all machines to use for testing of their IP software — it’s not a valid IP address). We tell him what his IP address was and how to type it in. He argued for thirty minutes that we were wrong, and he was right, and after a while we convinced him to “just try it.” What do you know? It came back up, and everything was fine again.

A week later he called back yelling and screaming that his ISDN was down. We stepped him through the configuration, and his IP was set to 127.0.0.1 again! We fought with him for another thirty minutes about how we were certain that the IP address we assigned him was what went in that blank. After a long argument, he changed it, and it came up, but he was still grumbling that we were wrong and he was right.

This continued, every week, for two years.

A year after that, I was working at another ISP and was very happy that I hadn’t heard from him in a very long time. Then one day I got an email from one of the most laid back tech support employees on my team. It read, “Have you ever had a customer you just wanted to ask to meet you in the parking lot???” I thought this was highly unusual for this particular support employee, so I went to look at the ticket in question.

It was the very same guy! Doing the very same thing with the IP address setting! I looked at the case history. He had been a customer for six months and called once a week with the same situation, but now he had a Cisco router on a 128K fractional T1 connection.

Another year and a half went by. By then, I was working for a small cable modem company. The cable modems we used could only be reconfigured with specific software, and then one had to TFTP the configuration file to the modem, and only our employees had access to any of that. Besides, we ran DHCP there, so the customer got the IP address automatically assigned when the modem was turned on.

One day I was processing new customer orders, and I saw this guy. We were on a first name basis by that time, so I called him up just to say I was glad he was a customer of ours, because now he couldn’t change his configuration.

The next week I got a call from my husband, who works for a web hosting company. This guy had signed up with them, and he had insisted that his IP address was 127.0.0.1.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “If I want somebody to send a reply to my email…should I include a self-addressed stamped envelope along with it?”

——————————————————————————–

Tech Support through email:

Customer: “I CAN’T READ OR RECEIVE EMAIL! HELP!”
We’re only allowed to reply through email, so I almost deleted it. But I reconsidered.
Tech Support: “Yes you can.”

——————————————————————————–

The following letter was received, through email, mind you, to a friend of mine:

Apparently I have read-only access with the email, but my boss would like me to be able to send messages as well. Is there any way this can be established with my account?

——————————————————————————–

I actually had this emailed to me once:

Help! I can’t find your email address. What is it?

——————————————————————————–

A few years ago I worked at a computer shop. One time a woman overheard me answer the phone and came storming over to me.

Her: “So you’re the one who won’t let me email my son!”
Me: “Excuse me?”
Her: “Well, I bought my computer here and you guys set up my Internet.”
Me: “Yes…?”
Her: “Every time I try to email my son, YOU email me back saying you won’t deliver my message.”
Me: “Ma’am, I don’t have anything to do with delivering email to anyone, and I’m sure I haven’t sent you any messages.”
Her: “I just heard you tell the person on the phone that YOU were Damon.”

——————————————————————————–

Received at our tech support email account:

I send a message to myself and find an email with attachment from my email address coming together. The attachment file is not on my computer. So I do not think the problem comes from my computer. I have an idea that maybe your email server has been hackered by somebody. Will you kindly check my email account or some other email account to see if there exists similar phenomena?

——————————————————————————–

There’s a long time customer of ours who has built quite a reputation around the support desk for being a complete and utter moron. He’s been online longer than most teenagers but still hasn’t grasped any of the fundamentals about windows, email, web pages, passwords, you name it. When he sends complaints to our support mailbox, he sends them in 18 point bold Verdana and only sends one sentence at a time. For the most part, if he needs another sentence, then he needs another email. Of course, anything that happens to him while he’s online is the direct result of something we did.

These two messages were in my box this morning, spaced about thirteen minutes apart.

you passworded my email and I cannot get in
Thanks

…and…

Disregard last mesagge. Damn windiws did it.

——————————————————————————–

When I started working here, I got myself all the computer accounts I needed, including an email account. I was given my passwords for all systems except email. After about a week, I called up the appropriate person to find out what the problem was and was told that my password had been emailed to me.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Help! I’m stuck trying to send you an email.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what kind of problem are you having?”
Customer: “I’m not sure where to buy stamps for my email.”
Tech Support: “You don’t need stamps. Email is free!”
Customer: “You sure it won’t bill me for it? If so, I can send you money.”
Tech Support: “It’s FREE.”

