What was the Dumbest thing you've ever said / done to a customer?

[Shadow1]

We've got threads for Stupid Customers, Stupid Machines, and Stupid IT People and stupid techs - Now how about when the stupid tech is loudmouth you? C'mon, we've all done it - now it's time to admit it...

I was sitting on my vacuum cleaning out an MP9000 when the operator (who was NOT hired for her brains) tripped and fell into me. One of the doors slammed into the back of my hand - ouch - and my head hit the other door - Ouch! - then the floor - OUCH!!! but in the process I got a nearly perfect face full of cleavage

She helped me up "OhMyGosh are you O.K.?"

I guess I hit my head harder than I thought, because I actually said the first thing that came to mind... "Uh-huh... Dual Airbags"

[mjarbar]

Nothing that funny unfortunately, I didn't do this myself but one of our engineers called a machine a piece of crap on its install into a customer, that caused no ends of phone calls and problems, in the end the machine was pulled and we had to install another at the same click which has caused us to loose money on it ever since.

Definitely not the brightest thing to be said in front of a customer!

[kyoceradude]

We had a customer that was the biggest pain in the ass. One day when they called, I agreed to go. Upon arrival the customer said to me, "Oh, they sent someone new. We haven't see you before. Are you gonna fix it? How long will it take, I'm very busy today? Why didn't they send Pedro? I'd rather have Pedro." I proceded to tell the customer that "I drew the short straw today". You guessed it, no sooner did I get back to the office when the boss came to me and asked, "Uh..... you got a minute?" He didn't appreciate my response to the customer. That minute turned into 15. Pretty sad when all the customer has to do all day is bitch, bitch, bitch......

[vincent64]

Guys and Gals, or my fellow Techs,
It dont matter what you say, how you say it or to whom,
Someone is not going to be happy, you can piss them off with a look, or just body launguage, it dont matter, although I do like the short straw line .
I have been there, done and said things I know I should not have, but just came out, or not able to fix a prob and have to get parts, or be the 3'rd tech to see it, its all in the cust's perception of us.
Heck, I even got a talking to about not, I repeat, NOT talking to a certain person at a office, he got all snooty that I ignored him, and I did not even know of this person.
So you see, it dont matter how we do our jobs, someone somewhere is not going to be happy with it

[mrwho]

This just now (circa 10 minutes ago):

I'm at a copy shop and I was vacuuming a machine's developer unit when there were to girl customers looking at me and giggling. I turned off the vacuum cleaner, turned to them and said "Hey, I only do this at my job, I don't touch the vacuum cleaner at home!".

That stopped the snickering!

[schooltech]

HOLY SHIT!!!! This was thousands of dollars given for free to this customer. I just knew that I would never hear the end of it at some point, so that was one more thing to get me out of that crappy place. I wonder if they ever found out.

I guess that the customer either benefitted from this, or they received a big-ass bill for the parts (seriously, this was thousands of dollars.)

[fixthecopier]

OK, Iwill admit what I did was stupid but sometimes you just snap. Not everybody in the army is stupid, as a matter of fact I have a lot of great customers who can change thier toner by themselves and everything. However, when you are a new soilder being trained, well just picture the kind of calls you would get if you had public copiers free for everybody to use, in a fast food restaurant or Wal-Mart. On a bad day I show up and it looks like someone had beat the machine with a toner bottle. There were open mostly full toner bottles rolling around in the drawer under the machine, spilling toner everywhere. They had tried to solve a problem by changing toner and did a piss poor job. I pulled out my sharpie, and left a note on the document feeder itself. It said "IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, DON'T FUCK WITH MY MACHINE, CALL ME,I HAVE WORKED FOR THE ARMY FOR 10 YEARS, NO QUESTION IS TOO DUMB" and wrote my name and cell number. Yes I had balls enough, or stupidity enough to sign my work. The next morning the drill instructor called me. "Hell yes I wrote it", I told him. He was used to dealing with people who were intimidated by him, and I was not. Next day, his First Sargent called the owner, and I took my ass out there and cleaned it off the top of the machine.

