Helpdesk comment - had to pass this on (1 Viewer)

[Matt Greatorex]

I keep hearing the same urban myths about things that people have said or done on support desks ("do you still have the box", "it isn't plugged in" and "there's a power cut" being the most frequently heard yarns). As far as genuine stories go, however, five minutes ago I had the following conversation with our company's 'help' desk.

To set the scene: I tried to log onto the PC this morning and received a message telling me that my account has expired and I should contact the administrator.

I called and the conversation went as follows:

Desk: Welcome to the XXXX help desk, how can I be of assistance?

Me: I’m trying to connect to the system and I get a message telling me my account has expired.

Desk: Can I take your name, please?

I provide my name.

Desk: Ah yes, your account expired at the end of last month.

Me: Really? On Tuesday, I got a message telling me that my logon password would expire in five days, but I changed it and logged on successfully after that.

Desk: No, I mean your actual account expired. It doesn’t matter what your password is, if your account has expired you won’t be able to connect anyway.

Me: …..but I logged on and used the PC all day Tuesday and all day yesterday?

Desk: No you didn’t.

I gave up and just requested access, at that point.

 

[Kraj]

Wow. That's a good one!

My own experiences with the Help Desk usually involve me diagnosing the problem three hours/days before they do. For example:

The database I designed and use at work has a button that generates an email in Outlook addressed to the person whose name is on the form I'm working with. If there are multiple possible matches in the Outlook address book, when I click Send it pops up a selection of names to pick from. If only one name in the system is a possible match it just sends it.

So I had sent a couple emails to a woman at another office location within the company using this system and never got any popup, but later got an email form her syaing that the messages intended for her went to someone else (who had forwarded them to her). I checked and indeed they did. The intended recipient was not in address book at my end at all, but the email address she messaged me from matched the name I tried to send to. Interesting. So I looked her up in the address book and found that she was still in the system on our end under her maiden name, but under the correct name on her end.

So I called the Help Desk and explained the situation, telling them what I had found and suggested her email address needed to be updated on our end with her new name. So they opened a support case for me and cc'd me on the email exchanges. It took about four people and two day's worth of correspondence to determine the problem, which happened to be exactly what I told them it was. To top it off, after they said they fixed it I tried to email her and it still didn't work because they hadn't actually made the change.

My most typical irritating help desk encounters were at my old job when I worked at a data center.
Me: "I was on the phone with a client and they said their system went down. I tried to log onto the system and couldn't connect."
HD: "Well I can log on; everything looks fine."
Me: "Well something must be wrong otherwise I wouldn't be calling."
HD: "Oh wait... You're right. I can't log on."

 

[Mile-O]

In my place we can lock ourselves out of our computer (three strikes on the password and all that) and when we telephone them to let them know we've done it, they've been known to send an email to confirm that it has been actioned.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

We have a pretty extensive Help Desk at my site. We deal more with pay problems but sometimes get people asking for help with a particular program they run.

One of my favorites was the person who wanted to verify that a file had been sent to his computer. This was MANY moons ago, back when everyone still ran DOS and saw a DOS prompt.

caller: "I don't know if my computer received the {mumbledly-umph} file."
agent: "Well you can do a CD C:\ and get to the right directory to test it."
caller: "OK, did that. It says C:\>"
agent: "Great! Now do a D I R command."
long pause... caller: "Can you spell that?"
agent: "Spell what?"
caller: "That D I R command."

At this point, the agent blushed an incredibly bright red as his eyes glazed over. Since at the time they were on speakerphone, the agent had to hit the mute button to hide the laughter. I got back to my own work and didn't hear the end of the conversation. Not sure I wanted to.