DoublePlusUnGood, Automotive division

[AnotherFairportfan]

I suspect the car may have jumped time yesterday.

Whatever is wrong with it, we can't afford to fix it.

Time to find somewhere that will give us at least enough trade-in to cover the rest of the loan.

[Sgt. Howard]

Front wheel drive? Tell me what it is and there's a chance I can talk you through it...

[lake_wrangler]

DoublePlusUnGood, huh?

So does that mean that while duct tape can bring back to life a large-nosed minion (after he has been dismembered and/or decapitated), it won't fix your car?

Maybe you should just find some muscle for hire, not too intelligent, who likes to brawl and drink, and convince him to just carry you around on his shoulders...

Then again, those shoulder spikes might get a mite uncomfortable...


Or how about finding a long-bearded, pointy-hatted guy to pull something out of a bag, say some mysterious words in front of your car, and then when people ask how you managed to get it fixed, you can just say "A wizard did it!"

[AnotherFairportfan]

Front wheel drive? Tell me what it is and there's a chance I can talk you through it...

I have determined that the auto trans is stuck in third.

Since that's the middle of its five speeds, i'm suspecting that the controller has gone Tango Uniform and it's running in limp-home mode.

[AmriloJim]

Gotta ask the obvious... is the transmission fluid level correct? I've seen cars present varying performance issues that were miraculously fixed with as little as a pint of the correct ATF.

[AnotherFairportfan]

Gotta ask the obvious... is the transmission fluid level correct? I've seen cars present varying performance issues that were miraculously fixed with as little as a pint of the correct ATF.

Checked it, as soon as i ascertained it was not shifting. Perfect.

[AmriloJim]

Figured you did, but I had to ask. When I was the managing the TV station and had an equipment failure, first question to the CE was, "Is it plugged in?" One time it wasn't....

[AnotherFairportfan]

Figured you did, but I had to ask. When I was the managing the TV station and had an equipment failure, first question to the CE was, "Is it plugged in?" One time it wasn't....

Heh. That was the first live call i took doing phone support on NEC desktops in the Windows 95 era.

[TazManiac]

Figured you did, but I had to ask. When I was the managing the TV station and had an equipment failure, first question to the CE was, "Is it plugged in?" One time it wasn't....

Heh. That was the first live call i took doing phone support on NEC desktops in the Windows 95 era.

Heh, heh- (And now I am recalling both ATT, and competing ITT, Desktop PCs...)

[ShneekeyTheLost]

My star tech support call was complaining about computer not turning on, only to discover the power was out for the whole building...

[lake_wrangler]

My most memorable tech support call, was a guy who was installing Windows 3.1, and asking which driver to use for his printer, since his printer was not specifically mentioned in the list. I told him he could either install a compatible one, or wait until Windows was done installing, and use the actual drivers...

At one point, he asked me: "Is it bad, to do 'Format C:' ?"

It turned out this guy was at his friend's place, and had ended up formatting the C: drive (on his friend's computer). And rather than unformatting, he reinstalled DOS, then Windows!

His friend arrived while we were still on the call, and I had to explain to him that the caller had just wiped his computer, including, as it turned out, all his Autocad files...

I heard him say to the caller "I'm gonna kill you!"

Hopefully, he did not follow through on that threat...


(This was 20 years ago, and I still remember it like it was yesterday, or just about...)

[Catawampus]

From the other side of the tech support relationship, one place where I worked had a tech support center that you could only communicate with via e-mail. If there was some problem with your computer, you'd send them an e-mail from that computer, and they'd trace the e-mail to that particular machine and run an analysis of it to find out what was wrong. Then they'd either fix it remotely, or else send back an e-mail telling you what to do.

There is a rather serious flaw in this set-up, as you might have already worked out.

One day one of the computers stopped connecting to any network. As you might suspect, that made it a tad tricky to send out an e-mail from that computer to the tech support center. So we had to send them an e-mail from a different computer. The whole conversation ended up going something like this:

Us: “Hey, one of our computers isn't connecting to the network. It's not this computer we're sending you this e-mail from, but rather [identification information for the broken one].”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

Us: “No, the computer we sent you the e-mail from isn't the one that is broken. We can't send you a message from the one that is broken, because it is broken. The one that is broken is [identification information].”

