Oh, Customers

These are all ACTUAL TICKETS. I brought them home with me in order to
capture the, er, full flavour and nuance of the tech experience.

"While on charge smoke started to come out of the top and the phone
was very hot. We took it appart and the battery was too hot to touch.
It has not worked since."

A) No crap, it hasn't worked since. I knew that part by the word 'smoke'.
B) You thought this phone could be repaired?
C) You thought this phone would be an IN WARRANTY repair?
Seriously? You used some cheap knockoff charger after clogging your
phone up with dust, and it started a fire. Being on fire is not good
for phones, okay?
Luckily, by 'took it apart' you meant 'took off the battery cover';
well, normally this would be a crucial, warranty-deciding sort of
distinction, but I guess in this case you can do whatever you want
now.

"Phone Displayes battery over voltage charging cancelled when not
plugged in. Battery indicator flashes randomly also."

Luckily, this is a known and familiar issue. The error message you
just garbled is "Charging stopped: voltage too high" and it appears
randomly. If I hadn't known about it already, your ticket sure
wouldn't have helped. Replaced yer broken thingamajig in the phone and
all is well.

And this last one, from an angry scrawl on a second paper, complete
with CAPS OF RAGE and underlining:
"This phone is complete crap. It has been protected, not dropped and
is still a complete cow. I have lost ALL my data because it wont
connect to my computer. The battery is now completely knackered as the
phone thinks it has been on charge + connected to a usb port for the
last two weeks. Utter utter crap. Please replace."

Let's break this down. a) the phone won't connect to a computer; b)
the phone is showing a usb connection when there isn't one. Using my
incredible and vast technical knowledge, it appears that this phone
only has one problem, and that is the usb connector.

Specifically, the dust in the usb connector. Because the phone worked
normally as soon as I blew a little air in there. You'd think with all
that huffing and puffing, the customer would've been able to do that
too...

PS, battery was tested at 100%, so it's a bit tougher than you thought.

Hoarders, Phone Edition

We at work were all hugely impressed by today's customer of the day.
Surpassing a previous record of 42, this tireless customer downloaded
183 (one hundred and eighty-three) additional apps onto their phone,
without their phone actually exploding. This kind of mental-disorder
dedication left all the techs amazed; we feel that Brand should find
and IMMEDIATELY employ this person for stress-testing.

 The phone comes with about forty apps, so
I don't count those, just the ones the customer added.

Adding about 10 apps is pretty normal. Adding about 20 apps means
you're getting a lot of use out of the phone. Adding about 30 apps
makes you app-happy. Anything upward of 30 is extremely likely to be
identified as the cause of your phone problems - any idiot out there
can put out a free app without testing to see if it gets along with
any other apps or even works well.

Applause!

First, a great big shout-out to our customer of the day, who managed
to both crack the touchscreen AND soak the insides of a phone! Well
done, Butterfingers, well done. Our prize for this is a lovely
phone-shaped paperweight.

Congratulations.

In comparison, the Ticket of the Day is fairly routine; "NOT HOLDING A
CHARGE AND A SOFTWARE". As the phone was holding both a charge and
software, I'm not really sure, but I blame the education system. Key
to the left of the A, sir/ma'am.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

Someone in the hierarchy at work has asked the question: Why can't
the Brand engineers hit a 30-per-day productivity, while also
hitting a 90% repaired rate?

Our supervisors have our backs, apparently, with a whole 'that's not
actually possible' line of logic. This is a good thing, because we
were laughing too hard when we heard that to really reply. And I mean
outright blurted-out guffaws.

F'rexample, today I did 32 phones. Four of them needed a part ordered
in, so went to 'awaiting parts' status - take them off the repairs.
Two of them were corroded all to heck by liquid, so BER - take them
off the repairs. So even if I could've repaired all the phones, and
not sent any at all to level three, we're talking an 81.25% repair
rate right there. This is typical. Oh wait - forgot, one phone had a
password lock and has to go to quote. Take that puppy off, too.

The level 1 engineers usually hit around 70% repaired rate, 'cause we
like to let level 3 feel useful and do a few phones too, now and then.
And frankly, I usually get 2-4 'forgot my password' phones that go to
quote in a day.

You now understand way more about what lvl 1 engineers do with their
time at work than at least one management type does!

Things Not to Do

Sure, they tell you not to drop it or get it wet, but do they tell you
not to drip candle wax into the speakers, leave it on the stove, or
fill it with chalk dust?

It turns out that these are not good ideas.

But I guess nobody told our customers that. I blame Brand, really.