URL

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

Anyone else wince as much as I do every time you have to explain where the customer should type "www.domainname.com"? Inevitably they are typing the damn thing into a search engine (WTF). And then when you try to explain they should be typing that into the Address Bar you get met with confused silence. "What you mean the google bar?" NO I DON'T MEAN THE GOOGLE BAR!!!

And God help you if the URL you are trying to point them to has something other than "www" in front of it. No stupid customer... "www" does not mean anything anymore. Every freaking website name does not need to start with it all the time. Jesus...

Comments

[azurelunatic]

It BURNS. "No, sir, there's no need to put a 'www' in front of 'email.coolexample.com', just 'email.coolexample.com'..."

In fact, when I'm giving them an address that doesn't have 'www', I tell them, "No need to put in 'www', just 'email.coolexample.com'; yes, sir, 'email' instead of 'www', that's right..."

(Also, hello, neighbor! I'm in Gilbert.)

[shadedspriter.livejournal.com]

My mum did this exact thing last night when I was helping her register a domain...

[usekh.livejournal.com]

I remember a customer getting all pissy with me because in an email I said go to mail.mycompany.com and he went to www.mail.mycompany.com and it didn't work

"Well you didn't tell me not to type www in front of it" I also didn't tell him to print out the url and shove it up his arse either :P

[darkmattr.livejournal.com]

start/run iexplore google.com

[reynardo.livejournal.com]

I once rang an ISP to enquire about their prices (in 2002)

"And we support all the current browsers"

"What, Mozilla? Opera? Lynx?"

"No. Yahoo, Google, Altavista..."

*facepalm*

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

yep "email.domainname.com" was the exact example that I was thinking of! I probably have that argument with people at least 10 times a day.

[azurelunatic]

Given your location and the complaint, we're probably co-workers. :D

[ahamay.livejournal.com]

HA yeah I was thinking the exact same thing. Gilbert huh?

[azurelunatic]

Yep! Off the phones, onto email-based support in the past month-ish, and I'm really loving it. It makes a difference to be able to devote the proper amount of time to it and know where the answers are, and have a better grasp of the can/cannot. It also makes a difference because you can be as polite as you need to be with no struggle, even with those customers who are very upset.

[spooforbrains.livejournal.com]

I was told today by a moron in PC World that the eeePC has "the Linux processor".

[nem0.livejournal.com]

Agh, my mom does that. She's otherwise an intelligent woman who can do more with computers than she thinks she can, but goddamn if it didn't take me a month to grind into her, "GOOGLE IS NOT THE ADDRESS BAR. IF YOUR WEBSITE DOESN'T SHOW UP IN THE SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS, IT DOESN'T MEAN YOUR WEBSITE IS DOWN."

[kingogre.livejournal.com]

Ya, I'm same place....still on the phones with erm too many final's for attendance.. Wanna move cause no Q&A rules and a forgetful mind I just fix stuff and forget that it's against the rules now *sad face*

[azurelunatic]

Different QA rules!! It's a bit of a shock to adjust. I got at least one 0 QA when I first got over there.

[udoswald.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I hate that. I've also noticed a lot of our users want to put ".com" at the very end even if there's already a .com in there. For example, I'll tell them to go to www.example.com/webpage and they'll ask if they should put ".com" after webpage.

[4ti3k4t35.livejournal.com]

It's even worse when somehow they've gotten into fullscreen mode or have the address bar actually disabled or unchecked or whatever in their browser and so they literally don't know what the heck you're talking about and it makes me cryyyyyyyyy.

That, and nobody can spell. Even if you spell out the URL, they'll add extra letters and www's and .com's and I sometimes wish I could choke some people over the phone.

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

I used to serve as a liason between the web guys and the clients. One big-wig real estate tycoon not only INSISTED that the search bar was where the address went, he even admitted that he taught a class where he TAUGHT OTHER PEOPLE THE SAME THING.

Cue Daffy...

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

i feel your pain

[kastinkerbell.livejournal.com]

Yup.
I once had a guy unable to get to our (super super simple) Web site for this exact reason. At one point he said he was there (victory!, I think). To verify, I ask, "Do you see a picture of [current picture on page]?" He tells me no, he sees a picture of his wife. Talk about burning stupidity. I mean, just how did he think that worked? And I'm positive this guy had more than a doctorate education...

[azurelunatic]

I've requested this already, but have no idea if/when they'll implement it. (I've had good results with suggestions in the past. I did get my way and they did implement something to ensure that someone cannot simultaneously have an A Record and a cname of the same name, and that made me so, so happy.) I should also suggest that the default cnames include www.email pointing to the webmail address.

[devilish69angel.livejournal.com]

i hate when customers do this, it makes me want to hit them in the head. kinda like those v-8 juice commercials that have been running lately.

[rwarner.livejournal.com]

Search bars in browser windows make Baby Jebus cry.

Addendum to that, all those fsking TOOLBARS that every new program these days seems to come with. And each toolbar comes with it's own search bar. I once remoted into a pc that had 7 toolbars in their IE window. Customer's complaint? "My internet is running slow!!11!!"

No, dolt, IE is not "the internet"

[spacebird.livejournal.com]

While we're at it, lets reduce all speed limits to 15MPH and only allow bumper cars on the public streets.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

The real fun is when you tell them it's a https:// site. Our Outlook Web Access server is https://exchange.company.com/owa. Make sure you have the 'S' in https. No, not www.https://exchange... No, not http://https://www.exchange... No, not https://www.https.exchange...

And so it goes. I hate having to include http:// when I tell people addresses, but Internet Explorer's idiot behaviour necessitates it. With any other browser you can just enter 'servername:8080' and it will default to HTTP and work fine. IE says 'Huh? I have nfc what this weird port means, so unless you tell me I'm gonna error out.' So, yes, you have to enter http://servername:8080 (invariably after trying it the 'every other browser' way once and then getting annoyed when you remember IE is a moron).

Sorry for the mini-rant ¬.¬

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

Back when we used a third-party mail server, I was constantly getting calls from people working from home unable to check their e-mail. They demanded that I fix the problems, said I was crap at my job, ('I have no control over our mail server - let me find out what's happening and I'll get back to you asap'), insisted everything should be sorted (without it costing anything) because it was very concerning for the organisation, etc.

Yes, they were typing in 'www.webmail.company.com' and no, it wasn't working.

[greatblondino.livejournal.com]

I shall one-up you! One of the managers here thinks she's pretty technical (because she can make her own tables in Word, use shiny features like 'Contacts' in Outlook, etc). She even tried her hand at database design once. Constantly I would try to explain a concept and she would butcher it in a thoroughly incomprehensible way ('uhh no, you have to link the tables using a primary/foreign key so that the records in table A link to the records in table B', 'oh... so how do we add a product to an order? Do we have to link them? Can't we just navigate to it?')

Anyway, there's a script that runs at logon on the Windows machines here. Command box pops up for three seconds, does its thing, vanishes, logon continues. On one occasion the script on her machine stopped and wouldn't close or complete logon. It was pretty early so I wasn't in, but when I arrived she was furious. 'You're supposed to make all this technical stuff go away! I haven't been able to work all morning! Just make the damn PCs work, that's what you IT people do!' (Yes, it's another of those people that doesn't understand how goddamn complicated operating systems, networks and applications are).

I asked her what was up, and she replied that 'My Windows isn't opening and the screen is full of programming text!' (I love that phrase). I wandered over to the screen and saw that indeed, it was full of very confusing 'programming text':

C:\>net use O: \\servername\folder
Please enter password: _