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Showing posts from 2014

Each?

Me: "Hmm? There's two of them, tell you what I'll do you a fixed price £150.00 Customer: "Is that £150.00 each!" Me: "Can be if you like?" :-D

Guess work

I might walk funny but I ain't got crystal balls. Customer: "Hi Pete, I need three bits of software." Me: "OK, what are you looking for?" Customer:  "One of them is Photoshop." Me: "And the other two?" Customer:  "Ooh I forget now?" Me: "Maybe you should ring me back when you remember?" Customer:  "Oh? OK." #facepalm

Halloween starts early.

This afternoon is definitely warming up for Halloween! 1: Guess who? Customer: "I had a notification from SAGE for an upgrade but they also said some software patch had to be put on. Can you tell me if it's been done?" Me: "By whom? Us or Sage" Customer:  "I don't know I've been off for two days." What? 2: I can't open it. Customer:  "I'm trying to do a scan and it says cannot open scanner." Me: "But you only had a manufacturer engineer out yesterday and they was working fine?" Customer:  "I know." Me: "Silly question, the scanner is on I take it?" Customer:  "Oops" I give up. 3: Ghost in the machine. Customer:  "Is Dave there?" Me: "No, he was with you?" Customer:  "Oh, they left a while ago. I need to know if they sent an email while they was here. XYZ says I sent an email cancelling some payments but I wasn't in at 1pm?" Me:

Little man.

Me: "Your misses is fecking gorgeous, feck knows what she sees in you?" Engineer: "I know, especially when I have such a small penis?" ROTFLMAO

Hit him with the clue stick!

So I've just taken a couple of days holiday from work to try and de-stress myself a bit. My daughter needs a new headlamp for her car and given my job is management I rang the garage on Monday, my last day off, and asked them if they could do the work on the Tuesday, the following day. "Sure, no problem." Now boys and girls there's a reason I rang on the Monday, can you guess? Came to work in my daughters car and my garage says the supplier hasn't got a headlight so the work cannot be done until Wednesday! #organisation

Pick one.

Customer: "Will they be installing the anti-virus?" Me: "No?" Customer:  "Why not?" Me: "You didn't order it, I sent you a quote." Customer:  "Oh, was I meant to choose one then?" #facepalm

Point through the window.

Customer: "Hi Pete" Me: "Hi Bill, I was just talking about you." Customer:  "In a nice way?" Me: "Hmm?" Customer:  "Oh, what have I done now?" Me: "I heard what you did, you wanna look on the Internet after getting me to spend my valuable time getting you the specs aye?" [Sounds of uproarious laughter] Customer:  "Oh well, you've gotta play the game." Me: "Not with me my son, I'm an Essex boy!" [More laughter] Customer:  "Don't I know it!" Me: "So here's the deal. When you buy it off the Internet rather than you thinking you're awesome coz you saved a few quid, when it goes wrong I'm gonna come round your place, sit outside your window with me ipod on laughing and pointing at your broken kit" [More laughter] Me: "How can I help you?" Customer:  "Well, one of our PC's is playing up and............." Me: "I'

Taking Liberties

Customer: "Hi, it's XYZ here. We mapped some drives on Friday and one of our ladies has come in today and the drive we mapped as i: keeps dropping out." How in Odin's name is this covered under maintenance and more importantly what makes you think we should fix something you did for free? #TakingLiberties

Free advice

Customer: "Hi Pete, can you tell me my browser type and number please?" Me: "What?" Customer:  "The bank has asked me in relation to a problem." Me: "They're asking you what browser you use." Customer:  "What's one of those?" Me: "What?" Customer:  "What's a browser?" Me: "It's what you go on the Internet with, do you use Explorer?" Customer:  "Yes" Me: "Well there you go then." Customer:  "Oh? And what about the number?" Me: "It will be on the about us" Customer:  "What's that then?" Me: "Left click the cog, click on about, there's the number they want." Customer:  "Oh" Me: "That'll be £65.00 please" Customer:  "Bwahahahaha" Sorry, did I say something funny?

Be specific!

I'm hungry! Me: "Can I have corned beef salad on a crusty baguette please?" Assistant: "We don't have any crusty baguette's." Me: "Crusty bread then?" Assistant:  "We don't have any crusty bread." Me: "Well what's that there then?" Assistant:  "That's a Panini." Me: "But it looks like a crusty baguette?" Assistant:  "Yes it does a bit." Me: "I'll have that then." Shoot me, shoot me now!