——————————————————————————–

My friend called me up one night and asked me to help him with a problem he was having sending email.

Friend: “I can’t send any email to you.”
Me: “So what’s the problem? Are you getting any error messages?”
Friend: “No, but everytime I try to go to your email it asks me for your password, and you never gave it to me!”
It turned out he was trying to get into my Hotmail account to send me an email.

——————————————————————————–

I work on the database for an IT recriutment company in the UK. One day an applicant emailed his resume in. It was a one page MS Word document, around 10K, but he apparently thought that this would take too long to send, so he compressed it with Winzip. Twice. Each time, he added the Winzip self-extractor program. The final size of his attached five was over 5 megs. The worst part is that he was applying for a Network Manager job, which would have given him my annual wage per month to manage 700 users.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I get this error when I check my mail. It says, ‘There are no new messages.'”

——————————————————————————–

A customer was inquiring about the features of a certain machine. Among his questions was, “Does it come with an email?”

——————————————————————————–

A few years back I was working at the helpdesk for an Internet provider where people could get a cheap email account.

Customer: “Hi, I want to change my email address.”
Tech Support: “Of course, sir, may I ask why?”
Customer: “I think it’s too long.”
Tech Support: “Can you tell me what your email address is now?”
Customer: “firstnamelastnamestreetadresszipcodeandphonenumber@[isp].nl.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I tried sending email to 1.404.123.4567 but the emailer wouldn’t let me.”
Tech Support: “Um, that’s a telephone number.”

——————————————————————————–

I helped someone set up his email account a while back. I realized how big a task it would be when I walked him through sending email, and he didn’t understand why “all psychiatric patients in North America” wouldn’t work as an email address.

——————————————————————————–

Tech Support: “How may I help you?”
Customer: “I’m writing my first email.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what seems to be the problem?”
Customer: “Well I can get the ‘a’. But how do I put the circle around it?”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I send you all this email, but I never get a response from you? Why? I don’t like your service. Answer me before I cancel!”
There was no return address on the email, and the Reply-To: field was set to ‘mail’.

——————————————————————————–

I had a user say that the email messages she was trying to send would come back undeliverable. I went to her machine to take a look. The two messages in her out basket had valid email addresses in the To: line, but the text of her message was stored in the Cc: and Bcc: lines.

This user had been using the same computer and the same email program for over a year.

——————————————————————————–

I run a Majordomo mailing list, and I got copied on all errors that get sent out to users who try to subscribe or unsubscribe automatically.

Once I received this:

MAJORDOMO ABORT (mj_majordomo)!!
[email protected]: 129, West, Third, St., M****, ID, 8**** is not a valid return address.

Evidently they don’t quite understand the meaning of an email return address. (The address was censored to protect the guilty.)

——————————————————————————–

Sometimes sent out by ListBot, a mailing list server:

This is an automatically generated message created by the ListBot system.
This is a warning message to let you know that your mail is bouncing.
If this email reaches you, then please disregard this message.

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The MSN ListBot Team
http://www.listbot.com/

——————————————————————————–

Someone once called me and asked me why she just received a satanic mail from us. I was a bit confused at first, and it took a few minutes to realize that she had received a message with the subject, “Message from MAILER-DAEMON.”

——————————————————————————–

Email sent to a mailing list server:

I have tried to unsubscribe, but a message appears saying that my user’s name is incorrect. I have been using the same name for 77 years and should know whether it is correct or not.

——————————————————————————–

Overheard in a class:

Student: “I’m so glad you’re giving this email class. I can’t wait to find out how to send a fax from my cell phone!”

——————————————————————————–

My boss decided he had to have a computer. Bad idea.

Boss: “It’s ON! I have CLOUDS! Come show me how to work this web thing!”
So I teach him how to send email. To send to me, he has to type all of five letters, plus the “@aol.com” part.

Boss: “Do I have to type ALL of this WHOLE thing every time? Can’t you fix it so it knows I want you?”
After I put myself into his address book:

Boss: “Do I have to do ALL this clicking, clicking, clicking every SINGLE time? Just fix it so it knows I want you.”

