Blame everything on 'computer error' – no one will contradict you Please pass on my regards to Mrs Cromwell for selling me her fig. What's that? You can't? Your email isn't working? Maybe that's because you are trying to log into Gmail with your Yahoo ID. That's right, they are different. They are supposed to be different. Yes, really. No, the computer isn't broken. You're broken, perhaps …
"Don't do anything and the problem is solved."
The French call it "laissez faire". Beloved of some British politicians when it comes to them making money by whatever means. However - they rarely apply that principle when legislating on what voters can do in their private lives.
Person in front of me today trying to pay with NFC on their phone.
A disturbing amount of bonking fails to release the goods, and requires manual attention before the payload is released.
Finally I can pay for my rapidly cooling coffee...except that the other teller is shouting, the card readers just gone down.
I reach into my pocket for change, lucky I am still old school and carry some real cash.
And Dabsy, just be thankful you didn't get an e-ticket and the train with the broken charging points. the railways are all pushing for these now, probably so that they can fire the (albeit cheap) sour faced sloth behind the counter.
"Finally I can pay for my rapidly cooling coffee...except that the other teller is shouting, the card readers just gone down.
I reach into my pocket for change, lucky I am still old school and carry some real cash."
You're using cash as the backup method - for me, it's the other way around. As a general rule, if I'm buying something over the counter in a shop, I pay with cash. The only exceptions are when I don't have enough cash on me (i.e. unusually large purchases - which is rare) or fuel. In the latter case, I always use pay at the pump at the filling station I use most often. I used to pay in cash, but a particular assistant there annoys me, and I just don't want to deal with him. (When I use other filling stations, e.g. when I'm away from home, I pay in cash).
"I reach into my pocket for change, lucky I am still old school and carry some real cash."
At times like that I think of the story I heard about Joseph Stalin:
Uncle Joe only carried pocket change. Whenever he wanted something it was given to him by a grateful public. Except when he took his nieces for a walk around Gorki Park and bought drinks at the vending machine. Vending machines aren't afraid of being sent to the gulags, you see.
Really I mean I hate why it's been implemented so badly by other humans.
Dabbs' experience reminds me slightly of a Оди́н день Ива́на Дени́совича Odin den' Ivana Denisovicha (I read it in English). No doubt Alistair Dabbs sat down that night and thought, "It could have be worse".
One day it will be. I don't fear Zombie attack, but ALL POS, Stock, Wages, ATMs etc outsourced to Cloud and one day it will go down. Like Potato famines (not just in Ireland), the Cloud is becoming a dangerous monoculture, apart from the fact a failure affects FAR more organisations than an in house system. There is "No Silver Lining" (a fantasy story about Cloud failure).
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I sent this to El Reg, but I guess they're not interested.
Please enjoy this absurd Dell Sales chat fail in all it's glory. Feel free to distribute far and wide.
Michael is the client.
Michael Initial Question/Comment: Why is it when I add a PC to my basket, there is nothing IN my basket? I cannot buy from the website!
14:14:28 System You are now being connected to an agent. Thank you for using Dell Chat
14:14:28 System Connected with christopher_j_oliver
14:14:34 christopher_j_oliver Welcome to Dell Business Sales & Finance, This is Christopher your Sales Advisor. Hope you are doing good!
14:14:36 Michael Hi Christopher
14:14:42 christopher_j_oliver Hi Michael
14:14:48 christopher_j_oliver sorry about that
14:14:52 Michael Frustrated by the Dell website that won't sell me a computer!
14:15:02 christopher_j_oliver can i please have the link of the model your looking to order?
14:15:12 Michael I've tried two browsers on two different PCs
14:15:25 Michael Optiplex 7050
14:15:31 Michael With Radeon card
14:15:34 Michael And SSD
14:15:56 christopher_j_oliver Would you like me to help you with the order ?
14:16:27 Michael N033O7050MT02
14:16:31 Michael I want to buy it myself.
14:16:42 Michael I'm not buying £1200 of computer via chat
14:17:00 christopher_j_oliver can i call and assist you ?
14:17:15 Michael Can you just fix your website?
14:17:19 Michael I can't be the only person
14:17:29 christopher_j_oliver please let me check
14:17:33 Michael How can Dell, of all companies, have a website that won't add a product to the basket?
14:17:41 Michael Your website is totally F'd up
14:19:24 christopher_j_oliver give me a minute please im checking on this
14:21:11 christopher_j_oliver Thank you for your patience.
14:21:23 christopher_j_oliver that one model is not in stock as of now
14:22:20 Michael Website says "Ships in 3-5 business days"
14:23:07 christopher_j_oliver it just got unavailable
14:23:22 christopher_j_oliver needs to be removed from the website
14:23:35 Michael So what is the new equivalent model then?
14:23:59 Michael Why am I the only person here with any common sense?
14:25:02 christopher_j_oliver http://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop/desktop-and-all-in-one-pcs/optiplex-7050-small-form-factor/spd/optiplex-7050-desktop/n044o7050sff02
14:25:07 christopher_j_oliver please check this model
14:25:32 Michael I don't want small form factor
14:26:17 Michael I don't want Intel graphics
14:26:31 Michael Should I just go buy Lenovo?
