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BUDDHA: Help-line madness


A contribution from one of our newer subscribers, Andrew Horton in NY, NY.

Andrew, Buddha. Buddha, Andrew.

This is one of those "users are dumber than you could imagine" pieces which 
make the rounds, but I love 'em so I'm passing it on. Over to you, Andrew:

------- 

From: Pest23@aol.com
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 16:03:16 -0500

I found the following snippet in an otherwise boring free 'zine in a downtown
record store.

The following is from the NY 'zine Popsmear #7.0. It has been copied without
permission, though no byline appears on the article, and it has the look of a
bunch of compiled news snippets:

And You Thought WE Were Dorks

AUSTIN, Texas-The exasperated help-line caller said she couldn't get her new
Dell computer to turn on. Jay Ablinger, a Dell Computer Corp. technician,
made sure the computer was plugged in and then asked the woman what happened
when she pushed the power button. "I've pushed and pushed on this foot pedal
and nothing happens," the woman replied. "Foot pedal?" the technician asked.
"Yes," the woman said, "this little white foot pedal with the on switch." The
'foot pedal,' it turned out, was the computer's mouse.

One woman called Dell's toll-free line to ask how to install batteries in her
laptop. When told that the directions were on teh first page of the manual,
says Steve Smith, Dell director of technical support, the woman replied
angrily, "I just paid $2,000 for this damn thing, and I'm not going to read a
book."

Compaq's help center in Houston, Texas, is inundated by some 8,000 consumer
calls a day, with inquiries like this one related by technician John Wolf: "A
frustrated customer called, who said her brand new Compaq wouldn't work. She
said she ahd unpacked the unit, plugged it in, opened it up and sat there for
20 minutes waiting for something to happen. When asked what happened when she
pressed the power switch, she asked, 'What power switch?'"

Seemingly simple computer features baffle some users. So many people have
called to ask where the "any" key is when "Press Any Key" flashes on the
screen that Compaq is considering changing the command to "Press Return Key."

Some people can't figure out the mouse. Tamra Eagle, an AST technical support
supervisor, says one customer complained that her mouse was hard to control
with the "dust cover" on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the
mouse was packaged in. Dell techinician Wayne Zieschang says one of his
customers held the mouse and pointed it at the screen, all the while clicking
madly. 

Disk drives are another bugaboo. One customer was having trouble reading
word-processing files from his old diskettes. After troubleshooting for
magnets and heat failed to diagnose the problem, Mr. Sullivan asked what else
was being done with the disketter. The customer's response: "I put a label on
the diskette, roll it into the typewriter . . ."

At AST, another customer dutifully complied with a technician's request that
she send a copy of a defective floppy disk. A letter arrived from the
customer a few days later, along with a Xerox copy of the floppy. 

At Dell, a technician advised his cusomter to put his troubled floppy back in
the drive and "close the door." Asking the technician to "hold on," the
customer put the phone down and was heard walking over to shut the door to
his room. The technician meant the door to his floppy drive.

The software inside the computer can be equally befuddling. A Dell customer
called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes
of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a
piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the
"send" key.

Another customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He
had cleaned it, he said, filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking
his keyboard for a day, and then removing all the keys and washing them
individually.

TEXT ENDS

Andrew
Little Tiny Buddha Picture Back to Buddha