Dusty cables
Posted by Salavora_M@reddit | talesfromtechsupport | View on Reddit | 38 comments
Hello,
I just read a story where the user wasn't very honest about what they did or didn't do when talking to their tech support and thus got reminded of this story (TL;DR at the end)
Quite a few years ago, I was first level support for a large car manufatorer.
On that fatefull day, I got a call by a user, that his internet was bad. He had already created a ticket and the ticket showed, that there was a problem with his router and that he needed to restart his router in order to fix the problem. How to do that? Simply pull the power plug from the router, wait a moment, then plug it back in.
The user told me, that he had done so but the problem persisted, which is why he called again.
I loged onto the router. Uptime: About 3.500 days => He did NOT restart his router.
Unfortunately, I could not restart the router remotely either.
How to get the person to do it right and not just saying he did? He sounded to to be about my age range, so I said "Do you remember the old game cartridges for the game boy, where sometimes there was dust in them and you had to blow into the cartridge to remove the dust to get it to work? It seems that he had a 'special' router, that sometimes had a similar problem with dust in the power cable. So in order to make sure, that this isn't the problem, could he please pull out the power cable, blow over the connections to dislodge and dust and put it back in."
He agreed and moments later I lost connection to the router -> He finally pulled the cable and waited long enough for the router to propperly restart.
After that, everything worked the way it should! Surprise! "There must have been dust in the cable" ;-)
TL;DR: User did not (want to) propperly pull the power plug from his router so it would be forced to reboot, so I told him, there must be dust in the power cable that need to be dislodged by pulling the cable and blowing over the connection, which he apprently bought because a few moments after that, the router finally disconnected and restarted and afterwards everything was fine.
derKestrel@reddit
That is why there are "directional cables" as a good way to make people check both sides of a cable too. "It must have been plugged in the wrong way, could you plug it in with the ends switched?"
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
Nice!
I will remember that one for when someone failes to propperly plug in the HDMI cable connected to the beamer! Thanks!
MerionesofMolus@reddit
But what happens when ya actually use a directional HDMI cable?
gromit1991@reddit
Not a power cable though!
anubisviech@reddit
You can still turn those in the socket, to make sure the wires wear evenly. (Except countries where you can't ofc.)
androshalforc1@reddit
Depends on who old the ticket is if the uptime is only three and a half days he could have restarted it when he submitted the ticket.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
argh, sorry the dot is the thousands delimiter in my country so it had been 3500 days (which is damn impressive but unfortunatly very clearly showed that this box had not been rebooted)
SeanBZA@reddit
Also that the local power supply is very stable, because by me having more than 2 months go by without a power cut is unheard of.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
oO!
Here you MIGHT get a power outage in a very old residential building (read "Build somewhere between 1700 and 1900") in which not all electrical lines have been updated maybe once a year tops (I live in one that had been built around 1850. Lived there for 4 years and had one outage so far)
Anything commercial that isn't under "Monument protection" though? Outages are practically unheard of. Sure, maybe a fues blows because someone insists on microwaving something that really, really, really shouldn't go in there but that wouldn't impact the rest of the building and especially not any IT areas.
My condolences for such an unstable environment
SeanBZA@reddit
Only had 5 hours this morning, which is not too bad compared to some, where outages of a week or more are common, and with no water on top as well.
Talismancer_Ric@reddit
Im going to suggest the op is from a culture that uses a dot for thousands, and that is 3500 days, or about 9 years
Jonathan_the_Nerd@reddit
Good thing you were working for a car manufacturer and not a heart surgeon.
__wildwing__@reddit
The scariest part of that is then “came out over two decades ago” yikes.
popejupiter@reddit
No, the scariest part is that that comic is nearly 2 decades old.
asmcint@reddit
I was 12 or 13 when I first read that and now I'm 30! It's scary to think I'm an adult and I'm watching another generation become adults and getting scared by it.
Jaym4n@reddit
Man... my knees hurt.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
xkcd is simply too perfect some days \^\^" Thanks for the laugh!
fatimus_prime@reddit
There’s always a relevant xkcd.
Constant-Notice849@reddit
I worked for DSL tech-support back in the day when not everybody had cell phones, and most people had more than one phone in the house. One of the requirements to make ancient DSL work is that every phone that was plugged into a phone jack had to have a filter plugged in between the phone and the line. Our installation kit usually included about four of the filters, sometimes for big houses we would have to send more.