14:26:40 Michael The Chinese will happily take my money
14:27:24 christopher_j_oliver i would need to check on this and email you back
14:27:45 christopher_j_oliver would need to check if we are having any new upgrades on the bundles
14:36:19 christopher_j_oliver would that be okay ?
14:42:00 Michael You just lost a sale to Lenovo. Congratulations. Please let your Sales director know that he is a numpty
14:44:46 christopher_j_oliver sorry about that
14:54:27 christopher_j_oliver are we still connected ?
14:54:36 Michael We are.
14:54:44 Michael And I don't mean to give you a hard time.
14:54:48 Michael I know it's not your fault.
14:54:53 Michael But I AM Serious.
14:54:57 Michael I just bought a Lenovo.
14:55:18 Michael That's a sale that Dell lost because the organization is ..... what can I say?
14:55:23 Michael Not the Dell I used to buy computers from.
14:55:28 Michael I always bought Dell.
14:55:30 Michael Not this time.
14:55:34 Michael You couldn't sell me what I wanted.
14:55:37 Michael BIG LESSON
14:55:47 christopher_j_oliver sorry about that
14:56:22 christopher_j_oliver they is the new upgraded model that is getting update that is the reason that model is not available
14:57:02 Michael it's pointless you telling me that
14:57:07 Michael It's not 1996 any more
14:57:24 Michael "we don't sell it any more but it's still on the website" - is a big fat FAIL
14:57:39 Michael "We have a new model, but it's not on the website." - Big fat FAIL
14:57:50 Michael It's not 1996
14:58:00 Michael Ecommerce is not some newfangled fad
14:58:10 Michael You're Dell, for crying out loud
14:59:42 christopher_j_oliver il put this across to our team
15:02:03 christopher_j_oliver would they be anything else i can assist you with ?
15:02:09 Michael No thanks
15:02:23 christopher_j_oliver you take care and have a good day
For a few months last year, O2 were unable to take phone bill payments from my Barclaycard. The first month I made a one-off payment, using the same card. The second month, I told them their systems were broken (they, of course, insisted there wasn't a problem and it must be Barclaycard) and wangled a credit for the month. The third month, when I rang and got the "How can I help you today?", I responded "It's more a case of how I can help you". In the ensuing stunned silence, I explained to the helldesk drone how bulk settlements were done and my scale of charges for consultancy. I settled for another free month.
I don't actually know where the problem was. Apparently the back-room boys at neither O2 nor Barclaycard had noticed that settlement files (probably millions of pounds at a time) weren't working for months. One drone admitted that he'd had several other customers with the same problem "that day" and gave me an email address to escalate. Of course, the email address and website contact were out of date. So I carpet-bombed all the addresses and complaint channels I could find until I got an answer from someone who simultaneously denied the problem and promised to look into it & get back to me.
Unfortunately my free service and entertainment ended on the fourth month, and I'm still waiting for my consultancy payment. Now what will I do with my spare time?
Unless it's known you work in IT. Then it's your fault because you touched it last or you work with computers so you should know.
So doing that to a colleague at present. He fiddled with a server - now it is giving problems, and I just kick the ticket(s) back to him. Let him sort his own messes out.
Our local charity installed new POS machines in their shops. $deity knows what the UI is like but the previously competent volunteers struggled to register a sale. That was several years ago - and they still struggle with the incredibly numerous screen touches apparently needed for each transaction.
My comment is the old "Someone had a nice lunch out of buying those".
Ely Cathedral gave me the mental shivers. The internal architecture seemed to be a model for Mervyn Peake's "Gormenghast".
The Lady Chapel is interesting - still showing the damage to the niche statutes from the time of the iconoclasts of Henry VIII's reformation. Puritan Cromwell only used the cathedral as a stable for his calvary's horses.
The original builders showed some future IT characteristics. Build a large edifice on an unstable swamp - and then wonder why one of the twin towers collapses. That asymmetry then becomes a feature.
Pedant here:
...stable for his calvary's horses....
Calvary = the hill on which Christ was crucified
Cavalry = bunch of armed blokes on horses
Same number of letters, same letters, different order, different meaning.
Probably Microsoft spell correct. Check that you haven't got "evangelical (US)" mode selected?
"Probably Microsoft spell correct."
Yes and no. The WaterFox spell checker obviously didn't flag a posible typo - and my brain read what it knew should be there.
Transposed letters are one of the effects of old age on two finger typing. Your hands hit their assigned letters in the right order - but the finger synchronisation is slightly out. So - "va" for the left hand - "l" for the right hand which got ahead of itself.
Possibly an insight into the way the brain splits up a sequence of words into two strings of letters for left and right hands. Then it slips up on synchronising the actual keystrokes. It started many years ago with the common mistype of "teh" - which some word processors automatically correct on the fly. Then spaces started to be transposed with letters.
Sometimes whole short words get lost - like: "in"; "on"; "of"; "a". The brain quite happily fills in the gaps on subsequent proof reading. I find you can have mental checking of meaning or spelling - but generally not both on the same reading pass.
