Technical Support – Is your PC running slowly?

I often get these calls and have used a good few versions of annoying them back, seems a fair exchange to me. Mrs NM says ‘Why do you bother? just hang up’. I say well whilst they are trying to rob me, they’re not actually suceeding in robbing anyone else. I often wondered how they knew I was using the ‘puter’ at the time. Well the other day one rang when I wasn’t on the pc, so I kept them talking being ‘thick’ whilst the operator, (usual sub continent audio soundtrack), babbled away in the background. So having checked the PC was turned off and removing the t’interweb cable, I began to play along.

Brrringgg
Hello, Is that Mr N. Munkey?
NM: Whose calling?
It’s Microsoft support, we are ringing to offer help is your computer running slow?
‘Yes’, I confirmed my PC was indeed running slow. A slow running PC helps you rather than them. A slow running PC means it takes longer for you to give them a reply, and hence gives you additional thinking time. So what you can do is make tappity tap tap sounds on the keyboard as they give you instructions. When they ask what its showing just say a blank/blue screen or yes the menu is showing, you’ve clicked on it, and you’ve got the cursor hourglass icon just showing spinning revolving etc. Don’t forget to just turn off your computer at the wall, tell them you’ve done it of course, this means any commands they’ve given you are void and they have to start again. Tell them sorry you were only trying to help, thats what you normally do when it runs slow and doesn’t respond. You’ll pick up that they are a bit annoyed now, its the ‘no, no, no,’ when you tell them you’re turning it off thats the give away, but seeing as you are obviously so ‘thick’ they stick with it, you will after all, at the end, be an easy victim.

I managed to keep this going for a good forty five minutes or so the other day, whilst idly flicking through a book doing picture research. The best bit was getting them to call back, the computer running so slowly that they got fed up waiting and said they’d ring back in ten minutes. Give them the added bonus of telling them its running XP, they start salivating like pavlovs dogs at the thought of such an easy crack. Guess what? they do actually call you back. I even managed to get a call to a mate in between, and they called during that conversation, ‘Oh shit I said my daughters just been sick!, call me back in ten I’ve got to see she’s ok’. That worked too. Eventually they gave up up when I said the screen was black and now not responding to anything, even re-starting it on their instruction and hitting F8 as many times as possible, (NB do not touch or follow any commands they give you), and the pc was ‘just making a humming noise with the green light flashing’ at me.

Tell them its the green one, most PC’s have a light somewhere, so it may as well be green and flashing. Oh, its stopped flashing. Having now been escalated to someone who could speak english quite well, (the sharks sensing the blood in the water), ‘Oh, green lights started flashing again’ etc etc, you get the picture, they don’t they’re target fixated now on you. Remember, you’re portraying the ‘Hobosexual’ (Mmmm that musty smell just does it for me …), type of customer who shouldn’t be allowed on the t’interweb without a responsible adult, and clicks on every Jenifer Aniston video link out there, so keep being ‘thick’. He eventually suggested that the PC needed to be taken to a PC shop to be repaired as it was really very, very broken and badly damaged, again emphasising that it was damaged and maybe had a virus in it. ‘Oh, I thought that’s what you were going to do to it’ I said.

Do you know what, that manager who told me he was from Microsoft then told me to ‘###k off’, well I ask you what sort of customer support is that?