Behold: The ghastly, preening, lesser-spotted Incredible Bullsh*tting Customer
- Reference: 1588924725
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/08/on_call/
- Source link:
Today's anecdote comes from "Leon" and concerns the outrageous porky pies occasionally emitted by customers only too keen to point the finger of blame.
In this case, Leon's customer was a rather well-connected chap. Our hero was tasked with keeping "his crappy laptop" ticking over, doing the odd bit of Desktop Publishing, video recording and so on. "In fact," said Leon, "anything that involves technology as he cannot get to grips with things that work by electricity."
Since we strongly doubt the person in question was particularly au fait with email or other internet-based means of communication, it was via the telephone that Leon's orders were barked. Which brings us to the incident in question.
The customer had appeared on a few local radio stations and was keen to show off share the experience with his equally well-connected chums. Leon was charged with burning recordings of the appearances to CD.
"I mentioned that hardly anyone has a CD player anymore, but talk of Soundcloud or USB sticks scared him to death."
The call came in a little while later, while Leon was enjoying the closing days of a well-earned holiday.
"What have you done to these CDs you made for me?" shrieked the voice on the other end of the telephone line, "I've had [insert name of well-known person] ringing me up saying that my daughters look nice!"
The customer added: "and [insert name of other well-known person] is asking why am I sending him photographs of my house? You have included private photos on the CDs that I've sent out to all my friends."
"My heart sank," Leon told us.
The customer, however, wasn't finished: "How can you have [expletive deleted] up so badly?" the tirade went on, "I'm a laughingstock. I expected so much better of you. You need to sort this out right away."
After his heart rate returned to normal, Leon pondered the problem: "I don't have any photos of his daughters or his house on the PC that I burnt his CDs on, how could this happen?"
Despite being sure he had not [expletive deleted] up, Leon spent the remainder of his holiday brooding on the problem. Not how any of us like to spend those precious days off.
"On my return," Leon told us, "I went round to his house to see what had happened. When I arrived, he repeated the tales of his friends phoning him up."
Leon popped a CD into the customer's laptop and, as expected, Windows Media Player popped up.
"There!" shouted the customer, "Look at those pictures! Why are they on the CD?"
Some may have already worked out what had happened. "What he was looking at," explained Leon, "was a history of the media files he had viewed on his laptop, not the contents of the CD."
"He had made up the stories of his friends phoning to make his story more convincing."
Leon told him bluntly that the files were never on the CDs, "and he knew he had been caught in a lie."
Doubtless to Leon's satisfaction, "I could see the look on his face change and a more conciliatory tone appeared in his voice."
"However, instead of apologising he said 'Well, that doesn't explain why I got those phone calls'."
We've all experienced the customer (or boss) that simply doubles down when caught out.
Leon's assessment of his soon to be ex-customer? "The cheeky, bloody, gaslighting tosser!"
Ever taken a call from a customer unable to discern fact from paranoid fiction? Or caught one in mid-stream of the highest grade of BS? Of course you have, and you should share the memory with all at [2]On Call .
Sponsored: [3]How to Build Your Digital Experience Portfolio
[1] https://www.theregister.co.uk/Tag/on-call
[2] mailto:oncall@theregister.co.uk
[3] https://go.theregister.co.uk/tl/1936/-8578/how-to-build-your-digital-experience-portfolio?td=wptl1936
Re: "He had made up the stories of his friends"
I've had somebody tell me something similar with their new laptop. This was a family friend (of my parents) and they'd written a series of emails which had never sent and vanished after they'd hit send. This person was using Hotmail and long enough ago that it was certainly before MSFT bought it. So they were doing everything on the browser and a new window was the norm no tabbed browsing yet. So some of them were still sitting on other windows waiting to be sent. I pointed out that fact and got no thanks as I was doubtless pointing out stupidity or ignorance on the part of the laptop owner. That wasn't all of them, and it became obvious during him sending a test email he'd deleted them instead of sending them. Now it's the turn of hotmail.com to be berated for their "idiocy" in designing their webpages.
Anyway as I'm getting ready to leave I was asked what else I'd been snooping on? I hadn't but he had the history open and there was a list of sites. I pointed out these were dated yesterday as last visited and that I certainly hadn't visited the bottom one which had a very "adult" address on any computer. I was then asked to leave and that was the last favour I ever did for that person.
