Funny call today

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

Long time lurker, first time poster.

I now work for a large cable company in their internet tech support. As my trainer put it "We support jack and shit." We support our connection and the modems we give you, and that's it. We don't support OS, or browsers, or anything else.

Had a user call in today. Said the technicians came out to his house to setup (Insert name of our top line high speed broadband here), and they couldn't hook it up because they couldn't find his control panel.

Me: Couldn't find your control panel? What kind of computer do you have?
Luser: A Dell.
M: What operating system are you running?
L: Win 95.
M: Well, there is the problem. Let me send you to customer service so they can change the service for you.
L: You mean I can't run it on this computer?
M: No sir, you can't run it on an 11 year old operating system that was 5 versions ago.
L: I want to talk to your supervisor right now! This is unacceptable!
M: Certainly sir, please hold one moment while I make sure a supervisor is available.

I told my supervisor (also my trainer), and he laughed. "Give me the idiot". I transfered and let go. He later told me the guy wanted a year's credit because we defrauded him because it wouldn't work on his system.

Been doing help desk/tech support for 10 years, and that's the first time I've heard someone want a year's credit for something like that.

Comments

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

Ick!

And I thought the recent spat of Win98 stories were bad....

[jon787.livejournal.com]

You know its been awhile, but I don't think control panel has moved since Windows 95. I'm also failing to see why Windows 95 can't work with a cable modem, it did back in the day.

[jon787.livejournal.com]

True, but I'll give away some ISA NICs I have :)

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

I'm just trying to think what kind of broadband service requires going into the Control Panel on *any* Windows machine. Assuming, of course, that it's already got a NIC installed, configured, and chatting happily away, of course.

But that's a separate issue from simply running a cable to the broadband router and playing Web Config 101 for two minutes - about the only extra thing that Win95 would need would be a reboot to change IP address.

Unless, of course, they're trying to use a USB modem. Oh dear.

Even so, being unable to find the Control Panel on a Win95 machine? Sounds dodgy to me. They didn't try the usual methods through the Start Menu, or Start-Run-control.exe, or even (if they were having a brain fart) looking it up in Windows Help on the customer's machine?

I mean, OK, if they tried all that and Control Panel *still* wasn't launching, than sure, refer them to Microsoft or Dell. But without knowing the details, it sounds like the field tech turned up, stood drooling in front of the box for ten seconds, and blew a mental fuse because the start button was the wrong color.

Stupid customer? Maybe. Stupid field tech? Who knows?

[annamaryse.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a stupid field tech to me God knows we've had stupid ones here a bunch of times, and a csr with balls... and big dreams... but hey, big cable high speed internet defrauds its customers all over the country, so he's not as dumb as he sounds.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

Using USB for networking is like using something totally unsuited for the task to do something else. I had to swap out my cable modem yesterday, and I made sure to look in the box they gave me to see if the new one (a different brand) had an ethernet port. Thankfully roadrunner seems to be fairly sane about shit like that. But you never know.

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

When I first got my cable modem, the guy who came to set it up insisted on checking that all the stuff was setup right. That it had a NIC, etc. I really should have set it up to boot bsd just to fuck with him, but as it turned out Win2000 was enough to do that. At the time I had the front plate of the case off, and he thought it was the back. *rolls eyes*

[ravenshrinkery.livejournal.com]

Parroting things people have pretty much said. Cable modem service generally works on anything with TCP/IP and an Ethernet NIC. It doesn't mean it's supported by the provider, but it's just a matter of what's technically feasible. You can make it work in DOS if you want.

Then again, the bigger reason why broadband providers won't support it is they have an image to keep up - they want their service to be able to perform at its full potential and if the computer isn't fast enough to do that then people will say the service sucks even if that's not the real problem. Furthermore, do you want be the poster telling someone their OS isn't supported a year after they got cable when their OS was never supported?

It probably will be pretty "secure" though, if you want to call it that, for the same reason Macs, Linux, W95, W3.1, etc. are - hardly anybody bothers to write automated exploits or go searching for these boxes. Heh, half the active content on websites probably won't even run.

/insert flames in 3.. 2.. 1..

[attackgypsy.livejournal.com]

Stupid field tech? Doubt it. These guys do field installs of this all day long.

I'm suspecting the machine didn't have a NIC card, and Win95 isn't USb, so...

Besides, we don't support Win 95 anyways. So I wasn't required to help him. Thankfully. We support 98 and up, Mac 8.6 (I think, I haven't gotten anything below 10.1) and up.

[sacredlyprofane.livejournal.com]

When I worked for Dell, the following used to bug me:
What type of computer do you have?
A Dell.
No shit jackass, what model is it?

[harmer.livejournal.com]

haha, I used to work for RR tech support. :P

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

I love'em, they actually seem *sane*.

[harmer.livejournal.com]

Haha, after working for them I'd be lying if I said I agreed. :P