As a pc user, I’ve had my share of frustration trying to get tech support help more than once in my life.  However, as someone who also gives tech support the frustrations are a 2 way street.  Tech support staff suffer many many frustrations everyday.  The following post has 3 purposes (1) To educate readers of TGM about things you should NEVER do when calling support (2) Hopefully a little insight into the what Tech Support staff deal with / comic relief (3) Therapy for me as I’ve had to deal with many of these issues recently.

Things that drive Tech Support Staff NUTS!!!!

- Please Turn on your PC before calling support

  **You would be surprised how many people never actually have their computer on when they call for help. Those same people usually have the slowest machines that takes forever to boot up.

- Please don’t complain that you had to wait !@#$% long in queue to get to support

  **We were delayed in getting to you because we had to wait for the last caller to boot up their pc (Keep in mind that if your pc is off when you complained about your wait, everyone after you will have to wait even longer).

- Calling for support when you are not in front of the pc

  **When you call for help and I ask for you to do something and I get Oh I’m not front of PC, right now (How the !@#$ am I supposed to help you, do you go to your mechanic to fix your car but forget to bring the car with you…..COME ON!!!!!).  

- Calling to tell me that you keep getting an error message and when I ask you what it said, getting told it said “something about something not working, I think or something like that I don’t know, cant you just see it”

  **No genius, my Carnac hat is currently at the Pawn shop, I needed to pay some bills!!!

- Customer calls me, tells me that they have an issue with something on the pc, then I say ok can you do the following (insert a troubleshooting step here) and they respond, "I’ve already done that"…..
  **Yes you may have but NOT with me on the phone, so please humor me. Even better when you finally get them to do what you ask and then they say, "That didn’t work for me, how did you get that to work". (Well the computer likes me more than you!)

- Why do customers feel the need to read me everything they see on the screen.

  **Even when you interrupt them and say that’s fine, and try and give them their next step, they continue reading.

- Do people need to have a test to prove they know their right from their left before buying a pc?

  **It drives me crazy when I tell someone “Now right click on…..” and the response I get is “Is that with the right or left?”  Really didn’t I say RIGHT CLICK on…..what part of RIGHT needs to be explained?

- Why do people believe computers will work forever? Why do so many people not backup things on a pc that are “critical” or “irreplaceable”? 

Here the cover is removed showing the platters and read/write heads. These are the mechanical components. These platters were perfectly clean and shiny when I first removed the cover.	Here is a close-up of the read/write heads on the disk platters. These ride on a thin layer of air generated by the rotating platters
And here is all the electronics inside the drive. Not as much as you might think	This is the actuator that controls the read/write heads and moves them across the drive.

(Pictures from http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=595 (http://www NULL.pcdoctor-guide NULL.com/wordpress/?p=595))

     Imagine the plate you see in there as the record album, and there is the record needle, in fact the plate is where your data is stored and when you make a request of your pc, the needle you see moves across the plate and looks for the data you asked for.  Obviously this all happens at speeds much faster than your 33 1/3 album (Most Hard drives these days rotate at 7800 RPM or 10000 RPM), but if your needle on your drive gets stuck or your plate gets “scratched” / “warped” your hard drive will stop working and eventually will happen to EVERY hard drive just like it would eventually happen to your old albums.

     Keep in mind that if you have “critical” or “irreplaceable” data and your drive dies, there is nothing I or any other tech can do to recover your data.  The only way to get it back is to send your drive to a specialty shop where they put your drive in a clean room, and use some true space age technology to pull your data. The cost of that kind of service start at $1000’s of dollars. 

     A good plan for your “critical” or “irreplaceable” data is referred to as a 3 step plan. 

1 – The data on your hard drive

2 – Have a copy locally on an external drive

3 – Using one of the many online services – Have an off-site backup.  **Tech Geek and More uses and recommends IDrive (LINK: https://www.idrive.com/?p=techgeekandmore (https://www NULL.idrive NULL.com/?p=techgeekandmore)) for your online back-up.

- Responding to call backs. If your pc issue is really that critical, why don’t you respond to my messages and voicemails?

  **You call me in a panic saying you need to get your pc back ASAP, then when I call you back all I get is voicemail. When I get a call I don’t answer I can see the caller ID saying missed call, and call them back or at least listen to the message and call back. So is the pc really that important, when you call me I need to be at your beck and call, but when I call you I can’t find you.  That’s a great way to make me put your stuff at the bottom of my busy schedule.

- As a computer user, you should learn at least the basics about your pc.  When you buy a car, you at least learn what the Gas Pedal, brake, parking break are, and how to remove the gas cap on your car (At least I would hope that you would!!), that doesn’t mean you’re a mechanic, it just means you understand what you use.

  **So as pc users please learn what the following parts of your pc are – \

1) Address Bar – When you open up the program or window you use to access the internet, there is a box where you type Google.com or Bing.com or whatever site your visiting, that is your Address Bar.

2) Task Bar – When a tech asks you to look at your task bar, its that area (usually at the bottom) where all the open programs are listed.

(This is from Windows XP)

(This is from Windows 7)

3 – The internet is actually controlled via IP addresses, that is the equivalent to your phone number.  There may be a time when a tech asks you to manually type in an IP address.  The addresses will look like 192.168.1.1 (for an example), which is 4 numbers sequences with a period in between each area.  Please understand that so that when a tech tell you to type you don’t type 192dot168dot1dot1 or 192period168period1period1, both of which I discovered the hard way after spending time working with a customer who said that it didn’t work. Of course it didn’t…..

4 – Please learn the difference between the power button on your monitor and the power button on your pc itself.  I don’t know how many people I have asked to turn off their pc, and then turn it back on by the power button (mainly because the pc is frozen) and the response I get is

Customer: “Its Off”

Customer: “Its back On “ (2 seconds later)

Customer: “Its still frozen”

- As a tech, when you call me to work on your pc remotely, and I get dialed in, please wait until I’m done before getting back on your pc to go to Facepage (Yes that was typed correctly, shows you what the customer knows) or dealing with your crops.

  **It is only 1 screen and 1 pc, there is no way I can do what I need while you plow your fields or respond to the POST ME if you believe this…..message.  When you jump on all I will do is disconnect, so that when you call back to see if I’m done all I will say is that I couldn’t do anything because YOU WERE IN THE WAY!!!!

AND LASTLY –

- Its 2010, computers have been the norm for 15 yrs. (Using Windows 95 as the basis to that statement). Why do I still get periodic calls from people who say that their pc wont work, while they are in the middle of a power outage.  (I don’t know if this one makes me laugh or cry more). 

  **All I will say to this one.  If you call me as to why your pc wont work, and you are in the middle of a power outage, unplug the pc, put it back in its box, and return it to where you bought it.  (I know that mean, but really…….)

Here is a rule that I and many other techs do support by - 
"99% of all computer issues occur between the keyboard and the chair"