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!

At some point over the weekend, or Monday somebody decided to try and annoy us.

I am guessing this “Prankster” must have had a spam phone call, and decided to google the number, finding the company name of where I work. We are a Telecommunications provider and sell phone lines and numbers. Apparently people do not understand that the company that sold the number is not the one who made the phone call. I guess people are dumb!

Well, this annoyed person decided that if they got a spam call, then we could have one as well. They then spent what must have been hours filling in every “call back” form they could find online, asking for a phone call about health and safety training, lead acquisition, training, hiring work experience people, etc. Using our Phone number and email address.

Which means we have had dozens of calendar requests, and people phoning us back to discuss what we require. They are getting very apologetic when we explain its a false request.

I do not think it has worked out like the “Prankster” wanted, all they have done is upset all the people calling, and us? We do not care, it beats working. Also, since all the online forms which were emailed to us contained the “Pranksters” IP address, then they must be expecting this to escalate into a “Prank War!”

And if there is one thing you never want to do, is to start a Prank War with a bunch of SysAdmin.

Every so often I like to dip my toe into the world of IT Support, to remind myself how glad I am that I do not work in that field.

I recently checked the support departments ticketing system and spotted someone with email issues. I checked into the issue and found the following.

Company has two domains, one with us and one with someone else. Now one person at that company is trying to send emails from Domain 1 (Not with us) using Domain 2 (with us) domain servers.  I let them know, and sat back happy to have done my good dead for the year.

Only the Company did not understand, so emailed back asking for more information, I explained again using smaller words. They still did not understand, so they got their IT company to contact us. (I get to play now). Now their IT person simply demanded that we reset everything how it used to be when it just worked.

I explained that nothing had changed our end, we do not support their email client setup, and again stated what the error was.  This confused their IT person who then over 12 emails kept stating he understood but there was an email issue now that did not used to exist, so I needed to reset it back to how it used to be.

I looked up the IT guy, and he worked for an actual IT Company that advertises that they are experts in all fields of IT, and especially in cyber attacks, fighting off hackers, recovery from hacks, everything. So I tried again and used really small words. that the customer was sending emails from a domain we have nothing to do with through our servers which does not work. They need to send emails from the server associated with their domain. I then spent the next half hour laughing loudly when this super qualified IT expert responded.

“To clarify my customer does not have to use an email server as they using 365”

I had to explain to an IT expert that 365 setup on outlook still uses servers, Microsoft email servers. And if they send the emails with the Microsoft 365 servers, and not ours then the emails will work.

Do modern day IT experts get their knowledge and qualifications in the bottom of a cereal box, like we older ones got our Cap’n Crunch whistles?

Today we made a decision.

Covid is getting more worrying, and the bottom floor of our building are individual office’s rented out to various companies. Among them are, a child therapist, a normal therapist, a masseuse, and a chiropodist. Now the majority of patients entering the building at the moment are the elderly (AKA the most at vulnerable).  

We had an informal meeting today and decided that even though we are out of the way on the top floor, we may still pose a threat to the elderly. Since we can work remotely with no inconvenience at all it would make sense for us to abandon the building for a while.

We have therefore decided to implement “work from home” until the worst is over.  

Not all heroes wear capes!

*Phone rungs*

Me: “Good afternoon, Insane Asylum!”

Caller: “Hi. can I speak to Joan Crawshore please.”

Me: “Who? Sorry no one of that name here.”

Caller: “Sorry it’s who I have down as a contact there, well who can I talk to about changing your power supplier.”

Me: “Humm. that would be a Dave Jones”

Caller: “Can I speak to them please?”

Me: “Sorry, He’s on holiday atm. He’ll be back in 2 weeks.”

Caller: “Thanks, I’ll call back then.“

Two weeks later :-

*Phone rungs*

Me: “Good afternoon, Insane Asylum!”

Caller: “Hi. can I speak to Dave Jones please.”

Me: “Who? Sorry no one of that name here.”

