Captain Lawsuit!

[darkrose.livejournal.com]

So I get in today and somehow some twatwaffle from orange county managed to leave a message on my voicemail (instead of sales or support). Here is a transcript:

"Message received today at 1:13 am
[yelling]I want someone from this company to call me or I will file a lawsuit. You installed your free software on my computer and I want it gone or I will sue you so fast your head will be spinning. If someone does not call me back immediately I will go to the courthouse tomorrow and make sure that your company is put out of business! My phone number is 714-xxx-xxxx. *slams phone down*"

I gathered from the message that this is an older fellow, but he gives me no information whatsoever. I googled the area code, which is in Orange County, California. Our business hours are clearly posted all over our website.

Nothing makes me move faster than a threat of a lawsuit (not). I'm considering personally calling this guy back, and you better believe that if I do, I will treat him like a 4 year old. The first thing I'm going to say is:

"Hey, the first thing you should do is refrain from threatening legal action. Should you feel it necessary to sue someone who provided you with FREE software and now free support, be sure to include those facts in your lawsuit. You should also be sure to include the lines in the EULA you clicked through to install the software that the product is provided AS IS or AS AVAILABLE with no warranty and no support. You should also be sure to include that we will gladly provide you with a refund for your product should you not be satisfied with the performance. In your case, I have refunded exactly zero dollars and zero cents to the credit card account you didn't give us.

Oh, and one more thing, our software doesn't magically install itself on your computer. You must download and install the product yourself, it's not some mystic auto-installer you can get by just surfing the web or something."

I don't have to be nice to this asshat. I won't be. I'm thinking the boss (CEO of the company) should handle it though...:)

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Update:

My boss asked me as the resident tech god to handle this customer service issue. He answered the phone and I introduced myself and he immediately said "Glad to see you assholes care enough about the future of your company to call me about your fuckin' software before I sued you".

I retorted immediately with "Sir, I don't know who you think you are, but as frustrated as you might be, I am a human being and I would appreciate it if you could refrain from filling my ears with your vitrol. You are on warning that if you threaten to sue, or threaten use foul language again, this call is over and you may do whatever you feel is appropriate including filing a lawsuit. I will tell you this, though..you'll get a lot more satisfaction and help from people if you don't go running around threating to sue everyone under the sun."

That pretty much shut him up, clueless colostomy bag that he is..He didn't know what product he installed, whether or not he downloaded it or installed it from a cdrom, what OS he was using, how to work a mouse effectively, etc. Basically your run-of-the-mill retired douchebag computer luser...

Apparently, the dumbass decided he didn't like the names of our products so he moved the icons everywhere and renamed them. His bitch was the uninstaller didn't delete the icons. OF COURSE THEY DIDN'T! So I taught him how to delete icons and he's supposed to be happy now..

..and maybe he learned now how to talk to tech support. A couple times he flared up at me, but I just let him rant (without profanity) and remained silent for a few seconds and said "if you're finished now, we can go on and fix your problem".

He didn't even say thanks.

Good Idea, Bad Idea

[ptstech.livejournal.com]

Good idea: Replacing two aging servers with new kit (to the tune of about 15K).
Bad idea: Refraining from purchasing licensing for Server 2003 in favor of reusing 2000 Server (saving a whopping $1400.00).

:headdesk::headdesk::
headdesk::headdesk:
:headdesk::headdesk:
:headdesk::headdesk:

I'm almost ashamed to be posting this...

[mashiroikaze.livejournal.com]

...however, occasionally decent techs make boneheaded mistakes, so I'll share it.

Sunday night I was getting to bed late and set my alarm incorrectly. I woke up Monday morning for work, dragged my ass into the office thinking I was 15 minutes late and sat for 30 minutes wondering where in the hell my employee was. At quarter of the hour, I'm called out to help a customer in our theater who is having problems with getting wireless to work for her presentation which starts shortly.

I get down to the theater, look at her computer and see that wireless is properly configured and everything should be fine. I check the wireless switch on the side of the laptop, see that it is set properly to the closed circuit sign, then decide that due to time constraints I'm just going to hook her up with an ethernet cable. I tell her I'll do a more thorough workup on the computer after her presentation, since I don't want to delay her. She thanks me and continues prep.

Did you see the two mistakes there?

The first mistake is that I set my alarm for 7:15 instead of 8:15 (it's nice living 10 minutes from work). As a result, I was in the office at 8:12, instead of the 9:12 I thought it was. I only discovered this when my employee came in and I razzed him about being so late without even a call.

The second mistake is even worse. I looked at her wireless switch and saw a line and a circle. In my (sleep deprived) mind, this still equals open and closed circuit - like on the wiring diagrams I read when I was in elementary school (yeah, I was a geek back then even). When I realized my mistake later in the day, the customer took it fairly well given the monumental flub.

Then again, in my defense it was a stoke of dumb luck that I was in the office when she came to get help...

Good times...

[azzy23.livejournal.com]

Having read some of today's posts, I was reminded of a fun little experience at my first support job (I was 17). There's profanity, so I'll put it behind a cut. ( Enjoy!! )

The drama.

[ethereal-dusk.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I get so tired of the clients whining and complaining about the age of our equipment-- as if I can do anything about it. So now I am starting to get a bit rude with them. I think I need to change jobs. I actually just said this to a client, and I wasn't really nice about it.

luser- "This Lexmark printer is so old that I think they brought it over on the Mayflower."

Me-- "They didn't have printers on the Mayflower. And actually the build date on that particular model is 2002, which is a few hundred years after the last voyage of the Mayflower."

luser- "I was speaking figuratively."

Me-- "I wasn't."