——————————————————————————–

Boss: (brandishing a newspaper ad) “Sign us up for this Earthlink thing!”
Me: “We don’t need that. It’s just another ISP. We have AOL.”
Boss: (blank stare)
Me: “A…O…L. That’s our ISP.”
Boss: “But I want to send email to (his friend), and HE’s on EARTHLINK! We can’t send email to him on Earthlink while we’re using that AOL thing!”
Me: “Sure we can. We can send email to anywhere we like.”
Boss: “No, that’s impossible. I’ve looked into it…we have to be on Earthlink, too. And that Netmeeting and Microsoftnet…we’re just going to have to join them all. Will I need a different e-dress for every one, do you know?”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t get my email.”
Tech Support: “Ok. Can you surf the web?”
Customer: “What?”
Tech Support: “I just want to know if you can visit any web sites. That will tell me if you’re connected.”
Customer: “What are web sites? I just use this to download my email.”
This guy was paying $40 per month for high-speed cable Internet access, and all he could do was send email.

Tech Support: “No problem. I can show you that later. Right now I need you to start your email program.”
Customer: “Aren’t you listening? It’s already started. I just can’t get any email.”
Tech Support: “Can you click the send and receive button for me?”
Customer: “I did that and nothing happens! I told you that!”
Tech Support: “All right, sir. We’ll just take a look at your preferences.”
Ten minutes later I finally finished walking him through his account settings in Outlook Express.

Customer: “You screwed something up! Now it keeps giving me an error message!”
Tech Support: “Ok, what does the message say?”
Customer: “It says YOU entered an invalid email address.”
Tech Support: “Let’s go back to the ‘General’ tab and double-check your address.”
Customer: “It says xxxx-at-home-period thingee-com.”
Tech Support: “Can you read it to me letter by letter?”
Customer: (growling) “It says x-x-x-x-a-t-h-o-m-e–”
Tech Support: “Ok, let’s stop right there. I want you to type ‘xxxx,’ then the ‘@’ symbol, not the word ‘at’.”
Customer: “What the hell are you talking about?”
Tech Support: “Have you got the ‘xxxx’ part done?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Tech Support: “Then I want you to hold the shift key and hit the number ‘2’ key.”
Customer: “At the same time? Are you trying to break it?”
Tech Support: “Trust me, sir, this will work.”
After we finished with that, he got even more upset because he didn’t have any email to receive.

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t get my email!”
Tech Support: “What’s the exact problem you’re having?”
Customer: “I called in earlier and I was told to go to Eudora to check for mail, but there’s no Eudora channel.”
Tech Support: “Where are you looking for Eudora?”
Customer: “I’m in mIRC of course.”

——————————————————————————–

Doing phone support for a software company, we had a customer that needed an update to our program. We told her that we had placed it in her mailbox, and it was there waiting on her to pick it up (our customers had “mailboxes” on our dial up server). She told us it wasn’t there, so we asked her to check again just to be sure. She said ok, put the phone down, and was gone for about five minutes. Finally she came back and said, “It’s still not there. I knew it wouldn’t because our postman only comes around 11:00am.” She had walked outside and checked her street mailbox.

——————————————————————————–

We are graphic designers based in the Netherlands. We recently did a job for a charity in London, which was sponsored by a large computer company. In order to complete the job, we needed a copy of the computer company’s logo. In due course, we received an email with a TIFF file of the logo. The text of the email asked that we return the TIFF file when we had finished with it. We did.

——————————————————————————–

The company I work for recently sent out (completely voluntary) customer information cards, asking for the customer’s name, home address, and email address. On more than one card, the email address field was filled in with the word “same” and an arrow pointing to the home address field.

——————————————————————————–

I have a user who still insists that he should not have to dial in to get his remote e-mail. The computer should just know to turn it on. When he asked if the other remote users in the company knew this, I said, “Well, I have never had this question before.” He accused me of calling him stupid and proceeded to call his manager to complain about our service. His manager laughed him off the phone and signed him up for training.

——————————————————————————–

I run a mailing list. Like most others, it’s set up so if you send email to the list with “unsubscribe” in the message, you’ll be unsubscribed from the mailing list automatically.

I should tell you how many times I’ve seen “unsubscribe” spelled. People get so mad at me because “it doesn’t work right” when they fail to realize that they’ve misspelled “unsubscribe.” This is a quote from one such person, who wasn’t even consistent:

“Hi. I try unbuscribe but it not let me unsubbscibe. Please unsubscibe me NOW!”

