Years ago I was working for an ISP, in the internet repair department. Daily life was wifi reset, it's slow, it's not working. But every now and then you get a real gem.
Got a call from this lady out in Texas, she had signed up for services at her new place and because the company couldn't bother spending money on a smooth start of services they told her to go to the local store and pick up her equipment. For the record this process fails nearly every time but what do you expect from cost cutting.
Well she calls us up, shockingly it's not working, so I go through my spiel for troubleshooting asking about the lights or connectors on the modem. This lady with all the confidence in her voice stated, "Oh it's still in the box."
After taking a pause to not laugh I start explaining that the modem needs a cable connection, blah blah blah. Then she cuts across me and states, "But they told me it was wireless." š¤¦āāļø
It's WireLESS, not WireNone
Also, say the wireless she thought was accurate. You would still have to remove it from the box to use it as why would it be so simple that you don't even have to open the box?
Given the number of customers Iāve talked to that refer to any piece of telecom equipment as āthe boxāā¦ wellā¦
Back in the day when I was working support for a company that had a of not-necessarily-technical users working from home, we spent a lot of time saying things like "it seems like there's a problem with the connection between the hockey puck and the breadbox; can you unplug both ends and plug it back in?"
For reference, the "hockey puck" was some Alcatel DSL modem that was approximately hockey-puck sized and the "breadbox" was the headless Linux SFF (by late noughties standards) PC we used as a firewall/router/VPN endpoint/file transfer staging area/kitchen sink.
Many years ago my daughter had a job doing support for self installs of DSL internet. One older man could not find the patch cord to connect the DSL modem to the wall connection. She assured him one came in the box and he swore there wasn't one. She looked at his address and realized he lived in the area and she knew exactly where. She started fantasizing about driving to his house and strangling him with the cord that wasn't there. Instead she transferred the call, grabbed her stuff and quit. Not really a waste, she was already engaged to a man she had met there. They now have a nine year old daughter.
I was once having breakfast in a hotel before going to a customer site. I had my company shirt on and some guy stopped me "Do you work for <company>?" I responded that I did. "That thing you guys make, the <company name>, its too complicated."
At the time we made about 20 different products. I supported 4 of them.
"Which product would that be sir?"
"The <company name>, its too complicated."
It turned out he was referring to our base model software, the one that had "Step:1, Step: 2, Step: 3" in big letters at the top of the screen. The one that was regularly praised in reviews for being the easiest software of its kind...
Somehow it didn't surprise me that he didn't know the product had a name.
worked at an isp as well (Belgian isp). dutch.flemish word they used for box was "bakske". But that could refer to the modem or the tv receiver.. try to figure out which one they had to reset was a nightmare.
When I worked in a tech shop in the mid 2000s I had a lady bring her laptop in for service, claiming it wouldn't boot. I started the intake process and asked if she had the power cord, and she said "Why would I have that? It's supposed to be wireless isn't it?"
I had to explain how laptops and batteries worked, this was during the WiFi G rollout so everything was being heavily marketed as wireless. Just so happened that I had another laptop already on the bench for service of the same style, plugged it in and booted right up. She was an older lady, a bit embarrassed but nice enough about the whole thing.
I think "heavily marketed as wireless " is the key phrase. Too few marketers and sales people understand the slightest thing about what they're pushing so it's no wonder people who buy based on marketing or sales patter don't understand what they're buying.
Nah, it's not that they don't understand that the machine isn't totally "wireless". They know the laptop needs a power cord, and that the modem connects to the coax, etc.
It's not like you could explain to them "hey, the laptop does have cables that connect to it" and they would say "oh my bad, we won't brand it as wireless, 3d vision, vr ready, Ai enhanced"
Because they are marketers, they only care about driving up sales. They'll say whatever they believe will push the most #s. Even if it's mostly a lie.
Thank you for reminding me of a customer who called in, we tried everything to get his program running and had to go to it must be the router vs the software, tell him to start checking things on the router at which point he tells us he has to unwrap the routerā¦ from the tinfoil heād wrapped it in to keep the government out
"Well sir, keeping it unplugged and wrapped in tin foil will keep them out. Unfortunately it will also keep you out, so it's not very practical all things considered."
I was once troubleshooting my own Wi-Fi and could not figure out why I couldn't get a good signal in the den which was the next room over from the one the router was in when I hadn't previously had any issues. Went through all the troubleshooting steps that I could think of and nothing was working. I finally noticed that there was a wicker basket next to the router on the Shelf that I didn't remember being there and I pulled it down off the shelf and it was full of colored strips of some type of metallic foil. And I had to ask the household who put the basket of random metal foil right next to the router? Then I explain to them that they were the reason the Wi-Fi had not been working very well.
You had to separate the Wi-fi from the chaff, and then give somebody a verbal threshing.
ššš
Chaff was reused as Christmas tree tinsel, probably the reason it was in the house.
š¤£ Nice!
Yep, it's like keeping thieves out by welding your front door shut. Works great right up until you need to get in. :p
An excellent analogy. I'll use it next time I have to explain it to someone... if I remember it.