Them: “Send us an e-mail from the broken computer, not from a different one.”

Us: “Umm, we can't. It's broken.”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

Us: “That's because you looked at the wrong computer. We can't send you an e-mail from the broken computer, because it cannot send e-mails. Do not check this computer, the one that this e-mail is coming from. Check [identification information for the broken computer].”

Them: “We told you to send us an e-mail from the broken computer. Follow instructions, and stop sending e-mails from different computers.”

Us: “How can we send you an e-mail from a computer that won't send e-mails?”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

This went on for several more iterations. We finally just put the broken computer in a box and stuffed it away in a closet in the basement, and found a new computer.

[lake_wrangler]

Methinks they had no business being in tech support...

[ShneekeyTheLost]

From the other side of the tech support relationship, one place where I worked had a tech support center that you could only communicate with via e-mail. If there was some problem with your computer, you'd send them an e-mail from that computer, and they'd trace the e-mail to that particular machine and run an analysis of it to find out what was wrong. Then they'd either fix it remotely, or else send back an e-mail telling you what to do.

There is a rather serious flaw in this set-up, as you might have already worked out.

One day one of the computers stopped connecting to any network. As you might suspect, that made it a tad tricky to send out an e-mail from that computer to the tech support center. So we had to send them an e-mail from a different computer. The whole conversation ended up going something like this:

Us: “Hey, one of our computers isn't connecting to the network. It's not this computer we're sending you this e-mail from, but rather [identification information for the broken one].”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

Us: “No, the computer we sent you the e-mail from isn't the one that is broken. We can't send you a message from the one that is broken, because it is broken. The one that is broken is [identification information].”

Them: “Send us an e-mail from the broken computer, not from a different one.”

Us: “Umm, we can't. It's broken.”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

Us: “That's because you looked at the wrong computer. We can't send you an e-mail from the broken computer, because it cannot send e-mails. Do not check this computer, the one that this e-mail is coming from. Check [identification information for the broken computer].”

Them: “We told you to send us an e-mail from the broken computer. Follow instructions, and stop sending e-mails from different computers.”

Us: “How can we send you an e-mail from a computer that won't send e-mails?”

Them: “We received your latest e-mail and checked the computer that you sent it from, and can find no problems with that computer. Have a nice day.”

This went on for several more iterations. We finally just put the broken computer in a box and stuffed it away in a closet in the basement, and found a new computer.

This is an automated response system, you would need to actually call them and work your way through one or two levels of script jockeys to get someone with a functional brain and the permission to use it to solve your problem.

[lake_wrangler]

This is an automated response system, you would need to actually call them and work your way through one or two levels of script jockeys to get someone with a functional brain and the permission to use it to solve your problem.

That's just it: maybe they don't have anyone there with a brain, and they've been relying on this automated system to check on the computer and spew out a diagnostic...

[Dave]

One word: "Droids."

[AnotherFairportfan]

Those are not the droids we want.

[Catawampus]

This is an automated response system, you would need to actually call them and work your way through one or two levels of script jockeys to get someone with a functional brain and the permission to use it to solve your problem.

No, it was actual real people who were fussing at us to e-mail them from the broken computer. At least four different people. And there was no calling them. Just e-mail.

[Warrl]

This is an automated response system, you would need to actually call them and work your way through one or two levels of script jockeys to get someone with a functional brain and the permission to use it to solve your problem.

No, it was actual real people who were fussing at us to e-mail them from the broken computer. At least four different people. And there was no calling them. Just e-mail.

Move the broken machine to another location, next to another computer that you can do without for a while ("spare"). Unhook the spare from the network and hook up the broken machine. Attempt to send a trouble email from the broken machine.

If sending the email works: quickly move the broken machine back to its original location and hook it up again.

If not: Unhook the broken machine and hook up the spare. Send the trouble email. Unhook the spare and hook up the broken machine. Hide the spare (do NOT plug it back into the network). Make sure that anyone who might respond to a phone call from the support group, or meet with a technician when one shows up, is in on this or knows whom to refer them to.

Alternative: ask for detailed instructions on how to send an email from a system that cannot send email.

(I gotta tell my daughter on this. She's one of those tech support people - but not in a shop with policies that stupid, or at least not any that I know of.)

[GlytchMeister]

Next time, say "Shibboleet"