Customer: “I think I’ve broken my computer! There’s a message across the screen that says: ‘It is now safe to turn off your PC.’ WHAT SHOULD I DO?!?!”
Stupid Tech Support
e’s a silly incident which happened to me when I was trying to renew my account in a local ISP in Malaysia. I was trying to renew my account, and after consulting my computer dealer, I had to do it through the bank. Two days after I sent the money, I checked if my account was rebalanced and renewed. It wasn’t. My account had been terminated once last year — I was not even informed, and I only knew this after a ten minute session with technical support. I wasn’t enthusiastic about seeing another reoccurence, so I sent a message to the ISP, stating, “I reviewed my account but it seemed that it had not been updated yet. Please do it so as it may be an inconvenience if my account is terminated without notice again like the last time.”
It may apparently be a simple request, but the ISP botched it. They thought I was asking them to terminate my account — and send a notice about it. I was given a notice politely telling me that my account would be terminated within three days.
Stupid Tech Support
I was at an ad agency a while back and there was a big project deadline looming. The folks who were printing this particular ad were about 150 miles away and had to get all of the files that the agency had put together in a hurry. We found out the hard way, after trial and error, that the print house didn’t have any Internet access at all, so we couldn’t email the data. So I suggested that we meet half way, and I’d give them the files on a zip disk. I asked the woman on the phone if she had a zip. She replied with a five digit number.
Stupid Tech Support
After owning my computer for a little over two months I noticed the system was sluggish.
Me: “My system’s really slow on bootup.”
Tech Support: “Have you been on the net for a long time?”
Me: “Well, yeah, about a month or two.”
Tech Support: “Try deleting the cache. Oh, and do you have a virus scanner?”
Me: “Yes, it was the first thing I put on the hard drive.”
Tech Support: “Oh, get rid of it. That’s the problem. Those virus scanners screw things up on your disk. Get rid of it.”
Me: “Isn’t that risky?”
Tech Support: “And you’ll have to format your hard drive with Quick Reinstall. That’s really all I know.”
Me: “Um…sure. Sure I will.”
A friend cleaned up my system path, and the boot lag cleared right up. And guess what? I didn’t have to format my hard drive after all.