This is why you're miserable.

My journey into work this morning. Trapped in my cul-de-sac behind a refuse cart with a broken bin emptier thingy. Had to reverse back for a neighbour after the refuse truck moved which meant I missed the traffic lights so had to wait some more. Stuck behind a 187 year old woman doing 15 mile an hour. Woman at the filling station who had clearly robbed every child's piggy bank to pay for her fuel. Stuck behind a cyclist listening to his iPod and weaving all over the road so you cant get past. Stopped a woman from pulling across the front of me on a roundabout who was in the wrong lane.

Are you working?

Saw the funniest thing the other day. A persons hard drive had failed so their machine was taken away so it could be looked at. Twenty minutes later that person fell for the old "Quick here comes a manager, look busy!" routine and waggled their mouse to bring the non-existent PC to life. Bwahahahaha

In at the deep end.

Please. I've been effectively doing sales for 35 years now. Don't put people on phones who; Cannot think on their feet. Have no idea what they're selling! Caller: "Hello there, I understand you deal with apprenticeships? Me: "Yes" Caller: "We supply office apprentices." Me: "OK, I am actually looking for an IT Support Engineer at the minute.) Caller: "It's Office staff we deal with." Me: "Well they are office based although they do go out to customers sites." Caller: "Don't you have anything in admin?" Me: "Hmm? OK, so I might be looking for a Digital Media/ Marketing apprentice in a month or so." Caller: "Is that office based?" Me: "You have no idea of roles do you?" Caller: "Well we are more Office admin." Me: "With the greatest respect you keep saying that but tell me what are the roles that fall into the category of 'office bas

Fifty fifty chance

No emails for two days, apparently the individual "Knows what he's doing" Me: "So you'll need to go on the server and use our remote support program to let us on your server." Customer: "The question is, which server do I go on. The File server or the Exchange server?" So much for knowledge?

Are you for real?

Engineer: "Can you see a red A on your desktop?" Contact: "There is no red A on my desk just my phone, pad, computer........." #Faceplam

I can't help myself.

Mrs Miggins: "Hello Peter, last week you put an out of office on Zebadee's email and a customer sent us a quote but he sent it to Zebadee. Could you forward it to me please?" Me: "Ermm? Can't you just ask the customer to send it to you?" Mrs Miggins:  "He's not in his office." Me: "Can't you look on Zebadee's machine?" Mrs Miggins:  "We don't know the password." Me: "What time was the email sent?" Mrs Miggins:  "Oh, I'm not sure? It was Monday." Me: "But today is Friday!" Cut a long story short, I was given totally the wrong email address and the wrong day as well! Plus they only have a maintenance contract. Would you ring BT to get an email you wanted?

Buy from you?

Customer: "Hi, we are a customer of yours, we bought our PC's from you and have broadband and email from you." Me: "OK" Customer:  "I've been on the Dell and HP website and I need a square monitor not one of those widescreen ones. Can you tell me where I can buy one from?" [Are you for fooking real mate?] Me: "From me." Customer:  "Oh? Umm? OK. Can you tell me what you can get?" Me: "What size do you want? Customer:  "Let me measure this one, 19" inches. How about a 21" inch one." Me: "I'll get a price and come back to you." Customer:  "Well price will be important." I sometimes wonder if people know what comes out of their mouth or more importantly do they care what comes out of their mouth? Not only did he want me to tell him where to buy from, obviously not giving me the sale but then has no shame in trying the old "You'd best sharpen your pencil"

I've been hacked!

Customer: "We've been hacked! We had an email from a client telling us to pay someone which we did and now our client says they never sent the email." Engineer: "You've not been hacked. You've followed an instruction." Oops.

Going halves.

