So, now we're supporting THEIR customers

[AffordableHOST]

I swear...this guy came into our chatroom and asked all sorts of questions about his domain and why it wasn't working. Well, after troubleshooting - we discovered there were 2 issues. DNS caching and he had no index file uploaded. After about 10 mins, my admin realized we weren't even hosting this domain and never have.

This is what followed:

<AH-Tina> Why not contact your host for support?
<Kevin> Let me try Mozilla
<AH-Tina> I'm sure they'd be happy to help you.
<Kevin> well
<Kevin> Im pretty sure, they dont have a big staff
<Kevin> some arent on alot of the time

I went on to explain that his host wasn't paying us to support their customers...but we'd be happy to support him with any service he purchased through us.

Since he just signed up for this new host...I seriously doubt he'll be ordering from us anytime soon. Especially since he left with the understanding that once DNS clears...his site will be live with the new host.

Have any of you ever run into anything so hillarious?!?

--Tina

[Steve]

lol thats funny Tina :-P you should have asked for his host and emailed them for commission :-P

[Robert]

We use to get that a lot.

Customer: "Hey I'm a customer and I have a question"
Us: "Sure, how can I help you?"
Customer: "How long does it take for a domain to work?"
Us: "I'll be more than happy to assist, what is your domain?"
Customer: "That's not important"
Us: "Ok, well it takes 24-72 hours sir"
Customer: "Oh ok. How do I access my cpanel?"
Us: "Well what's your domain so I can look up your account"
Customer: "I'm not a customer"

ARGH!

[Spirit Connect]

Get their IP and block them from accessing your site :D

[markblair]

That's pretty funny. :) People will try almost anything for support...

My little story. ;) A few years ago I worked for a rather large company on the IT Help Desk. We received calls all day long regarding various problems. Anything from printers not printing to network servers not responding. All the calls we took were from employees of the company. One particular day, I received a call that went like this:

Me: IT Help Desk, this is Mark, how may I help you?
Caller: Are you the department to call for problems?

I should have had her elaborate more...

Me: Yes, what seems to be the problem?
Caller: Well, you see, my Husband went into one of your stores -- HUH!!! :uhh: -- and bought some underwear -- WHAT!?!?!? -- and they don't fit. When he took them back, the store wouldn't return them. I want this resolved now!

Remember, I said I worked for the IT Help Desk. I supported employees not customers.

Me: Um, I'm sorry but we don't support the stores, we support our own internal employees with computer related problems.
Caller: Are you going to help me or not?
Me: Not specifically but I can transfer you to the correct department.

...Last time I answer an open ended question like the one above. :)

[thebyp2]

thats why our support is now behind the customer log in.

One guy noticed that we had offices in the uk and it went something like this:

user: hi
me: Evening, how can i help?
user: are you guys in the uk
me: Indeed
user: are you in london
me: no
user: do you know london
me: yes, i lived there for some time
user: great
user: i'm coming over on holiday and need to know how to get from paddington station to my hotel
user: whats the best way
me: are you a customer sir
user: no
me: this is technical support for our customers
user: i don't want any of your services, i just want to know how to get to the hotel
me: sir, this is technical support. please feel free to email us at when we have a spare five minutes we may help you.
me: for now though, i have to answer questions from those who understand the concept of technical support

muppet.

[Spirit Connect]

Wow - I bet he was an American :D

[thebyp2]

Originally posted by Spirit Connect:

Wow - I bet he was an American :D

He was. (well his isp was a local american one at any rate).

People like that don't do a great deal for america's image abroad :rolleyes:

[blue27]

Originally posted by markblair:

That's pretty funny. :) People will try almost anything for support...


Except pay for it.

[Cow]

Tina, sometimes people like this make my blood boil. A few months back we received an email and it goes something like this ...

User: "Hello is this customer support?"
Me: "Yes, how can I help you."
User: "I can't seem to login to our account. I keep getting 'Invalid Password'."
Me: "Well, can you give me the name on your account. so I can assist you?"
User: "Sure, my name is ***** and my password is ******"

Me: "Thank you, I don't see your account in our system. Are you sure you purchased services from us?"
User: "Purchase? I thought MSN Games were free."


