We all miss these computers because computers used to be fun to use not anymore. I liked it when we wrote our own programs and we could taylor it to our needs. Now we are forced to accept features we don't need or want. Also when you turn on a machine it's was up and running no waiting and shut down was just a power switch and the machine was actually off and not consuming power. I use pre windows machines at work and they are up and running within a minute. Just program loading and it's not taking time. DOS was good in its time and many still use a DOS computer. In electronics it does many test functions and no update interference.
30:34 : "Why did I have to wait on hold so long?" "Well, the 10 customers I had before you; they didn't have their serial number ready either..." ROFL, great answer.
Do that. We throw those stickers away." I said "they're Post-its! Not "stickers," dummy!". So I had to tell my department that Post-its stacks needed to move to the cubicle desk light so they wouldn't have to recreate the stack frequently.
Whenever I got a new computer, I would build a stack of post-it notes with the machine's serial # or contract #(compaq), so I would just lean over, peel off one prepared Post-it, and I would be ready for the support tech. I passed that little labor saving trick on to my whole department. It got back to the I.T. department & they demanded to know why all the machine's in our department had Post-its stuck to the back of the machine's. I explained it was a labor-saving trick when calling support. I.T.
I worked on a help desk at two different companies over a period of 15 years, and there was one thing that was absolutely consistent. If the customer was happy with their system, they said "I bought this..."; If they were NOT happy, they said "YOU sold me this...!"
I worked both IT and help desk in college. It was NOT easy, in fact impossible, keeping Microsoft DOS and Windows users happy. You think Windows 10 is a nightmare, you haven't tried DOS and Windows 98. No matter how much they paid for a system, it had large numbers of bugs. Our UNIX workstation users (SGI, SUN, HP) had the least complaints. Occasionally it would crash.
@BDPhotog67Easiest way to fix that is to create a separate admin user and remove your mother's administrative permissions. I did this for my mom and I barely hear out of her about it, and she calls you before installing that crapware because she can't.
@@livesimplyandhumbly 2 years ago I started working with legacy machines again and damn there are so many hoops to go through to get anything to work right. Most people today don't realize how good they have it now!
That's how I got my job where I am now. Almost the exact same process, asked a bunch of questions in the interview about how I would fix X or Y and then sent me to the factory where we build these machines for 5 weeks to talk about how they work and how to adjust / diagnose / repair them.
The same thing happened to me at university. They had 486 and floppy disk 3.5 and 5.25 floppy. Someone inserted a CD and it was still in their and I was able to take it out. It was obvious to me that it was not a CD drive. I didn't even know what that 5.25 floppy drive was until I looked around on the internet or magazines.
Used to work at a software company and during the transition to CDs another common thing was to have the customers insert it into the gap BETWEEN the 3.5 and 5.25 drive. Or when they would get 5.25 disks and had a 3.5 drive they would fold them in quarters and insert it that way. Also had a customer take the 5.25 disc out of the plastic sleeve and insert it into a CD-rom drive. I couldn't help myself one day when the customer called and was trying to install a Windows version of the software on a Dos machine and had them say they had to use the corner office as their cubical didn't have Windows. I was like 'What did you say?', ok, what 'color' is the screen? It's black, ok let me send you the DOS version of the program as we aren't concerned about if you have a view or not.
...I was stupid enough when I was 4 years old with my grandma to mistake floppy drive for disk drive, because I didn't know about the button to open the disk drive, so we both assumed it is supposed to go there... We understood soon enough that it was a mistake, but a little too late😂 I also have to say, that even though we had a floppy drive (I think it was 5 inch one, because how a disk can fit into a 3 inch drive?), I've never seen a 5 inch floppy until I got into my twenties 😂 so maybe it wasn't that bad
My funniest support call was a client who was hearing a loud beeping sound that kept going even if the computer was off. I quickly figured out that it was their UPS (battery backup). I asked them if it was plugged in, and they said, "Oh yes, it is plugged in". I asked them to check a couple of other things, none of which were helpful. I realized that I may not have been specific enough. I asked, "What is it plugged into?" They said, "Oh, it is plugged into an extension cord." I then asked them to see if the extension cord was plugged in. A moment later they came back and said, "Oh one of the other employees unplugged it". So yeah, I got a call where their computer wasn't plugged in.
I have had multiple calls years ago with people complaining the computer didn't work when the power had gone out. "Sorry, I can't tell what it says as the lights are off."
:D classics. Like someone who calls tech support because his keyboard doesn't work. Of course asking if it is plugged in is always answered with yes. The tech support asked him to pick the keyboard up and walk away at least 5m and then ask if they could take the keyboard that far. At that point they finally realised it wasn't plugged in -.-
I saw UPS plugged into extension cord plugged into this very UPS. That Ouroboros-style istallation was made by IT guy after moving computers from one room to another.
I TOTALLY empathize with the Mute button experience. The joke on our team was that we had to slave our mute buttons with Jim's phone so that when he 'went off' we would be covered. Eventually we persuaded him to find another coping mechanism.
It happened to me a couple times. I immediately came up with the excuse "Sorry my computer has been acting up all day" pretending I was swearing at the computer not them 😏 But yeah that's bad
Don’t laugh. Had a lady call home office section and said she said “I wish to order a new part...I broke my coffee cup holder...can you send one out?” True story 😂
@@eizol568 one of my friends was a phone and PC repair tech for the college I went to; I heard of regular stories where tenured profs were indeed doing exactly this - using the CD-ROM tray as a coffee mug holder, until it eventually broke.
As a kid in the 90's, I had a friend who's family got a new computer and AOL. We played with it and left it open for his dad. He sits down and immediately clicks the "x" button and closes it. (Thick southern accent) he says"what happened to muh American Online?" "You closed it when you clicked the X." "Oh hell, I thought that was a game!" "It's okay, just open it back up again." He picks up the mouse like a microphone, and speaks into it "I wanna go online!" We laugh and say "No, click on the AOL icon!" He picks the mouse up again, points it at the screen clicking at it, and we died laughing! He got up, cursed at it, and I don't think he ever touched it again. I feel kind of bad for laughing, but I'll never forget how funny that was to us.
Oh man I got my first computer in 94. I was 12 years old and I had America online version 2.0. Windows 3.1. And a 28.8 k modem. and giving all the technology we have today I'm telling you right now I would much rather go back to those days because simpler times were better. That's a great story by the way.
ChrisS82 Plus, we had (some) privacy back then. No social media, linking our personal profiles to everything we do online. Data harvesting was much less invasive. I miss those days too.
