Guy Calls Tech Support Over Password Problem, The Fail Escalates

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mattstaff
Jan 10, 2022 10:00 AM EST

You've really got to hand it to the people in this world that are working tech support. They are regularly subjected to profound moments of mystifying stupidity from some of the world's most clueless human beings. It's a tech support tale like the one we have here that can really support the notion that some folks absolutely need instruction manuals for when it comes to how to navigate all the technology available at our disposal. For some more humor from the tech support world check out this story about the time that a customer genuinely believed that the internet runs on magic. 

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  • 01
    Font - r/talesfromtechsupport + Join u/jbanelaw • 1d "I CAN'T RESET MY PASSWORD! (literally)" Long As an independent consultant, see all kinds of tech support issues. But, the best stories never seem to come from my regular clients. Instead they almost always come from contract gigs I use to fill in some of the slow times. Here is a quick story about one such incident. Scene
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 02
    Font - I am on a 3 month contract, essentially on call as overflow phone support. It was an easy gig. I just sat at home and when the call center got too busy, they would start switching over tickets to some of us remote guys. All I had to do was be available between certain hours and have a quick turnaround on the first touch. This was in the beginning days of the pandemic when everyone had just started working from home. Most of my tickets were easy such as VPN connection issues or provide qui
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 03
    Font - IT Guy (me): "Hello, I see you have a problem reseting your password to access the network via the VPN." Jim: "Yeah, I have tried the reset password features about a dozen times now and every stupid time it just errors out." IT Guy: "OK let me check a few things." I browse his user profile and everything looks OK. He is not suspended or locked out. Figuring that he must just be typing the wrong password over and over again, I do reset his password in the admin portal to start troubleshoot
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 04
    Font - Jim: "OK now I need to sign out and reset my password though." IT Guy: "Do you mean you want to set it to something other than the one I just gave you?" Jim: "Yeah the one you gave me isn't my password." IT Guy: (a little confused) "WelI I reset your password to that, but I can set it so next time you login you can set your password to whatever you like." Jim: "Yeah I need to change it back to my password so everything works."
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 05
    Font - IT Guy: (still confused) "Everything should work if you use that password, but if you want to change it that is not a problem." Jim: "Look I told you that is NOT my password. I need to set it back to MY password." IT Guy: (confused, but giving in at this point) "OK I've set your user profile so the next time you login it will prompt you to input a new password. Do you want to try while I am on the phone?" Jim: "Yeah let me give it a try..." I wait about 90 seconds hearing Jim pounding awa
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 06
    Font - IT Guy: "Let me reset your password back to XXXXXXXXX and try it again." It works with the same result so clearly Jim must not be entering the password confirmation correctly. Jim: "...But I still need to change the password back to my password." IT Guy: "OK let me set it so you can reset the password at your next login once again. If it doesn't work can you send me a screenshot of the error?" Jim: "Yeah no problem. Let me try this all again." Another 90 seconds pass with Jim cussing in t
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 07
    Font - IT Guy: "Jim, send me a picture of the error please if you can through your phone or another device." After stumbling around for about 10 minutes, he finally gets around to a picture of the screen to me via his iPad. The error says "password is not valid, enter new password." Now I understand what Jim is doing wrong. The error for this credential management system, when a password conflicts with the security policy, will generate an error of "(password that was attempted to be entered) is
    via u/jbanelaw
  • 08
    Font - your attempted reset was "dollhouse123"and that violated the password policy the error would say "dollhouse 123 is not a valid password...") Here all this time Jim was trying to trying to type in his password as the word "password" which created the confusing error message. I explained that "password" was not a valid password under the new security policies to Jim, who objected at first because he was also under the false impression that only his user name and that password would give him
    via u/jbanelaw

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