Unclear on the Concept

User calls pilot fish to fix her fax machine, and he knows two other techs have already checked it out and given her the bad news -- the phone line for the device is dead. "I go out and do the same thing, to which she replies that she knows the phone is dead," says fish. "They hadn't paid their bill, so she was picking up the phone receiver on the fax and attempting to make calls on it. I explained that you needed a phone line for that, but she was adamant. 'A fax doesn't use phone lines,' she said. 'It uses fax.'"

Toned Down

Customer service supervisor sends a request to this help desk pilot fish: "We need a toner replacement for our desktop scanner. There seems to be a problem with the scanning image. The image is very light in color."

Squishy

Help desk pilot fish gets a call from a user having trouble sending files to her assistant. "She described the process she was going through to do this -- loudly and unclearly," fish says. "About the only salient point I heard was that somehow the documents were ending up 'squished' and didn't look right when they arrived on the other end. I suggested she try using the paper clip function to attach a file. Then I listened as she and her assistant yelled back and forth at each other regarding their success with this method. The user informed me that my suggestion had indeed worked for one file. I gave her my extension and asked her to call back if any more files were 'squished.'"

You Asked for It

These two users need to print color name badges for a big-deal corporate event, but they can't get what they need. "After several attempts at printing to their local color printer, they only get black and white," reports a pilot fish on the scene. "They abandon the local printer and print to a remote one with success. After they call a technician to check out what's wrong with the first printer, he finds that the printer works just fine. They had checked 'print in black and white' on their computer."

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Copyright © 2007 IDG Communications, Inc.

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