It’s Not My Fault

An idea whose time has come

Some people might think charging $1.95 per minute for tech support is outrageous. But I think it’s a wonderful idea. I am willing to to bet that if you are getting charged PER MINUTE YOU ARE ON THE EFFIN’ PHONE, you are gonna to make goddamn sure you already have the model number, serial number, date of purchase and all that crap that EVERY SINGLE  TECH SUPPORT PERSON IS GOING TO ASK YOU written down BEFORE you call tech support.

Well, you might not do it the first time. You might not ever do it the second time. But eventually, you will learn to take friggin responsibility for your own damn self and read the friggin’ manual.

How to avoid pissing off the tech support guy, Part 1

1. Be patient. I imagine there exists on another plane of existance tech support lines in which NO ONE has to wait to talk to a live person. Here in the real world, there’s probably going to be a wait. A minute or two is NOT too long. Five minutes is getting there. Ten minutes, you’ve waited too long.

Regardless, IT IS NOT THE FAULT OF THE PERSON YOU ARE TALKING  TO. The tech support guy’s paycheck depends on getting you assholes off the phone as soon as possible. He or she was motivated to get you and THE ASSHOLE WHO PROCEEDED YOU off the fucking phone as quickly as possible. But that didn’t happen, so you waited too long.

Here’s some reality to suck on: YOU waited in line because someone was being an even bigger asshole than you were.

My advice: Grow the fuck up. Life is hard, and waiting ten minutes to get your fucking toaster fixed is the least of your worries. Your mother lied to you when she told you that you were the center of the universe. Your time is NOT more valuable than that of the little old lady who I patiently helped before I took your call.

I am sure you THINK that because you are the customer, having to wait longer than you wish somehow gives you the moral right to piss and moan, or even to berate the tech support staff. The reality is that you don’t. Your having done so just marks you as a mental and morally inferior piece of shit whose parents didn’t raise very well. I’ve been spoken to over the phone in ways that would have gotten the caller laid out had the conversation been face to face. But I am too professional to let on that I am even offended.

Not that it would matter to any of these assholes, but all these little hissy fits accomplish is to make the next guy wait a little while longer. Not that any of these assholes give a shit.

And here is why it’s not in callers’ interest to unload on me: As I’ve said before, I know exactly how much service I am expected to provide. Take a tone with me, and you will receive exactly that minimum. I will play by the “Asshole Edition” rules and if you are ONE DAY out of warranty, you ain’t getting shit. And if there is any way to fuck you up (within the rules), I will.

And I will do it with a smile in my voice.

That’s not covered by the warranty

Yeah, I’m about 90 percent sure this was staged. They had a video camera at eye level pointed at the copy machine in such an agnle it also captured this guy’s desk? Yeahhhh. Sure.

Not that this hasn’ t happened.

Some Mac v. PC fun

I have a MAC. It sits there, on my desk, consuming energy. I use my PC laptop for serious work because I don’t have the patience for a MAC.

But these ads are fun.

The meaning of ‘what’

When you give a caller some specific instructions, and he/she/it says “what?”, it means one of two things.

1. “I am sorry, sir, but I am of below-average intelligence, therefore I need to have even the simplest instructions, even those spoken in clear English, repeated to me before I can understand them. Actually, at this point, I believe my genetically inferior brain structure refuses to click into place and activate until I hear anything things the second time.”
2. “Sorry. Bad connection.”

If ya can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

With the exception of little old ladies suffering from Alzheimer’s …anyone who falls for this scam deserves to lose their money.

Fucking idiots. That’s why I get spam … because these fuckers know that if they send out 10 million emails, one dumb fucker is going to fall for it.

More Dell Hell

Hat tip: Tech blog.

Put simply, this is what happens when a Dell, IBM, or any other lithium-ion battery powered notebook catches fire/explodes. PCPitStop decided to intentionally create conditions “in which the Li-ON battery pack would explode inside a generic portable.�

Sweet mother of God.

It’s a good thing no one actually puts a laptop on their laps.

Well, I don’t. Maybe because I haven’t seen my lap since my early 30s.

Dell Hell,lithium-ion battery,battery fire

‘I USED to be a Mac … now I’m unemployed’

You know Justin Long? The actor whose appeared in some movies I haven’t seen who plas “Mac” in those annoying commercials where one guy is a Macintosh computer and other guy is supposed to be a PC? You know, the hoodie-wearing, unshaven doofus? That’s him on the right:

Well, he’s not going to be doing those ads anymore. Either he was dumped, or he’s such a huge movie star these days that Apple won’t pay him what he wants.

He’s an idea for a new one. We have the Mac guy on the phone for tech support for an hour, while PC guy gets his problem solved in five minutes and he leaves to go fishing, because tech support people don’t know what the fuck what to do because the low volume of Mac calls means his company didn’t bother training the help in how to fix problems on a Mac. I kmow about a call in which the Mac is screaming and yelling at tech support because the techie had the audacity to suggest the problem might be the setting in the Mac, when everyone knows that Macs come out of the box absolutely perfect.

Microsoft agrees to let people steal Vista

Oh, come on. You KNOW that’s what’s gonna happen:

On Oct. 16, Microsoft issued the new user license for Vista, including terms that would have limited the ability of those who buy a boxed copy of the operating system to transfer that license. Under the proposed terms, users could have made such a switch only one time.

However, the new restriction prompted an outcry among hardware enthusiasts and others. Microsoft is returning the licensing terms to basically what they were in Windows XP–users can transfer their license to a new PC an unlimited number of times, provided they uninstall and stop using it on the prior machine.

The software maker said it paid attention to the response both directly to the company and on blogs and decided to reverse course. Microsoft had hoped to use the change to aid its ongoing efforts to thwart piracy.

“We’re trying to be really clear about our intention to prevent piracy,” said Microsoft product manager Mike Burk. “At the same time, after listening to the feedback that came in, (we) felt that we needed to make this change.”

By reversing course, Burk said, Microsoft hoped to assuage users’ concerns, particularly those of hobbyists who frequently upgrade the components of their PC, in some cases triggering Windows to consider the machine a new PC.

Yeah, I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve upgraded my PC to the point that it was a brand new machine. Not.

Bullshit.

Out of 100 Vista users, how many are gonna have this problem? One? Two, maybe?

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m happy we’re gonna be able to lend our CDs to friends and family, albeit against the terms of the Vista license. Microsoft, is, after all, a big company and it’s morally acceptable to rip them off. No doubt they figure they are still gonna make a billion off of this OS anyway. So fuck ‘em, but let’s at least be honest about it.

Dilbert ‘gets’ tech support