You broke my computer!

[ToGGoT]

I am so completely about this, i need to vent.

BG: I am the lead Tech for a small owner-managed computer business in the UK. We do a lot of home-visits to service customers equipment/renew antivirus/do teaching etc

Last week I went to visit a fairly long standing customer for a general tidy up. He has a pretty rubbish 10+ year old HP laptop, which every year we groan at the prospect of having to sit in front of for another couple of hours to sort out. But, he is a generally nice guy, easy going or so we thought.

While I was there, I joked with him that "Ah, we haven't managed to persuade you to replace it this time around then?" He said no, couldn't afford it, and he'd eke it out another year at least.

Finished the service, left, thought no more of it.

A week later, he is getting strange graphical artifacts on screen - fairly classic RAM/GPU failure. Advised him of this.

This morning, he turns up while our office head (OH) is out on business, and he pretty much dumps it on me, tells me he is pretty disappointed, feels we have let him down, it worked before the service, now it doesn't even start. I am cordial, but obviously I haven't done anything to cause this, so tell him i'll have a look and see what we can do.

OH comes back in, and I tell her that SC has dropped his rig in - and she asks me "Did he tell you what he thinks about it?" - My answer to this is no, and she responds with:

OH: "Oh yes, he thinks you must have done something to cause it to break - he says you even talked about wanting him to replace it, so obviously you did something".


WTF.


Firstly, I have a lot of pride in my job. I've been here 10+ years, and without trying to sound big-headed, I know my stuff. Why on earth would I want to risk it by "doing something" to his computer.

Secondly, I am not commission based. If I sell a machine, all it means is I have more work to do setting it up for him. It does not benefit me in the slightest.

Thirdly, If I WAS able to "Do something" to his laptop to cause it to physically fail, does he really think i'd be stupid enough to do it when I had joked with him about replacing it anyway?

Fourthly, what the hell does he think I would have done to his computer to cause it to break anyway? Jesus, I mean the service basically consists of updating antivirus, disk cleanup, quick defragment and windows updates plus answering silly little questions - not an open up and probe about inside.


Was very tempted just to call him to tell him to come and pick it up, and refuse to deal with him again, but the owner isn't here for me to OK that with. I am up to my eyeballs with stress and overwork already - I really don't need this as well.

FML.

[Kittish]

So.... dude's computer bit the dust a week or more AFTER you'd been there to service it? And he wants to blame it dying on anything you did? WTF man? Sounds like this guy thinks he sees a good opportunity for a gimme grab, 'cause, of course a computer that's 10+ years old and already barely tottering along is expected to just keep right on working forever and if it stops then someone MUST have done something to break it, right? Sheesh.

[EvilEmpryss]

My mother-in-law once believed her son when he said that *I* had broken her computer when I ran the Windows update. What he didn't tell her is that after I did the updates I caught him surfing porn on it and kicking the machine under the desk when the popups started and he downloaded a virus.

Some people will believe what they want to believe, no matter what the truth is.

[Jay 2K Winger]

"If I was gonna break your computer, I'd use a sledgehammer."

That's what I'd like to say to some of these delusional freaks.

[gerund]

OH: "Oh yes, he thinks you must have done something to cause it to break - he says you even talked about wanting him to replace it, so obviously you did something".

You touched it - You own it.

I am so over this attitude. The next person who attempts to blame me for something when I only did something completely unrelated is going to get the sack so quickly their head will spin.

A lady got me to do updates on her old XP machine. Suddenly her iTunes would not allow her to download apps for her iPad. Turns out it was one of the updates broke iTunes. So that was my fault (especially since I didn't tell her about that before I did the updates)

WTF? How was I supposed to know about some obscure fault with iTunes on a PC being broken by one of many many updates I did that day?

I stopped working for her. It was not a hard decision.

