What is the dumbist customer comment/question you've heard?

[CableGuy]

I had one of these this morning. I had read this thread earlier in the week and wanted to say something cheeky to my customer but chickened out.

Today is the third day I've been in to look at the ageing POS that should have been replaced years ago.
I walked in and the two ladies were at the machine, one asked me 'do I know what's wrong with it.....
What I wanted to say was 'yes, but I'm dragging it out coz it's a bit quiet out there at the moment' but said
'If I knew that, I wouldn't be standing here having this conversation with you' I think she noted the exasperation
in my voice.

Did my best sales pitch that an engineer can do, but I'm sure I'll be back there again soon....

[Akitu]

MP C3000, machine switched off, I'm rebuilding the Fusing Unit, screws and parts all over the place, my collegue is replacing/modifying PCU's, and a customer says : "It receives the faxes in the memory right now?"

That's actually a pretty reasonable question, coming from an end user... Most customers would assume it would still receive and print faxes in the present condition. To assume that any fax is going to the memory is reasonable, comparatively.

[harps05]

Had a woman recently ask how she can scan her black and white document in colour. Ah women, they're strange creatures.

[Tech2002]

Ditto.

[Tech2002]

"Is it broken?" When you have everything out of the copier, screwdriver in your hand, replacing a hot roller is still a classic.

Have this happen all the time - do these people actually have a brain? Or how about when the machine is in pieces and they ask you if they can print something. Depending on my mood I sometimes ask if they are for real.

[Jnr]

a cumtomer with a km C203 asked about tshirt printing

After explaining about tshirt transfer paper, invert image, thick2 paper in by pass etc etc 10-15 conversation.

We got a call a week later, they tried to print ONTO the tshirt

[NRTech]

"It always jams from this tray, I thought it might be the toner so I put a new one in and it still jams."

Thanks, at least that's one thing I can rule out.
We can laugh, cos we see these things everyday. Some customers only see it once. Having said that, some customers see A LOT of stupid faults.

[Tech2002]

I had a client that her machine wasn't feeding right and the copies were I guess faded when she copied. She was looking to upgrade the machine, and as I found out later because she never called me back about the upgrade, she didn't want to call me with a Service Call. I had sent them their annual service agreement, about $1,200.00 during this period of their contemplation. In the meantime, in this woman's infinite wisdom, she tells me after she has me come out to pick-up the machine to get it back to the Remarketer, that the machine was having a "hissy fit" and she proceeded, on her own volition, to put a brand new toner in the machine to fix the machines copy quality issue. Didn't work - duuuu. She failed to tell me that there was a pile of Black Developer on the floor of the right door. She thought because she never called me for service that she was off the hook for the service agreement. However, if it wasn't in the writing of the service agreement, that when she put that toner into the machine, where the toner is included in the service arrangement, she activated the $1,200.00 service agreement. Only in America can you work 40-hours a week, not know what the heck your doing and still get paid. And, if you don't get paid because your less then intelligent you take your employer to the Labor Department - and get paid. She also thought I was being just a good guy when I got their machine back to the remarketer at my cost - not so, lady. Another note: the guys she went with for the new machine, they sell Sharp, but no one there at the dealership knows how to fix them. I've gotten more good business from there dealership. This lady thought she was saving money, will see. Got to love it!

[gneebore]

QUOTE=Jnr;354582]a cumtomer with a km C203 asked about tshirt printing

After explaining about tshirt transfer paper, invert image, thick2 paper in by pass etc etc 10-15 conversation.

We got a call a week later, they tried to print ONTO the tshirt [/QUOTE]


Reminds me of when we worked on old Canon pc 25's. Our secretary found out that if you taped quality cotton linen to heavy butcher paper, non- waxed, she could copy quilting patterns onto the linen. Had to be a copier with a straight copy feed for the copies and no turns from bypass tray or paper trays to the exit tray. Her quilting club used an old pc 25 just for that reason. Then one of the lesser brains decided to run some fabric through a sharp 7300 or 7800. Only a few problems. First the sharp fuser got way to hot compared to the canons.. Next she put the fabric into the paper tray, not the bypass tray. And third she tried to run wool through the machine. I think it took about a month for the stench of burning wool to be cleared. They had to replace the 7300. But the dumbest thing they tried to demand was getting a free replacement for the sharp. Because it was under service agreement. Glad that It wasn't under contract to us.

[George J]

A bit of a longer story, but basically after a corporate merge, they found a really old Ricoh 1035 in the storage room of the place they just bought. My boss, in all his wisdom, decided to take up the service contract for this machine in the hope to later sell them a couple more machines.

They call us a couple days later, saying that the machine is constantly displaying error codes. Of course, I get to go. After a 2 hour drive, I enter the building, only to find that people are using the machine without any obvious problems. So I ask around about the problem and nobody seems to know. Until somebody from IT finds me and starts ranting about how it keeps displaying error codes and that the machine has serious software errors. Obviously, it's an old machine and it wasn't very good when it was new imho.

Fortunately the guy could reproduce the problem! Now I don't remember the exact sequence, but it was something like select date stamp, enlarge copy, select tray, cancel date stamp and then choose double sided copies, the machine would display a software error. So my first question is: 'Do you have to use these options regularly?', he replied 'erm... no never, I just thought I should point this out!'

Now I'm not sure if this is really really dumb, or extremely clever to find a sequence of instructions that would give an error. I just wonder how long that guy must have spend at the machine trying out every possible combination.