I use to work for AST support back in the day with The 8-Bit Guy. We referred to the Ascentia 950 as the "China Syndrome Laptop". On the Grid support side, we actually had Grid laptops in Tanks supporting Desert Storm. They were used for Fire Control. Those "Laptops" were more Luggable than portables though. You can see one in use in "Aliens" The Directors cut, running the robot sentries. AST was a great place to build your PC and Networking skills.
Wow old technology that still works. Just like the space program if it works don't fix it. That's why I like the idea of building my own computer. You don't have to have apps you don't use, its just a waste of money and battery power.
It's super frustrating trying to explain even the most mundane and simple thing about computers to someone that still lives in a world where a common toaster is deemed as a state of the art of consumer electronics.
@keselekbakiak I've had callers try to tell me how a certain feature of Windows works, and it's almost always readily apparent they've never even thought of using that feature in their life. Computer literacy may be more widespread than back in the '90s, but it's only at the most basic level.
i have a friend that worked in tech support for 7 years, one his calls was for HP for an older lady with a laptop regarding a battery issue Lady: yes hello, im calling because i cant keep wasting money and i need a solution, my laptop battery doesnt last anything i have to keep buying a new one everytime because it stops working Friend: oh thats terrible, but a new battery should be working, i can give you the link to... Lady: no no, im not buying more batteries, Friend: well are you charging them properly with the original charger that came with the laptop Lady: ............ the what? Friend:............... the charger, the laptop comes with a charger that you plug into the wall and the laptop to charger the batteries after they run out Lady: ,......................... hangs up turns out the lady had been buying a new battery pack every time it discharged because she dint know they had to be charged
I had a customer who purchased a desktop PSU call me saying it was DOA. Turns out he thought it was a battery and didn't plug it in. I have hundreds more stories of things like this.
I try so hard to put myself in their position, but some of these stories just don't make any sense. Wouldn't the instructions have shown her the battery has to be recharged? Ugh.
@@cvbabc People are stupid and will go to great lengths to ignore the obvious. I deal with them daily. What seems like common sense to you may be a foreign language to someone else.
Anyone notice that in the older video, "Why old computers were better" the "modern" tech support assistant tells David's wife to run scandisk and defrag and to call back? Now I know where that comes from.
I was at a bar a bit back and a comcast agent made a scene. He apparently worked from home and verified all the awful stuff that's already been reported in a loud less-then-sober outburst that actually silenced the place. It turned into a Q&A session since locals also had comcast. It was kinda surreal with people raising their hands and the bartender rolling with it and picking people out for the questions. (Which makes sense since he was the one that started the question spree.) Then someone asked what was he doing at a bar if his pay was so low: "This is my rent $$$." And that was the end of the Q&A.
I worked tech support and we had a guy who did the same thing he'd say: "is your computer running slow at all?" to which the answer was always YES. He'd get them to start the scan disk/defrag process and to call him back. He was a genuine dog-f***er.
@@Johnny_Nitro worked at an ISP tech support center, and we had one tech that would go out of his way to make every issue a windows issue on their end. everything from screwing with the system32 folder to having people download viruses. was fun when you get one of his calls when they came back. also got found out and fired for it.
Telling a person trough a phone how to open up the hard disk and telling them how to remove the heat sink just to show them that they where running a intel proccesor is insane
Heatsink back then where clamp-on on usually quite small, and the heat produced by the CPU was not much (not talking about the "volcano" AMD K5 here). Even if they didn't apply any new thermal compound after that chances were that those would continue to run for ages. Friend of mine had an Pentium 75 from Packard Bell with no thermal compound at all (not his fault) and it ran for years. My Dad's old 25mhz 386 had no heat sink at all. there was a case fan blowing air over it, nothing else.
@@Crazy_Borg the thermal compound was sol as a product that will fit small holes in the petallic cover of the CPU. Those "holes" are microscopics. So if their argument is correct you really don't need a big amount of compound. NOwadays they put so many compound on their CPU that it became another entirly new layer.
I used to work in one of those Third-world country call centers (in Colombia, if you really need to know, for a cellphone company). One one hand I have to say that, yes, it looked like that picture but many of the agents did try to help customers, knew what we were doing and didn't just read scripts from the screen. On the other hand, however, it's such a soul-crushing job... call after call... and having to follow so many rules and procedures (for instance, we couldn't use the word "problem") and having to deal with angry American customers (I love you guys, but you can be a handful sometimes...) I don't know... I just hated it... Up to this day I still have a mild panic attack every time I get a call.
I'm so sorry you had to go through all that and I apologize for the appalling behavior you experienced from people from the United States. I do my very best to be courteous with people working in customer service since I've had that job before too. Not being angry and cursing at people and being pleasant to work with is a simple way to make someone's day better and I wish everyone would do the same
Honestly it's a soul crushing job in any country, dealing with any customers. My ex-girlfriend used to work in a call centre for a charity for dogs. The abuse she would get with move her to tears. And she wasn't asking for donations, she was just routing calls and bills and stuff.
Yeah man, call center jobs are fucking horrible. I used to work at one myself, work from home. You'd think since it was work from home it'd be good but NO, it was soul crushing. Ended up quitting less than two months in.
My favorite from my training days with Dell was the recording of the guy who told a customer that they “were experiencing an ID10T error.” It was a clear lesson in what NOT to say in the phone with a customer.
It’s funny that you say this. My first laptop was an AST advantage explorer 486 dx4 100... pretty badass but after multiple closing of the screens... the screen died. So I ripped the monitor off and just connected to my p-bell monitor. So I actually had a half-ast
One of my "favorite" tech support calls went something like this: .... Me: "Ok sir, is your computer plugged in?" Caller:"Of course it's plugged in! What kind of an idiot do you think I...... I'll call you back."
I had a call like this once doing support for Compaq laptops and desktops back in 2001. I didn't actually work for Compaq, this was The Answer Group, a contracted support company in Florida. Anyway, dude calls up because his laptop isn't charging. He has it on his desk and the little battery indicator light just blinks and turns off, because the battery is dead. Ask him if the thing is plugged in and the guy legit checked. He said he was looking at the plug in the power strip (which was on) and the other end was plugged into the laptop. The power brick actually had its indicator light on. I was about to send him out a new AC adapter when he traced the cord and found that his fucking rabbit chewed through the cord from the power brick up the back of the desk to the laptop. He swears and hangs up the phone. I was nice. I sent him a new one anyway.