——————————————————————————–

The following was received via email from a customer:

Dear Help Desk:
Hmmm. This appeared in my inbox as I was writing you about Outbox trouble. So, apparently that email sat in my outbox BUT was also delivered… so I just BET the computer thinks I was sending it from the LS Mailbox, whence mail DOES sit in the outbox even if it was delivered. That was a forwarding of a message which had ORIGINALLY come into the LS mailbox BUT I had moved it into MY inbox before forwarding. I guess the computer remembered where it had originally arrived, does that make sense? This is this not a PAB problem but a Shared Inbox thing, a feature not a bug?

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Your service stinks.”
Tech Support: “Um, what seems to be the problem?”
Customer: “I can’t email.”
Tech Support: “Ok, what error message comes up when you try?”
Customer: “‘Mailer Daemon error: the address you are attempting to reach does not exist.'”
Tech Support: “May I ask what email address you were trying to send to?”
Customer: “‘www.jvim.com'”
Tech Support: “Oh. Well, that’s a web address, not an email address. If you want to email someone at jvim.com, the email address would probably be in the format [email protected].”
Customer: “Oh, ok.”
Tech Support: “Email addresses always have that @ symbol in them.”
Customer: “So that one won’t work — how about www.abc.com?”
Tech Support: “Er, that’s also a web address. Anything that begins with www is a web site.”
Customer: “Ok. I get it. So I can only email them from Netscape?”

——————————————————————————–

The General Manager of one of our subsidiaries needed to send some information regarding the network problems they were having to my supervisor, the network analyst.

My supervisor told the GM to write him an email. Which he did. The guy opened up Outlook, addressed the message, and typed it up. Then he printed it out and faxed it.

——————————————————————————–

I work at a help desk that supports several offices around the country, and I got a call from one of our regulars who was having trouble with a specific email message. All other messages worked fine, just the one message with an attachment was causing the issue. I asked her to forward the message to me, and I would take a look at the file to see if I could recreate the issue on my machine. I told her I would call back after I got the message and had a chance to test it. I moved on to another call and honestly forgot about it. Three days later an envelope arrived for me with a photocopy of the email, with the icon for the attachment highlighted and circled. It is now posted on the department bulletin board.

——————————————————————————–

Cut directly from our support log:

> jim, when i send e-mail! do i use ink, like if i was writing? i
> had to put in new ink in
> my printer, so i was wondering if e-mail use’es ink.
> thank you

——————————————————————————–

A client brought his PC into the office. “Eudora just doesn’t work!” he complains. The tech opened Eudora. Five minutes later it opened. He had about 200 letters minimized.

Customer: “Whaddaya mean, ‘I need to close them’? Aren’t they closed?”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I’ve been away a few days and it seems my mail has built up to the point where I can’t get it anymore.”
Small wonder. It turned out, the user had 30,000 messages in his email box.

——————————————————————————–

This morning someone came barging into my office, panic stricken, and frantic. “All my mail I saved in one of my folders is gone!!!” she said. I asked her which folder she had saved it to. “Deleted Items,” she said.

——————————————————————————–

A few months ago we had panicked users stating that they couldn’t get to their mail and were getting error messages. Lo and behold, the mail directory had been moved to our server. (We use a single database oriented mail system.) When we went into the console to find out where, when, and who moved the mail directory, we found that it had been moved by a user. (Users need full read, write, and modify access to the mail folder beause it is a shared database — a setup like this is itself a computer stupidity.) When questioned why she did this, she replied, “The network needed cleaning up.”

——————————————————————————–

Someone here at work, who just couldn’t grasp the big picture of computers and computer networks, had something go wrong with his workstation and, for the day, had to use a different one in another lab. When he read new email from the second workstation, he replied, “How did you know what machine to send it to?”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t get my email.”
Tech Support: “What software are you using?”
Customer: “What do you mean?”
Tech Support: (sigh) “What do you get your email on?”
Customer: “My computer.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Yes, I just got this disk in the mail for ten hours. Does it give me email?
Tech Support: “Yes, ma’am, it does.”
Customer: “Well, can I have my answering machine hooked up so that I can just check my email from my answering machine?”
Tech Support: “Well, no, ma’am, it does not work that way.”
Customer: “Now, you listen, young man, there is no reason for you to get smart with me!”
Tech Support: “No, ma’am, I understand. I was just trying to explain to you how it works.”
Customer: “Well, young man, you have to understand in my day this stuff did not even exist.”

