There's a Rat in my Computer, Naughty NAS, and other Support Stories

Anketam · 2012-08-07

I am so sad at the Naughty NAS story. Beause of it, we will not get a story in a few years when a tech guy comes in and has to explain to them that he cant recover their backed up files because the drives were never there.

2012-08-07

"A torch. Oh, wait, no, not a torch -- a flashlight."

A torch would very likely have worked too. Open fire emits even more infrared light than lightbulbs.

Remy Porter · 2012-08-07

Maybe the HDDs that belonged in the NAS were full of porn, and that's why they were removed. Y'know, for... researching how that porn got there. Yeah, that's the ticket. Total violation of our IT standards. Oh, that's a total violation. It'll be a long, hard job figuring out how it got on there.

Zylon · 2012-08-07

Please to reformat the needful.

2012-08-07

The "Naughty NAS" may be mine...

When I was doing consulting, the company I worked for allowed clients to purchase their own devices which we were to connect and support. It was quite often that a client would purchase something which did not satisfy any need, but it was cheap. Generally only about 5% of those clients would listen to such recommendations as:

└ It may be cheaper to buy a new printer rather than find a fuser for a 1980's LaserJet you bought at GoodWill for $15;

└ No you don't need a Cisco Pix 535 for a 4 person office, a Netgear will provide plenty of bandwidth for sharing your 256kbps DSL connection;

└ Installing Windows XP on your PII 300Mhz 96MB Ram computer is not "as good as buying a new one.";

└ Installing a NAS without harddrives won't do anything for you. Yes, hard drives do cost more than the NAS box... You're not willing to spend that much?

Yeah, good times for all.

2012-08-07

Kate:
The guy in the last story was pretty rude. The support techs have a shitty job and are usually forced to follow a fixed script. They can't skip any part of the flowchart and just refer your issue upwards because they'll get done for it. The kindest, most human and also most efficient way to behave is just to go through the flowchart with them. It won't take too long and it's much less hostile. Then you can get referred on to the next level of support. You might be a genius-level IT professional, but to the support tech, you are Schrödinger's technical support problem. Don't be a dick.

I once tried that. I was at a friend's house. Their brand new Hell computer (you can figure out the real company name if you like) was having an intermittent problem. After a bit of poking around, I discovered that if I wiggled the hard disk power cable I could hear the disk spinup/spindown etc. So flakey connector or flakey cable or flakey disk.

We call Hell support in on my cell (no landline in that room). The script took about 1.5hours to go through with me punctuating each step faithfully done with 'If I wiggle the power cable on the hard drive I can hear it power up and down maybe there's a problem there.' Finally we got to the point where he said he suspected there was some sort of problem with the hard-drive (that was the first 45min). The next bit was convincing him that:

This was a brand new computer.
Shipping parts around when there could be more than one cause for this was a non-starter.
Please replace the damned computer because it is under the infant mortality period.

What I did at the end is what I often do when someone's service frustratesmen. The last question on all the script is:

Support tech: "Is there anything more I can do for you" Me: "Yes I wonder if you could rate your performance on this call?" Support tech: "I'm sorry I don't understand?" Me: "I just ran up a 1.5hour cell phone bill with you not listening to me tell you what the problem was. How do you rate your performance?"

Key...say this very calmly don't be angry don't be an asshole just ask "How do you rate your performance on this call?"

Captcha paratus

2012-08-07

Not going to give the real company name or product but....

We had a blade server that suddenly went off line. We could even get to it's little diag processor that remains up as long as the blade is plugged in. We went to the machine room and saw that all the status lights, and even internal ones on the system board you could see through cooling vents were not on. Reseated the blade, even in another slot, and no change.

Called support, and told them it's dead send the guy out with a new system board. Tech support insisted we get to the daig process and check the logs because it could be something else.

We kept saying, it has no power, we can't get to diag processor. They kept saying they needed the logs first, and we told them there are no logs to get. This goes on for about 30 minutes. Finally we told them, either send the ticket on to the hardware group or give me your supervisor on the phone, NOW. We have a 4 hour response time contract, we are not going to play 20 questions for ever.

When the field guy came out with the new system board and replaced it, you could see a crack in the plastic around the power pins on the backplane connector, and the power pins were loose.

There's a Rat in my Computer, Naughty NAS, and other Support Stories

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