The company that Karl J. works for recently signed a contract with a big North American corporation and everybody’s really excited at the prospect. Practically overnight, their flagship product - a platform-as-a-service solution – would gain a boost of about 40,000 users and an accompanying in-stream of cash too.

But there was one detail that made everybody, well mostly management, feeling nervous: their client insisted on having 24/7 support. But, you know what? That’s OK! Karl’s employer hired a 3rd party agency to do the grunt work of front-line support and escalate non-trivial issues when they would arise, around the clock.

Services were purchased and that money was used in turn to purchase even more services to keep it all running smoothly. Unfortunately, the 24/7 support agency proved to be less capable than originally anticipated. Or perhaps somebody forgot to tell them that what they actually did. 

===========0006401801=================
Fri 05-Apr-13 01:56p
======================================
NAME:Tim
COMPANY:abbotsford fire rescue
PHONE:604-123-4567
"Based on your service agreement with 
NACK/Fuzzbin, is this a high, medium,
or low severity? If you are not sure, 
we'll assume its either high or medium
and contact the on-call now"          
SEVERITY: HIGH[x ] MED [  ] LOW[  ]   
NOTES:198 Emerson St, SomePlace
Electrical system has been
compromised. fires from electrical.
"Thank you for calling an on-call   
    technician will contact you as    
         soon as possible."           

--------------------------------------
Message History  Account: 63101234
Taken:  Fri 05-Apr-2013  1:54p UN
Serial#: 1
===========0006401801=================

It's Too Windy! (from Jeff W.)
"Man, I guess that when it picks up out there, the wind sure can blow those loose bits around!"

 

Troubled Widgets (from Dean)
A while back, Dean's wget requests started failing for no apparent reason. So, he submitted an incident to his local IT staff to try and get wget pushed through the firewall, some how, some way.

Here's the text of the incident: 

I just recently my wgets have started failing. firewall issue?
wget -P . 'http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/read_more-7.x-1.x-dev.tar.gz'
--2011-11-11 11:46:05--  (try: 2)  http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/read_more-7.x-1.x-dev.tar.gz
Connecting to ftp.drupal.org (ftp.drupal.org)|140.211.166.134|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... Read error (Connection reset by peer) in headers.
Retrying.

So a few days later, someone from IT (who just happened to be the CTO) came to Dean's desk to help with my issue, in person. The first words out of his mouth? "So, tell me, which widgets are you having troubles with?"

HP Support Gives Me the Warm and Fuzzies (from Dan H.)

 DanH : I'm trying to get this printer, and a P1505n, set up on a Linux print server (for evaluation purposes), 
        but hppi diagnostics doesn't recognise them. There are no firewalls in the way, as I successfully 
        tested a 2500 series printer last week.

** An agent will be with you shortly. **
** You are now chatting with HP_bod . **

HP_bod : Welcome to HP Total Care Chat Support for Imaging & Printing Group. My name is HP_droid. Please give 
         me a minute while I review your problem description details.

  DanH : Ok, thanks.

HP_bod : DanH, as I was reviewing your details, I came to know that you are using HP Color Laser Jet CP1515n 
         Printer connected to a computer with operating system as LINUX and you are facing issue as you are 
         not able to install your printer on your computer. Am I correct?

  DanH : Mostly. :) I've installed the model scripts, but the HPPI utility can't complete the networking check 
         on these printers.

HP_bod : DanH, I greatly appreciate that you have forwarded your concern and have given us a chance to assist 
         you on this matter.

HP_bod : As a consumer myself, I can certainly understand your frustration.

HP_bod : I, on behalf of HP Technical Support take the ownership of this issue and will try to resolve this 
         issue to the best of my abilities.

  DanH : Thank you.

HP_bod : You are most welcome, I am here to assist you.

HP_bod : DanH, I would like to inform you that you are trying to install the driver of your printer from the 
         CD which came initially with the Printer, the drivers in that Installation CD are on compatible to 
         the Operating System as Windows XP.

HP_bod : I will assist you but before that I need your confirmation of the above mentioned statement?

  DanH : I'm not trying to install the drivers from the CD. The printer server is a linux operating system, so
         I got the model scripts from HP in the internet.

HP_bod : Ok.

HP_bod : DanH, I would like ot inform you that we do not have the correct expertise on the Operating System 
         as Linux.
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