How to insure you make it to the Wall of Shame...

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

First e-mail:

I tried your [crap unsupported application] among others, undecided, but can no longer access my files given the [company] icon hogging access to them.

How do I get your trespassing lock off my files without filing formal criminal charges against [company]? You have 48 hours to respond.

[Redacted]

CC: Guess.....
-------------------------------------

Second e-mail (sent 4 minutes later):

Disregard, removed [crap unsupported program] from my hard drive, files revert to [old associated application] files.

-------------------------------------

..These kind of people always make me chuckle. Rather than spending 30 seconds to uninstall the program or *gasp* understand that that "trespassing lock on [his] files" is, in actuality, an option that he selected during the installation *AND* is a basic Windows function (file associations)..but he will never know because he made a legal threat. The message is now in our Legal department and they will no doubt force him to sign a waiver before tech services will help him if he needs help.

Lusers never learn that making legal threats generally get you the exact opposite of what you want.

Comments

[ohmyhead.livejournal.com]

I'll SUE you for this!

No, wait. I mean, thanks for sharing! :D

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

BTW: The word is "ensure".

[ex-deliveryboy.livejournal.com]

I've received so many legal threats its barely funny anymore, but I love talking to our attorney about them.



What's really fun is when they call Customer Care after making legal threats and telling them that we are no longer able to assist them anyway what so ever, as they now must refer to our legal department and talk to them directly.

[wxgeek.livejournal.com]

I wish we could do that.

[jjjiii]

So then, can he sue your legal department for failing to disregard the legal threat that he ordered you to disregard in his second email?

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

I dispair at the number me people who can only open documents using doubleclick. I mean, all you have to do is right-click and "open with" is /right there/.

This story reminds me me the guy who threatened to sue the centos team for "hacking" his misconfigured web server. Check out slashdot archives, it's a doozy.

[hopefulnebula]

That was that guy in Arizona, wasn't it?

[silveryrose.livejournal.com]

sadly, no. It was a moron in my home state of Oklahoma.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

http://wwwf.centos.org/127_story.html?storyid=127

There's the whole sorry story.

Sorry for the typos in the previous post. I was posting from my mobile, and got bitten by the T9 predictive text monster.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

I remember that one, we laughed for weeks...

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

rofl, that was awesome. reminded me of the user we had today who was refusing to let us install something that we're making manditory. my coworker and i asked our boss his take on the situation and our boss told us that we could give him the choice of either he let us install it or we take his machine off the network for not being in compliance. i don't think he'll like it if he tests our patience because now that we have our boss's blessing to be harsh, we're quite eager to do so. XD

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

When I worked in Uni, we had a bunch of grad students with their own boxen for research. Well, these were Linux boxen with the kitchen sink installed, and an apache vulnerability had come out like a year prior. Did they update? No. So, boxes get hacked, and we notice them doing naughty things on the network. Of course, we couldn't actually fix them because they are research machines and (more importantly) we didn't have accounts, and don't like to break into people's machines if we don't have to. So, we go into their lab, unplug it from the network, and stick a note on it saying "Your box has been rootkitted. Do not reconnect to the network. Save your data, reload the WHOLE OS, and keep the patches up to to date this time. This is the only warning you will get".

They were not amused.

[cirobi.livejournal.com]

haha, nice. we like to use some scare tactics when it comes to virus and spyware activity. while symantec isn't necessarily the best of the best anymore, it does it's job in our corporate environment (not that we have much of a choice anymore as procurement has mandated we go with symantec). in any case, we set up the nifty little feature where we get email notification of detections and the automatic cleaning of those attempted infections. most of our users know that if they piss us off it could be bad news for them getting anything looked at in the future. so, when we get one of those email messages, my coworker and i (C2 in the original post) like to forward the detection message and state as formally as possible that they ought to be careful of improper use of company computers during work hours. we've had several users run over to our desks all nervous about being in trouble and justifying what they were looking at. "it was cnn.com i swear!" "i was researching graduate programs! all i did was click on a banner for a grad program!"

[mattcaron.livejournal.com]

Speaking of misappropriation of resources.. in University I got to use the department color laser to print out pictures of pierced genitalia, completely on the level. I was in a human sexuality class and the topic of our presentation was piercings in erogenous zones.

[geekgrrl-ca.livejournal.com]

I loved working at a company that had that policy...
Luser "Fix this or I'm going to sue you"
Me "I'm sorry sir, you have threatened to sue, I can no longer talk to you and all further coraspondance shall have to be done through our legal department reachable by writing Blah Blah or faxing ###, thank you for calling megacorp"
Luser "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it, can we just fix it"
Me (with glee) "Sorry, once you threaten to sue I am not allowed to deal with you any longer. Any further contact you wish to have with megacorp needs to be done through our legal department, which you can reach at the previously mentioned address/fax."
Luser "swearing and threats of suing me personally if I don't help him"
Me "All legal action should be directed to that address I already gave you, they will be happy to deal with it"
Luser
Me "Sorry, I can not give you a supervisor as all communications now has to go through the legal department."
I think this call went on for 15 minutes with me repeating that everything had to go through the legal dept.
I miss those days which didn't happen often.