Telephone Support By Script

[CatalinaWOW]

Scripting has funny consequences.  There has been a phone scam going on for a couple years that is based on a script.  The callers are clearly low skill southwest Asians.  It starts with "Hello, the is Microsoft Technical Support and we have been receiving error messages from your computer".

Their eventual goal is to get you to give them remote access to your computer, but their responses are really interesting when you give a non-scripted answers. 

Try:

"Lordy be.  My windows have computers?"

"My windows computer speaks Linux."

"My computer is already running.  How can a use a "Start" button?"

A dumb sounding response is perfect, it lets them think they will eventually be able to talk you into doing what they want, but their language skills and scripts are limited enough that they can go strange directions.

[Deathwish]

Reminds me of that scene in star trek when scotty tries talking to the mouse to get the pc to do something

[Derick Freese]

Back when I worked DSL support, I would turn the port on our side on and off while making you powercycle, since the CPE needed to be cycled after anyway.  It fixed a lot of issues.  Often, it brought the comment of "It never does it like that when I do it myself."  Of course not, I just reset the line.

Powercycling equipment, especially home telecommunications equipment, is part of the troubleshooting process and the front line can't get the issue escalated, even if it's obvious that the issue is the small equipment fire.

I once had to do full troubleshooting when the guy told me that the boundary box in his neighborhood had been involved in a car crash.  At the time, I had some clout, so I just sent that in as a ticket and it was worked as soon as the crash was cleared.