The wife has just called. Wife: "Virgin Media are here and they want to splice off our cable for next door." Me: "Tell them no!" Wife: "You tell them!" Virgin Media:  " It's not a problem it would only be for two weeks." Me: "It is a problem! You don't just turn up at my house and say I'm gonna splice off your cable, I get a bad enough signal as it is, catch up is hit and miss if you can watch it or not and as for navigating the box....!" Virgin Media: "Well I'll tell next door you said no then." Me: "I beg your pardon? Don't try and make out it's my fault! Why can't you just replace his cable?" Virgin Media:  "It's a two man job." Me: "So let me get this right, it takes one man to splice off my cable yet two men to re-run his cable?" Virgin Media:  "It's OK" Few second later. Wife: "He's doing it now." Me: "D

You're an idiot!

The supplier Supplier: "Hey Pete, I came in at 7:00am to get your five laptops out. I have just finished (9:05am) and was getting ready to box them up and realised you wanted 32bit!" Me: "You're an idiot, you've wasted the morning. Best bet, re-install, clone it, and image the others." Supplier: "Yeah." The Engineer Engineer: "Pete, all four of the machines have installed fine but SAGE refuses to install on the fifth one. I've tried it from USB, an external drive, I even replaced the ROM drive! I dunno what we are going to do?" Me: "You're an idiot, all five machines are the same hardware aren't they? So clone one of the four and then put that image on the fifth!" Engineer: "Oh yeah." I am surrounded by amateurs!

Non sum Romanum!

I sent out a flier yesterday for some Grade A Galaxy Tab III 8" tablets with a picture I hasten to add. This morning I had an email; Email: "Hi I'm interested in the 11" inch tablet can you also give me a price for Microsoft Office for it?" Doesn't anyone understand Roman numerals anymore?

Hurry up!

Customer: "Can you hurry your supplier up and get me a quote. As you can imagine it is not good for business to have broken equipment." Er, hang on. I didn't break it.

Knock something off.

Prospect: "If we supply our own graphics card can you take the graphics card out of the machine you've quoted and will that mean the price will drop?" Let me just take a screwdriver to the motherboard and bust off that chip!

Old Tom

So most of you will have heard my complaints about the difficulty in simply being able to order fish and chips from the chip shop? Well it would seem there are many other opportunities out there to eat up your lunch hour when trying to buy something. A well known UK car accessory outlet. Me: "Hi there can I have a Tom Tom Start 25 UK & ROF @ £99.99 please?" Assistant: "Do you want the maps for life?" Me: "Oh Christ, here we go! No thank you." Assistant: "Do you want the European maps?" Me: [Sobbing gently] "Could I just have the Tom Tom I asked for please?" Assistant: "OK I'll go and fetch one."

Four coaches.

I am living proof of those people who say "You know if I wrote a book about it nobody would believe it!" So I went to visit my daddy today in Birmingham QE hospital. I caught the train to Birmingham and had to change for University station. I spied a guy in blue offering platform information at Birmingham and made my way towards him. Mr Blue coat (I have no idea what they're called?) was just about to help a very smartly dressed guy who looked to be in his early twenties. Passenger: "Can you tell me where to go for the 13.20 to blah blah blah?" ( I forget where now ) Mr Blue: "Platform 7 sir." Passenger:  "Platform 7? You sure?" Mr Blue: "Yes sir, platform 7" Passenger:  "It says four coaches?" Mr Blue: "That's right sir." Passenger:  "So there's no tracks at platform 7 then?" Mr Blue: "I'm Sorry?" Passenger:  "I've never heard of coaches stopping at platf

I want it but I can't afford it.

So I run an 'Opt-In' mailing list predominately of refurbished PC's and Laptops. All the prices are excluding delivery and are Ex VAT. I had this begging email when I got in this morning. I regularly get your email updates, but all of the available machines are more expensive than I want to pay. I currently have a Compaq Pressario running XP, however it is extremely slow. I need an XP machine as I cannot afford to upgrade all of the software on the one I have. I also have a Dell laptop running Windows 7 (64 bit). This is the specification for my Compaq: Compaq  Presario 6207EA Microsoft® Windows XP Home Edition Service Pack 3 Celeron CPU 1.70 GHz 1.49GB RAM Maxtor 2F040J0 Hard Drive 40 GB Samsung SP0812N Hard Drive 80 GB (Secondary Drive) HL-DT-ST DVD-ROM GDR8161B TDK DVDRW161N Floppy Drive I know that the deal on your update below is a good one, and I could load XP instead of 7, but it is still quite a way above my budget. Could you let me know if you ha