People are probably laughing at the "top of the line" calls. But I DO feel them. Back in the 90s, product cycles were CRAZY. You bought a reasonably powerful machine for 3000 bucks and it would be middling at best half a year later. What didn't help was the SX madness that was going on. Those basically were crippled CPUs. Within half a year, buying one of those would really hurt you. And who hasn't seriously considered those Overdrive contraptions. If you wanted to upgrade, you basically needed a new CPU and mainboard and more RAM of a different kind. Things got really stupid once CD Drives got in the mix. These days you are absolutely fine with a 5 year old computer. Replace the video card. At most. In the 90s. 5 years would mean that you are on a late 386 while stuff started to expected early Pentiums. Imagine you just bought a nice 486 60MHz. A couple of months later, you could get a 486DX 100MHz for the same price. Which was nearly double the speed.
This is why I miss the days of the Turbo button on the front of the machine. It wasn't just there for aesthetics. Granted, some games were still unplayable because their timing operated through a different function, but I was able to keep playing several older games on a newer machine. If only I had known back then that retro computers would be a thing now - I would have hung on to some of that old hardware. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p2q02Bxtqds.html
It didn't changed anything over the years and wont change till the market will collapse. You buy a high end gaming PC today and in two months becomes completely irrelevant. Because someone made a new game that looks "pretty" while lacking in everything else nut that is a story for another day. That is why I respect the old saying PC is for work only and consoles are for actual gaming. The only era that made me have a relevant PC for a longer period then usual was a Pentium 4 back in 2005 and it lasted maybe two years then games started drastically change requering far more power. After that onwards buying a gaming PC was and is still a nightmare. Especially the incopatibilities and crashes. All I say I stop investing and good riddance. Who ever praises PCs as a gaming platform are ignorant masochists who have insane amount of money to trow away on pointless things.
1980s: Techsupport guys know more than customers 2000s:Customers know more than tech support guys 2020s:Techsupport guys call customers to fix their own problems.
It’s not actually true - the tech support first line may not know shit, but the customers still do *not* know more, on average. And yes, the scripts that first line tech support uses are now so good that they’re automating away the person between the scripts and the phone.
26:03 This photo is widely used to illustrate news about call centers around the world. In fact, if you search for _"call center in india"_ it will return this photo. But this was taken somewhere in Brazil (probably Rio de Janeiro) 'cause the text on the blue shirts refers to a campaign on safe traffic by the government of this region in the year 2008.
A 'friend' called me just a few years ago: "I got this used graphics card for cheap but it didn't run stable, so I let the PC run over night so it can get used to the new hardware." That's a special kind of stupid. Eventually I went over and it turned out the GPU needed two 6-pin power connectors, but his PSU only had one, so he thought it would be fine. Some time later he called me saying his mom's PC had random video problems and would shut down shortly afterwards. He had no explanation why and apparently "already tried everything". What did I find? A PC tucked away into the corner of the desk and the only slot in the back for air was occupied by a cat. Replaced the ancient GPU with some crap I had around, cleaned the internals and it still runs to this day. I spent half an hour explaining why cooling is important. Having customers that have no clue isn't so bad. Customers who think they have an idea but have no clue are.
Customers that have no clue but expect you to be able to understand their exact problem through osmosis and cuss you out when you ask for details are pretty bad.
and this is why i got out of the biz. It's not just the general public either. I had a company call me to do a service call for them. Drove 33 miles, opened up her computer (they gave me a work order to replace the cpu) noticed the on/off switch was broke. Got out a piece of wire grounded the two together and boom computer booted. I told the lady to call the company back and tell them she didn't need a 500 dollar cpu just a 5 dollar on/off switch and tell them i will never work for them again. (this was the fourth such error in a row). I've had personal customers who have done the opposite of what I've told them to do so they won't lose the printers on their network (to cheap to upgrade and to stupid to listen) they are also a case of "this is my last visit". The IT guy who replaced me called me a few times to ask if they did these things frequently, all i could do was tell him to get used to both of the ladies who owned that rental management business were crazy. I've had enough of the general public since 1998 thanks!
...who's got people pickin' up the phone, seven days a week and at hours when you should be out socializing." Exactly what I felt I should be doing during my days of tech support 😒
"Please look for a little blue sticker on the front of your tower that says *Intel* on it." *sounds of what I can assume someone tipping over a shelf of computers and subsequently falling down the emergency stairwell in a high-rise building*
I had a customer who was wondering why her internet wasn't working. When I asked her where her modem was she told me she hid it in her cupboard (unplugged), because she was worried that someone was going to steal it....
Hitting the mute button and cursing at the customer! Brings back memories of times that I spent working in call centers. "You stupid f___ing idiot!!!!!" Fortunately, I always made sure the mute button light was on! 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Used to work with one guy, who had most of the call center terrified of him. He'd constantly be stabbing his pen into the wall of his slot (by the mid-2000s, you couldn't call them cubicles anymore, although the place I did commercial support at did have cubicles, examples of lots of devices we supported to test on, a lab network with all the servers we supported interfacing our system too, it was great) while talking to customers. He didn't take well to dealing with stupid people. His other job was as a university-level calculus TA. He viewed it as a key job function to get people not smart enough for calculus to drop the course. He tended to succeed. Normally, we both worked in chat support, so he needed to be typing and mousing to use the chat interface with all of the canned phrases that speed along things so you can work at least two calls at once (three or four if your very good and/or cocky) so he couldn't stab the wall while doing that.
Oh my God, I worked with an old guy in tech support who always did the defrag and call back tango. The rest of the team would transfer the call back to old guy or give out his personal number. Classic rip and flip tech.
A funny computer story I heard once was: A secretary was asked by her boss to "copy" a floppy disk. So she took the diskette to the photocopier and took a "copy" of it and handed the sheet of paper to her boss. I can imagine his reaction. Another one I heard was that a customer said that their software had the message: "PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE" but that they couldn't find the [Any] key. They can only see [Alt], [Ctrl], [Shift] and [Enter]. Maybe they have the wrong keyboard.
Very entertaining talk. Took me back to my time in the nineties learning as I went in the pre-internet age, where computer magazines were your reference to proper behaviour more often than not.
Sometimes wish I had been born a bit earlier and could have experienced that myself. I was born at the tale end of 89 so effectively a 90's child and we couldn't afford a computer until the late 90's I think, possibly later. I think my first personal machine ran Win98 and I remember having learned some keyboard shortcuts from using a computer at a friends house before that (his mouse was broken). Now I own a few computers but mostly use a Win10 machine, if compatibility improves (mostly for games/graphics cards) I may switch to some form of Linux (probably something Debian based as I have some experience with it).
