Tales of Tech Support

I had an interesting mail today. The dude wrote to me saying he had a couple of hundred megs' worth of emails on his mail server and he wanted to know how to delete them.

What got me was the "please send me step-by-step instructions".

See, we have a really, really nice interface for web mail. And all you have to do is LOOK at the damn page, and there, clear as a bell, is a link marked "delete". Not only is there a link marked "delete", there is also a link marked "purge deleted".

So... I can see the response now... "Go to the webmail page. To do more than one mail at a time, select the mails you want to get rid of by checking the checkbox next to each mail. Click "delete". The mails will show as deleted, they will be struck out. Click "Purge deleted" and they go bye-bye."

Of course, that info is right in the help and all... oh, but that would require EFFORT on his part. Oh, no wonder he's writing me!

I actually didn't write back with that. I am hoping there is more to the situation than meets the eye. What I actually wrote back was a note in the hopes of getting more info. Is he trying to get rid of mailboxes that he's given to other people, or is this only his own addresses? If it's only his own.. see above!

I dunno about people sometimes...

Tales of Tech Support Redux

Okay... it must be one of those days...

I just had a customer want me to tell him how to make an order form and cgi-script so he can take orders in his store.

Apparently, this person thought that it was something I could explain in five minutes that would miraculously put it together.

We really aren't unkind--we offer three different commercial store packages, all are very reasonable, and if the customer is really struggling with the directions, for a minimal additional fee, they even have me, the Programming Goddess, go in and install it! I'm cool with that--I mean, if the person is having trouble, rather than have them make a mess of their site, it's way better to just pay a small amount of money and get it installed properly, right?

We also have an open source storefront that requires minimal configuration. It is free and will install itself from the site owner's control panel. Can't get much more helpful than that, I don't think! ;)

We're even thinking of having me offer a nice class for basic html, and I hope we do. I love teaching people how to do stuff, and something like html is awesome because the results are so clear and immediate.

But when a newbie is so new that they don't even know making an order form for an online store is not a matter of a quick explanation, I have to wonder why they have a website--wouldn't it be more to the point to hire someone to make what they want and they can learn about it as they go along?

I defintely get the award for tact today with this line, though:

"Unfortunately, teaching you how to make a site and program it is beyond the scope of tech support."

Drabbles

Every person on your flist gets to request a drabble (100 words) from you. In return, they post this in their journal. Post all fandoms you're willing to write for. Your friends can pick a relationship, a story arc, a missing scene, or pretty much anything they want, unless the author has previously mentioned that they will not write it. They comment with what they want, and you write drabbles and post it in your LiveJournal.

Fandoms I will write:
Big-O
BTVS
Angel
Farscape
Star Trek
Sailor Moon
Marmalade Boy
Cowboy Bebop