Caller: “Sorry it’s who I have down as a contact there, well who can I talk to about changing your power supplier.”

Me: “Humm. that would be a Thomas Evens”

Caller: “Can I speak to them please?”

Me: “Sorry, He’s on holiday atm. He’ll be back in 2 weeks.”

Caller: “Thanks, I’ll call back then.“

Two weeks later :-

*Phone rungs*

Me: “Good afternoon, Insane Asylum!”

Caller: “Hi. can I speak to Thomas Evenss please.”

Me: “Who? Sorry no one of that name here.”

Caller: “Sorry it’s who I have down as a contact there, well who can I talk to about changing your power supplier.”

Me: “Humm. that would be a Susan Jenkins”

Caller: “Can I speak to them please?”

Me: “Sorry, She’s on holiday atm. She’ll be back in 2 weeks.”

Caller: “Thanks, I’ll call back then.“

This may have been going on for several months now….

I’m slowly running out of made up names.

So the other day the Support Guys were a bit confused over a request in the Ticketing system.

Subject: Website URL’s

Please could you set the following websites to point to IP 192.168.123.2

www.******.co.uk
www.******.co.uk
www.******..co.uk
www.******..co.uk
www.******..co.uk
www.******..co.uk

******= to protect identity.

The more observant amongst you will have noticed that is a Local IP address, and if Websites are pointed at it they will not work for anyone else in the world. So We queried the IP, and asked them to double check.

Imagine our surprise when they responded telling us that was what their IT company was saying needed to be done, or they would not be able to create email accounts on the exchange server.

Yes. Apparently an IT form needed websites pointing to a 192.168. Local address before they could create new accounts on an Exchange server on a different IP range/network.

This leads us to a conflict of interest.

Professionalism V “The Customer is always Right”

Dear Constant Reader,

I got into the Insane Asylum this morning to find the following email on your support system, and it was too amusing not to share 😉

Enjoy!

F*cking iPhones. His iPad has exactly the same settings as his iPhone. iPad connects and retrieves email. iPhone does not. Have advised him to test it against a brick wall.

iShit really is the spawn of the Devil. You would NOT believe the problems I have with them (or perhaps you might). Wi-fi connection seems a favourite one. Happy to connect to one AP but not another (same manuf, same encrypt etc…).

They are as shi**y as a very shi**y thing.

You can tell I’m not happy.

Ps. Until a few months ago I had a mac. Just for testing purposes. I need blood pressure medication and I had to get rid of it for medical reasons. The day some dork won the eBay bid was one of the happiest of my life…

This morning as I was in the Support Office attempting to dismantle a multimeter using a Swiss Army Key (Long story and totally Irrelevant here) the following conversation happened between OfficeBitch1 and myself. I should point out OfficeBitch1 (A name given him by TheGovernor)  used to be the main Support Guy of the Asylum many years ago, and has recently come back one day a week to get himself back into IT.

OB1: “I cant log in!! Has my password been changed?”

OB1: “Stupid keyboard is broke! the m key doesn’t work, no wonder I cant log into my account”

WO: “The m key is broke? do the other keys work ok?”

OB1: “Yes, everything is fine bar shift-m”

WO: “Hang on, lower case m works? just shift-m doesn’t?”

OB1: “yes. m works by itself, it doesn’t with shift”

WO: “Why don’t you use caps lock then?”

OB1: *Typing* “arrgh That doesn’t work either!!!”

WO: “Did you turn caps lock off after you typed the M?”

OB1: *mutters* *types*

In his defence, the issue was that he was using the wrong email address as his username, and he had his laptop set to numlock so the m was in fact a 0. Even still I feel for anyone phoning the Asylum today for support.

Update:

I was right in worrying. I just had a simple “add this text to dns record” support ticket escalated to 3rd line Server support on the one day of the week when we have double the normal amount of support guys in. Apparently Cut & Paste is too advanced for 1st & 2nd Line Support.