Tech Support Rule #1

[tertiumquid.livejournal.com]

Do not lie to the tech.
We are here to help. Lying to us makes it much more difficult to deliver the assistance you want and we want to give you. Do not think it will go unnoticed. We will find out and it will not make us happy.
If you do not know the answer, the correct response is "I don't know". Pulling a random answer out of your butt that you think we will like is not going to expedite the support process. We ask questions for specific reasons and rely on the answers to make the decisions regarding your problem. If you give us the incorrect answer, you lead us down the wrong path and backtracking will waste our time and yours. If you don't know, we can usually ask another question to help elicit the true answer.
Omitting details is just as bad. If your software stopped working after you decompiled, and rewrote part of the code, not telling is the same as lying. If you know you did something stupid, own up to it. We have seen worse and will be able to assist you with much more efficiency if we have all of the details.

Comments

[loosechanj.livejournal.com]

If you do not know the answer, the correct response is "I don't know".

This goes for pretty much anything. It's also against 99% of peoples' religions to admit such a thing.

[buckaction.livejournal.com]

heh, ya know, i went on an interview yesterday, and like any good technical interviewer would do, he asked me a series of (wait for it...) technical questions.

One of the questions he asked me didn't spark anything in my head, so I told him, I don't know the answer to that one, so i'd have to just spend some time troubleshooting it and i'd figure it out.

He asked me If I had any guesses, my response was that guessing won't fix the problem, only make it worse, but that I did have an idea of what the problem might be and would troubleshoot from that point on in a real world situation.

At the end of the interview he told me, that he liked my answer, because most people would try to make something up or take wild guesses, and that he did not like because he himself believes that making guesses usually just ends up causing you to make the problem worse, not better.

[tertiumquid.livejournal.com]

Bravo! Good luck with the job hunt.

[valiskeogh.livejournal.com]

TESTIFY!!!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

The first rule of calling tech support is: You do not lie to tech support.

[warpedwitch.livejournal.com]

and the first rule a tech learns is "they all lie, always"...

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

True. About the only question I can get 99% of my callers to answer correctly is "what is your userID", and that's only because they're corporate callers who have to use their ID forty times a day for various things. It's the one question they get right by reflex. And joy of joys, when my own interrogation systems are working, that userID allows me to call up a huge swag of information about them and their account in seconds.

In fact, I can punch in their userID as I'm asking "And what's a contact number for you there in case we get cut off?", and know almost everything about them before they finish reciting it to me.

That phone number is only usually right, but by then I have their official corporate number, supervisor and manager's numbers, and that of their office reception point anyway.

Everything else they tell me is subject to the usual laws of Murphy, including "Which office are you calling from today?". But that initial little burst of 99% correct information makes my day, every time.

[warpedwitch.livejournal.com]

*envy* i used to work for , and there were days that the EU's couldn't even get the right number-no, i am not your telephone company, the plumber, or the power company, and no, i'm not going to look up the number for you unless you're the lady with three kids screaming in the background and you've said please and thank you...

would you believe

[kalidor.livejournal.com]

I actually had a client tell me the truth. The spyware came from a porn site.


Amazing

[bottleopener.livejournal.com]

Even better -

" Porn popups on my computer, it was the kids again. "

Yeah . . right.

Bottle

[dmsalem00.livejournal.com]

Oh no, they never lie...

Especially when you ask if they're still using the OS that came with their computer, IE - Shipped with Win98, but mysteriously, no "My Computer" icon on the desktop, there's a "set programs access and defaults" on the start menu, and the device manager doesn't have its own tab, but is a button under "Hardware" on system properties.

Yeah ok, your dinosaur is REALLY still running win98, I believe you, you retail-buying upgrading mofo.

[warpedwitch.livejournal.com]

at least they can tell you that they're running Some form of windows..."i don't know, how do i tell?" *bhok*

Customer ALWAYS lies...

[sithlet.livejournal.com]

(And they NEVER follow directions.)

I had a customer on the phone for 20 useless minutes a couple of weeks back...
"Did you try power-cycling your router?", "Yeah."
"Okay, and what about your firewall?", "Yeah, I did that."
(after slight hesitation)
"Okay, then how about we try connecting your computer directly to the router."
"Hold on, I'm going to go power-cycle the firewall." (Mmmkay.. I thought you already did that, liar.)
Five minutes later, he comes back, his connection still not up... I recommend, for a second time, that we check and make sure his connection works without the firewall between his computer and the router...
He leaves and comes back five minutes later (again) "Well, here's the deal. [Phone company] says my line is up (duh, I already checked that), and I KNOW my firewall isn't the problem..."
"But did you try connecting your computer directly to the router yet?"
"No. Hold on a second."
(head+desk)
Five minutes later, he comes back and says, "Well, that worked, it must be a problem with my firewall."