Right there with you. I was completely self-taught and was a killer trouble-shooter, especially with hardware. I once fixed the PC for one of the VP's at Nortel (Richardson, Texas) that 7 "upper floor" techs had been scratching their heads for 3 days. I was a roving tech and the sole hardware certified one. After hearing the desktop would not POST, I took the case apart and found the biggest dust bunny on the CPU heatsink (no fan) that I have ever seen. Pulled out my vacuum and killed that lil' bugger. I then popped off the heatsink, removed the CPU and palmed it (all pins touching the palm of my hand), with no grounding strap, mind you. Needless to say, all 7 of those techs were freaking out. I calmly reinserted the CPU, reapplied the heatsink, put the case back on, then said, "Watch this....your PC is fixed" as it POST and booted up the OS. Dumbfounded, they asked in amazement, "How did you do that?" I just responded, "I used magic" and then walked off without saying another word. From that day forth, I was known by them as the 'Tech god'. :)
We had Commodores and a Coleco ADAM when I was growing up, but our first actual PC was an AST 486DX2/66 with a 3.5 disk drive, 4 MB RAM and a 345MB hard drive. I remember, to this day, my Dad swearing to my Mom as we were trying to justify the price to her... with those specs and the "upgraded" hard drive, this would be the last computer we'd ever have to buy. lol It truly was state of the art... for nearly a year!
I've been pronouncing my name all this time! It isn't Chris, it's ch-ris. What other lies have I accepted as fact? Gif isn't pronounced as jif, it's pronounced like gift without the t.. Or have I just inadvertently blown the universe's mind while destroying my own name?? :O ffs don't you dare phonetically define an acronym that makes sense so help me!!! Giraffe is the only way one could ever explain GIF so help me bacon!!! Don't tell me that my name also is pronounced similarly to krispy kreme.. I can't handle the mindsplotions!
Oh man, this takes me back. In the 90s you had to practically be a walking tech encyclopedia (for dummies) to do any kind of call center Tech Support. I would often find myself wracking my brain trying to figure out how to explain to do something. "On your desk you should have something that looks like a TV, something with keys like a typewriter and a small object that looks a little like a mouse, I need you to move the thing that looks like a mouse, do not lift it off the desk, just slide it around. Did you notice how when you do that the small graphic on the screen moves in unison with it? Ok, now I want you to move that graphic over the other little graphic that looks like (describe icon). OK now on your mouse, toward the part where the cable comes out there should be 3 plastic switches that look almost like fingers cut out of the plastic, I want you to click the one on the left twice quite quickly without moving the mouse off the icon." 2 hours later you eventually have them in their email client composing an email to their friend who will also likely call you in a few hours to ask how to check his email 🤣😂
Nevermind the 90s. This is still a near daily occurrence for me. Doing system administration (which unfortunately includes tech support since we emulate dumb terminals for most everything) for a large manufacturer and we get at least 4 or 5 calls a week from the floor saying their computer won't turn on. After 10 minutes of the most meaningless and nonsensical conversation you can imagine, you walk out into the 250k sqft factory to find out they didn't turn on the "Wi-Fi box"(PC) because we wired that work station with cat5e yesterday so they don't need it and they've just been turning the monitor on and off. Yeah we just left that there for decoration and we really like it when there's shit in your way, you don't need that at all. Plenty of "it won't connect to the mainframe, it says 'no network connection' " etc. No, that says no video signal, but who can be bothered with technicalities when there's work to be ignored. By far my best story was someone who threw away a tower that was in their way leaving the keyboard and monitor completely unplugged. And swore it worked for two days like this and just started disconnecting from the network and that it had just been working before they called. Refused to accept when I found the tower and reinstalled it that that had been the issue because their computer at home was "just a screen and a keyboard it worked fine." I've never had a more ridiculous argument than this in my life. We had to agree to disagree after -20- minutes and I got maintenance to bolt the tower to the table. So don't fear, tech support is probably still the most ridiculous and unnecessarily necessary job a person can have.
@Howard Black Pretty much, yeah. Funny as hell when you get there to see they did this: Ccolonbackslashcd windows Then I started telling them which keys on the keyboard to use :P
Just feel glad you didn't cut your teeth on remote support in Europe for a multinational. Not only could your caller not speak 'computer', they might only have a very basic grasp yours plus the computer itself is in another language and the keyboard is different.
I had that so many times in real life from customers. In my software exam we were not allowed to use any key statement in programming but told to display " press a key ". that still gave issues but atleast they press the "a" key and carried on. "Slam your head on the keyboard " more like it should have said.
Yep, I've also had to deal with namings like: the tower? You mean the console? Or no that's the modem.... And at one point where you need to go to the modem, the don't even konw what it is or what it does...
@@ElderX2007 how do people spend so much money on something and not know what it is? like, would you buy a car and be like, "oh the groceries are in the tractor"
The last place I worked was taken over by a company obsessed with metrics. Why spend hours hunting down the underlying cause of a recurring problem and actually solving it when it can serve as a fountain of tickets that get closed within minutes? I got a panicked phone call one day about a raft of alarms that came in and how we needed to open a conference call, and after explaining at length the exact mechanism which produced them and the process by which I had been investigating them over a period of time, I got the response "what's a _spanning tree?"_
I worked at a place where users could submit help desk tickets on their own, and occasionally they'd submit a hardware or service request as a trouble ticket. Some of these requests could've been classified as projects to procure custom devices and and a development team to make them do what was requested. Since there was no easy way to re-classify it as a service request or project, we had to use the program's dropdown item, "closed without resolution." We would put in the comments that it was a request instead of a break/ fix, however the guys making reports and metrics did not look to see why they were not resolved. We did get better software and trained the users on how to decide if their issue is with something they have or if it's with something they want, however by that time the decision makers decided to outsource the help desk.to a dedicated call center.
God yes. One place used "third call resolution", which meant customers were fobbed off twice, spent at least 20 minutes coming through the queue each time, only to be told to reboot or try an init string to test on their own before caling back. One of the teams I worked on were very particular about this - sometimes taking no notes on the customer (meaning they could dodge the third call thing) and always getting the best stats - and the end of the month kudos. I swore I'd never work in support again after that place.
Used to work for Dell's tech support. Had an old lady call in about her Packard Bell. She couldn't understand why I insisted she call some other number instead of helping with her computer.
