Me: Good Afternoon, Innitech Service dept, how can I help you?
Angry Customer: This printer you sold me is crap! I can't get it to work with my ECP Parlell port! Don't try to tell me there's something wrong with my card, I paid good money in the US for this card! It's an expensive VESA-local bus IO card*!
Me: Let's try some diagnostics.
[snip various printer tests that show there is no communication with the printer]
Me: Ok, let's verify the jumper settings on your IO card. Do you have the manual?
Customer: No, I don't know where it is. You guys should have the manual! **
Me: We sell hundreds of different products, there's no way we can have manuals for all of them.
Customer: I blah blah blah and I know all the products I sell inside and out.
Me: There are new products every week; there's no way we could keep up with them all. We're a retail store, not the manufacturer!
Customer: Don't give me that! You should know all the products.
Me: Ok, maybe you can download the manual from the internet.
Customer: What?! The Internet? Don't you go trying to put a noose around my neck! That's nothing but a way for the government to control you! They will track everything you do!
Me: ... Ok, well, what's the model number of this IO card?
Customer: AFP-10x-23
Me: (After searching on Yahoo) Ok, I've found the manual for it on the internet, let's verify those jumpers...
Customer: Really?
Me: Yeah, I'm looking at a graphic showing the card and all the labels.
Customer: Maybe this internet thing IS worthwhile....
The ironic thing was this customer claimed to be an electrical engineer. In the end we didn't get his printer working so I suggested he bring it in, where we'd get it working for him (for free, since he bought it from us). He flew off the handle again, claiming it was too far to drive, and decided to see what he could do by himself. I saw him again a few months later, and asked how his printer was. He claimed that one of the wires was loose in the parallel connection on the printer and after re-soldering it it was fine. Who knows? It's either that or the men in black came to his house and sodomized his cats and he's just too embarrassed to admit it.
--
* This story takes place in 1997. VESA local bus was a not bad technology that was popular on 486s but lost out to PCI.
** We didn't even sell him the IO card in question.
No comments:
Post a Comment