techrecovery | (no subject) (Reply)

Here's another one for those of us in the "I hate asking customers to spell things" club.

Me: Support center, this is Katy, may I have your username please?
Customer: Ess, Aich, Ee, Ee, Ee, Arr.
Me: Sheeer is not coming up as a registered username. Can you repeat please?
Customer: Ee, Ess, Aich, Ee, Tee, Ee, Arr.
Me: Esheter isn't it either.
Customer: Ess! Aich! ee ee ee arr!
Me: Ok, let's spell this phonetically. Rhyming letters all sound the same over the phone, you see. So that's S, as in School, H as in Henry, 3 E's as in Elephant, R as in Rachel?
Customer: My name is Sheper.
Me: And so please tell me where I'm getting it wrong. Can you spell it out phonetically?
Customer: S as in school, H as in Henry, E as in Elephant, P as in Paul, E as in Elephant.
Me: What about that R on the end?
Customer: Oh yeah. That too.
Me: So it's Sheper. Well, that's not coming up either. One more time. S, H, E, P, E, R.
Customer: No! S, C, H, E as in Paul, P, E, R.
Me: Um... E as in Paul?
Customer: P as in Paul.
Me: And so what was that letter after the S?
Customer: C! Like Chris!
Me: I see. Well, let me just have your full name so I can look up the username.
Customer: I told you it's Sheper and you just spelled it right. What is the problem?
Me: One moment, checking... OK, please confirm your first name and birthdate.
Customer: Chris, that's C H R I S. July 23, 1986.
Me: OK I found your account. The username is CSCHEPER. No wonder I couldn't get it to come up for me.
Customer: That's what I told you, cscheper.
Me: There are two C's in there that you never told me about.
Customer: I told you C as in Paul, Scheper. That's S for school, H for hentry, e for paul, p for paul, e for elephant, r.
Me: Alrighty. How can we help you Chris? and so on...

Later in the call, I asked him to click on the Control Panel from the start menu, and inquired as to whether the control panel says "Pick A Category" or not. He started reading off what he could see there because we couldn't seem to find the usual identifiers for classic vs category view... "Well, I see My Computer, My Documents, Printers and Faxes, Connect To, My Network Places, Control Panel, All Programs... but nothing about a category." I asked if he was sure he was in the control panel. He said yes, he clicked on the control panel after he clicked on start. Bang head on desk.
WTF WTF WTF WTF WTF! Fucking stupid kids.