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July 30, 2005

Stupid Customers...

Everyone hears that old saw about "the customer is always right". It may be true but in some cases, the customer is also a grade-a, fully-certified, bona fide, nong. And this is the story of one of those nongs.

Basically, the customer, Mr Nong, had bought himself a Pocket-PC. It stated quite clearly on the box that it did not work with Macs but Mr. Nong presumably put that down to ignorance and bias on the part of the producers of the handheld. He took it home and sure enough, when you plug it into a Mac, nothing happens. So he searched the internet and found a product that would solve the problem Mark/Space - Missing Sync. Mr. Nong purchased the product, installed it and guess what? Still nothing happened. You see the produce was for Panther and Mr. Nong was running Tiger :-)

Down the track, the nice people at Mark/Space released a version for Tiger (The Missing Sync for Windows Mobile) and Mr. Nong upgraded. It worked like a treat and included a couple of products designed to compensate for the lack of functionality in Windows. One of these is a slideshow/photo display package called "SplashPhoto". Mr. Nong found the CAB (some sort of windows package format) and installed it. The software asked for a key and so Nonggie started plugging in every conceivable number he could find on his invoice. When they didn't work he complained to the vendor.

The vendor replied:

Hi Nong,
This just in, the reg code can be found in the /applications/MIssing Sync for Windows Mobile/Extras/SplashPhoto/SplashPhoto readme.rtf file.
Regards,
Pete

Isn't it always the way. The bl**dy customers never read the bl**dy instructions when you put them in a file called 'README'. Maybe the file should be called 'README YOU IDIOT'. Then again, maybe Windows can't handle long filenames yet...

Next time, I promise to read the instructions.

I also promise to try and be as polite as Pete was when I have to deal with idiot customers :-)

Posted by Ozguru at July 30, 2005 12:00 PM

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Comments

YOU are Mr. Nong? Can't be....

Posted by: Old Horsetail Snake at July 31, 2005 04:36 AM

I guess everyone (except of course Mr O.H. Snake) gets to be a Nong at some point. I just do it more often than most :-)

Posted by: Ozguru [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 31, 2005 09:51 PM

I have to remember this for t he next time you are moaning about some customer who didn't RTFM.

In fact I have been laughing myself sick for the last half hour about this one.

Hey Oz - next time - read the instructions.

Posted by: Rofl [TypeKey Profile Page] at July 31, 2005 10:57 PM

what something useful in the README! go figure

Posted by: skipjack at August 2, 2005 06:14 AM

Well, I have a Dell, and it keeps telling me an upgrade is available. Only I can't download it. Why? Because the firewall software they installed won't let me. Solution, turn off the firewall, only there's another little gimmick installation which becomes active as soon as you do that - to tell you the computyer is at risk and won't let you remain online because "you are not protected ....."

The fact that I subscribe to a Braodband service which has a built in firewall doesn't seem to figure in anyones "Help" or "Read me" instructions is not help either. We struggle on!

Posted by: The Gray Monk at August 2, 2005 06:56 PM

A perfect case of a situation where you want to pick the computer up by the scruff of the neck and tell it: "just bl**dy do what your told". Except of course, that non-Aussies can leave out the swear-word. Perhaps you could try treating your computer as per the recommendations in this post:

Practice bring up your computer in the Australian manner: tell it not to be a sook; order it to stop blubbing; give it a right-hander (not necessarily in that order).

Posted by: Ozguru [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 4, 2005 08:15 AM