Too many options

Back in the good old days when you was allowed to shove small boys up chimneys ordering fish and chips was easy. "Fish and chips please love." the only response you got was "Salt and vinegar darling?" sadly today is very different. Ask for fish and chips now and you'll get a whole barrage of "Is that a special?" Armed with this we went to the chip shop last night fully prepared for their annoying options. Me: [Full of smugness] "Can I have sausage and chips special please." Assistant: "Is that the £1.50 or £2.50 special?" Aaaarrrgghh WTF!  Ok ok lets move on. Me: [Full of trepidation] "Can I have kebab meat and chips please, OH WAIT! you only do small or large don't you?" Assistant: "No we do a breakfast special, a daily special, a mini special, small, medium or large." Aaaaaaarrrrrrggghh! Can I not just go in, order something, get served and leave? :'(

High IQ

Engineer: "Okay, put s&^jO0p+b in the password box" Customer: "What shall I put in the confirm password box?" Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhh

You can't make this stuff up!

Office bod: "Ello mate, is xyz there?" Me: "I'm afraid he left the office about fifteen minutes ago." Office bod:  "Well he sent me an email for a second twin monitor. Thing is I want one the same size as Eric" Me: "And what size does Eric have?" Office bod:  "A big one." Me: "A big one? Can you be more specific, what size is it?" Office bod:  "Umm? 58 inch is it?" Me: "I have no idea, measure it diagonally from corner to corner." Office bod:  "700mil" Me: [Deep sigh] "So 28" Inch then?" Office bod:  "Yeah, suppose so." Me: "What size is the monitor you currently have?" Office bod:  "19" inch" Me: "So do you want two 28" inch or just one 19" inch as they usually are the same size?" Office bod:  "I suppose the 19" inch" Me: "So what size is the one xyz quoted?" Office bod:  &q

Sale of goods act.

I do so love these people who spout "Consumer rights at you" and yet  have no clue whatsoever that they're talking out their derrière. Just had some moron rant at me that; Moron: "By law all new goods must come with 1 years warranty!" Me: "How many are you looking for?" Moron: "None! I'm just telling you you're breaking the law by giving 3 months warranty!" Me: "Lucky they are refurbished goods then?" Moron:  "What? Aye? Erm?" Clearly  he had not read the email properly or he would have noticed the range of warranties from three, six to twelve months. And the clear wording "Refurbished" on those that were, but what is even more interesting is this person is such a sad sack that they waste theirs and my time to score some sort of personal success by finding something which actually does not exist. I suspect he's a Guardian reader? :-)

Hi-Spec

Customer: "I need a Hi-Spec laptop something really stable for our business." Me: "Well we have another customer who is in your line of work, I supplied them yesterday with one for just under £2K" Customer:  "Yes, the Director was thinking about £1K" Me: "OK let me get a quote together for that and the other work you want doing." A few minutes later. Customer:  "The budget for the laptop is £600.00." And would you like me to throw in a box of crayons, some play-doh and a painting by numbers book? Hi-Spec pfffft

You rogue!

Customer: "This laptop you sold me is well dodgy!" Me: "What do you mean dodgy?" Customer: "There's no Windows 7 licence and when I went to register it someone has pulled the serial number off!" Me: "They're under the battery." click brrrrrrrrrrrrrr

When in doubt pull out.

Image
Customer: "I think our printers broken? I've tried two brand new toner cartridges and it won't print." Engineer: "Do you want us to come out and look at it? As you know it's chargeable." Customer: "You might as well get us a new printer." Engineer: "OK." Three days later. Engineer: "Hey Pete, you know that printer for xyz? I've installed the new one. I also found out what was wrong with the old one." Me: "What was it?" Engineer: "She hadn't pulled the safety tab off the side of the toner." Me: "Bwahahahaha"

One of them days!

I run an opt-in mailing list and send out something like 70+ PC's and laptops. As you'd expect there's a brief run down of CPU, Memory etc. So some bright spark sent me and email asking " Can you supply the generations of the CPU's and the CLOCK speeds of all the memory on every unit please. " Fook Off I quoted (Actually I under-priced it tbh) to replace a screen on a laptop, inadvertently I was not making any money on the actual screen but at least was making money on the installation. Had an email. "Do you have a courier service? If I send it to you it will cost money and I would expect a discount on the price you quoted." Fook Off

Here we go again ZenCart.

