r/TalesFromTechSupport - Switch The Monitors They Said... It'll Be Quick They Said...

0:00So good, so good, so good. Spring styles are at Nordstrom Rack stores now, and they're up to 60% off. Stock up and save on Ragnbonne made well. Vince, all scenes and more of your favorites. How did I let no rack as a deedus? Why do we rack for the hottest still? There's so many good brands. Join the Nordie Club to unlock exclusive discounts, shop new arrivals first and more. Plus, buy online and pick up at your favorite rack store for free. Great brands? Great prices. That's why you rack. Two teams, one cup. The prime time stage is set for the TGL presented by SoFi Finals, Los Angeles Golf Club versus Tiger's Jupiter links. Keep up, it's playoffs. Tune in Monday, March 23rd, 9 p.m. Eastern on ESPN 2 and Tuesday, March 24th, 7 p.m. Eastern on ESPN and on the ESPN app. Hey everybody, Rob here, down in the print room today. I do hope every single one of you is having a wonderful day today. I can't really throw my voice right now because I just had another oral surgery on my mouth

1:04yesterday, where they actually cut open my lower palate, mandible, whatever it's called, and chipped out some more bones from inside so that my teeth would fit in properly. That's so much fun. So we're healing on that one right now. I'm on some stuff that makes it feel better at the moment, but also makes me quite tired and not really wanting to do anything else. I recorded two stories a couple days ago from Tales from Tech Support and I'm going to pop them up now, although it's, I don't think it's even an eight minute long video. Hope you guys enjoyed this one. I'm going to toss together a malicious compliance compilation from stuff that I've done recently and hopefully that will guide you all over for a few more days until I'm ready to get right back to recording and everything working properly here again, although I do like my smile now. That's pretty cool. Anyway. Let's just jump right in. Thank you again, everybody for your patience with me getting through this whole dental journey thing and I hope to be back to recording as soon as I can.

2:05So let's jump right in. This story comes to us from Elise SWL, the mystery of the dark phone screen. I am the de facto IT person for my current job in a residential program for people with disabilities. So much so that I'm interviewing for the agency's actual IT department next week. If not all of the clients with the agency received some form of government assistance, which can include being given free cell phones. In my experience, these are usually budget friendly androids with low-res LCD screens that are pretty accident prone. A few weeks ago, a client that has one of these phones began complaining to a coworker of mine about the phone being broken despite only getting it a couple of months ago. Having not actually looked at the phone themselves, the coworker said something about it during a team meeting to the tune of, client says that their phone is broken, the screen is too dark, and they can't see anything on it. Client is asking us to help them call the service provider about getting a new one. In my mind, I'm thinking, what do you mean too dark? Let me look at it.

3:06But it's my 4.45 pm on a Friday, so I figured it'll get handled over my weekend. I get back in the office and read the shift reports from the previous two days. Here is a brief synopsis of what they said. On day one, my coworker reported having called the service provider and they said they would be sending the client a verification email within 24 hours before proceeding with replacing the phone. This coworker emphasized that the screen still couldn't be seen well and was actually getting worse. They said that the client would need help with being able to use the phone to even access her email because the screen was so dark. On day two, the coworker reported that the client had denied getting any emails several times. The coworker said that they've continued to reach out to the service provider. They said the service provider was being incredibly difficult because they refused to do anything without the verification pin from the client's email. coworker said they would continue to reach out after they got back in the office and asked me to continue to keep an eye out for Schrodinger's email.

4:07After reading all of this, I'm staring at my computer like the confused math lady. I processed the information for a minute or two, then I get up and walk down the hall to the client's bedroom. I tell them that I've heard about their phone situation and asked to take a look at it. They give it to me and the screen is indeed very dark. I opened the little Android widget menu from the top of the screen and low and behold, the brightness was all the way down. Jumping down to the comments on this one we have one from a user called euphoric series 1194. It says, the fact that your coworker spent two days escalating this to the service provider instead of checking the settings is true horror. I'd like with the interview for the actual IT department. Opie responded and said, I genuinely believe to this day that she wouldn't have stopped until the phone got replaced. Another commenter down below called Z4 driver said, if you're close enough to the user, in such a case, it's support 101 to first go and take a look at the phone yourself. So you can check if it's just the brightness turned down or the phone turned off.

5:10Only if that doesn't help you contact the service provider or whatever appropriate instance for further support, change of device, or such. Opie responded and said, apparently this is not common sense to most people. I think most of us who have knowledge about IT services know that the most common, simple answers are the ones you should always go through first, because 90% of the time, those are going to be the ones that fix the issue. The fact that this was escalated for two days just for a brightness slider is actually horrible. This story comes to us from Speddy23, a tale of two screens. Back at an MSPI worked at, we had a customer that had a room with two computers. Let's call these two computers, computer A and computer B. Each computer had a single monitor connected to a single monitor arm. The customer, let's call them Gene, requested a quote to change computer A to have dual screens. But we quote them for an extra screen, dual monitor arm and one hour labor.

6:13The minimum for onsite visits to swap out the single monitor arm for a dual monitor arm, move the existing screen over and install the extra screen. Gene accepts the quote, we negotiate a day to do the job when Gene is away for the day and hence the room is also free. And I attend to do the job on the schedule day. Right at the end, basically as the job is done and I'm packing up, someone pops in and says, oh great, the second screen is here. But it's actually meant to go on that computer, gesturing to computer B. I check the request and confirm this is for computer A and demonstrate this to that person. Ah, yeah, Gene and I were discussing this the other day and originally it was going to be computer A, but we decided it would be best on computer B. Gene must have told you the wrong computer, it's meant to be on computer B. Can you please change it to computer B? Gene is away for the day, so I can't verify it with Gene. I take this person's word for it, a little annoying, but I reverse the install I just did,

7:14then do it on computer B. So now, computer B has the dual screens and the dual monitor arm. All up, the job now took a bit over 90 minutes, but we quoted for it and only charged for 60 minutes. The next day, Gene is back, Gene emails us and asks why computer B has the two screens when it was asked to be on computer A. Of course, I get asked about it and mentioned that someone who I don't know their name mentioned it was intended for computer B. Not getting this person's name was a fault on my part. We replied to Gene's email and tell her that someone we don't know the name of mentioned it was meant to be on computer B instead. Gene disputes this, Gene mentions she wouldn't know who would have said this, but it was quoted and accepted for computer A not B. And as such, we should come out and fix this at no cost. We agree. I attend that afternoon and swap the dual screens and arm back to computer A, which is 90 minutes of unbillable time plus to cost them a trip out there.

8:15My boss is a little annoyed at me that I cost him unbillable time, but understanding that these things happen. A few days later, we get an email from Gene. Gene mentions that she has been made aware that Roger let us know on the day we installed the dual screen that Roger made the tech aware that the dual screen was meant to be installed on computer B. As we were aware of this and the dual screen was installed on computer A, we will need to swap this to computer B at no charge to them. My boss clearly remembers Gene's dispute before, so replies back giving her two options. In one, we can gladly swap this over at no charge, however, as this now demonstrates a previous dispute was based on a claim that is now disproven, we first want to charge for the 90 minutes for the time taken to resolve the dispute, previous email attached. Option two, we completed the job exactly as requested in writing to change these over will be a new job and we quote you 90 minutes. Gene took option three, don't reply.

9:18We never followed this up further as it wasn't really worse the effort, but for this client, all future requests needed to be in writing. We were extra sure to do exactly as requested. So you mean to tell me that somebody came into the room, told OP to put the monitor on a different computer, but they weren't on the work order and they never got that person's name or that person's position in the company. This is completely on OP, like what the heck.