Re: "He had made up the stories of his friends"
I was then asked to leave and that was the last favour I ever did for that person.
Good.
Wonder if he asked other persons and gave them merry grief when they were not too careful?
I don't need such persons as clients, they can have the pleasure of going to my competition.
Love in a multi-member team
I love it when I assist a user, problem solved, they are happy. Then the issue returns, and another member of the team takes the call. And then the original cause of the issue was all of a sudden me?! According to the user. It was a very uncomfortable moment for said user when I, and my colleague roll up to the office to confirm the issue and resolution.
Re: Love in a multi-member team
Ah quite, the blame game in all its glory.
IT *CAUSE* issues, they don't solve them.
Re: Love in a multi-member team
You mean PC doesn't stand for problem creator?
In Leon's place I would have been blunt ' I understand that you are not a computer operator and so are likely to make mistakes but I am not going to tolerate you blaming me for your mistakes, calling me while on holiday and spoiling my time off'.
I have to admit though, that my actual words may be somewhat less polite.
I have to admit though, that my actual words may be somewhat less polite.
I would have been impeccably polite. While informing the twunt that the unnecessary callout fee has gone up to £250...
Pillocks like that don't have friends so they have to pretend.
They do, however, have people they know who can't get rid of them.
There should be an IT Driving Test
Not quite the same but in a similar vein.
I got a call from a Friend early one New Year's Eve.
Rather than the expected drinking session I'd imagined, he was in a panic as he was DJing that evening and had lost his music.
It transpired that after hours of creating playlists his ageing slab was low on storage so he deleted the MP3s to save space since he had his playlists, right?
Not wanting him to miss the gig,a fair few beer tokens and Ladies phone numbers I sent him t the bar while I booted a recovery stick.
Sure enough, said MP3s started to return from the abyss, along with some assorted trash and some "interesting" videos.
Convinced I had put them there he started to protest.
A quick call to his significant other and the culprit was identified.
We recovered all of the music plus 'er Indoors' deleted stash of entertaining videos.
Re: There should be an IT Driving Test
Judging from my drive around yesterday to charge the car after 6 rusting I think driving tests should be re-done every year too!
Contrary to popular belief, the customer is not always right.
Firing customers who are a more of a pain in the ass than they are worth is one of the truly great joys of being self employed.
About three times per year, or thereabouts, I quite literally use the phrase "you're fired" to a client of mine, or of the wife[0]. Frankly, I quite enjoy it. The look on their face when they realize I am dead serious is priceless.
[0] She's a softy, so I draw this detail by default.
Mistaken identity
> Ever taken a call from a customer unable to discern fact from paranoid fiction?
Many decades ago, when the concept of "technical support" was still in its infancy I was called in to see the boss's boss's boss. Me and another individual from the "industrial" (I worked with "commercial" customers) side of the biz.
We got a rollocking because one customer had filled in a survey (I didn't know we did surveys. If I had, I would have "helpfully" filled them out for my customers - just another example of going "above and beyond") and given a big fat ZERO for customer satisfaction. Somehow mentioning me and my colleague by name, hence the carpeting.
When put under the spotlight about this, I rightfully said that I have never heard of this customer. Nor were they one of "ours" - which my colleague agreed with. The B's B's B took all that in, then ignored it with the words "I don't want to know. Go out there and fix it"
From the customer's point of view this all worked out fine. They got the attention they were seeking. They got loads of free support and they got their own lack of technical competency sorted out. They also got my office phone number - although by an error of transcription (I'm sure I said " ... 2, 3" - but they wrote down 3, 2 ) that phone line was terminated at a junction box in a store room.
Customers
Ah customers ......
Cant live with them
Cant pay the bill's without them ...... .
Re: Customers
Ah, the lack of correct apostrophe placement is strong in this one.
Many moons ago, worked at a place that used to have processing plants that used modems to dial in and drop files onto a mainframe (yes, mainframe).
One manager at a processing plant called in to complain he couldn't send files. He was really not a happy man. It was our fault, it always used to work. We'd changed something. So in the interests of soothing the situation, I asked him to try there and then so I could diagnose the problem. With him on the phone he starts the transfer. Those of you familiar with old tech will remember that the modem starts the negotiation (so you can hear it), and then goes silent. This one never stopped warbling and of course would not connect.
