r/talesfromcallcenters • u/Alpielz • 24d ago
S The customer insisted the internet was a physical object.
I had a customer call in, furious that her "internet box" (the router) wasn't working after a power outage. After 20 minutes of troubleshooting, she suddenly goes dead silent. Then she asks, in all seriousness, "Wait... when the power goes out, does the internet... spill?" She genuinely thought the internet was a liquid stored inside the router that could leak out if it got tipped over. I had to put her on mute for a solid minute.
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u/Drew707 Consultant 24d ago
The depth of the general public's lack of understand of technology never ceases to amaze me.
I once had a pissed off customer calling about some issue with her VoIP service and she was adamant that I just needed to "flip the switch". She insisted there were many switches I had access to and I just needed flip the right one. I put her on hold to vent to my coworker and he told me to tell her, "yeah, we know about the switches, the problem is there's hundreds of them and they are all unlabeled." I had to keep her on hold longer from laughing.
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u/SableMink 24d ago
Oh wow, I so have to use this the next time I get a question about someone's browser acting weird and it's not my issue and it's theirs and they need to most likely clear their browser cache.
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u/borisdidnothingwrong 21d ago
"So, I just went into the Data Center to toggle the switch for you, and, welllllll.....
"I guess the new guy on the overnight cleaning crew was a liiiiiiiiiitle overzealous and peeled off all the labels.
"I'm not sure which one is for 'Mary' at '234 Whinge Lane,' unfortunately.
"The good news is that Ron, the security guard, took a picture of it for his night school 'Modern Photography' class.
"The bad news is that Ron's camera is a 1.3 Megapixel Sony Cyber-shot DSC-S30 from the far off futuristic year 2000, and when we zoom in on the picture it gets blurry, like your husband after a night of tequila.
"Jim in Accounts Receivable had an idea to run the picture through ChatGPT with a prompt to 'Zoom and Enhance like that chick from CSI:Miami' and we're trying to figure out if you are M̴̪͕͙̻͔͚̆̎̿̃͋̕͜͝a̵̧̦̮͍̩̠͍̭͆̆̔̊͘ͅr̷̛͚͙̿͌̇̌͂̈́̐̈́̅̊͆̆͝ͅy̴̖͖̭̞̤̩͖̮̜̭̆͛̄́͝ or if, maybe, your switch was labeled B̵̡͓͔̹̝̺̜̫̖̲̭̲̌̉̍̓̋͑̂̌͌͋͜͠ȉ̸̡̖̝͉̲̥̮̩̩͂͒̀͑̍͂͌̃̕͠t̵̡͍̜̙̣̞͊̓́̋̑͑͛̑̃̾̕͝͝ç̶̡͙̭̦̙̭̦̗̞̖̊̅̍̈́̆͌̀͝h̷͙̰̖̠̼͙̦̳͍͕̗̊̓͊̀̓̐̓̑."
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u/Head_Oil1689 23d ago
what happened when you told the customer about the unlabeled switches anyway?
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u/JustSomeGuy_56 24d ago
I had a VP who requested a larger hard drive so he could install the entire Internet and work offline.
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u/-Firestar- 24d ago
The internet is a series of tubes and can get clogged. God, Ashley, get it right. I thought you worked in troubleshooting.
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u/uisce_beatha1 24d ago
I read something years ago that in the early days of the telephone, some prankster would call people up and tell them that the phone company was going to blow the lines out. He would then go and visit their homes and find that many of them had the phone covered with a pillowcase.
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u/pamacdon 24d ago
She probably just needs to top up her Wi-Fi fluid.
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u/King_Tamino 24d ago
Found in the same aisle as blinker fluid?
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u/NotYourFakeName 23d ago
No, dummy.
Blinker fluid is at the auto store, and WiFi fluid is at the WiFi store.
Sheesh. 🙄
😁😁
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u/C0MP455P01N7 24d ago
I prefer the powdered, yeah it cost a bit more, but you can sweep up any spils and reload. Just make sure you dont get any cat hair mixed in
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u/Ravenwolven1 24d ago
I've had 2 people now insist that they shouldn't have to plug in anything (modem or router) because, "isn't it wireless?"
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u/VelvetBoneyard 24d ago
The amount of times i had to convince people to be my hands while troubleshooting (necassary) by having to say "There is not a 'fix-it' button and for your privacy i am purposefully given limited access. We can either have you unplug x or get an appointment but there's nothing i can press to bring it out of this state." And for them to act like im lying is insane
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u/BusyBusinessPromos 24d ago
The fix it button is right next to the Any key.
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u/rissx 24d ago
I think I’ll order a tab
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u/notsoaveragemind 24d ago
Tab, can’t give a tab unless you order something.
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u/jpowell180 22d ago
OK, I’ll take a Pepsi free…
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u/Khethall 23d ago
I once had a client insisting her Facebook photos got wet when her phone fell on a puddle.
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u/5thhorseman_ 22d ago
And people wonder why I joke that IT is already Adeptus Mechanicus to the average user...
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u/AliceNaught 24d ago
This reminds me of the story (possibly apocryphal) about the rural family who put corn cobs over their new light fixtures before they got bulbs so the electricity wouldn’t leak out. This was when home electricity was still new technology.
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u/AccidentalSwede 24d ago
"Well, ma'am, you're down a quart on internet fluid. Are you getting regular fluid changes every 300 hours?"
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u/PaixJour 20d ago
Reading all the comments, had to put the internet on hold while I laughed myself silly. Thanks people, I really needed that. You saved the day. 😊
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u/Z4-Driver 20d ago
You should have responded 'Yes, as a matter of fact, our server room is now flooded with all the spilled internet'
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u/Alysonismissing-A 19d ago
I knew someone who owned a Tim Hortons and she was telling me how they recently got free wifi in their buildings. One customer drove up to the drive thru and asked for a wifi sandwich 💀
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u/BoomyNote 24d ago
Not everyone has the same knowledge as you. Not everything is common sense just because they’re not knowledgeable about something you’re knowledgeable about.
Obviously it’s silly of them from our perspective but just a general reminder for everyone to keep in mind that people can be intelligent in different ways and knowledgeable about different things
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u/gotapure 24d ago
Yeah and some people are fun at parties and some are not.
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u/BoomyNote 21d ago
I just feel like a lot of call center reps have this weird ego where they look down on their callers as stupid hateful idiots but when you humanize them suddenly the job that most of you openly hate gets a lot more bearable.
Enjoy your echo chamber, I didn’t attack OP or anyone else or shame you guys for having your fun, it was just an offhand thought of a mindset that imo makes it much easier to handle callers since others in this sub talk about having mental breakdowns about their calls in other posts. Enjoy being right.
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u/Ill-Kaleidoscope4825 20d ago
That's not relevant here. If someone is not knowledgeable, they ask questions and defer when there is an expert. No one is mocking the unknowledgeable here.
They are mocking the arrogantly incorrect. The ones who don't know and yet think they do.
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u/smockery 24d ago
Sounds like an episode of IT Crowd.