[KuariKaydrith]

Oh man, this brings back memories of whenever my brother used to do something to my parents' computer that would cause it to not work properly. He always managed to get the blame put on me - despite the fact that I had my own computer that he was not allowed to touch or I'd break each one of his finger bones. Why on earth would I even need to go on my parents' computer when I had one of my own that, while older, worked way better than theirs? My mother's theory is that I was being a spiteful bitch (bear in mind that my mother is also a toxic narcissistic bitch and I was the scapegoat for everything). Mind you, my dad has a serious porn addiction and knows nothing about computer safety, and my idiot brother would actually purposely download virus code onto the computer to 'save the code to use later' because he was a '733t 4@xx0r'...he decided this after watching 'Hackers' about a million times. Ugh.

A few years later I finally got my mother to shove her theory where the sun doesn't shine after I pointed out to her that (at the time) I made my living doing technical support and that I knew how to maintain/fix a computer properly because it was my job, and that if she thought my idiot brother - who had borked several of their computers by this point - actually knew what he was doing they would have gone through maybe one or two computers during all that time, instead of being on the seventh one in a 5 year period. Considering that I was on my second computer at that point and it was only due to it being cheaper to replace the whole unit than to piece out each part...yeah, she shut up.

[otakuneko]

Of course it makes perfect sense in their minds. They know that they don't know what it is you were doing, and that they would never do anything to break their own machine deliberately, and they don't know there's no possible connection between what you did and what happened. Thus, they blame you.

Same old story as with car repair. It can't possibly be the idiot owner's fault, no way, it's got to be the repair man's!

[An Haddock]

I had one of these a couple of weeks ago.

Guy brought in his wife's laptop because it was running slow. My guy turns it on - it won't load Windows. Tests HD, it's going bad. Calls the guy, who immediately blames him.

"But it was working when I turned it on at home! A hard drive can die that fast?"

I pointed out that it was already dying since the computer was running so slow, and yes - that's how fast they can crap out. A lot of the time it's a "it worked yesterday, died today" situation. One time I had a failing drive I was recovering data from and it seized halfway through copying the stuff off it.

So yes - they do die that fast.

I managed to get most of their data off the drive and didn't charge him for that. But we did our usual HD replacement so we still made money on the thing.


But yeah - we touched your laptop and that means we "did something" to it so it stopped working. Ass.

[MadMike]

You touched it - You own it.

I was almost guilty of a similar accusation 15 years ago or so. Back before my company issued us all laptops to take home, we were able to connect to the system through the internet on our home computers for any after-hours on-call stuff. But it was limited to mainframe access only. You couldn't connect to the network that way, so if you needed to access a document or something on the network and you were connecting from home, you were out of luck.

One day, I found out from one of my coworkers that the company now had something in place where you could get full access to the network from home, as well as the mainframe. The catch was, you had to bring your machine in so they could install something -- I have no idea if it was hardware or software. But after some of the spectacular fuckups I had seen from our "help" desk, there was no way I was letting them mess with my machine.

A few days after I had that conversation with my coworker, my machine started randomly shutting itself off. It turned out to be a motherboard issue, and since I hadn't learned how to build my own yet, I had to take it to a shop.

It's funny how that happened right after I was talking to my coworker about bringing it in so the "help" desk could install whatever they needed to install. It would have started acting up shortly after I got it back from them, and I would have sworn up and down that they had broken it. After all, it's not like there wasn't a precedent set.

[Catwoman2965]

You touched it - You own it.

I am so over this attitude. The next person who attempts to blame me for something when I only did something completely unrelated is going to get the sack so quickly their head will spin.

Slightly OT but this happened with my friend and my mechanic. She had an ancient POS car, one which already had a replacement transmission. Add to it, two major accidents, and 160+K miles, it was only a matter of time before it died. Her DH is cheap. Cheaper than cheap. Irrationally and obsessively so. He's one of those who thinks a. certain things don't need fixing or replacing until he says they do, and b. said certain things should only cost what he thinks they should. Any deviation from that, and they're out to screw him over.

Car needed to be replaced but wasn't happening until they had enough to pay cash for a new one, which they almost did. no loan, no nothing. So she's driving around in this POS car, with a 2 year old.