So I'm doing yet another ZenCart site for a customer. The latest version 1.5.1 requires PHP 5.5 which meant we had to set up a dedicated LAMP server, which actually is about time. I did all the usual PITA stuff of changing permissions on folders so it installs and that [supposedly] was fine. Now the default template is pretty nasty to say the least so I had a quick punt around and found a suitable one and installed that. But wait, what's this? WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again. Really? What kind of error? A hint would be nice? Now your first thought is "This must be a template related error as the default one works?"  so after some searching (And time wasting I hasten to add.) I find that supposedly ZenCart does not turn on Layout Boxes by default. You have to go in there and turn them on, but wait! WARNING: An Error occurred, please refresh the page and try again. WTF now? Oh yes, clicking on Tools -- Layout boxes controller

Eager

Colleague: "I understand you're moving, can we quote you for moving and setting up your equipment?" Prospect: "It's not even built yet!" Colleague: "Oh..........." #facepalm

Switch it off.

Customer: "Our servers broken!" Engineer: "When you say broken what do you mean?" Customer:  "We switched the plug on and pushed the button like we normally do and it has a black screen with text on it." Engineer: "You switched the plug on?" Customer:  "Yeah, of a night time when we've finished we switch the plug off." Engineer: "After you've shutdown?" Customer:  "No, it asks us questions when we do that so we just switch the plug off." Speechless.

Black Friday

I had a really bad day last Friday. Prospect: "I'd like to order one of those Optiplex 745's at £140.00 please." Me: "OK." Prospect:  "It will be for putting info in a spreadsheet. Just basic stuff." Me: "You do know there's no Office package?" Prospect:  "What do you mean?" Me: "There's no Office, you know, Word Excel etc." Prospect:  "But it says Windows 7 here!" Me: "That's the operating system." Prospect:  "Well how much is Office then?" Me: "I can do it for £165.00" Prospect:  "Does the Dell come with a keyboard and mouse? Me: "Not normally but I'll throw them in." Prospect:  "What monitors have you got?" Me: "What size do you want?" Prospect:  "I've no idea, I'll measure this one it's diagonal in't it?" Me: "Yes." Prospect:  "20" inch" Me: "

When can I have them?

Here's a good one. Ask me to look at the prices of my quotation. "Can you do anything on the price?" Ask me for slightly higher spec's. Aye? You just asked me to cut the base price? Ask me for a delivery date as well.  How the feck would I know when I have no idea what you're ordering?

Email expert.

Customer: "My emails won't go I keep getting an email saying there's a problem." Colleague: "Can you send me the bounce-back?" A few minute later. Colleague: "You've sent me the emails you're trying to send." #facepalm

If its four it must be less?

Customer: "I can't send this email?" Me: "That's because you have a 50mb attachment! You can't send attachments that size you'll need to split that zip file into four separate ones." A little later. Customer:  "I still cannot send this email!" Me: "What the...... You've attached the four zip files to the same email! That's still 50mb." #facepalm

White space.

Customer: "The download URL generated by our website is not working." Me: "TBH it has never worked." Customer:  "Yes it has!" Me: "OK, see the plus signs in this+is+my+file.pdf that is not a legal character in a URL it should be %20" Customer:  "OK?" Me: "I've turned on directory listing on on your website. Can you see all the documents now?" Customer:  "Oh yeah." Me: "So you would have got myfile.pdf but not my file.pdf you would have got anotherfile.pdf but not yet another file.pdf " Customer:  "Oh, that explains why sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn't." #facepalm

Not new?

So I was offering some generation 1 iPads for sale. Prospect: "Ello mate, you've got some iPad's for sale, what does iPad 1 mean?" Me: "It means they are first generation, the first iPad's they made." Prospect: "Oh, so they're old then? Me: "Well as I say they are the first ones released." Prospect: "They're not the latest ones then?" Me: "Not for £150 they're not!" If only I had more hair to pull out.

Anything cheaper?

I'm sorry but you've really fecked me off! You time waster. *Day 1*  "Thanks for the email on the refurbed base unit for £200 leave it with me." *Day 2* "These refubed ipads for £150 do you have them? Oh, you order them in. Let me think about it." *Day 3* "How much for a Samsung 10.1?" Why do I say time waster? £200 is clearly too much for him, £150 was probably too much for him and now he's taking the piss by asking about something that is clearly double the price of second hand equipment.

