Me: “What type of internet do you have?”
Customer: “Internet Explorer.”
Me: “No, sorry, I meant what type of internet, like your ISP?”
Customer: “Internet.”
Me: “No, what type.”
Customer: “Uh…modem?”
Me: “What kind of modem?”
Customer: “Black.”
Me: “Is it plugged into a phone cable or a coaxial cable? Like a cable you’d plug into your TV.”
Customer: “It’s plugged in to…the wall.”
e’s a silly incident which happened to me when I was trying to renew my account in a local ISP in Malaysia. I was trying to renew my account, and after consulting my computer dealer, I had to do it through the bank. Two days after I sent the money, I checked if my account was rebalanced and renewed. It wasn’t. My account had been terminated once last year — I was not even informed, and I only knew this after a ten minute session with technical support. I wasn’t enthusiastic about seeing another reoccurence, so I sent a message to the ISP, stating, “I reviewed my account but it seemed that it had not been updated yet. Please do it so as it may be an inconvenience if my account is terminated without notice again like the last time.”
It may apparently be a simple request, but the ISP botched it. They thought I was asking them to terminate my account — and send a notice about it. I was given a notice politely telling me that my account would be terminated within three days.
I work for a large ISP. In the middle of a call, suddenly there was a piercing high pitched beeping noise in the background.
Me: “What is that noise?”
Customer: “Hey Martinez!! I’m on the phone! Cut it out!”
Me: “What was that?”
Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Me: “What is that noise?”
Customer: “It’s from a device.”
Me: “What kind of device?”
Customer: “I don’t know.”
Me: “Like a fax machine or something?”
Customer: “I don’t know. Someone is under house arrest or something.”
I work in the technical support department for a national ISP. One day, I was listening to the conversation of a tech next to me talking to a very frustrated woman. Apparently she had been having trouble getting online with our software, and the previous tech had her go into Dial-up Networking to create a new connection and get her online, so she could then download our software. That, amazingly, had been successful, but she was calling back to complain that when she had finished downloading the software and opened the CDROM drive, there was nothing in there.
The tech replied, in his thick Australian accent, “Ma’am, this is not a vending machine.”