Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

[blackcat4866]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

We used to have a very large customer that tried to pawn off their IT work to us, even though they had their own IT department. Most often it was embarrassingly basic. For example:

The maintenance folks reposition a MFP somewhere else in the building. They can figure out how to plug in the power plug. So I get service call saying that it won't print. When I talk to the IT gentleman he says it won't ping. When I get there I discover there is no network cable, and no network port within 100 feet. It seems our IT professional is glued to his fricking desk chair. That was the first one I billed.

A few days later I get a call that the MFP won't print in color, and true enough, it's not printing in color. Upon closer examination I see that the IT professional installed an HP4 print driver. Do you think that might be why it's not printing in color? That was the second one that I billed.

A couple of weeks later I get another call for not printing. More accurately it prints a few of the pages, than drops off the network. I plug my laptop into the network drop and start a continuous ping back to the print server. I get:
<1ms
<1ms
<1ms
<1ms
=5ms
=10ms
=56ms
=247ms
=Request Timed Out
=Request Timed Out
=Request Timed Out
=1047ms
=52ms
<1ms
<1ms
etc. etc.
How can the MFP cause this when it's not even on the network now? It's my laptop doing the ping. That was the third one that I billed. They started doing their own IT at that point. =^..^=

[roho]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Once had a small 2 man office where I had hooked up a MFD printer on their network. The guy in charge had no clue how networks and printers work, could not give me any info on any of the settings.

2 weeks after setting him up he called me as he wanted to add another user to scan to his desk top. I explained how he could scroll through the device and follow the network to each user, just as I did earlier with him watching. He then asked me his network name, I paused, rolled my eyes and told him that is like me asking him what my dog's name is.

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

My favorite is 'we don't have a network, we're wireless"

Actually had a customer with a network printer set up with a wireless adapter. One thing they did not do was password protect the adapter so anyone that discovered the new wireless ip address could print to it. So a joker found the new wireless receiver and started printing all sorts of obscene jokes on the printer with his laptop.

[mnchstr2k]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

When to a local branch of national corporation. YGIC (young gal in charge) said copier quit sending scan to emails. After checking over, I told her that it looks like corporate IT is stopping copier from going out on internet. YGIC said she doesn't want the copier to get on the internet, she only wants it to send email. I told her the copier uses the internet to send her email. YGIC says it is on our network and my office is only 20 feet from it, the copier doesn't go out on the internet to send her email, it emails inside the building. I suggested we call her Corporate IT, they do some checking, they said they will be coming out in 5 days to fix "stuff". So as I am pulling the plug on this "adventure" the YGIC says I think you should make that scan to email until IT comes to fix "stuff" on our network.


Please enter smart ass comments below. I just wonder who slept with whom to get her in charge.

My favorite is 'we don't have a network, we're wireless"

[tonerhead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

i ve got a travel agent wth a bunch of old biddies using dell PCs and insist that AOL is the leading edge of tech..
As I try to accommodate my accnts and do charge for my time weather pc or color copiers I was asked to look at an issue wth her email..
I open an email and it has an link to a trusted vendor of hers that is some new resort and all..
and when she tries to open it it refuses,,
OK So I RIGHT CLICK OPEN IN NEW WINDOW AND it works..
She refuses to make that extra step and insist I should fix,,
OK so i decide to give her a free outlook email service and install Thunderbird and link up her AOL accnt and now it opens the new link..perfect..
I demo and show her,,she refuses to switch.....The day was getting late and i was there with other PCs with other issues and tell her it is a AOL issue..
I send her a bill for labor and get a nasty call back..saying I never fixed her problem and how can i charge her.........
I blasted her over the phone and she got the message IT never Ceases to amaze me out there,

Reminds me of a time customer traded in a Lanier for a Kyocera. Lanier to do a 2-2 duplex requires 1 screentouch, Kyocera requires 2 screen touches to do the same. She was hell bent that the extra touch was a waste of her time and her time is too valuable to be making a second touch. So I created a shortcut to do so. The shortcut wasn't good enough for her, she wanted the kyocera panel to look identical to the Lanier panel. When I told her it can't be done, she told me to remove the copier. I told to contact her sales person and walked out.

Some fights are more effective just walking away.

