Customer: "I can't get on the Internet. Would this have anything to do with my apartment buzzer code not working?"
Technician: "Nope."
Customer: "OK. Thanks! Bye!"

Customer could not connect to the POP3 server to get email in Outlook Express.

Customer: "Is it mandatory that I be connected in order to do this?"
Technician: "Yes, yes, it would be."

Technician: "OK, ma'am, we need to remove the checkmark from that box."
Customer: "OK, so where do I put it?"

Customer is unable to browse the web. They said something about setting up the Local Area Connection and putting in an IP address and such. It was xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. Um, OK... Set it all back to automatic settings, and whaddya know, it WORKED!!! Amazing!

Customer can't send email. She is getting error 550 5.7.1 Relaying denied. She is connecting to the correct SMTP server. She otherwise has web access, and is receiving email OK. I checked her IP address. It was xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. This resolves to a completely separate ISP. Now the customer mentions that she is connecting by a friend's connection. Well, that would be the problem. I told the customer to connect by OUR DSL service and it will work fine. She will try that and call back if it doesn't work.

Customer: "I click nice lady, I get much naked ladies."

Customer: "I get kazaa, I search for horse, I get lady with horse."

Customer: "I am from Europe, everything is illegal in Canada."

Customer: "I don't want to see, but sometimes I get some nice ladies, so I save."

Technician: "Can you double-click on the big blue 'e'?"
Customer: "I'm not a technical person. Don't use such technical terms."

Customer was cancelling their DSL service for whatever reason and had a credit on their account, but still had the rented DSL modem at home.

Technician: "So we will mail you a cheque for the credit amount after you return the modem."
Customer: "Well it's my policy to not return the modem until I receive the credit."
Technician: "No problem. Since this is rented equipment, the rental charges will be deducted from the credit amount until you return the modem. When the credit runs out, we will try to take the payments from your bank account."
Customer: "Then I'll just make a stop payment."
Technician: "And when the payments bounce back to us, we will send you to the credit bureau for the entire amount of the modem and the rental charges."
The customer hung up.

Summary of a conversation with a customer: New modem is not getting sync. Old modem does get sync. New modem is broke. He says no. OK, new modem must not be broke. That's why they don't put warranties on new things.

Customer (yes, an actual customer): "I didn't realize that you were an Internet provider, so I was going around talking to [competitor]."

Customer: "Is the Internet working today?"
Technician: I so wished I could get away with saying "No, the whole Internet is down today. The entire thing is broken. Too many people were emailing their friends jokes and chain letters and the Internet crashed. Try again next week."

Customer: "Hi, do you sell insurance?"
Technician: "Nope."
Customer: "OK. Thanks."

Customer: "I was talking to Mike earlier in the day about getting it up."

A customer called in complaining that every night since December 18th, between the hours of 6pm and midnight, his DSL would not work, but otherwise it was fine during other times of the day. Interesting. What happened on December 18th? He put up his Christmas lights. So, whenever the lights turn on, his DSL stops working. Somehow -- this is yet to be explained --, his Christmas lights conflict with his DSL. Very weird.

Technician: "What happens when you launch Internet Explorer?"
Customer: "It doesn't open. It just gives you that message with all the typing on it."

Customer who recently upgraded from dialup to DSL (high speed) called in to ask why his connection wasn't any faster. He is still dialing in, and has not picked up the high speed modem yet.

Customer called in wondering why the new modem she just installed was not being detected.

Technician: "What is the model number of the modem?"
Customer: "Just a second, let me pull it out again... [pause] It's XXXXXXX."

The customer then replaced the modem in the computer. Technician asked her to re-read the installation instructions that came with the modem. They said to install the modem, then power up the computer and Windows should detect the new modem and display the New Hardware Wizard.

Customer: "Oh, maybe that's why it's not working... I didn't turn the computer off yet."

She was plugging in the internal PCI modem while the computer was still running! Not just once, but three times! Miraculously, the modem and computer were both fully functional after this call.