They don't come out?

Customer: "Is it possible to swap the battery on this HP 8440p?" Me: "For what?" Customer:  "No, can you take the battery out? I was in Currys looking at laptops the other day but they was no good as you couldn't remove the batteries." Me: "You don't think that was deliberate to stop people pinching them do you?" Customer:  "Oh!" Sheesh give me strength!

Give me your supplier.

Customer: "I see you have some Windows 7 pro laptops for sale, can you do them any cheaper?" Me: "I'm afraid not, we put very little markup on them and as they are refurbished they are very reasonably priced anyway." Customer:  "Seeing as it's pro I take it they come with Word and Excel?" Me: "I'm sorry, why would Pro mean that? No that is just the operating system, Office will be extra" Customer:  "What? They're not much use without Word." Me: "As I said, you can have Word/Office for an additional cost." Customer:  "Can you tell me where you buy them from please?" Me: "I'm afraid not." Customer:  "Why not?" Me: "Two reasons, one they only sell to Trade and two, why would I tell you that so that you go to them direct?" Customer:  "You're very rude?" Me: "I'm sorry you feel that way, I think we will leave it there. Goodbye."

Is it in yet?

Colleague: "I'm trying to boot off the ROM drive can you see any activity back there?" Me: "Nope" Colleague: "I'm rebooting, anything now?" Me: "Nope" Colleague: "Hang on I had the USB plugged in the front before, lets try that. Any joy?" Me: "Nope" Colleague: "Oh, hang on, maybe I need to put the CD in?" Me: #facepalm

Definition

Email #1 "What is the screen definition of the three laptops you are selling?" Me: "What do you mean by 'definition'? the screen sizes are two @ 14.1" inches and one @ 15.6" inches." Email #2 "Not size, definition like 1260x800!" Me: "Oh you mean 'Resolution' here are the links to the spec sheets." Email #3 "Precisely" Aye? I knew I should have become a Gibbon trainer.

Let me guess.

Why do people ring without the most basic of information? Customer: "Hi have you got an internal fan for a Dell Server?" Me: "Tower or Rackmount?" Customer: "Rackmount." Me: "Which model?" Customer: "Oh, I'll have to come back to you."

Back(up) to basics

Customer: "I haven't had an email to say that its failed but I don't think the server backed up. The tape was out the drive and I don't know if that was because nobody pushed it in or if it was ejected?" Engineer: "Have you tried pushing the tape in to see what's on it?" Customer: "Oh" Welcome to Monday morning.

Gizza loan.

Customer: "Hi we bought a cheap laptop from you but it does not appear to have MS Office on it, do you by any chance have a copy of Office we can borrow?" Speechless

Translating Customers Comments.

"I'm a friend of xyz" = "I want it really cheap or better still for free because I know xyz." "It says here delivery included, how much is the delivery?" = "I'll come and collect it and save myself the [Delivery cost] "

Free upgrades for life!

Me: "You need to make sure you are all running the same version of Office tbh." Customer: "Yeah but I bet you have to pay for the upgrades?" Am I really living an an alternate reality?

I just knew you'd say that.

Prospect: "I've had your email so we must be on your mailing list?" (No shit Sherlock!) Me: "OK" Prospect:  "I'm interested in three of the Dell i5 machines, I see they are refurbished can you tell me the history of them and what has been done to them?" Me: "I'm afraid not......................" Most suppliers have between 20 - 20,000 units they come from all sorts of places and for all sorts of reasons. Some need new parts, some just need a clean and some are in pristine condition and need nothing doing to them. Basically I only trade in Grade A. The machines come into the supplier and are graded, tested and offered for sale with varying lengths of warranty. They don't have time to write a frigging Bio on every unit. If you want a brand spanking new PC then "Pay the fooking price" if you don't want to pay full whack accept what you are buying then.  Me: "So three units plus delivery plus VAT is £12

The whole Internet is very slow.

Customer: "Hi Pete, any chance you can look at our Internet for us? We could do with it being a bit faster!" Me: "Hang on a moment while I just turn your dial up a couple of notches." Happy New Year.