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We have gotten phone calls from people wanting help running and installing completely unrelated software, in some cases on platforms we don't even develop for.

We have gotten phone calls from people wanting help running and installing completely unrelated software, in some cases on platforms we don't even develop for. We don't publish a phone number for tech support anymore and this sort of service request is more common than actual tech support on our own products, which is nearly always done through email. The people telephoning fairly often will say something like: "I didn't want to waste your time with an email, I just have a quick question that won't take a moment. I am having trouble installing Outlook 97 on a computer I got at an auction, it's an SGI Workstation?" "I'm not sure why you're calling, we don't produce or support Outlook, that version has been obsolete for many years, and was not written for SGI." "You were so helpful getting your software installed before, I really appreciate it, and no one else has been able to help me with this." "We don't support that, also it's not possible." "Surely there is some way. Let me read you the serial number of the computer plate. Do you need the Outlook license key?" "I can't help you." This goes on for a while. I stay on the line mostly because I am amazed by the call. Anyway the basic insight I have is that anyone with a reasonable request understands the information we have about email and forum support and uses that. It's only the unreasonable customers who feel sufficiently motivated to track down the phone number and make a call. As the parent post mentions, these sorts of calls often come in at weird early morning hours and weekends. We also get calls from people wanting advice in their life about non-support related things like where to go to university to learn to write software like we do or whether to buy a new car. Again, reasonable people understand that support is by email, unreasonable people don't and this explains why most phone calls are unreasonable requests. I still handle these politely, perhaps so I can later tell the stories to people as I am now. Maybe also I am a bit of a sucker for whackos!

spitfire 14y ago
... it's an SGI Workstation. "Good choice sir! Do you have a support contract with us?" SGI's were such cool machines I might actually talk to that person and explain what they are and why you can't help.
- droithomme 14y ago
  Oh I did that! This particular guy worked in a machine shop, he was in charge of the warehouse. He would watch the local classifieds for estate and defunct business auction notices and go and buy weird random stuff for no reason. That's how he got the SGI, but he didn't know what it was and thought it was a weird sort of PC that someone had installed Linux on. He was hoping to get Windows on it, and he had an installer for Entourage someone had given him or he had found at Goodwill or who knows, and his work used Entourage so he thought he would get that working for some reason. No one could help him but we had provided such helpful service in the past for our products he thought he'd give us a call at weird hours and see what we thought about his problem. This was not the only call from him, he made several over the years, he had my private line number because of a previous legitimate call that had gotten escalated to development. He's just one example and one of the more unusual ones. There's also the calls from somebody that wants you to write custom software that only they could possibly ever use for them for free, they'll even be willing to forgo their royalty! Those ones are more frustrating. Having a public phone number for Twitter to take random calls from free customers who are too impatient to wait 2 days for an email response since their fundraising twitter account was suspended for (quite reasonably) looking like a violation of service terms sounds like a nightmare. It's quite bizarre that the NYT was taking their side in this in the referenced article, or even writing an article about it at all. The people mentioned have a crazy level of entitlement and insane expectations from a free service serving tens of millions of people. Their bad attitude and whining at the end was infuriating even to me as a bystander observing the story.

spitfire 14y ago

... it's an SGI Workstation. "Good choice sir! Do you have a support contract with us?" SGI's were such cool machines I might actually talk to that person and explain what they are and why you can't help.

droithomme 14y ago
Oh I did that! This particular guy worked in a machine shop, he was in charge of the warehouse. He would watch the local classifieds for estate and defunct business auction notices and go and buy weird random stuff for no reason. That's how he got the SGI, but he didn't know what it was and thought it was a weird sort of PC that someone had installed Linux on. He was hoping to get Windows on it, and he had an installer for Entourage someone had given him or he had found at Goodwill or who knows, and his work used Entourage so he thought he would get that working for some reason. No one could help him but we had provided such helpful service in the past for our products he thought he'd give us a call at weird hours and see what we thought about his problem. This was not the only call from him, he made several over the years, he had my private line number because of a previous legitimate call that had gotten escalated to development. He's just one example and one of the more unusual ones. There's also the calls from somebody that wants you to write custom software that only they could possibly ever use for them for free, they'll even be willing to forgo their royalty! Those ones are more frustrating. Having a public phone number for Twitter to take random calls from free customers who are too impatient to wait 2 days for an email response since their fundraising twitter account was suspended for (quite reasonably) looking like a violation of service terms sounds like a nightmare. It's quite bizarre that the NYT was taking their side in this in the referenced article, or even writing an article about it at all. The people mentioned have a crazy level of entitlement and insane expectations from a free service serving tens of millions of people. Their bad attitude and whining at the end was infuriating even to me as a bystander observing the story.