@@nstg8 no Im in the UK, we did support for the uks biggest technology retailer (they have/had a few brands). We did all computers they sold, but I was on a pure PB team :(
My first ever computer aged 10 was a second hand AST running Windows 95, memories come flooding back! I clearly remember the power supply failing and an engineer coming out to replace it, and we purchased a scanner and I scanned in a huge high resolution photo then set it as the desktop background and panicked as it then took about an hour to boot into the desktop due to it trying to load in the image file! Then we got a Packard Bell, then a HP Pavilion (GTA3 on a TNT2!) then by that point I had learnt how to build my own computer :) Now I've worked in IT 15 years...I miss the good old days! :(
"They just squeeze them in like sardines and they pay minimum wage" Best Phrase I ever heard about IT support, and BTW that is the reason (the other is my age, I can´t stand managers anymore ....) I never ever be working as support on a call center.
That call center photo that you showed is from Brasil. Its an old picture from the DETRAN ( the public organ that administrates transit) call center. The computers that the used is from a nacional brand called Positivo In their shirt you can read a government campaing "don't be irracional on traffic" This photo is probably from 2005-2007
@@kirinyan1998 Eu sei que cheguei atrasado nos comentários, mas a foto foi em 2008, pelo nome da campanha no Google achei, era do DETRAN-RJ agauu.blogspot.com/2008/09/campanha-do-detran-rj-mobiliza-as_23.html
I used to do tech support for Compaq (desktop Presarios) in the late '90s. Once I received a call from someone who had no sound. The previous "tech" told him to reformat and reinstall Windows. All he had to do was plug in his speakers! Unfortunately, that was common place there. I don't know who was worse: the people calling in or the people I worked with!
I know I am late to see this presentation but I wanted to thank you for bringing some of my memories of my work as a tech support guy. I worked at a company and supported the 300+ staffers there as pc was getting rolled into the offices. I enjoyed my time at that job over 10 years there. Some of what you experienced i ran into myself. So thanks. Gave me a smile.
Thank you. I felt like I was part of the audience. My PC support only extends to friends and family but as I'm a developer, it's difficult not to scream at them.
When I was in primary school, after school I spent my evening at my Kindergarten, that had a group for primary school students. So this was around 2003/2004 and they got a computer that they installed in our private Lego Room. We had a small room that only fitted a Table, 2 Benches and a shelf in it, where we sat with 4 people in it and built Lego stuff in it and the best part was, that we where allowed to let it there. So they plugged everything in but not quite correctly. The monitor was only plugged in into the PSU (yes PSUs had Monitor Outlets back then) and I told them that they also need to connect the VGA Cable (I didn't knew the name back then) and they basically told me to shut up, because I don't know anything. I went of crying, because I cried about everything when people where a bit harsh to me and I drew a schematic about on how to connect everything correctly. I did had an computer back then and I remember getting a Computer in '99, when I was 5. When Windows XP was widely used, I needed to figure out how to access my computer and that without Internet or friends on telling you on how to do it. All User Profiles had passwords on them, where I didn't knew them. It where 2 Accounts and mine only had user rights, because i wasn't allowed to install things, that I wasn't supposed to install. Overall I had a lot of stuff, that I wasn't allowed to used. I had a TV, a VCR, a DVD Player, different Nintendo Consoles and of course a PC but mostly they where off. At some point I waked up earlier to do a book review in the morning and when I finished the part, I decided to turn on my PC and tried different passwords. So after I tried some passwords, Windows was taking quite long to show that it was the false password and I hammerd CTRL + ALT + DEL and the basic login screen popped up and I tried "administrator" with no password and it worked. So I used this account and I woke 1 or 2 hours earlier up in the morning and played some PC Games. After some weeks i got caught.
I worked tech for an ISP for a while. Can't count how many times I helped someone set up their POP3 account and had to explain that the server name, "mail dot dot com", was spelled like "mail as in the thing you asked me to help you set up", not "the gender". The Win9x network stack tended to break... a lot... so it was pretty common to have a nondescript "check-engine" kind of error while dialing in that could only be fixed by resetting the stack. That meant removing TCP/IP and PPPoE drivers and reinstalling them. There were also some "net" commands that would reset bindings and driver hooks -- it didn't always fix everything, but it was less intrusive. Depending on whether the user could type CLI commands, one might be faster than the other, so I would try to guess which would be less painful for both of us. One user called in and seemed capable of following directions, so I lead her through the "net" commands, but it didn't help. So next, I had her rip out the network stack. The problem is, sometimes it needed the Windows CD to reinstall those drivers, so I would always ask if they had the disc before messing with things, just in case I couldn't find the files on the HDD. I would also ask them to check for "C:\Windows\Cabs" which sometimes had the install files. After working methodically through some of these pre-flight checks, she started to feel like we were hitting too many dead ends and lost all her confidence. The CLI commands didn't fix it, then we removed all this stuff, and went looking for directories that aren't there, and now you want the install disc, and... "I don't think you know how to fix this. Can you transfer me to someone who knows what they're doing?" >:-| So I handed her off to the next tier, which sat a few feet away. I then heard one of the nice ladies over there explain that, based on the ticket notes, we were doing exactly what we needed to be doing, and "if anyone here can fix it, he can... or we can send out a tech, but that costs $60/hr." If you're out there reading this, big love Den Mama. :-) We once added a new subnet of public IPs to our pool, and for some reason it wasn't routing correctly. I don't remember if that was something our guys missed, or at the upstream provider.. doesn't matter. Eventually one of those new IPs got assigned to a user, and he wasn't able to reach any sites on the Internet. I told him we needed to check his connection (user-speak for "what's your IP?") and asked him what OS he had on his computer so I could walk him through the steps. He informed me that "it is NOT a problem with my computer. I use Linux! I know you're used to Windows lamers and all the problems they have, but trust me, this is *your* problem, not mine." Having recently learned Linux myself, I replied without missing a beat, "OK, I'm sure it's fine on your end, but would you mind running ifconfig and telling me what IP you got on ppp0 so I can make sure it got registered in our routing tables?" I think it caught him off guard, and he was very cooperative after that. Turns out it was in fact a bum IP, so I told him "just reconnect until you get an IP that's not in the subnet and you should be good to go." ... "Oh. Uh, OK, thanks." Of course, sometimes you just needed to reboot. But.... there are some rural villages around our state with a population that is not ... at all ... tech savvy. Sometimes they would call in with really weird problems, and I would start off with "first let's try restarting your computer." More than once, they would say "Oh, OK, thank you, I'll try that. " I know what you may be thinking, but I didn't do that on purpose to get them off the phone quickly. Usually. Speaking of quick calls.... since we were using DSL, sometimes we had to walk someone through the proper installation of line filters, which were basically band-pass filters to separate the low-frequency voice, and high-frequency data meant for the DSL modem. It wasn't always strictly necessary, but some phones did not cope well with high frequencies and would wreck the signal -- those needed to be filtered. You could often tell when this was the case by audible screeching, scratches, and other noise. We would then tell the user to get the little pigtail filter that was supplied in the box and connect it between the phone jack and phone. "OK, so I just pull out the phone cable and put this-- " Yep, that's the right one! :-D
Ha! I did Prodigy internet support during the same era. DSL was a blast, but I had the most fun walking to the communal Windows 2 and 3.1 machines to get an idea what the customer was looking at while trying to configure a connection. Crazy thinking of all the plain text passwords, credit card numbers, and SSNs on every screen during that time.