I mean...the internet's just, like, in the air right? Shouldn't have to "connect" anything, right? /s
Sheesh...
Aethernet
Cue drum riff.
"hey, I'm can't connect to the cloud, the sky is all blue, it's completely empty, there's no cloud to be seen, I can't work Help!!" /s
This reminds me of a time very early in my call center career. Lady calls in, no internet. Typical troubleshooting, so I ask her to unplug it and plug it back in. I get the response that itās wireless so thereās nothing to unplug. I tell her that it needs power, so itās definitely plugged in somewhere. She says just a minute and sets the phone down. In the background, I hear her absolutely screaming at someone āYOU TOLD ME THIS WAS WIRELESS NOW I LOOK LIKE A FOOL!ā After a few minutes of silence, a manās voice comes on the phone and we continue troubleshooting like nothing happened.
"but it's wireless!"
"...ma'am, we are the CABLE company"
Oh sorry. Looks like I got put through to Cable Side of company. Can you put me through to Wireless Side?
The common sense that flies out of peopleās heads is amazing. I was helping an older lady on a new software and she said āwhat do I enter here?ā I pointed to the field label, saying āFirst Nameā, the help at the bottom of the screen that said āEnter the Clientās First Name here.ā, and the Last Name field being right next to it. Ugh
Sadly, a lot of people would rather be told what to do than have to read and comprehend anything.
On a sort of related stupid remark, someone I know is a solar installer and he told me that a customer got their solar setup and casually asked how it works at night
They told him it won't generate power at night and it will just power the house from the grid. He was pretty livid that the sales people never told him this and he had assumed it would generate power 24/7
He managed to con the company into giving him a discounted battery system to go with itĀ
Hm. Considering how sales just push sales even with lies or omissions. I'd say it was fair enough he got a discount on the battery setup.
I don't think it needs to be said that solar panels don't work at night though. It's common senseĀ
Sadly, common sense is in short supply these days. The sales guy probably promised it to deliver power 24/7,365.
A few months ago I had a customer who simply put her fiber ONT on a sideboard without connecting it to anything but power, she also was thinking it was "all wireless". (RTFM!)
I once read that some people don't realize that their laptop battery needs to be charged. So they discard the charger after unboxing.
And I've heard some discard the computer AND BUY A NEW ONE. /Facepalm
Yeah. I wish I could have a crack at their trash bin every week.
No kidding. I'd fish those out. Buy a charger. Re image them and re sell or use them. Especially for their perfectly good and haven't been rained on
There are probably other good things in there, too! I got a decent bicycle once when I was driving through a nice neighborhood on trash day eve
I did tech support for a local ISP years ago... More than one time I would have a customer on the phone that I told to turn the computer off then back on. They would inevitably tell me that the screen didn't change. They had turned the monitor off and back on instead of the computer. Yup. FML.
I'm about to go "wireless" for our house phones when AT&T takes my nice twisted pair back to the CO away. Not looking forward to it, but it is what it is. I'm an Electrical Engineer on the Internet since 1990s with built-in Ethernet jacks around the house and phone jacks there, too. I think/hope it won't be too much of a hassle.
If itās like most āPOTS in a Boxā replacements, it will be a 4G/5G cellular router combined with an analog telephone adapter. One (or more) RJ11 jacks that can connect to your existing inside wiring.
There are fiber gateways that have provisions for analog phone service as well. Cable companies often offer similar services on their devices.
Yes, it's exactly that. This one can connect via 4G cellular or Ethernet to our Internet. I will be connecting it to our existing wiring on the phone side. I won't be able to use our legacy rotary dial phone with it. :(
https://www.usbtypewriter.com/
Cool. We have an Underwood #5 from the 1920s, but I think we'll keep it stock as it's been in the family all these years.
to be fair at times in the past Intel and other vendors have published futuristic articles promising wireless power distribution
If that ever actually releases to the public, you know some idiot is going to get it installed, and then line their walls with tin foil to protect themselves from it... The charger will either detect something's wrong and not work, or it won't detect something's wrong, and set their house on fire.
Either way the customer will complain. A lot.
As a former Spectrum employee, you would be suprised at how many people only want the wifi not the internet.
TBF, I've got a WiFi that's not internet (dedicated WiFi between house and garage for my security cameras).
I do realise that's an edge-case tho :)
This is an edge case and you have a use for it. They mean they were sold only wifi they dont need the internet thats why they got the wifi. The actualy argument I was given
As someone who was in tech support in another life, I remember customers like that.
Back in the early days of radio (then called 'wireless') a British gent visited a transmitting station. His response? "I don't know why they call it wireless. I've never see so many wires before in my life!"
I used to install cable. Responded to failed self installs all the time. Most of the time it was something dumb like this, but one time some jackwagon 3rd party retailer sold this lady a full package (Phone, internet, TV, Home security) in a block we had infrastructure. I knew when I loaded the job in my work queue what was going on, and the greasy little shit that sold her that stuff had to have known too. I don't know why the system didn't block him out of selling it. Maybe they figured some kind of work around or something. Crap like that happened all the time with those folks.
*in a block we had NO infrastructure.
Use cordless phones as an analogy to explain.