——————————————————————————–

Tech Support: “You’re having a problem with getting your mail?”
Customer: “Yes.”
Tech Support: “Ok, tell me line by line everything you do.”
Customer: “I click ‘check mail’ and it asks me for my password.”
Tech Support: “Ok, so you type your password.”
Customer: “No, I already did when I logged on, so I click ‘Cancel’.”
Tech Support: “No, Ma’am, you have to type your password.”
Customer: [pause] “Hey, what do you know, I got some mail!”

——————————————————————————–

I once had a customer call me up wanting to send something via email. She said no matter what she did it wouldn’t go through. After much debating over the settings, I finally asked her what she was trying to send. It turned out she was trying to email a box to her daughter for her birthday. I still haven’t quite figured out how she thought that would work.

——————————————————————————–

When I was setting up a service call with Apple computer, the girl was getting my info. She asked if I had another way of being reached other than by the phone number I gave her. I said that I could be reached by email. She asked for my address. I gave it to her. Then she wanted the phone number for my email address.

——————————————————————————–

My Supervisor: “I have email now.”
Me: “Great. What’s the address?”
My Supervisor: “‘dmusket506’.”
Me: (writing it down) “Ok, what’s the rest?”
My Supervisor: “That’s it.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t seem to send any email.”
Tech Support: “What are you doing to send it?”
Customer: “I write it down on a piece of paper, slide it into the slot on the front of my computer, and click on ‘send mail’.”

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “I can’t send an email. Is the Internet full?”

——————————————————————————–

The other day I took exception to an insulting joke that someone had sent me, repeatedly, in his email signature.

His response: “Don’t draw conclusions about me from my email signature!”

Isn’t that what an email signature is for?

——————————————————————————–

Customer: “Uh, I’m trying to send email to my daughter and she’s not receiving it.”
Tech Support: “Ok, sir, what is her email address?”
Customer: “I don’t know. She doesn’t even have a computer. Can’t I send it to her post office?”

——————————————————————————–

Here is something I do that might count as a computer stupidity. I go to the mailroom at work several times a day to check my mail. I know intellectually that postal mail is only delivered once a day, but for whatever reason I keep equating it with email and check it periodically throughout the day. The fact that I only ever find stuff there once a day doesn’t seem to deter me from looking continually.

——————————————————————————–

Once my friend tried to send me a message by clicking on the “mailto:” link on my web page — but no one had set up email on her system, so it didn’t work.

She came to me the next day and told me about it. “Your computer must not have been turned on,” she said, diagnosing the problem.

——————————————————————————–

I received two differently worded email letters that said essentially the same thing (obviously something happened and the sender didn’t realize the first letter had gotten sent, so she typed up a second and sent that too). The letters were complaining on the subject of foul language in the movies, and she asked if anything could be done about it. I maintain a movie-related web site, so this did not seem out of the ordinary to me. I answered her, saying she should contact the studios directly.

The next thing I know, I received another letter from the address. It asked who I was and how in the world had I gotten hold of this movie language letter. It concluded by saying, “This is not my regular email address, so please respond to this one….”

All I could figure out was that this person logged into her friend’s account, found a letter of email addressed to her friend in response to her friend’s email, and got confused that she didn’t know about this beforehand. Although that would have made a fine computer stupidity, that’s not what happened.

I answered her, saying who I was and that I didn’t know how or where the original email had come from. I speculated on a couple theories, including the one above (expressed in less demeaning terms), to help sort out the problem.

She writes back acting all snotty, acting like I’m a nosy little jerk unduly interested in her Internet access, and then, in that “I asked you once” tone, would I please tell her honestly how I came about that original letter on the subject of movie language? She went on to say that she really did write the letter, but it wasn’t supposed to be sent to me. It was supposed to go to the Vice President of the United States at whitehouse.gov. My email address is absolutely nothing like that of our Vice President’s. To type mine out accidentally when trying to type out his, you need to mistype somewhere around 25 characters in just the right way. To this day, I have no idea how she flubbed this up, and I know she doesn’t.

I wrote her back, telling her I didn’t appreciate her attitude, and, for the second time, that her original email was emailed normally to my mailbox and that that that’s how I came about it.

Three days later, I get yet another letter from her. It was slightly differently worded, but what it said was that I was acting like a nosy little jerk unduly interested in her Internet access and then, in that “I asked you once” tone, would I please tell her honestly how I came about that original letter on the subject of movie language?

