Silly Clients

[memyselfandi]

Oh lawd, I've had this fool give out my email address for years now, he even forwards stuff to it titled "to me". He's been giving it to his family too, so I have been getting emails from them for years now and they all seem to struggle with the concept of "your family member that shares the same name as myself is giving my email address out to you constantly because he doesn't know his own".

It was funny for the first few months, but years later it's just annoying.

Have the same issue with some rednecks in the US (where rednecks is not used as an insult but as an apt description ... these people send each other pictures of what uncle billy-bob and joe-bob have shot on there latest weekend out "shooting critters").

One never seems to remember that their email address is both initials of their hyphenated firstname not just the first one and this combined with the same surname gives my email address.

I've been nice a few times and contacted insurance, travel agents, airlines had had them phone their customer to get a correct email address instead of mine. But most of the time it's just irritating, although fortunately it's one of my backup accounts rather than my main ones.

 

[phil675]

Bet it made you feel like a big man berating the non-technically minded teaching staff, can't have your tea being interrupted by providing IT support, which sounds like it was your actual job and all

This was the same 3 people every single day coming in and making me plug something in for them, how am I supposed to have a good start to the day without a cuppa and browsing forums for 45 mins or so?

But no really, if you flick your kettle on in the morning and it doesnt light up, you at least check the plug. or wiggle it or something, you don't call the electrician.

 

[Matthew-1985]

The best one I ever had was someone had connected a USB memory stick to the serial port and wondered why it didn't work.

When I showed her that it should go in the USB port she insisted it's always worked in the serial port before and that we must have changed something to stop it working...

 

[spoffle]

Bet it made you feel like a big man berating the non-technically minded teaching staff, can't have your tea being interrupted by providing IT support, which sounds like it was your actual job and all

Yeah, no.

Have the same issue with some rednecks in the US (where rednecks is not used as an insult but as an apt description ... these people send each other pictures of what uncle billy-bob and joe-bob have shot on there latest weekend out "shooting critters").

One never seems to remember that their email address is both initials of their hyphenated firstname not just the first one and this combined with the same surname gives my email address.

I've been nice a few times and contacted insurance, travel agents, airlines had had them phone their customer to get a correct email address instead of mine. But most of the time it's just irritating, although fortunately it's one of my backup accounts rather than my main ones.

Yeah, the annoying part is that they are unable to understand that it's not their email address. There are emails going back for years with updates from family members. The most annoying aspect is that the guy clear hasn't noticed he's not been getting these important emails that his family are sending to him on a regular basis, or the fact that I've emailed him and he hasn't bothered to respond to say he'll stop giving people the address.

 

[RedvGreen]

Do your clients come back to see you a couple of months later when $RELATIVE (or) $MATE has utterly failed to produce anything useful?

Because one of my favourite things to do at work is making numpties that ignore my advice eat some humble pie where their idea goes sideways on them.

Best things from my IT Support days, web design days and current days are people who initially bawk at your prices/hourly rates, then go cheaper elsewhere.

Then a few months later, they gingerly approach you and want you to fix a shambolic product. When you do, they then try to barter you down, despite contractually agreeing to a set price beforehand!??

 

[Stellios]

Bet it made you feel like a big man berating the non-technically minded teaching staff, can't have your tea being interrupted by providing IT support, which sounds like it was your actual job and all

To be fair, a good IT support agent will try and educate the person needing help so they can at least have a stab at it next time before asking for help. I don't mind being asked the same thing time after time, but its more effective and saves time for both parties if you educate them to do it themselves next time.

Sounds like a case of the staff being lazy to me, especially if it was just unplugged.

 

[One]

This was the same 3 people every single day coming in and making me plug something in for them, how am I supposed to have a good start to the day without a cuppa and browsing forums for 45 mins or so?

But no really, if you flick your kettle on in the morning and it doesnt light up, you at least check the plug. or wiggle it or something, you don't call the electrician.

That's because it's electric and electric comes out of the wall. I'm fairly convinced that many people don't realise the cables are just electric cables. Mind you, they'd probably be scared to touch them if they worked that out.

 

[CharlieRich]

Best one I had (and I'm sure some of you have had the same) when I was doing freelance graphic design work...

"I'm not sure exactly what I want, but I know when I see it"

You then prepare some ideas for the client and present to them

"Where did you get these ideas, they're not what I asked for!"


AAAAAAGHHHHH

 

[memyselfandi]

Let us not forget that it's not only retarded clients, it can also be retarded service desks ... we seem to have an offshore one currently who, if they can't fix something, just close the call instead of passing it to the appropriate support team to investigate. (Like the time when an entire office couldn't work for network reasons ... which took half an hour to get them to raise a call (and explain basic networking to them) and then they wanted to just close the call rather than getting the appropriate team to fix the DHCP server).

Fortunately we have enough access to the ticketing system so we can re-open the ticket (which does nasty things to the service desks first time fix stats ... shame), update the ticket and then pass it on ourselves.

(unfortunately there are political/process reasons why it's not a good idea for us to just raise the initial ticket ourselves).

 

[dowie]

Oh lawd, I've had this fool give out my email address for years now, he even forwards stuff to it titled "to me". He's been giving it to his family too, so I have been getting emails from them for years now and they all seem to struggle with the concept of "your family member that shares the same name as myself is giving my email address out to you constantly because he doesn't know his own".

It was funny for the first few months, but years later it's just annoying.

