Other than that, there is one major difference between the average technical support operation and insane asylums is that occasionally, there are times when the inmates, er, employees can actually go home. Unfortunately, many of the technical support reps out there have this tendency to be computer geeks, and head right for their really powerful computers at home (the major players in the industry tend to throw the table scraps to the tech support department as far as computers are concerned. Of course, many times there is still another team of tech support reps on the other end holding down the fort, so to speak. Well, one day recently, I was sitting in the den thinking about this, and began getting some wild ideas about things (it is a human tendency to start getting wild ideas in such situations. In this case, I thought abouthow from where I live, not only is the tech support operation I work for a local call away, but I have never activated the free support on Internet Explorer... Then from there, I began to realize that practically nobody there would recognize who I was if I could establish some sort of false identity. From that point I was on a mission: To prank call technical support.
Not wanting to sound like I knew anything technical I came up with a "back story" to the whole thing. I decided that sonce I was going to be calling Internet Exploder tech support first, that the story would be this: Being a luddite, I have recently purchased this computer from a local shop. I had just installed Internet Explorer, and it is not letting me get to the Internet. Of course, in this theoretical scenario, it might help some if I actually had an ISP.... or a modem, for that matter. Now, let's listen in as the off-duty tech support rep decides to pull a fast one on an unsuspecting co-worker, under the guise of an actual tech support call (well, it was an actual tech support call, but that was beside the point:)
Tech:Thank you for calling Internet Explorer tech support (typical name and phone number spiel), how may I help you?
Me:I just installed this Internet Explorer on my system, but whenever I try to start it, it tells me that "the site was not found."
Tech:Ok, who is your Internet Service Provider?
Me: What's that?
Tech: It's where you get Internet service from.
Me: I'm not sure if I even have an Internet service provider. Is there any way that I can check?
Tech: Ok, let's go into the "my computer" icon, then into "dial-up networking"... OK, what do you see?
Me: Well, I see "Make new connection," but nothing else is in there.
Tech: Ok, then you need to sign up with an Internet Service Provider (goes into a spiel about where to look for an Internet Service provider, specifically mentioning MSN (I wonder why...) as one of them).
Me: Thanks a lot. I have just one more question:
Tech: Yes?
Me: Do you need a modem to get to the Internet?
And it went on like that for a little bit before the fact of the matter came out, that there was no modem installed in this theoretical system I was running. Just to add to the irony, I was surfing the Internet the whole time that this call took place, even with the ICQ "user is online" sound in the background one or twice... Anyway, proceeding from there, I called MSN support, just to double check a couple of facts:
Tech:MSN support, how may I help you?
Me: I was just talking to someone in Internet Explorer technical support, and they explained that I need an Internet Service provider in order to access the Internet. They also mentioned that I may need a modem also... Is this true?
Tech: Yes, it is true that you need a modem blah blah blah blah (goes into another spiel about what kind of modems are out there and where to find them)
Me: Well, Okay, but modems are really expensive, and I want to make sure that I am not going to buy something that I don't need for my system.
And the rest of the call continued in a similar fashion. My next victim was to be AOL tech support, this time with a different scenario. I had through some circumstance that defies description by either scientists or philosophers happend to come in contact with an AOL disk, and was immediately brainwashed by the shily blue logo on the disk. lobotomized at the software level of the brain, I proceeded to dash to the nearest computer (running into seventeen walls in the process) and stick the disk in... The immediate response of the machine was "this disk is unreadable-do you want to initialize it?" and in my AOL-signing fury I hit yes, and suddenly, the magical glow that was an AOL disk disappeared, leaving an unhealthy blank disk in it's place. I then repeated the process with little variation (other than hitting 38 walls the next time I tried it) but getting the same result. Alas, before I could implement this nefarious scheme, AOL decided to crush the entire idea with their idea of a glorified busy signal.... "We're more popular than ever, and ebcause of that, more and more systems are being utterly hosed by our software, keeping all of our techs ridiculously busy. Because of this, we cannot answer your call... If you can reach AOL, go to keyword help and help our other socially inadequate lusers have a better chance of talking to someone who knows less than they do. And if you can't reach America Online, keep calling back repeatedly until your significant other decided to run off and start a new life. By the time you're reduced to a drooliong, raving lunatic who is incapable of feeding himself, you too may have a chance of talking to a technician who knows less about computers than you do." After that, there is no option to hold, so you have to keep calling back over and over again if you hope to have any chance of talking to anyone. I decided that pursuing this any further would probably get PETA and the ASPCA on my case, so I let this one go.
Finally, about an hour later, I decided to make a followup call to Internet Explorer tech support, this time having made an amazing discovery about the software...
Tech:(typical welcom to tech support spiel) how may I help you?
Me: I just called a little while ago, and I was told that I needed a modem to access the Internet through Internet Explorer. Since then, I have been looking around on my system, and I have found this thing called "personal Web server" on my system... I was wondering if since I have this, do I still need a modem installed in this system?
Tech: Yes, you do. (goes into a lenghty explanation about what a modem is, basically the same thing I heard from the last two people I talked to)
At this point, I decided to suddenly "notice" that there was a modem attached to Rocky (why I never noticed the one on Zippy that was pumping data at a steady clip will be best left to the philosophers) but not notice that there was a computer attached to it...
Me: Wait, you talk about this "modem" thingie... I have had this thingie called a "Turbomodem plus" sitting on my desk for the past couple of months but never knew what it was... Do you think that might be it?
Tech: Well, possibly. Let's take a look at the back...
and so on and so forth. Basically, at this point, I was told about 5 minutes later that it is entirely possible that this thing was in fact a modem, and then explained that there may not be a serial port on the back of the system to pur it in (athough there was one...) Finally, I just made up the excuse of needing to buy a cable and thanked the technician for her efforts. I can't wait to see my own customer record when I return to work tomorrow. BTW, if anyone out there has any of their own experiences with calling technical support (as opposed to answering technical support calls, like most of you seem to be doing. Brian Townley, one of my readers who has been upgraded to status of co-conspirator, contributed this story: (note, if the formatting makes no sense, it was clipped straight from an ICQ chat session:)
I had just bought my Pentium Pro from Gateway 2000... and it came with their Virge video card with 8MB of VRAM... well... the screen wouldn't stop flickering... so I thought that it might be my old monitor (It was about 4.5 years old)... so I went out and bought a $1000 SOny professional monitor... After I connected it up, I found that it flickered as well... so I called tech support to see what I needed to do, or to see if the card was just bad... well the woman who answered informed me that I had a poor quality monitor that couldn't accept the refresh rates that the card was sending... I said "I don't think that that is the problem since I have this Sony blah blah"... so she said in her snottiest voice, "Well, I am the technical help person, I THINK I know what I'm talking about"... well... and how she said it... so anyway... I thought well I'll test this out... two MORE monitors later it was still flickering... so I finally called back Gateway and told them that "Yes, the tech support was right... the monitor doesn't like the refresh rates that the card is sending it... but I want to let you know that it is not because I have a bad monitor.. it is because the rates the card is sending are crappy... how do I return this piece of manure?" and I got my money back.
I am quite certain that I am not the only one out there who at some point decided to call tech support just to make life miserable for someone out there... Heck, lusers do it every day.