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

i ve got a travel agent wth a bunch of old biddies using dell PCs and insist that AOL is the leading edge of tech..
As I try to accommodate my accnts and do charge for my time weather pc or color copiers I was asked to look at an issue wth her email..
I open an email and it has an link to a trusted vendor of hers that is some new resort and all..
and when she tries to open it it refuses,,
OK So I RIGHT CLICK OPEN IN NEW WINDOW AND it works..
She refuses to make that extra step and insist I should fix,,
OK so i decide to give her a free outlook email service and install Thunderbird and link up her AOL accnt and now it opens the new link..perfect..
I demo and show her,,she refuses to switch.....The day was getting late and i was there with other PCs with other issues and tell her it is a AOL issue..
I send her a bill for labor and get a nasty call back..saying I never fixed her problem and how can i charge her.........
I blasted her over the phone and she got the message IT never Ceases to amaze me out there,

This may sound like a real basic question but what happens if you click on the link with the wheel? I know I did that when showing a customer how to look up user manuals for older printers and copier where the manuals had been lost. Or they could use a search engine and use the wheel click to open one or more links in tabs to scan and see which website had results closest to what they were looking for.

[fshead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

i ve got a travel agent wth a bunch of old biddies using dell PCs and insist that AOL is the leading edge of tech..
As I try to accommodate my accnts and do charge for my time weather pc or color copiers I was asked to look at an issue wth her email..
I open an email and it has an link to a trusted vendor of hers that is some new resort and all..
and when she tries to open it it refuses,,
OK So I RIGHT CLICK OPEN IN NEW WINDOW AND it works..
She refuses to make that extra step and insist I should fix,,
OK so i decide to give her a free outlook email service and install Thunderbird and link up her AOL accnt and now it opens the new link..perfect..
I demo and show her,,she refuses to switch.....The day was getting late and i was there with other PCs with other issues and tell her it is a AOL issue..
I send her a bill for labor and get a nasty call back..saying I never fixed her problem and how can i charge her.........
I blasted her over the phone and she got the message IT never Ceases to amaze me out there,

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Had a call once, the customer was an hour and a half away, and said the copier would not print or scan, and that their IT looked at it for 4 hours and couldn't get it working.

Showed up to find the network cable was unplugged from the copier.

Handed them a bill...

Oh boy that brought up a real fun memory. We had a large rural territory back in the early-mid seventies. There were a few home offices out on some one lane or dirt roads. Had a few customers that repeatedly would not check the plugs in the walls. And got quite a few calls for the "typewriter is dead" they would look and see the typewriter plugged into an extension cord, but then not check to see if that was actually plugged in. Yes another person that worked in the offices would unplug the extension cord and plug in what they needed to use. And when done not plug the extension cord back in. Got to the point where even the dispatcher at our office would ask these same customers to check the extension cord before she sent me to fix the typewriter because if that was the only problem they would be billed travel time and one hour minimum for a service call that was a repeated customer error.

[tonerhead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Had a call once, the customer was an hour and a half away, and said the copier would not print or scan, and that their IT looked at it for 4 hours and couldn't get it working.

Showed up to find the network cable was unplugged from the copier.

Handed them a bill...



As it should be!! Been there, done the same.

[CompyTech]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Had a call once, the customer was an hour and a half away, and said the copier would not print or scan, and that their IT looked at it for 4 hours and couldn't get it working.

Showed up to find the network cable was unplugged from the copier.

Handed them a bill...

[fixthecopier]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

About 2 years ago, I did a toner delivery to a doctors office. It was lunch. The office manager, who was a total c..., was not in. As I would do anywhere else, the machine was waiting for the toner. I installed the toner, a girl signed the ticket and I left. Two hours later the office manager bitch called the shop cussing and raising hell because what I did caused their network to crash.

She also had written a bad review of us online. When they fired her, I got the review removed. The whole office hated her.

I was delivering toner to a daycare and the girl said the copier wouldn't print. I stated it was an IT issue, they will charge for the call, but I will take a quick look.

"Oh look, here is the problem," I said holding up one end of the USB. "It has to be plugged in to both the copier and the computer at the same time."



Remember, we will never be unemployed because the general public becomes technologically literate.

[Bix]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

I had a farmer customer who, after installing the printer, said that the life saver was triggered.


I did all the measurements with the tester and the printer did not seem to have any anomalies. I improvised as an electrician and I discovered they had a UPS on a computer

After some tests, I discovered that the UPS was faulty and it did strange things. By removing the UPS, the life saver is no longer skipped.

But remember. For the customer, the last person he saw was always to blame

[gneebore]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

A few years ago my son broke his tibia and we had him in the ER. They had him in a brace for the weekend as only Orthopaedic sets bones. Monday we took him to the very same hospital, so Orthopaedic could put a cast on the broken bone. I mean I thought all Doctors were trained on casting bones. At least they were when I was growing up. I was not thrilled about it, that my son had to take pills and sit all weekend. I just wanted someone to take care of the issue instead of passing the buck. That's what it seemed like at the time. We got a Dr. saying very few physicians set bones anymore because of LIABILITY.

