What's your most irritating Customer question and how do you want to answer it?

[mascan42]

One that just bugs me, is you get a call, it says on the call screen emergency, get out to the call, the office is closed, locked, and all you get when you call numbers is voice mail, happens a lot at local university

Or the one that says "Call ASAP" and then they give the fax number.

[scepter2112]

"We ought to get you a desk here" . . . never get tired of that one. Especially when it's been 2 months since the last service call.

I actually like this one. I can answer this without risk of being fired. I start describing what kind of furniture I want

[KenB]

How about when you arrive to do a network installation, and when you ask for a patch cable, you get "Oh, the salesman said that YOU would supply us with everything we need."

I try to carry a few 8' spares for when this happens; I'm not going to quibble over a $7 cable. Of course, you get the occasional whack job who needs a 50 footer.

As soon as I leave, my next phone call starts off, "Hello, mister sales manager..."

Grrrrrr...

(Years ago, I carried a spool of UTP in my car, and frequently made cables on demand. But that was when we also installed network cards - networks were still a bit of a novelty back then.)

[mascan42]

How about when you arrive to do a network installation, and when you ask for a patch cable, you get "Oh, the salesman said that YOU would supply us with everything we need."

I try to carry a few 8' spares for when this happens; I'm not going to quibble over a $7 cable. Of course, you get the occasional whack job who needs a 50 footer.

As soon as I leave, my next phone call starts off, "Hello, mister sales manager..."

Grrrrrr...

(Years ago, I carried a spool of UTP in my car, and frequently made cables on demand. But that was when we also installed network cards - networks were still a bit of a novelty back then.)

That's not too bad. I've had people that expected me to run cable through their drop ceiling for them.

[KenB]

Yup, been there, too, although it's been a few years. It used to happen a lot when I carried that spool around and made a bunch of cables.

Fighting back what you really want to say, I think that the best reply to that one is "I'm sorry, Mr. Customer, but we're not bonded or insured to do that."

I remember one customer who wanted us to run the cables down the inside of the walls, install wall plates, etc..., all for the cost of a normal installation.

Come to think of it, I think that's when we weren't even charging for installs.

[imthinman]

My machine has never worked

I here this from time -to-time. Usually I check the meter and say we owe a lot of credit for the 4 million bad copies they must have gotten.