Yes. Put your home at risk!

[afreak2600.livejournal.com]

A few months ago, I had a subscriber call in and tell me that their cable modem had caught fire.

She said she had a brown-out and then heard a loud pop emanating from her office room. She entered the room to see that the modem was giving off smoke, so she unplugged it. The next morning, she ended up calling us and this is how the conversation went:

Me: So the modem basically starting emitting a lot of smoke?
User: Yes.
Me: Okay. There isn't much that I can do on my end. I'll arrange to have someone come over and pick it up and replace it.
User: Okay. Can I plug it back in? I want to go on the Internet.
Me: Umm. It's probably a very bad idea to consider doing that.

Nice to know that fire doesn't equate to "bad" in some circles.

Comments

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Should've let her. Let technological darwinism take its course. =)

[bamatone.livejournal.com]

But... she wanted to go on the internet.

[snarl817.livejournal.com]

"FIRE, BAD!" </James Hetfield>

You should have said, "Well, ma'am, you can do that...but we will NOT be held liable for any damages that result!"

[wherdafux-d-cat.livejournal.com]

But was the smoke the Magic Blue Smoke or just regular black smoke???? If it was just black smoke, she didn't break the internets and could have gone back online!

Really.

Honest.

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of an almost similar issue I posted here some years ago. Now I'm on a mission to find it...

[teriwyn.livejournal.com]

I spent forever looking for this, mostly because I thought for sure I'd put it here, but it was actually in Customers_Suck.

http://community.livejournal.com/customers_suck/804514.html

[captpackrat.livejournal.com]

I had a user whose CRT started smoking and buzzing and doing an impressive impersonation of a plasma globe. I told the user he should turn the monitor off immediately, and he did.

A couple minutes later, a coworker came into the office and the user said, "Watch this!" and turned the monitor back on!