Custard2
From DotelTech
- Client: Remote office
- Problem: Printer won’t print
- My Job: Remote/onsite Tech support
Client calls up complaining they can not print from their workstation, this being a fairly regular type problem. The Printer is at a remote location and prints via Citrix (remote access program). I spend 30 minutes on the phone, working with the client who is about 80 miles away. I have the client power cycle the printer, the printer server, I test printer on network, and I can not get this printer to even make a peep on the network. I come to the conclusion that either it’s physically disconnected (which the clients swears it is not) or it’s dead. I mention to the client that printer is probably dead and will have to be replaced. The client responds to me, “oh good this one smells bad anyways”.
Of course this comment made me do a double take and now I have to have the client explain to me what she means by "smells bad". The client then proceeds to tell me that the printer has really bad smelling smoke that come out of it every once in awhile. Stunned silence on my end of the phone.
My immediate response is to tell her to quickly unplug it. She unplugs it, and I ask her more about the smoking printer. It turns out the printer has been doing this for several weeks, on and off. I guess finally enough of that magic factory smoke finally got out of the printer to cause it to stop working. I of course had to tell the client that “this is not a network problem, and you should call the company your leasing it from, and to tell them your printer is smoking”.
You would think one of the first things one would tell there support tech is THE DEVICE IS SMOKING, SMOLDERING, BURNING, LEAKING, OR SCREAMING, before having them walk you through 45+ minuets of diagnostics.
Now I am forced to add to the opening line of my diagnostic,
“Madam/Sir, Is your [insert broken device here] on fire?, smoking? are their any fluids coming out of your [insert device here]?