Today's Entertaining Customer

[Dips]

For the last few days I've been providing tech support via email to a customer in India. The problem is not that he doesn't understand English. The problem is that he keeps trying to dodge giving me information I need to get him up and running.

We've been having a fun little dance of him asking me to give him an activation code and me asking him for his serial number.

He responds with an invalid serial number and I ask for it again.

He writes back and pretends he never heard back from me at all and asks for the activation code again. It's all very polite and cordial, but going no place.

We are currently in the middle of cycle two.

The thing that makes this amusing is that they HAVE two valid serial numbers registered. One is eligible for activation and one isn't. I just need to verify that he is trying to activate the eligible one and he would be a happy customer by now.

I think he's trying to wear down my patience.

[Phone Jockey]

I think he's trying to wear down my patience.

I swear all customers know how to play "The Patience Game." All they have to do is to make you lose YOURS & they're on cloud 9.

[Comp_geek]

They've met their match in me. If I had to provide support over email I would be the happiest person ever (at least in something like this).

"Please give me the right number"
SC:"here is INCORRECT NUMBER"
"that number is incorrect, i need the right one"

copy and paste

[Dreamstalker]

I tend to have a short fuse with the willfully ignorant, which is why I strongly prefer not to do support over the phone. Having an actual task to do (as in researching errors online or working hands-on with hardware) lets me ignore the tantrums (and in some cases, they're reined in by me explaining in luddite-speak what I'm doing).

Comp_geek, I do the same thing in email correspondence The only person who never figured it out eventually was the twit (but then she was beyond help in many ways).