[atwageman]

OK, Iwill admit what I did was stupid but sometimes you just snap. Not everybody in the army is stupid, as a matter of fact I have a lot of great customers who can change thier toner by themselves and everything. However, when you are a new soilder being trained, well just picture the kind of calls you would get if you had public copiers free for everybody to use, in a fast food restaurant or Wal-Mart. On a bad day I show up and it looks like someone had beat the machine with a toner bottle. There were open mostly full toner bottles rolling around in the drawer under the machine, spilling toner everywhere. They had tried to solve a problem by changing toner and did a piss poor job. I pulled out my sharpie, and left a note on the document feeder itself. It said "IF YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING, DON'T FUCK WITH MY MACHINE, CALL ME,I HAVE WORKED FOR THE ARMY FOR 10 YEARS, NO QUESTION IS TOO DUMB" and wrote my name and cell number. Yes I had balls enough, or stupidity enough to sign my work. The next morning the drill instructor called me. "Hell yes I wrote it", I told him. He was used to dealing with people who were intimidated by him, and I was not. Next day, his First Sargent called the owner, and I took my ass out there and cleaned it off the top of the machine.

I put a sign similar to the one you made, except mine was typed out in multiple languages. It did it in english, german, spanish, and hindi...... The account employed people from different nationalities........I didn't want to come across as being a racist so I made sure ALL the employees could read and understand it.

[Shadow1]

I had one customer back in the days of analog machines and uncoated exposure glass that would break out the bottle of windex every night then call for ADF jams the next morning no matter how much I explained it to them. After the 5th time I removed the exposure glass and taped a note to the optics cover: "The Glass is coated with oil to prevent jams - DO NOT clean the glass - You will be billed" and I quoted our labor rate.

I had enough sense to call my boss as I left and told him. Sure enough the customer called back in, but my boss had told me not to touch the machine untill I had a check in my hand.

BTW where did you even find a picture of Fedron - I've got some customers I'd like to pour a capful in their desk drawer...

[Morlock49]

Aaaah the smell of fedron. the memory takes me back, poor lungs and permanently black fingers.

[Shadow1]

Aaaah the smell of fedron. the memory takes me back, poor lungs and permanently black fingers.

And don't forget about the enlarged liver and shriveled gonads... of course you'd eventually grow a 3rd and 4th testicle to make up for the shrinkage - quantity over quality

For anybody not familiar with the stuff, throwing away the rag you used with it in a customer's garbage can was a big no-no. Your service manager would get a call complaining the tech barfed in their trash can - it literally smelled like day old vomit. People would gag walking by.

[atwageman]

I had one customer back in the days of analog machines and uncoated exposure glass that would break out the bottle of windex every night then call for ADF jams the next morning no matter how much I explained it to them. After the 5th time I removed the exposure glass and taped a note to the optics cover: "The Glass is coated with oil to prevent jams - DO NOT clean the glass - You will be billed" and I quoted our labor rate.

I had enough sense to call my boss as I left and told him. Sure enough the customer called back in, but my boss had told me not to touch the machine untill I had a check in my hand.

BTW where did you even find a picture of Fedron - I've got some customers I'd like to pour a capful in their desk drawer...

I'm not sure where I got that picture of Fedron. Its an image I've had stored on my PC for awhile. I did a google image search just now and low and behold that pic shows up.

Yeah Fedron is kind of an old school cleaner, not too many techs using it anymore, especially this day in age when the sue happy public seams to be allergic to everything from peanuts to working for a living. Nothing like good ol Fedron or a similar product to clear out an office

[mrwho]

Not familiar with Fedron - guess they never sold that over here. Now I'm curious. What are the active ingredients to make that stuff so bad?

[vincent64]

Federon is a good solvent, but lacquer thinner will also work, and almost the same chemical makeup.
And speaking of dumb things said to customer, what do ya'll tell them when they say "It's about time you got here" or "What took you so long"

[fixthecopier]

Federon is a good solvent, but lacquer thinner will also work, and almost the same chemical makeup.
And speaking of dumb things said to customer, what do ya'll tell them when they say "It's about time you got here" or "What took you so long"

I would say something like "I just got this job this morning so I was trying to read up on how to fix copiers" or "Thank god you called, my boss was not going to bail me out of jail again, but he is short handed this week"