On the other hand it may be that the brain was doing subconscious validation - and decided that the religion associated word had a higher probability in the context of a cathedral. A sort of Freudian slip.
Yes and no. The WaterFox spell checker obviously didn't flag a posible typo - and my brain read what it knew should be there.
There's a point.
Anyone know of a good spellchecker for a browser better than the current 'just underline everything it doesn't recognise but not help like a smug teacher'.
I'm not using any grammerly stuff or anything that clouds the solution. There's a perfectly good dictionary on the system that should easily be able to provide corrections and not just 'mark my homework'.
Helpdesk analysis:
- "Faults" caused by not following instructions, switching things off, etc.: 20%
- "Faults" that aren't faults at all but the system operating exactly as designed: 20%
- "Faults" caused by literally performing obviously destructive acts (deleting files, rebooting and losing their work, clicking Don't save, restoring factory settings, etc.): 20%
- "Faults" caused by third-party software / services that aren't perfect but that we have zero control over (e.g. Word decides to crash, "why doesn't Microsoft just make a button for that", or the web service goes down, etc.): 20%
- "Faults" caused by users literally expecting miracles (e.g. why can't I edit this 50dpi scanned PDF as if it was just a Word table? Expecting their ID card (from the 20 other cards in their wallet) to magically open the door when it's 30 feet away from both the door and the card reader, etc.): 19.9%
- Actual, real, physical hardware faults: 0.1%
IT is a real shitshow of having to cope with other people's idiocy and inadequacies. Nobody expects the car salesman to be the guy ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR DESIGNING the new BMW or whatever, but in IT it that's exactly what they expect.
I had one just now - why can't we log into <web service provided by third party which has zero integration with our systems and was bought independently of the IT department>.
I don't know... have you tried their support line?
Sorry, it's still "not my problem, gov."
If they are blaming me, they need to identify the action I need to take to resolve it. Which I can do for them. And then likely nothing will change.
And, yes, had those conversations ANY NUMBER of times, for the big-boss and associates. Not once has it ever not been "They need to tell me what to do then". If it wasn't, it would already be fixed.
(P.S. "Just open up all your firewall ports, disable all security, run as administrator" is not a valid course of action. And NOT ONCE has it ever resolved any problem an outside vendor has experienced).
> Helpdesk analysis:
I get about 40% logging issues with other companies’ products with similar names.
> not following instructions
I don’t think I’ve ever had a support request from anyone who had even considered the possibility that there might be instructions, if they clicked on that big “? HELP” button on the main screen.
Except for one guy, who wanted it in PDF rather than HTML.
"IT is a real shitshow of having to cope with other people's idiocy and inadequacies."
I was repairing a couple of laptops the other day. An on-site call-out at a council IT helpdesk and I was there a couple of hours. Pretty much every call I overheard was a use asking how do do stuff. In other words, either they had not had enough proper training or possibly were just useless at using the tools provided. The IT support budget is being used to hide the cut-backs in the training budget.
Railway booking office staff are not necessarily as painted. Buying a ticket from our local station was nearly always a pleasant operation. It was often the apparently irrational customers ahead of me that seemed to prolong transactions unnecessarily.
One day I wanted a train ticket that appeared to be going to cost me over £200. Unbidden the counter clerk offered me a discounted fare of about £40. Then he pointed out that I might find it useful to buy an annual discount card that would chop another third off that and future tickets. Well worth it.
Try to be nice to people behind the counter of any business. They are a captive audience for the customers' foibles - like any IT support role. Make their day - and they will probably make yours too.
My local station is staffed with people like that. They seem to have the entire timetable in their heads, along with the entire fares table. They usually beat the split ticketing sites on price, and always beat the main ticketing sites.
It's good that trains attract a certain nerdy type that enjoys amassing lots of what looks like pointless information, but which when put together becomes a great example of big data.
"I applaud the few that do indeed know what is going on. They are a rare breed and constantly under threat from their own management."
I applaud the few that do indeed know what is going on. They are a rare breed and are a constant threat to their own managements jobs.
FTFY. Sadly the people who are great at frontline work usually get either stifled or promoted. If promoted, they may or may not be good in the new position, but whoever replaced them seems rarely to be as good.
Railway booking office staff are not necessarily as painted
Indeed not. But sometimes they do have their moments.. Many years ago in a place far, far away (Barnet) there was a ticket agent at the local main-line station who, while otherwise a splendid chap, seems consitutionally incapable of telling the difference between Plymouth and Portsmouth. Since I wanted to visit Plymouth (my then-girlfriend, now wife lived there) it was a tad disconcerting to realise that he'd sold me a ticket to Portsmouth..
I got into the habit of watching which keys he punched and got fairly adept at realising that he was about to sell me the wrong one.
I have lots of fun in a sad way, trying to get any long UK railway journeys cost down, by the booking the whole trip online into three stages, utilising as many off-peak tickets & as few peak tickets as available.
I brought the Glasgow to Exeter St Davids fare down to about 88 quid from 190 in a recent exercise to show Yanks at a convention.
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