I went on to explain to the user that we weren't MSN or affiliated with MSN in any way, how they got to emailing us puzzled me. The user apologized and moved on. I honestly think sometimes people email or live chat with totally unrelated companies in hopes of receiving support with a totally unrelated product.

[silverfreak]

Haha, these are great.. I have one to share as well from when I used to work the "Live Support" phpChat at my former employee..

Me: Hello, how may I help you?
Them: What are you selling?
Me: Well, we provide web hosting to folks.

This, after the company has the phrase "Web Hosting" in their name! :)

[Chicken]

Not that it entirely relates, but I get emails into the forum (contact us link) with people asking some very odd questions. Makes me wonder what exactly they think this site is about and the purpose.

[thebyp2]

Originally posted by Chicken:

Not that it entirely relates, but I get emails into the forum (contact us link) with people asking some very odd questions. Makes me wonder what exactly they think this site is about and the purpose.

Some people are really dumb, or so clever their dumb. not sure which.

:D

[tailzie]

I am the only female that works for my employees co and somehow I was blessed with this chat. It was pretty funny joke for a few months.

Sarah: Welcome to Live Chat, How may I help you?
gg: no live her
gg: i need live
gg: movie
Sarah: I don't understand
gg: u spec arabic
Sarah: Sorry, I do not speak arabic
gg: ok i need wacth sex movie
Sarah: This is a hosting company live chat, we don't do live camera's and we only answer support tickets
gg: i have camera and need live chat
Sarah: Again, this is a hosting companies live Support chat. I will end this conversation now. Thank you :)

[thebyp2]

Originally posted by tailzie:

I am the only female that works for my employees co and somehow I was blessed with this chat. It was pretty funny joke for a few months.

Sarah: Welcome to Live Chat, How may I help you?
gg: no live her
gg: i need live
gg: movie
Sarah: I don't understand
gg: u spec arabic
Sarah: Sorry, I do not speak arabic
gg: ok i need wacth sex movie
Sarah: This is a hosting company live chat, we don't do live camera's and we only answer support tickets
gg: i have camera and need live chat
Sarah: Again, this is a hosting companies live Support chat. I will end this conversation now. Thank you :)

Looks like you've pulled ;)

[Rincewind]

Back in 2001 someone sent me a US Postal order for $9.95 along with a print out of the front page one of my web sites which at that time sold ebooks and cgi scripts. There was no return address. No covering letter. To this day I have no idea what they were trying to purchase.

[nybble]

All my support is limited to clients only. If I am in a good mood I will help a non-client, only cause I do that on a personal note.

All customers must enter their username & password before they can request any form of support other than pre-sales & sales.

This being said.... I know whos account uses up the most support time :)

And of course... the public gets a bit of support, but to be honest? I could care less most of the time if their cpanel isnt working when they are not a customer. Customers get the support, not the public. I don't have time to support the world :)

[Rincewind]

In addition to these wandering support requests - do any of you guys have a problem of people ordering addon services without ever ordering hosting. I have several people who have subscriptions for various account upgrades but no account for me to apply the upgrade to.

[thebyp2]

Originally posted by Rincewind:

In addition to these wandering support requests - do any of you guys have a problem of people ordering addon services without ever ordering hosting. I have several people who have subscriptions for various account upgrades but no account for me to apply the upgrade to.

I'm affraid to say that i have had this. One guy ordered a webspace bolt on for his plan i had to ask which user he was as i couldn't fine him. Quite calmly he replies, 'sure, my username is xxxxxx'.

Still couldn't find him. Queried the details and asked him for the domain.

again, without question he replied:
'sure its users.geocites.com/bla/bla/bla'

needless to say i sent a polite note back inviting him to be a customer but never heard from him again :)

[Rincewind]

Least your's replied. I have one person who has been paying for an upgrade for 4 months now and doesn't reply to my emails.

[Chicken]

Originally posted by tailzie:

gg: i have camera and need live chat
Sarah: Again, this is a hosting companies live Support chat. I will end this conversation now. Thank you :)
There's a slight possibility that the person wanted a streaming video hosting account for live sex shows. Hard to say, but it's the only context I could put it in.

