Tech support - ha!

We've had a public printer down for over a month so today I called the IT department to check on the status of the request and they said "huh, I guess we never got around to calling that in to [company X]." (I'll just call them X from now on.) So they called X about it. Now WE are not allowed to call X directly; we have to go through IT. I guess I should have followed up weeks ago. Sigh...

Anyway, a nice guy from X called me back within 20 minutes and asked me to do some test prints and call him back. He said they should be able to tell exactly what was wrong from the test prints, and that's all I would need to do. (Oh - we were getting "dirty" prints with extra ink all down the side of each page.)

So I did the test prints and called X back, was on hold for at LEAST 15 minutes, and finally got a different person. I explained what the other guy had told me to do and after asking me a BUNCH more questions she said, "Now have you cleaned the [something] window?" I'm like, "cleaned the WHAT?" She said, "All you have to do is get your cleaning wand, remove the fusing oil unit and clean the [something] window behind the fusing oil unit, being careful not to touch the [something]." I said, "First, we don't have a 'cleaning wand', and second, I don't have time to do this right now, so when I get off the desk I'm going to have to go over to the printer, take it apart, clean something with a tool I don't have, and then call back and wait on hold for ANOTHER 15 minutes." Her response: "Well, if you had called us standing right in front of the printer like we say in our guidelines you would be able to do it right away instead of having this delay." (Delivered in a sarcastic, snarky tone.) So I said, "Well, I thought YOU guys were the tech support for these printers - so far, it seems like I'm doing all the work and X hasn't done much of anything. We're not the ones who are supposed to be going into the printer and cleaning it out - that's your job." Whereupon she hung up on me.

Now granted, I was sort of a jerk, but what she was asking wasn't within my "realm of expectation," and of course hanging up on me wasn't particularly helpful. I called our IT folks back and told them about the call and they confirmed that our service contract with X only requires that we: fill the paper trays, clear paper jams, and replace ink cartridges. Nowhere in our contract does it say that we are responsible for cleaning the inside of the machine. So I hope to god that somebody comes and fixes the damned machine - our one remaining printer is currently being used by 40 computers and it's wearing out fast.

This is the kind of experience that gives tech support a bad name.