It has been a while since I have had a customer rant on here, I have tried to be “professional” but this one ended up tapdancing on my last nerve. We are talking two days dealing with a ten minute task.
We have one customer who requires a SSL Certificate on their website, but like to try and save money and get their own certificate instead of paying for one of ours. They then pay us to install it for them. This normally ends up when you add our install fee, plus their certificate fee, a saving of around £10. But it is still a saving (Normally).
So our fun starts on a Monday morning, at one minute past our phones going live for the day, when we received an email.
Customer “OUR SITE HAS BEEN DOWN FOR AGES, I HAVE EMAILED YOU. INSTALL OUR CERTIFICATE!!!!”
Now, as a pointer to you all, this is never the best way to get anyone in IT to do what you want. We IT people tend to be a special kind of person who will move annoying people to the bottom of the work queue. Read the BOFH before dealing with IT people. This counts double so for a Monday morning, especially if you have not emailed in any requests, or you only just sent it and it has not reached its destination yet.
Me “Oh, we have no email from you yet, did you just send it?”
Customer “Our site has been down for days. We urgently need the certificate installing”
Me “ok, I can see an email from you. I will install that now”
Well. Not only did he email with a subject line of URGENT, and was phoning up chasing up his request that he had only just sent. And if their site is so important, why wait until the certificate runs out before replacing it.
But, I am nice (shut up! I try) so I go to install the certificate and find out they only sent a windows certificate for a Linux server.
Me “can you send the PEM apache certificate and key”
Customer “Sent”
Me “No, you just sent a PEM certificate. We also need the key”
Customer “here you go”
Me “No, that is just the certificate with a different name”
Customer “Try these”
Me “again, that is multiple zip files all containing the certificate with different formats. we need the key you signed the request with”
Customer “what is a key?”
This back and too went over several dozen emails, and phone calls. I even had to explain how certificate requests are created. I explained the software used, and eventually I got enough files in different formats I was able to generate a certificate and key. So I install it, check the site and report it is up.
Customer Phones “OUR SITE IS STILL BROKEN!!!”
Me “Really? I can see it is running fine.”
Customer “The certificate is not installed. re do it!”
Me “I can see your website is live and certificate works.”
Customer “NO IT IS NOT!!! IT IS AFFECTING US!!!!”
Me “What are you seeing? I can see it is fine, I can also see you got a three month free certificate, so we will need to install a new one in three months.
At this point the customer emails me a screenshot showing the certificate errors he is getting. And I can see that he is on a different site, a subdomain that is not their website.
Me “That is not your website. That is a subdomain you need to install the certificate on that. We only look after your website”
Customer “Here is a copy of the certificate, install it”
Me “That will not fix that site, we only host your www website.”
Customer “This is affecting our business. Fix the pointers and certificate”
Me “We do not manage your DNS, we do not manage your domain, we do not host or manage your subdomains, we only host your public facing website which is working.”
I figured that was the end of it.
Tuesday morning, while checking my work emails I see several from the Customer yelling that their company is being strongly affected by this issue, their site is still down and it is affecting them. He has even copied another IT company in to offer us help fixing the certificate issue. I email to ask in what way is his site affected, I can see it is ok.
Customer “The certificate is still broken. the other IT company says to check your pointers”
Me “What pointers? your public website is fine.”
Customer “The site is down we need this fixed now, it is damaging our business!”
Me “is this your public facing website or the subdomain site?”
Customer “The public site is fine. You need to check the pointers. Godaddy says the certificate is not installed, and the site is down”
Me “we do not manage your DNS. we do not manage your pointers. we do not manage your email. we do not manage your domains. we do not manage anything other then your public facing website.”
Two full days I have been dealing with this guy, trying to get him to understand that his issue is nothing to do with us, has never been anything to do with us, and he needs to talk to whoever manages that for them.
I swear there is stupidity, but this level needs a need classification.
Uber-Stupidity!