Sounds alot like what I did as an internet installer. Back around the dot com bust when high speed internet was coming online I felt with tech support hell. Back when AOL 7.0 came out and corrupted the tcp/up stack when installed and then no internet. We had the fun of fixing it Back then hookup was static not plug and pray . We always ask if they were using AOL so we set it up knowing what that software does and rebuilt the stack then plugged in the numbers for the network and only then would it work. AOL got sued over there software .
I had a friend years back that went to school for computer networking and then got a job at an internet provider. One night he called me on my house phone and was having problems getting a customers networking to work. I had to talk to him telling him what to do while he was on the phone with the customer to finally get the problem solved. What makes it worse is the fact that I had never had any 'schooling' with networking and was all self taught.
I still remember some of my clients windows and office installation keys by heart from my tech support days 15-20 years or so ago. It just occured to me watching this video.
Brings back some memories - I worked at Circuit City back in the early 90s and loved AST machines. Initially they were some of the best quality machines we sold - But super expensive compared to other machines. They were solidly built and performed well. I did see some changes along he way, but I left before they got too bad I suppose. I never knew the background as to why they failed.
I also work in a call center where the english comprehension of our own staff gets worse with each new batch of employees ☹️ English is their second language, but what the hell is the company doing by not testing their literacy effectively before hiring 😣
The 'chi' in chimera is pronounced like the 'ki' in kite by the way. It's basically exactly what that room somewhat implied. Mashups of multiple animals. I believe it dates back to ancient greece where it referred to an animal with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and a serpent for a tail.
Once I got a call: "hi, my monitor is broken" me: "ok Sir What's wrong" --> he:"A big part of my word document is unreadable!" me: I took a heavy new CRT monitor to other side of the campus because I thought it's was a hardware problem ...only to find out he clicked accidentally on the "restore to window" icon in the title bar. This guy was using MS Windows for 2 years but had no basic understanding of how windows worked! By the way he was a legal expert, very well payed and often working on cases for tech companies!!
Dude. Thank you for the great video. I was watching your RGB mod on your old Samsung TV yesterday for the first time since you uploaded it. I own an AST Advantage! And have had it since new and always wondered the history behind AST. Keep up the great work!
30:05 I work in IT for an academy and I had a teacher raise a ticket the other day that she couldn't plug her keyboard into the hard drive. Now I know that her computer knowledgeability is stuck in the 80s.
The best support issue I've heard of was from my friend who worked in the same computer lab in college that I did. The student was assigned a computer in the computer lab that only had a 3 1/2" floppy disk. But they had a 5 1/4" floppy. So the student proceeded to fold the floppy in half so it would fit and wanted to know why the computer couldn't read the disk.
Definitely not an urban legend. "There's a problem with my automatic cup holder." My brother and his friends told me about this in the nineties at the computer store they worked at. It happened more than once. Eventually, I started working there in the early 2000s and saw that the different stories they told were true. I found it shocking because I was in no way a computer expert.
Loved those tech support stories! I've been in IT for 20+ years and only spent 1.5 of it in a call center (never again) and this really brought me back. Hearing about those crazy calls reminded me of the time I tried to help a 90 year old lady get her Windows 3.1 machine online (this was in 2007!) when she knew nothing about computers and was using a magnifying glass to look at the monitor since her sight was so bad. Turns out her great grandson had given her the machine and let's just say he's lucky I never met up with him in a dark alley! We also had the guy who would hit mute to cuss during customer calls...he was a master at hitting that button and swearing (in the same sentence) and somehow he never did it with the mute button off. Get cursed at myself was a daily occurrence and I talked to every manner of customer including a heavy breathing pervert who kept making crude sexual references and a hippie on so many drugs that he just wanted to talk about pyramids and aliens and couldn't remember the reason he had called in the first place. And then there was the extremely hysterical woman who kept screaming at the top of her lungs that she was so upset about her computer that she was going to slit her wrists and commit suicide (and trust me, I think she was serious). However once I fixed her issue (which had nothing to do with the services we provided!) she eventually calmed down and I can only hope she looked into some psychological counseling.
I've been doing computer repair for 15 or more years now, and one thing you mentioned I can certainly attest to, is when a customer calls and gives you a description of what's going on, or uses terms like modem, tower, hard drive but really means something else entirely. Even today, a lot of people can't accurately describe the situation but try their best to convey their issues. I always find that just having a normal conversation with them over the telephone helps a lot without any technical mumbo jumbo and when I go to their home, I always make it a point to sit down with them and let's view the problem together to get a real idea of what's happening and what all concerns they have. I find that being a knowledgeable and friendly person who comes in and sits with them and looks at the concerns goes a long ways compared to blindly throwing processes in front of them or walking them through things. Of course, I also mainly do in home and on-site repair and not call center or over the phone help, so there's that.
I now we have something in our pockets that is 1000 times more powerful and most people use them to browse social media only, and use it as a calculator.
My funniest Call was like this: Customer: my Outlook doesn't work! me: OK what doesn't work? Customer: I've got an Error Message! me: ok, what does the message say? Customer: IDK because Word is right now open. me: OK close the window (my error i didn't said Word Window) Customer: ok wait…. some noises later… ok I've closed the window. me: you didn't just close the office Window didn't you? Customer: yes because you told me.... short silent me: Well, at least there is no traffic noise anymore…. Sorry for my bad english.
