(no subject)

[katyism.livejournal.com]

So yesterday all the people who are no longer affiliated with the university had all their accounts disabled, as per a notice that was sent out a month ago, three weeks ago, two weeks ago, last week, and yesterday. This means if you check your university email regularly and are on the disable list, you would have gotten FIVE emails, once per week, warning you that your account would be shut off as of midnight last night, and giving you helpful links about how to back up your email somewhere else and other important stuff.

So of course all the people who ignored or deleted those emails (aka "didn't ever get them") are calling us today going WTF WHY ARE YOU DISABLING ME?? NO ONE TOLD ME!!! etc.

This is one of those times when customers lie their asses off and whine at us.

"I never got that email." Yes, you did, you probably just didn't read it.
"Well, I remember some emails like that but I thought they were just notices so I deleted them." They WERE notices, which you are supposed to read for important information, dumbass.
"Since I never got it, can you turn my account back on since it's your fault that no one told me?" No, we can't turn it back on. Our job today is to take your call and tell you who to email to get temporary access so that you can back up your account stuff.
"But I'm doing important research for an important professor and he'll kill me if I can't log in to campus sites and do this work!" Your professor got these notices, too, and should have contacted us way ahead of time if he knew you'd need your account still.
"But you guys are the computer guys. Just turn it back on for like an hour and then disable it again." We can't do that. All we do is tell you who to contact to get it done. We don't actually have access to turn accounts on and off at will.
"Are you stupid? My email account's disabled! How can I send them email to turn it back on?" Try hotmail? What century do you live in that you just have one and only one email account (the university's) that you relied on for life and death? Remember the email outages last month, the ones you called to whine about? BAck then we suggested setting up alternate email accounts with Hotmail for just this reason. I even gave one of you a Gmail invite code.

To make things more complicated, they decided to do this during Thanksgiving week, which means they left us all alone. The people who actually can turn the accounts back on, the ones we have to tell customers to email, are GONE for the week. That means in addition to telling customers I can't help them and they'll have to contact these other people, I get to hear them whining about how long it's going to take. It's Thanksgiving week. None of the offices except us tech support peons are open. No, I can't tell you how soon after they get back on Monday they can fix your problem. No, I don't have the authority to tell your professor/boss that he should extend your project deadline from Monday to a week later. You tell him.

This "didn't get the warning emails" is getting old. I know for a fact that every person whose account was disabled was emailed. If the emails bounced back, the system account administrators made sure that person was notified by other means. EVERY SINGLE PERSON was contacted about this, more than once, a month in advance. READ YOUR EMAIL PEOPLE. Calling too late because you think we can press a button Just For You to fix your problem isn't how it works.




crossposted to customers_suck.

Comments

[jacobine.livejournal.com]

The theory in my office is that if the users see email from IT, they hit the delete button immediately.

In fact, at one point, our email admin told me that he and the network manager used to regularly get their emails about system maintenance dumped into our spam reporting repository by a few users.

[tsutton.livejournal.com]

Yes,yes,yes I agree!

I work in I.T. too and everytime we send out emails of every system down time. As soon as the system went down, we got lots of calls & emails, asking us WTF is going on.

"Did you read the email that we sent twice?"

"No", said the user "I deleted it cos I thought it was nothing important" and that sort of excuse.

[naggy.livejournal.com]

If you using an internal e-mail system with read receipt (not all do):

When you hire the person, add to the internet use agreement form that you agree to pay $10 every time you get your account disabled for ignoring notices. Every week, an automated notice e-mail should be sent out with read receipt. Every third receipt returned when you delete without reading gets your account turned off (for work, autonotify their boss ;)

Delete three notices, pay $10 or explain to your boss or prof why he can't e-mail you anymore because you're too stupid to read notices.

[tmercenary.livejournal.com]

I remember when a University audited thier dialup ISP accounts. They didn't used to disable accounts unless they sat inactive for 6+ months. So people who graudated/dropped out who kept using the free account the university provided, could do so for years.

The university even went as far as to start calling the numbers that people were dialing in from, and asking them not to do it anymore.

Some didn't comply. That's when the university did followup calls, and apparently let someone with no customer service skills or idea of how to handle a issue took charge. Apparently, this (Presumably Student) called people still using the dialup ISP, and threatened to send the FBI on them if they didn't stop using it at once.

Normally I would tell people, "tough luck, no more free ISP for you, go buy one."
But with that attitude, I had to mess with the university just a little bit.

"Hello, University tech support? This is agent Nimwitz with the FBI division of computer crime investigations. We have gotten word that people are getting free ISP service from your school. Would you like us to raid their homes and confiscate all thier computers?......No?....Then why are we getting reports that you are threatening to do so?"

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

bwahahahahaha

[taleya.livejournal.com]

Emails are only contain vitally important information to users when their grandma wants to send them pictures of her cat.

Everyone knows this!

*headdesk*

The dichotomy shits me up the wall sometimes. They won't read important information, in fact they'll damn well disregard it. But you cut them off from their spam and they'll squeal like a wagonload of pigs....

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

They won't read important information, in fact they'll damn well disregard it.

BUT THEY'LL OPEN THE ATTACHMENT SENT FROM FDHFJDPKSM@HAPPYMAIL.DE WITH NO THINKING WHATSOEVER BECAUSE IT SAID IT WAS A FUNNY JOKE!!!

AAARGH!! [headdesk headdesk headdesk]