[PHPGeek2k3]

Originally posted by tailzie:

I am the only female that works for my employees co and somehow I was blessed with this chat. It was pretty funny joke for a few months.

Sarah: Welcome to Live Chat, How may I help you?
gg: no live her
gg: i need live
gg: movie
Sarah: I don't understand
gg: u spec arabic
Sarah: Sorry, I do not speak arabic
gg: ok i need wacth sex movie
Sarah: This is a hosting company live chat, we don't do live camera's and we only answer support tickets
gg: i have camera and need live chat
Sarah: Again, this is a hosting companies live Support chat. I will end this conversation now. Thank you :)

I would have to say that this would be one of the better ones that someone has posted on any of the forums that i visit.

Thanks
- James

[dynamicnet]

Greetings:

We get similar requests all of the time.

Just in last week => "I bought a new computer and wanted to re install frontpage but I lost my disk. What do I do?" (not from a client).

We also get calls on a regular basis asking "how much is our Internet?" (we don't sell dial up).

And the most hilarious was back when our office was in Womelsdorf, PA.

The previous office owner, who moved out TWO years before we moved in, did plumbing and heating.

We would have people stop buy to pay their bills (hmmm. Delinquencies or they just don’t read the invoice for the location) or to pick up plumbing parts.

We’ve since moved, so we no longer have that humor in our lives; but we still get emails and calls form people who think we are Microsoft.

Thank you.

P.S. I’m not sure what it tells you about the state of hackers, but we have hackers who try to break into our servers who must think we are Microsoft based on the user id’s they try. I promise I don’t look like Bill Gates ;-)

[AffordableHOST]

What is it about your company that makes people think you are Microsoft?

Speaking of internet access...we once had a lady phone our office FURIOUS because she was positive that ordering a domain name from us had screwed up her AOL connection. She could no longer connect to the internet and was demanding that we take her domain name off the internet immediately, so that she could log into AOL and get her email.

--Tina

[dynamicnet]

Greetings Tina:

We host a free support site for Microsoft FrontPage; and it ranks high in the search engines when you search on Microsoft FrontPage.

BTW, earlier this year we got a call from a disgruntled customer of some sport person sponsered orange jucier who swore up and down our toll free # was listed on the manufacturers support site.

The funniest call, my memory is clicking is when we got a call asking for pet suppies. They mistook Dynamic Net, Inc. (our parent company) for Dynamic Pets ;-) (there is such a company).

Thank you.

[AffordableHOST]

Kinda makes you wonder about the future of the human race. :D

--Tina

[consul]

Waaah!!!! Thanks for the laugh guys. I quite enjoy the readings.
But ,seriously, it seems that nowadays people's common senses are vanishing. What happened?

I should infer that this is because of too much dependence on technology that some people don't even bother to read some basic information before even asking.

I suggest to those who have children to emphasize on their kids the importance of reading instructions and the importance of thinking out things first before even asking for something.

Take care everyone!

:)

[linux-tech]

Thankfully, I have a one on one relationship with my clients, inasmuch as I know if they're a client or not. If not, I tell them that I don't provide free support. If they ARE, I'll obviously help 'em out :)

I've run into the same type of thing though, not with clients but with THEIR support companies. These people are paid to know the answers to questions, yet constantly find themselves bothering me for stupid crap. I could cite numerous examples, but I won't, for the sanity of the support company.

[Monoxide]

I deal with it all the time < : (

[WII-Aaron]

This happens to us all the time. I think some people just trol around if they can't get ahold of thier host and find anyone who's online.

Another thing I find anoying is when we have customer's customers call us for support.

Aaron

[LiftNw8]

I actually more or less got out of the web hosting business for a while to reorganize my ideas, and I still get some of my former customers contacting me to help them with problems with there new host because they haven't be responsive to them. It hasn't happened lately but for the first couple of months it did.

[IntraHost]

Some people call us for support for innerhost. Thats not fun. :(

But anyways, somewhere somehow Microsoft was publishing our toll free number (877-676-4678) on thier website I think, and I would get calls to signup for msn and to get msn support. Ended up attempting to track down thier PR people to have them remove the number, twas a funny and annoying thing. Annoying because we do 24/7 support and when people call at 3am I tend to wake up.... damn MSN.