“Just as the biggest problem with a car is often the nut holding the wheel, many IT support issues are down to the user rather than the equipment,” Ian Barker writes for BetaNews.
“UK-based support company Probrand has compiled a list of some of the oddest support calls it has received over the past year,” Barker writes. “It also reveals that in the first week of January, the volume of support calls was 47 percent higher than an average week, mainly from workers who needed assistance with logging in and resetting their password, having forgotten it over the Christmas break.”
Here are some of Probrand’s strangest support calls of 2018:
• A user who had punched his laptop and wanted the screen replaced before any colleagues found out.
MacDailyNews Take: Must have been a Dell.
• One major business client called to report that they’d lost their internet connection. After sending out a team of engineers, it was discovered that the internet was down due to an employee in the business’ finance team cancelling a telephone line to save £20 ($26) a month. This cost the business thousands in revenue and took almost two weeks to get back online.
MacDailyNews Take: Ugh. Beancounters.
• The IT helpdesk took a call saying an office printer was faulty. After being talked through some basic troubleshooting by the team, it turned out it wasn’t plugged in.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Ay yi yi.
I know a large, muscular guy who lost his temper at a computer and smacked his hand hard on the top of the tower. After that he heard a noise from the tower – tick, tick, tick. The HD was dead. LOL
I’ve driven 40 miles because someone stepped on the rocker switch of a power strip.
It’s often in how they report the problem… “I can’t get email.” When you get there you find out no one can send or receive email, not just the woman who made the call. You make your way to the server room to find all the servers are gone. Email server, file server, vpn, calendar server, backup machine all gone. That’s when you realize that there is one disadvantage to the MacMini.
On the bright side, you get to prove how forcing them to pay for online backup has turned out to be a god send. Backblaze rocks.
Several years ago, I had a client who called to complain his desktop computer wouldn’t turn on. He said the screen just stayed blank when he tried to start it up and he had an article to finish on deadline. I inquired if he could hear the hard drive spin up or the computer chime when he turned it on. He said no, he couldn’t. I asked “Could your computer have gotten unplugged from the wall?”
“I can’t tell.” He replied. “I can’t see if it is or not. . . It’s too dark to see the outlet.”
“Why is that?” I asked.
“I have no lights; the power went out about an hour ago. Hold on, I’ll get a flashlight. . .”
I had a user call me to her desk, telling me her computer wouldn’t respond. When I got there, I asked her what she had been doing the last time she used it. She said that she had shut it down. I looked at her for a moment, then when she still didn’t understand, asked her if she had turned it back on. Her eyes went wide and she said ‘Ohhh!’
Having dealt with her for several years, I was in now way surprised.
I know a guy like that. He’s called applecynic and he uses Windows 3.11 for Workgroups to this very day because he’s, like, a rebel.
I’d like to see the list of stupid IT responses… you know like the MS certified tech that said “Macs can’t be networked” or “Macs don’t have RAM because they’re a closed system” on and on…
Here is the one I hear the most:
“My computer doesn’t work” then the stupid bitch hangs up.
“Hello, tech support. I think Apple products and the company are useless. I whine and whine, but Apple doesn’t do what I want. What can I do?”
“Go buy something else.”
Yes! That’s the message for applecynic.
This is why I’ve stopped posting. too many cynics. Sad.
I did support back in the early 80’s when people were far more naive about computers, the most common calls were — not plugged in or either the computer or the monitor was turned on but not both.
How about the doctor who stored important files in her computer’s wastepaper basket? Or the nurse who attempted to print his document 53 times on the same network printer? (Yes, I counted.) Can’t tell you how many callers insisted that they had restarted their computer when they had actually just turned off their monitor then turned it on again to find that the computer had the same problem. Also liked the one who forced a CD into a crack in the front of his computer, then wondered why it wouldn’t run.