This was the primary reason that the DSL connection wouldn’t work when people tried the self install, failed, and then called in, so we’d have to ask them. ”have you plugged a filter into every single phone that you are using in your house?” They would invariably say that they did, but of course they had not. I would ask them how many little boxes they had left from their kit. If the answer was four or if they were like “is that what these things are?” it was a dead giveaway that they were lying. We would have to do a lot of handholding in the troubleshooting “So how many phones are in your house? OK three, so let’s go to the first one, I’d like you to follow the cord all the way to the wall and tell me is the cord plugged into the wall or into a little beige box?”
The mini advantage was if a caller was really, really annoying It was pretty easy to get them to unplug the phone that they were talking on - Oops disconnected call!
AlTeRnAtE-PoIsOn@reddit
Back in the days, you would put the filter directly at the demarcation point. One line would go to the modem and the other line would go to phones
anubisviech@reddit
Yeah, I don't get why you would need more than one filter. We just had one that we plugged the router (or modem) into and everything was fine.
HanonOndricek@reddit
Oh, yeah, that would have been real easy, but this was a DSL consumer self-install kit in 2003 so it's likely they didn't want to try and have people try to locate or mess with the demarcation point and potentially goof up the connection from their landline provider which was not associated with our internet service.
This was also before most computers had an ethernet port, so the kit also included a NIC and I got to ask people to locate a screwdriver and guide them through opening their computer and installing a card inside. I had one lady in Connecticut who was quite peeved that the only tool she could find in her house that worked was an heirloom silver butter knife.
SeanBZA@reddit
Some countries you do not have a demarc inside the home, it is outside, and all the line from there is classed as indoor wiring. So no UK Master socket that splits off the ring to a separate wire, and all the indoor sockets are wired in some fashion, either in a string, a star fashion, or more likely a blend of both. So you need a filter for each phone, though most phones after a while actually did include the DSL filtering as part of the input protection circuitry. Me I just rewired the place entirely, or removed every wire past the first socket and replaced it, with the DSL filter there for the other phone outlet there on a double connection.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
Too bad, so sad! ;-)
Throwaway_Old_Guy@reddit
Would it make a difference if you told the User; "I'm logged into your router right now, and the current uptime is (X). If you had restarted it as you say, it should show (Y)."
We've all read TFTS posts where the User assured IT they had restarted the computer, when they had merely turned the monitor on/off.
The worst one I recall reading here was a User that, instead of doing a reboot, played the .WAV files associated with Windows startup.
Shinhan@reddit
Absolutely not, that would just make him angry and defensive.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
Hadn't seen the .WAV file story yet but damn, that must have been some "interesting" thought process to think this would actually help \^\^"
I prefere not to accuse the user of not having done what I wanted him to do, when he insists that "Yes, I DID do this!", despite proof that nope, he did not. Didn't have the time to argue back then and this was way quicker (although, if he had called me out, I then would have switched to "I see uptime of YEARS, maybe you unplugged the wrong cable? Please try again" in hopes to get him to finally do as I say
Faholan@reddit
I recall that one too, it was hilarious
jmjedi923@reddit
I had this with a friend of mine, their power supply in their PC was wonky and would sometimes just need the power switch on it flipped on and off again (I know this because I believe I gave it to them).
They didn't understand the difference between resetting the power on their surge protector (which they did do) and resetting the power on their power supply, so they argued with me until i said fine i'll come over, if resetting the PSU works you buy me dinner.
They took me to get Japanese food.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
Nice (and tasty!)
Moneia@reddit
When I was on the front line to the general public we always had an issue getting the customers to check the power cables.
You quickly learnt to blather a little about a blown fuse (the UK has a fuse in the plug) and try checking the cable in their kettle.
Salavora_M@reddit (OP)
Everything you have to do to get the user to actually do, what you told them to do three days ago but they were too lazy (or clueless) to do.
dreaminginteal@reddit
"OK, I have boiled the cable in the kettle. What next?"
Silent-G@reddit
Decide whether it goes best with milk or lemon.
Pyehole@reddit
Social engineering FTW
K1yco@reddit
I love that he will now think he can solve everyone he knows who has problems by telling them "Oh you just need to blow on the cable"
gromit1991@reddit
That's the great thing about Linux - running almost ten years without a reboot.
Tarlonniel@reddit
Done and dusted.