OMG! @27:38... This is so funny I have actually received a support call about the CUP Holder Twice... LOL About 27 years ago I worked to this Mom & Pop Used Computer store in Indy called " Compute Exchange"... What they did was buy old office equipment when a company was updating there computers. There were lots of Dell, HP, AST, Compaq stuff. As a Tech we would strip out stuff like the floppy's scsi drives, fans and resell the used parts. Scraped the rest that was not used. We also refurbished lots of the newer old stuff for sale as used. Our shop was in a low-end area and was known for cheap used stuff... We also sold new stuff and new builds of computers. The Tech was a catch-all guy, did all kinds of stuff and answering the phone was #1 on the list... Lol I sold a lady a new tower computer and I always told our customers (most never had a computer) to take it home and play with the Windows ( 3.1 and 95 ) and when you brake it give us a call and we will help you fix it OR will see you in a week and I will re-install all the software... (Tons of disks back then) So this lady called the day and said, can you help me, I said yes, she said is the computer under warranty and I said yes, she said Great, I broke off the fancy cup holder the pops out at the top of the computer!!! I said, what did you say and she repeated what she said. I had to put my hand over the phone as I started to lough so loud that the owner came out of his office and wanted to know what was so funny. I explained what she said. He finished the call and we re-placed the CUP Holder fee of charge..... Then gave her a one on one class on how to use a CD-Rom Drive...... To make it even funner we had another one with the coffee holder jamming his cup and he could not get it out.... What a week, 2 CUP Holder in the week.... Sorry for the long story!!! LLAP
"Had that been an AST monitor *chuckle* it would probably have broken a long time ago *Laughter*" "*Realizes no one is laughing and akwardly stops laughing*" This is why I love this channel
@@buttnutt well, in one of David's video's like this, you can barely hear sounds from the audience. In that video, david amplifies the audio from his microphone audio in post video production so that we can hear what is being asked.
@@Ev11nroo Apple iMacs have been this way forever and there was Windows XP machines built by Compaq and Packard Bell that also had terrestrial TV receivers built in that almost never worked
@@nobytes2 Some customers would have similar (past generation) routers at offices or college dorms, while still using cheap consumer grade desktops. Then there are people who would actually report the model of the ISP router at the other end of the line, not the CPE router.
One of my favorites from personal experience. One lady was following some written instruction that I had produced. She came to a point in the instructions where I had written "Press any key to continue.' After about a minute or so of her looking at the keyboard I said, "What seems to be the problem?" She said "I can't find the any key!" Another one - I told one young lady "You know you've been on the computer too long when you talk to it as if it were a person. (something I have done) She said "Oh, I'll never do that." About 5 seconds later she's yelling at the computer "I said yes!!!" I said "There you see?" Her reply was "Oh my!"
I work in IT tech support at a Hospital and all of this stuff still holds true... Forward slash... the one on the question mark key. Backslash, the one above enter. Usually at least... Forward slash is leaning forward and backslash is leaning back. Press the windows key, in the bottom left in between control and alt. What do you see on the screen. No... What EXACTLY does it say... Can you make sure the Ethernet cable is connected on each end, 1 second late, Okay done... Okay yeah right, can you actually unplug the cable on each end and plug in back in.... the best way to trick someone into making sure a cable is connected is to have them unplug it and then plug it back in. More times than you’d think, they end up saying oh the cable wasn’t plugged all the way in... Yeah that’s why I asked you to make sure it was connected and you outright lied to me.
Great stories. Here are some experiences I had with AST as a customer: - I lived near AST HQ in Irvine, CA in the 1980'[s when they were making the "hot", well made 286 desktop. I was an internal audit manager at a nearby company and knew the internal audit manager from AST. I had an Apple II, but lusted after the 286, so I cut a deal with her and traded some internal audit checklists for a returned 286 which I used for awhile. - Later, I worked at Ashton-Tate, maker of dBase database software. We had many developers using TWO AST 386's each, one for coding, the other would run compiling the code. I visited the Northern California development office and found newly hired programmers were sitting without doing much work. While interviewing them, trying to find operational improvement ideas, the newly hired ex-IBM Software Developer manager yelled at me for taking up programmer time. But I found the second computers for the new programmers were backlogged. I tracked the purchase order back to the Southern California office of Ashton-Tate, and the orders were sitting in my boss's inbox, the CFO of the company. He couldn't believe they needed all the computers, and just let the orders sit. I called him, told him why they were needed, and they were shipped the next day to the idle programmers. - Finally, when Ashton-Tate was sold to Borland, I went to work as an internal audit manager at Nissan Motor Corp. in Southern Cal. I was on the tech committee. They were behind most local firms in buying personal computers, but had just bought $7-million of AST 286 computers. At that time, Lotus 1-2-3 (DOS) was king of spreadsheets, and firms usually bought separate wordprocessing, database and graphic chart programs. The leading graphics software firm came in, and demonstrated their new Harvard Graphics graphing software to the software tech committee, which I was on. They showed how fast it was running and managers were getting excited. Then I noticed they were using the later AST 386 machines which were faster. Once I asked why they were using a PC we did not have, they lost the sale by trying to fool the committee. I still have a stuffed AST promotional Tiger. The early AST's were quite good. Cheers! Vance Jochim
Direrain - I worked on tech support for a few years and there are lots of people who are very technologically impaired. There was a customer who when asked to click run the command prompt took off running after clicking the run button he took it as a warning, he then picked up another phone on the house and asked if it was safe to go back to the computer. Another customer when asked what version of Windows he had he left the phone and after a while came back and said that non of his windows had any markings in them or how could he tell they where just glass. Another customer was asked to close all open windows he went around the house closing his actual windows not the open applications, and asked if wind was bad for his computer. And all this stories happened on 2007-2009 period I can’t imagine how calls in 1990s went when people truly where new to this tech.
My own mother was on her second computer (she paid someone at her church $500 for a Windows 98 SP2 machine in the mid-2000s, when a 1.8GHz Celeron eMachines with XP ran about $300 for the entire setup). I eventually got tired of her constant problems with the old beast, which was made for an even older OS but could manage Win98 at a veritable crawl, so I bought her a reasonably priced computer. Some months later, I was visiting, and made a joke about the cup holder on computers. Think Geek was selling an actual drive bay cup holder in gloss black, which I had put into an empty space in my own computer. My mother got excited. She thought I meant computers actually had cup holders. Trying to explain it meant the disc drive, she was baffled. So I decided to show her. I think it's time to back up just a little farther. When Windows 98 actually *was* the great new thing, my mother took an adult education class for computer literacy, training her on Windows 98 and the latest Office suite. It had been a few years, but none of this should have been new territory. Also remember this was her second computer. Despite her frequent gaffs, there was so much she should have been familiar with, but somehow had never (and still hasn't) learned. So, I tried explaining it was the optical drive on her computer. "The what?" The disc drive. "The hard drive?" No, Mom. There's a disk dri-- "Oh! The FLOPPY!" No, mom. Wait. You still use floppy discs? "Oh, no! They have viruses!" Alright. Well, they don't, but I'm talking about this. (I open the CD tray) "What's that? Is that? It's the CUP HOLDER YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT!" NOOO! Mom, look. Mom, this is the CD drive. "MY COMPUTER CAN PLAY MUSIC?!"