I've had that issue repeatedly... I've got firstname.lastname@ google's mail service... unfortunately there are a few people out there with the same name... an academic in south africa, some bloke living in france, someone in scotland and an american who's managed to mis-spell his own name when registering his e-mail address and still periodically gives out my address, uses it to register on websites etc...

 

[MissChief]

I've had that issue repeatedly... I've got firstname.lastname@ google's mail service... unfortunately there are a few people out there with the same name... an academic in south africa, some bloke living in france, someone in scotland and an american who's managed to mis-spell his own name when registering his e-mail address and still periodically gives out my address, uses it to register on websites etc...

That's kinda weird. I also have a professor in South Africa who gave his investment company his/my email address and I used to get monthly updates on his stock portfolio!

 

[HangTime]

I don't have any retard clients. The following things frustrate me however:

It's urgent, but only when I don't have to do anything.
Saying something is SUPER-DOOPER-ULTRA-MEGA CRITICAL!!!!11 (random senior managers in copy, you know the drill), then taking days to reply to requests for additional information or instruction on how to proceed. Occasionally frustration levels increase further when you get a kicking for taking too long to solve their problem despite the 'ball being in your court' for only a small fraction of the time.

The non-existent meeting agenda
It's a really important meeting. You need to travel 100 miles and spend all day with us. But we won't spend 5 minutes up front to give any guidance in terms of attendee list, objectives, running order or specifics - a one-liner is all we can manage. How can we get best value out of our time together if I have no steer on what I need to prepare (or worse, I waste time preparing the wrong thing)? To be fair, this applies internally in many organisations too.

No such thing as a provisional date
Demanding milestone dates and then completely ignoring explicitly documented caveats that accompany them i.e. "these dates are dependent on X happening by date Y". Seconds after they leave your outbox, those provisional, estimated, subject-to-change future milestones have been written into a plan, communicated to senior management, carved into granite and published in the Financial Times. Then in future, when X doesn't in fact happen by date Y, you issue revised milestone dates and all hell breaks loose because of the alleged 'slippage'.

I'm repeating myself
When you have explained at great length why they can't have requirement X without making change Y, then for months down the line when discussing the same/similar issue they say "we need X", yet still haven't formalised a change request for Y.

On the flipside and to provide more of a balanced view, there are some qualities in clients I find refreshing:

-Acceptance that a client-supplier relationship is a two-way street and input/effort is often required from them to best move things forward
-Gentle nudging "have you had a chance to look at this yet?" rather than persistent/aggressive hounding [the latter can have a place, but sometimes all it does is put the recipient on the defensive, or force them into rushing their work]
-Willingness to compromise e.g. accepting they may get X late if Y is thrown in for free

 

[Whitewater]

Retarded? No. But busy. I've seen this a few times, bless em:

Client: X stopped working.
Me: *turn X on*.
Client: Oh, let's never speak of his again.

 

[Angilion]

I've done a similar thing in reverse on one or two occasions. I fix fruit machines as part of my job and sometimes the machine will be completely dead. Once or twice, I've spent several minutes testing before sheepishly checking the wall socket and finding that it has been switched off. I've never gone as far as replacing a PSU, but I have got a spare one out ready to swap.

Some days you hear hoofbeats and unaccountably conclude that it's zebras.

 

[garak112]

As a user I have encountered some interesting IT support.

I work in a hot desk environment with lots of shiny new 24" 1080p monitors. I sat at a new desk one day and was immediately greeted with a blurry mess on screen as the resolution was locked to 1280x1024.

I phoned the service desk and the chap on the end of the phone said someone would come up and update the graphics drivers.

An hour later, whilst I was in a meeting, the IT support technician came up and fixed the problem by replacing the 24" widescreen with a 15" 4:3 monitor. This was apparently the permanent fix.

It took an hour on the phone to several different people before the monitor came back and the correct drivers were installed. The first suggestion they gave me when I called was to buy a new monitor through their support contract because that would trigger the drivers to be installed when the monitor was delivered.

 

[LeeUK]

I've had the problem of some Americans using my email address in the past too. Recently happened few times over Christmas as well. Someone went on a shopping spree at a few American online retailers and gave my email address, then a few days later tried to reset their password when obviously trying to check order status etc.

Another funny one was last summer, some American was moving house and gave my email address to their removal company. I was getting contracts, invoices, receipts and all sorts.

 

[ahar]

Been a while since I worked in support, but I did once get called out to a printer that wasn't working to find it working fine as the user's had confused it with the fax machine on the other side of the room. They were pretty sheepish wheni pointed out the difference, particularly with the handset on the side of it (old school fax machine)

 

[Guru]

LOL just had this classic....

(Entry: 1) Original Call
Cath called because their phones are still not working despite having a new router sent out by their ISP on Monday.

(Entry: 2) Close

The phone had been off the hook all week.

Putting it back on the hook has resolved the issue.

Closing.

 

[Deleted member 77746]

Two of the calls I have dealt with the last couple of days...






wow.

Calling them retards isn't the right word to be giving them. Why do people insist in calling people names who has trouble with IT.

Remember: The people who don't know what they are doing keeps YOU in a job!

Relax a little man will you and stop calling people names no wonder non technical users don't like calling up support when they have issues! You give people in IT a bad name!

 

[Titchy]

When I was working in the council's IT dept., I was called out to another building because a few of the people couldn't get their computers to turn on. Now this was the day after that particular office had been set-up as a trial for wireless, back when wireless was pretty new.

Turned out the manager had removed the power leads because they'd been told they'd gone completely wireless. I kid you not.

Ah that is brilliant !!