Car was acting up, randomly not starting. Took it to my mechanic several times, and on the third time, the code showed a bad starter. He hadn't wanted to replace it initially as the code didn't show the bad starter. He's very good and won't just replace things on a hunch.

So he replaces the starter and the next day the tranny blows. Remember I said the car was old, and already had a replacement. Her DH went into a rage, and down to the mechanic and threw a tantrum worthy of a toddler. Screaming that the mecahnic somehow did something to make the tranny go. Never mind it has nothing to do with the starter being replaced whatsoever. But oh no, mechanic touched the car, therefor his fault.

She was embarassed and I was PISSED as i had referred them to my mechanic. Thankfully they didn't hold it against me. And my friend? They ended up with a Honda Fit, which while a nice car, is barely big enough for them and their now TWO kids. After that, I have as little to do with her DH as possible.

[protege]

But yeah - we touched your laptop and that means we "did something" to it so it stopped working. Ass.

That's exactly why I refuse to provide tech support for certain family members. For years, my dad would bitch and moan about how his "top of the line" computer (a cheap piece of shit, which is another rant in itself ) was running slowly and various things didn't work.

Since I actually do tech support for a brokerage firm, I thought I'd be nice and take care of it. Stupid, I know. After running some tests, he had multiple antivirus programs running. Norton is a resource-hungry piece of crap to begin with, but why would you compound the issue by running AVG on top of it? So I took them both off, installed AVG properly, then proceeded to take care of the other issues.

On startup, he was loading all sorts of stuff--drivers for equipment that he no longer had, MS Office (why?), and some things he really didn't need. Autoruns took care of that, and I removed the million or so toolbars from IE. While I was at it, I did the Windows updates, security updates, and other things that hadn't been done. I had that thing running like new...or at least as " new" as a 5-year old crappy HP would run..

So you can imagine my surprise when the phone rings, and he starts screaming about how I'd "fucked up the scanner." Really? Foolish of me to head back down there, and take a look. Turns out he'd had that shitbox fixed (for a whopping $300 when the hard drive failed), and the shop that did it reinstalled the wrong driver. The wrong driver, for an old scanner that nobody used anymore

When I pointed that out, he lost it. Yep, I was getting screamed at for what they did because I was the last person to touch it

At least I tried to be nice and offered to install the correct driver. Again, the screaming started, so I left. I was wiling to take care of it, but after being told I was an "idiot," I walked out. Not my problem then.

[EvilEmpryss]

<sigh> Power surge at the office took out a computer and a printer. Forget the fact that the lights flickered, I am apparently to blame because I was installing a new printer driver at the time.

I have tried to explain the difference between a surge protector and a power strip before, but no one wants to listen. Power strips look like surge protectors, but they're a fraction of the cost, so why get something labeled "surge protector"? Belief isn't enough to protect your computers, honey.

[lordlundar]

Oh that reminds me of a site I was at.

It was a bank site that had automated light systems that no one told us about (that site was a mess in other ways as well but I digress). We had to drill new holes for the monitor stands so we went around to set up the drill. it was a hodgepodge connection that made me VERY uncertain it would work. I outright said "watch, the moment I turn the drill on a breaker will go". My lead on the site told me to try it to find out. I pull the trigger...

Remember how I said the lights were automated? The moment I hit the drill was when the lights were timed to turn off.

Cue everyone laughing while I'm standing there with a mix of horror and amusement on my face saying "I didn't do it I swear!"

[wolfie]

It was a bank site that had automated light systems that no one told us about (snip) The moment I hit the drill was when the lights were timed to turn off.

Did you have somebody go around waving their arms in order to keep the lights on, the way one Dilbert cartoon had the PHB deal with the automated (motion sensor) lights which went off when people were sitting at their desks?

[lordlundar]

No proximity or motion sensors on those lights because there's usually no one in those areas when the lights go off. It was a big branch (regional central branch) so there's a lot of floor space for it to the point that you could have a decent game of catch in it without any risk of damaging anything.