That’s right, she sent me a differently worded version of the same email as before. I wrote back, hopefully for the last time, saying she should learn how to read and write email before she chews someone out over it. But with her track record, I have no idea if she’ll ever actually read it.

——————————————————————————–

I’m in the Army and currently [at the time this anecdote was submitted to Computer Stupidities] deployed to Kosovo. As the local techie, people usually come to me with computer questions. After we had been here a while, a computer network with Internet access was installed. Being a net fanatic and desperately missing email, I talked to the system administrator and got our computers hooked up.

After getting everything set up and checked out, I announced to my company that we could now do email and if anyone had any questions about setting up an account that they should come see me. There was one guy who was extremely happy about having access to email, as communications with the states is difficult to begin with. Well, he came to ask how to set up an account. I gave him a printed copy of the procedure.

The next morning I ran into him at the dining tent. He looked very tired. I sat down with him and asked him about his condition. He replied, “I set up my email account last night and spent the entire night doing email.” This was understandable. I did the same thing.

Later in the day, I was taking the regular (snail) mail to the post office. It’s routine to check through all the mail to ensure that proper return addresses and “free mail” was printed on each envelope. Otherwise, the military postal system wouldn’t mail them. While sorting through them, I came across a stack of letters without the proper return address. They all had email addresses as both the return address and the ‘send to’ address.

My friend had apparently sat up all night hand writing 23 letters of about 5 pages each and thinking that by putting email addresses on the envelope, they would arrive a lot quicker.

——————————————————————————–

I used to work for a multimillion dollar consulting firm doing desktop support. The gentleman who was in charge of several large government contracts decided he needed to send a letter via email and wanted to know how to do so. Easy enough I suppose, until he happily handed me his letter on a sheet of paper crumpled up into a ball. “That is the letter I want to send,” he said. “Can’t you stuff it into the floppy drive and send it?” I tried to contain my laughter and explained to him how email worked. Of course, after I left I went outside and cried tears of uncontrollable laughter.

——————————————————————————–

My boss never could get the hang of email. He only used email for one thing: sending weekly messages to his daughter, an English instructor in Saipan. We will call her Mary Smith, but that was not her name. Her address was simple enough, but every week he would call me over to the computer with another problem.

Boss: “It’s gone! The email I just spent an hour typing is gone!”
Me: “What happened?”
Boss: “I clicked ‘Send,’ and it just disappeared!”
Me: “It’s in your outbox, because you told the computer to ‘Send’ it.”
Boss: “Oh.”
This happened almost every week. Either that or:

Boss: “It won’t let me send this message.”
Me: “You need to type her exact email address, not just ‘Mary Smith’ in the To: field.”
Boss: “Well, how many Mary Smiths could there be in Saipan?”
Or:

Boss: “I send email every week, they ought to know who it goes to by now!”
Or:

Boss: “I thought computers were supposed to be smart!”
He would always send his emails on Tuesday so they would get to his daughter by Saturday.

——————————————————————————–

I teach a class at a university in which the students have to email their assignments. Despite the fact that the email address is printed about three times in the course handbook, and I repeated it 20 or so times and wrote it on the board, one student wanted to know why her emailed assigment kept being returned with error messages. The reason? Instead of the proper email address, in the “To” field she had: “any teacher for LL101”.

——————————————————————————–

I was teaching a friend of mine how to use email for the first time. After going through scrutinizing 30 minutes of basic concepts of email in comparison to the real post office mail and answering her novice questions, we decided it was time for her to get her feet wet.

I had already signed her up for a free web-based email account. She logged in with her username and password, took her time to compose a message, and sent it successfully to her sister with such pride in her eyes.

Me: “Good job! That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Her: “No….”
Me: (smiles)
Her: (stares at the monitor)
Me: “What are you doing?”
Her: “Just a sec.” (stares some more)
Me: “Are you…looking for something on the screen?”
Her: “Yeah, I am waiting for a reply!”

——————————————————————————–

Friend: “Did you get the email I sent about my sound card?”
Me: “Nope, haven’t seen it yet. When did you send it?”
Friend: “Sent it this morning, you should have it by now.”
Me: “Let me check again. Hmmm. Nothing.”
Friend: “Oh, duh! It’s President’s Day. It probably won’t get delivered today.”
Me: (stifling laughter) “Oh yeah, that must be it. Just to be sure I get it, send it again to my other address.”

——————————————————————————–

I work at a good-sized newspaper. They have just switched to a Microsoft Exchange mail server. As part of the switch they went around to everyone’s PC and installed MS Outlook and some other networking gizmos.