Isn't it the same with copiers? We are trained to load drivers, set up scanning, help with printing. People are calling us for help, we should do it (regardless if we charge or not, that's another thing). If a customer has IT, fine they can watch over us. I'm rural, probably 90% have no IT and only hire IT to fix their computers. Yes there is a LIABILITY, that is why they sign a WAIVER. We know how we feel when IT passes it off as a printer issue. I've had my share of customers ask if we do IT work also because their rental IT guys are always passing the buck blaming problems on others rather than taking care of problems.

Bottom line is it is about taking care of the customer, not trying to squeeze out the last penny, not trying to pass blame, etc. This is where America is bad..... it's not my job, pass the buck.

Side note, wouldn't you love to go back in a time machine and shoot the idiot that sold the first toner inclusive contract? The copier industry has been sliding downhill ever since.

Sorry about what happened with your son. I do remember way back when growing up a friend broke her arm and went to see her family doctor. He put her arm in a cast right then after taking an x-ray in his office. She went to see her family doctor because he was closer than the nearest hospital and could see her right away. Would that happen now? No way. Too many times a physician or hospital has been sued for malpractice just because the doctor was not a specialist ( like in the situation with your son) and did not have the "required specialist training" for whatever emergency procedure they did to help. I've even heard of some EMS personnel being threatened for malpractice when the nearly dead victim recovered but ended up paralyzed after getting treated at the scene of an accident.

In situations where the customer had a small limited network we would install or have them install drivers while we showed them what to do. Quite a few times we put machines into offices where there were only five or less computers and they did not have a server but just used one modem and one or two routers. Usually we set up the copier and had the customer watch as I installed the drivers on one computer and then watched them and guided them when doing it on one or two more. Heck been doing this long enough that some of the "network copiers" actually only had a parallel port and the pc actually found the new printer and installed default drivers or asked for the cd with the drivers. Then the parallel connected copier was shared via the small network. Yes there were times when we installed drivers for some dot matrix printers and then shared that so accounting offices could print out ledger sheets. Like you these were a lot of times out in small communities away from the large cities in the area. Like a doctors office or even law offices.

[tonerhead]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Sounds like we've all been in the same boat at one time or another. Sometimes though you've got to take a chance or two, just make sure your back is covered. A followup of YGIC, their IT came by on Tuesday, fixed the issue. We looked like heros to them because their IT did just exactly what we said would be done and everything worked again. That's the victories you get. Another customer called me this week, had printing trouble, I walked her through it over the phone. Her reply was I've had 3 different guys from our IT dept in for this very same printing issue, why don't they know what to do? I said I don't know why, it's not that difficult to do. Another victory. Building customer loyalty!!

A few years ago my son broke his tibia and we had him in the ER. They had him in a brace for the weekend as only Orthopaedic sets bones. Monday we took him to the very same hospital, so Orthopaedic could put a cast on the broken bone. I mean I thought all Doctors were trained on casting bones. At least they were when I was growing up. I was not thrilled about it, that my son had to take pills and sit all weekend. I just wanted someone to take care of the issue instead of passing the buck. That's what it seemed like at the time. We got a Dr. saying very few physicians set bones anymore because of LIABILITY.

Isn't it the same with copiers? We are trained to load drivers, set up scanning, help with printing. People are calling us for help, we should do it (regardless if we charge or not, that's another thing). If a customer has IT, fine they can watch over us. I'm rural, probably 90% have no IT and only hire IT to fix their computers. Yes there is a LIABILITY, that is why they sign a WAIVER. We know how we feel when IT passes it off as a printer issue. I've had my share of customers ask if we do IT work also because their rental IT guys are always passing the buck blaming problems on others rather than taking care of problems.

Bottom line is it is about taking care of the customer, not trying to squeeze out the last penny, not trying to pass blame, etc. This is where America is bad..... it's not my job, pass the buck.

Side note, wouldn't you love to go back in a time machine and shoot the idiot that sold the first toner inclusive contract? The copier industry has been sliding downhill ever since.

[copiertec]

Re: Customer ignorance issue of today, place smart ass comments below

Sounds like we share some of the same experiences with clients. Our company just took over service for a large insurance insurance provider, apparently a tech from another copier vendor installed some kind of software on their server and it crashed it... completely. I do not know all the details, however, we were briefed that any and all IT related issues are strictly done through their IT dept, no exceptions.