@@NobodyWhatsoever ahhh the classic ''(such and such completely innocuous piece of tech or website) has viruses'' according to my mother, a guru on all tech matters youtube, facebook, google and every videogame under the sun are loaded with viruses and thats why her desktop runs so slow, ignoring the fact that the computer is 15 years old.
@@yallevereatenbeans2723 Quite similarly, yes! Another favorite instance of this was her first foray with a scrolling mouse. She called me, telling me she'd bought a mouse with, "something called a scroll wheel," and it wasn't working for her. Upon getting to her house (still with her old Win98 box), I find the mouse connected, and after trying a thing or two, see that the mouse is not working. I search for mouse drivers, I found advice that the specific mouse needed something proprietary, and there were people left SOL with this no-name mouse with its own drivers. So I asked my mom where the software was that came with the mouse. This became a back-and-forth of, "The WHAT?!" eventually ending with, "Did it come with some sort of a disk? a CD? a floppy disk? She confirmed a floppy disk came in the box. I asked where the floppy was. "I threw it in the trash!" But your mouse is useless without that software. "Nuh uh! My computer class told me viruses come on floppies and I don't want a virus!" Sp I dug the disk out of the trash, wiped off what goo I could, and installed the drivers. The mouse worked. Except she insisted the mouse didn't work. I go back to her room, and find her sitting at her computer with nothing but the desktop showing, shouting that the mouse isn't working. I wiggle the mouse, right and left click, receiving the expected responses. I tell her it appears to be working just fine. "No it isn't!" she insists, while holding the mouse still with her left hand, and running the palm of her right hand across the scroll wheel. She then ROTATES THE MOUSE, holds it still with her left hand, and once again buffs the top of the entire mouse with her right hand. "SEE?! It's NOT WORKING!" From there was the ten minute conversation to convince her to open her web browser. And then I had to convince her to go to a "long page" like the news or something. Finally on a web site longer then her monitor showed, I instructed her: Alright, mom. Now, put your right hand on the mouse. Alright. Use one finger and roll the wheel towards you. The page scrolled. "OHHHhhhhhh!"
Direrain - My mom refused to put an anti virus on her computer. I told her about AVG, and Avast! as well as other free anti virus. She said no and I told her not to ask me for help on her computer ever again after that.
In the late 1980s ('88 or '89 I think), I (like many computer nerds of the time) had a side business as a "computer consultant". I sold a few AST computers that I bought through the distributer Softsel (later became Merisel). The AST 286 was a GREAT machine. Every part on that machine fit perfectly. Every screw on the case went in straight, and every slot was perfectly aligned with the case opening. It was a HUGE difference compared to most everything else on the market at that time.
yeah. I went from a C64 to a 486 dx-66 AST from Radio Shack in Raleigh, NC. I convinced my parents because it was $2,000 with no interest for 1 year or something. Huge leap in computing for me. It had Win 3.1 but AST made some kind of windows program over the desktop? But then windows 95 came out and really blew me away.
related to your winfax story.... when my daughter was 5, she drew something and colored it. I suggested we send it to grandma. So daughter got to put the document on the flat bed scanner and put the lid down. I scanned it and emailed to mom. About 5 minutes later, daughter comes thru, lifts the scanner cover and says "LOOK.... grandma sent it back already!"
5:22 For anyone wondering what the unmentioned port on the AST sixpak card is, it's a game port, which used a separate backplate with a CD15 connecter, & attached to the card via a pin header.
@@TheOriginalChaosdjin/videos CD-R lasted well into the DVD age, esp. considering most DVD-R drives could also burn CD-Rs and discs were much cheaper too. Plus, most folks didn't need to store gigabytes worth of data on a disc, or just wanted to burn some music to listen to in the car or their cd walkman.
When I was in boot camp we had Castle Wolfenstein in a hidden directory.. One of the drill instructors was trying to find where we'd hidden the game and was giving me DOS commands... I used "DIR/W" to show a wide listing... until he'd actually found the hidden directory and asked for a listing and I knew typing "DIR\W" looked similar but showed "File Not Found".
One of my favorite stories from working Tech Support was when I worked for an internet company. I had a customer call me and told me his internet wasnt working. Not uncommon. I had him reboot his modem and lost the call. Weird. About half hour later, I got, by chance, the customer back on the line. He told me when he rebooted his modem, he lost his Magic Jack phone. I informed him (trying to not laugh) that if his MagicJack was working, his internet was, in fact, working.
I think that AST 486SX/33 was my first PC. Not sure why I bought it, I guess it was the new thing at the time, but it did start my path into a career as an IT Pro, so thank you AST for that. :)
Hey Dave, I am reminiscing and greatly amused watching this video! I started my career back in the mid 90's doing desktop support/repair (I would actually drive to people's houses to do factory warranty repair on their Packard Bell or Compaq machines for $25 per call...no salary or expenses)...I laughed out loud when you mentioned customers calling the computer "the hard drive" as well as the "cup holder" story, I can totally relate. Anyways, I had one that I only had happen once and never saw again...I arrived at an elderly gentleman's house to repair a faulty CD-ROM drive. He said that he inserted disks in it and they wouldn't work and that he couldn't get them out again. So, I took the side panel off of the tower to remove the CD-ROM drive, unscrewed the screws and could not, for the life of me, remove the thing...it was jammed in there...I investigated closer and found 5 CD's jammed on top of the drive, between, the drive and the bay. I got a flat screw driver in there from the side and was able to dislodge the stack of CD's and get the drive out. The man had been stuffing the CD's into the seam between the top of the drive and the bay...I have no idea how he was even able to get 5 discs in there! After it was all said and done, I gave him a lesson on how the drive actually worked...he was embarrassed but was a good sport when all was said and done...sorry for the long comment but just want to say that I love your channel and I am a huge vintage commodore guy myself...my first computer was also a VIC-20 back in '82 or so.. Keep up the good work!
Mark Wicker me too! Can’t tell you how many customers told me their modem was broken. I’d give them an estimate on how much to replace a modem and when I’d hear, “that’s all?” I knew we were not communicating. They thought the tower was called a modem, because all they used it for was dialing into AOL. But dont get me started. AOL 5.0 was its own special hell.