They gave everyone the same email password and put the word out that passwords wouldn’t be changing for 45 days.

Everyone. Has. The. Same. Password. And everyone knows what it is.

They did this ON PURPOSE.

——————————————————————————–

This story is an example of a kind of mass stupidity mob that happens in various forums on the Internet all the time. I don’t understand why.

I belong to a mailing list, the topic of which will remain unnamed. The list’s only purpose is to send out a brief newsletter every day talking about things of interest to the subscribers. Consequently, the list is set up so that, normally, only the owner of the list is allowed to send messages; none of the recipients can post to it. After months of running smoothly, the mailing list software went haywire, and suddenly everyone was able to post to the list. Chaos broke out, and people started to send notes to the list (a list of about 500 people, mind you) just to be “cute.” Had it been left alone, the flood of mail would have quickly subsided. But then a wave of people started posting to the list telling these people to stop it. Letters poured in reading “STOP IT!” and “DON’T REPLY!” and “Why are you sending this to me?” This triggered more people to do that, which triggered more, and so on. In the first couple hours, there were easily seventy of these silly nonsense notes telling everyone else to stop sending out mail. You’d think common sense would keep people from “solving” the problem by contributing to it.

——————————————————————————–

I subscribe to a listserver that covers an automotive topic. Last year one of the list members went on vacation and set up his email server to autoreply to any email with a message that he was out of town. Unfortunately, he didn’t unsubscribe from the list before he left.

You can guess the result. Everytime anyone sent a message to the list, this guy’s automated reply went out on it too. The listserver fell down and went “splat” a couple of times before things got sorted out.

——————————————————————————–

This story points out the amazing fact that, although it is great fun to laugh at the mistakes of computer newbies, it takes the knowledge and expertise of a fairly competent newbie system administrator to make your sides really split. That’s me, and I maintain our organization’s UNIX systems.

There I was, looking at my screen, pondering what I saw. It was a message, stuck in the mail queue for no apparent reason. So, I figured, “What the hey, let’s process the queue and see if it goes out.” It didn’t. And it said it was stuck because it couldn’t contact the remote site. “They must be down, then,” I figured. So, since I was bored, I decided to speed up the rate at which the queue got processed by typing “sendmail -q5”. And after about ten minutes, I got bored of watching the message sit there in the queue and went on to other things. I assume the message eventually went, but I never went back to check up on it.

Later that day, someone sent out email to the whole office using a mailing list that we had set up specifically for that purpose. I got four copies of the message. Some people only got one; others got as many as seven or eight. Needless to say, I was a little shocked. The sender insisted he only hit ‘send’ once. I dubbed around a little bit, looking for the cause, but didn’t find it. So I left it until the next day.

The next day, people were complaining to me left and right that everytime they used the mailing list to send office mail, people would get multiple copies. I thought, “This is a serious problem now.” So I did what every good newbie system administrator would have done in that situation. I rebooted the mail server. And lo and behold, it actually worked.

Feeling pretty good about myself, I went to check on the sendmail daemon to see if it was running (as a sanity check more than anything — mail was going out, so I knew it was running). But I discovered, much to my surprise, that sendmail wasn’t running at all — and mail was still going out.

I was shocked. I felt a little scared. And then, suddenly, I felt incredibly stupid. I finally remembered that we don’t USE sendmail, we use SMTP. So I checked the SMTP process, and there it was, happily processing email.

It took me a few minutes to figure out what probably happened. When I was looking at the stuck job, I started a copy of the sendmail daemon. Not only that, I set it to a delay of only five seconds. The regular daemon, SMTP, is set by default to 30 or 60 seconds.

So when the queue got plugged by the mounds of mail going out in an all-office mailing, was this: SMTP got to it first, because the process was triggered by the mail entering the queue. But it wasn’t fast enough to keep ahead of sendmail. Sendmail could process the queue but couldn’t delete the message from it after it had sent the message. So while SMTP was plodding through the messages one by one, sending them and cleaning them up, sendmail was blazing through them, delete nothing, and do it all over again in another five seconds.

As it happened, people who were at the physical bottom of the mailing list got the most copies of the message, while the person at the top would only get one or two.

Needless to say, I kept this knowledge to myself, and instead of being the laughing stock of the office, I was the hero for having “solved” the great mail problem.

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