So next day, with a modem in the company pool car (a beat up old diesel Orion that had a perpetual cloud of blue smoke behind it), I make the 3 hour journey to the plant. The manager greets me with indifference and points at the modem. My gaze, however, is immediately drawn to the mess of wires hanging out of the phone point.
Me: "What happened there!"
Him: "I couldn't hear it (pointing at the modem). It kept going quiet, so I just removed some wires until I could hear it."
I just advised him to get the telephone company in to fix the mess, there wasn't anything I could do with it. Nothing left to do but jump in the car and make the 3 hour journey back to the office.
Fun days!
Social Media incompetence...
At a previous job, I was forced to take on the role of Social Media Manager. I was supposed to write a German post for Xing, an English post for LinkedIn and one in both languages for Facebook every single day... I tried to point out to the CEO that over posting isn't considered good practice, I also tried to tell him that the different platforms need different approaches, but he wasn't having any of it.
So we started our campaign. The first day or so went smoothly, although I had to submit the posts to approval to the CEO and he was never happy with the wording and re-wrote most of the short, witty posts into long meandering nonsense, it was also hard to find enough topics to write about as well, I tried to say we should put in things about the IT industry in general, but there was an iPhone zero-day, so I wrote a warning that Apple had patched the zero-day and users should update their phones. Vetoed, I can't bad-mouth other companies. Our own stuff? I couldn't mention our staff (GDPR), I couldn't mention our customers (he wouldn't let me get clearance to use their names), most of our products were taboo as well, we wrote software for the slaughter and meat-processing industry and he didn't want a PETA shitstorm attached to our posts...
Anyway, I usually found something to write about. But after a couple of days, the posts weren't appearing! I was called into the CEO's office and he tried to wipe the floor with me, the posts weren't appearing, I wasn't doing my job! I quickly went to his computer and navigated to the relevant Facebook, LinkedIn and Xing pages and there were the posts.
Well, I must be incompetent, because they weren't appearing in his feed! I tried to explain about their ranking systems and how they used his interests and browsing history to work out what was of interest to him, and that although he was CEO of the company, Facebook & Co. didn't know that and, based on him browsing his favourite football and basketball teams all day long, they had decided that his company wasn't of interest to him!
That didn't work, I had to find a way to change the Facebook ranking system, so that the company posts popped to the top of his feed every day! ARRGH! I quit left shortly thereafter and I'm much happier now.
Yes the users are bad
But it's the absolute bullshit that techs spout that has given me the most fun.
I have a customer's employee that has attempted to blame my software for his dumb mistakes multiple times, complete with "no, I never clicked there" and all. Eventually, I was forced to make the program take screenshots every time certain critical features were invoked (as well as when "yes" was clicked on the confirmation box, etc). After getting caught lying a couple of times in front of their manager, they got the hint and stopped with the bullshit.
Thousands of 'em. I was one of the poor buggers working in the call centre for "A Major UK Electrical Retailer", as they are sometimes known, and while some of the calls were genuine complaints, either about the products they'd bought or the arsey service they'd got in a store, many of them were either total bollocks or completely insane.
Had a customer phone up in tears, telling us she'd bought a camcorder that was dud and the store refused to exchange or refund, even though it was only a few days old. I called the store in question and had a chat with the manager who told me "Oh, her... yep, she brought this camcorder in and it was completely buggered. Scratched and bashed about, big cracks down the casing, and when we opened it up, a ton of makeup powder fell out. She's obviously wrecked it herself so we told her it wasn't covered under warranty".
I had the joyous task of calling her back to explain. That went well...like buggery it did. She went absolutely bananas, screaming down the phone (and I mean it), threatening to go to the store and kick off, break their windows and stab the manager, and generally being rather displeased.
Any road up, as per company instructions that all threats of violence should be reported to the police, I called the plod and passed on her details.
The daftest one I remember was someone saying their phone started to float in mid air one evening, and tried to smash its way out of the window. I assured the customer we didn't sell flying phones.
Then there was the one my mate took about a printer with a live lizard in the box.
Beer icon because... beer.
"He had made up the stories of his friends"
I see why.
Perhaps the radio spots were imaginary also, the CD containing just an audio clip of this fellow talking to all his mates, on his own interviewing himself in the dark.