Please Scream In Frustration Now
Apple Bloom raced downstairs an hour after lunch one gloomy weekend afternoon. "Applejack!" she cried. "Ah can't get on th' Canternet!"
Applejack groaned. Ever since Twilight had insisted all her friends get computers and sign up for Canternet access, there had been one problem after another with the Apple family's computer. With a sigh, she pulled out the Handy Guide To Fixing Your Canternet that had come with the computer. "Let's see now...is ever'thing plugged in?"
Apple Bloom nodded. "And turned on, and all the lights are on on the modem and the router. It just won't connect!"
Applejack sighed. "Fine, Ah'll call..." She swallowed a thick, heavy lump in her throat. "...Customer Service."
Finding a telephone number in extremely small print in the back of the help guide, Applejack walked over to the phone, picked it up, and began dialing. As she did so, Apple Bloom ran into the room with the latest account statement from Canternet, knowing that Applejack would need it during the call.
//Thank you for loving our service here at Canternet,// an obnoxiously cheerful automated voice answered after two rings. //To tell us how much you love our service, please say 'One' now. To sign up for our service so that you can love it as much as our users, please say 'Two' now. If you are experiencing difficulty in loving our service, please say 'Three' now. If you do not love our service, please hang up at this time. For additional options, please say 'Derp' now.//
Applejack rolled her eyes. "Three," she said.
//Thank you for saying 'Three'. Please describe the difficulty you are experiencing loving our service, and please speak as clearly as possible. For example, if you find you are unable to connect to our service, please say, 'Can't Connect'. If you have misplaced or forgotten your password, please say, 'Password Help'. If—//
"Can't connect."
//Thank you for saying 'Can't Connect'. One moment please.// After a five second pause, the voice returned. //Please choose from one of our following options. You may say, 'No connection', or, 'Modem not working', or, 'I forgot to pay my bill', or—//
"No connection."
//One moment, please.// A brief pause. //Our diagnostics indicate that our service is functioning properly. If you require assistance connecting to Canternet from your computer, please say, 'I am stupid and do not know how to use my computer' now. Otherwise, please choose from one of our following options...//
Without even letting the automated voice finished, Applejack pressed zero twice on the phone.
//Fine, don't let me finish. See if I care. You are now being connected to someone who can actually listen to your problem and further assist you. Please be advised that your call may be monitored for quality assurance. Anything you say can and will be used against you in small claims court. Please hold for our next available representative.//
The obnoxious computer voice was replaced by an elevator music cover of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". A full seventeen minutes (almost long enough for the entire song to play from start to finish) later, the hold music was replaced with a brief burst of static, followed by a thickly-accented voice. //Good afternoon, and thank you for smurfing our Customer Smurfice Department. My name is Unhelpful Smurf, how may I smurf you today?//
Applejack blinked. "Uh...yeah. My name's Applejack, Ah'm callin' because mah Canternet's down..."
//I see...I am very sorry to smurf that, ma'am. Now, if you would please smurf to make sure your computer is smurfed in, then make sure your smurf and smurfer are smurfing properly, that means first the smurf light will smurf, then the smurf light will smurf twice, then—//
"We already checked all that, just like y'all's book says," Applejack said.
//Yes, but we must smurf procedure, so if you would please do as I smurf—//
"Ah'm tellin' ya, Ah already done all that!" Applejack snapped.
//Yes, I am understanding this, ma'am, but we have to smurf procedure—//
Applejack let out a frustrated groan. "Fine," she spat. "Ah'm goin' an' checkin' all that now." Applejack went through ten minutes of checking things she could see at a glance were working properly, all while the annoying and unhelpful turd on the other end of the line enumerated every tiny detail of the process in his gratingly thick, incomprehensible accent. Once they had determined that there was, in fact, nothing wrong with Applejack's computer, Unhelpful Smurf said, //If you would please to be smurfing me your smurf number, your smurfword, and a smurf number you can be smurfed at, I'll just smurf up your account...//
*Yeah, Ah'll just bet you'll smurf up my account.* Applejack rattled off all the information from her account statement. //Smurf you very much,// Unhelpful Smurf said. There was a sound of keys clicking. //Ooooh, yes yes, I smurf the problem now. I am sorry, ma'am, our technicians are smurfing the Ponyville access smurfer at the moment. Your Canternet access will resmurf sometime in the next smurf to smurf hours.//
Applejack growled. "Y'all coulda just told me that in th' first place! Do y'all know how much time Ah wasted goin' over all this crud on mah end that Ah knew weren't the problem?"
//I am sorry very much, ma'am, but we must smurf procedure. If you would please wait smurf to smurf hours, your service should resmurf. If it does not, please smurf back again later. Now, was there anything else I can smurf you with today?//
"No, no...Ah think you've smurfed me enough," Applejack replied. "Maybe y'all should just go an' smurf yourself for a little while." With that, she slammed the phone down angrily and stomped upstairs. "Canternet's down for service, sugarcube," she said.
"Oh, okay," Apple Bloom said. "Jeez, what took so long just to tell you that?"
Applejack shrugged. "Ah dunno, li'l sis. Ah reckon them people they got answerin' th' phones jes' don't speak Equish."
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OH GOD THE HORROR!
An Indian dude once called my house saying he was from Microsoft and that, and I quote, "your computer is being downloaded". How the hell does one download a computer? :
On another note, customer service sucks... but this story doesn't. Favorite and upvote for you
Awesome story
3662301 Anyone who calls and says something creepy like that is a telemarketer trying to sell something shady or a scammer trying to get personal information. But yes, even the scammers and telemarketers outsource to India now. It's one thing if they outsource to Mexico, I can at least understand Mexicans, but India? Really?
"Dear Celestia,
Please give me th' power ta shove mah hoof through this here phone and punch this ever lovin' smurfer in th' face. Ah-men.
Applejack"
3662307 I know, I don't think there are many people dumb enough to believe that
Also, yeah to the last part. India isn't even nearby to most of the companies and the accents are often to sick to understand. But eh, what're we gonna do
As someone who has been on both ends of the support equation, I am getting a kick.
Also, did AJ try turning it off and on again?
Poor Applejack. I'd hate to tell her how many times that I've been through this nonsense, from putting up with computer customer "support", to that of my former satellite providers, to even having to wrangle with customer support from Amazon.com; etc. It's an everlasting nightmare, no matter who it belongs to. Makes me want to tear my hair out by the roots every danged time!
And I'm probably the least bigoted/prejudiced person on the planet, but where customer "support" is concerned, don't even get me started if they're not from the U.S. (or whatever country you happen to be in when you have to do this), and speak a butchered up form of English while talking to you about this stuff! Grrrrrrrr!!! Drives me nuts!
Sweet Celestia! This better get featured!
APPARENTLY elevator music-versions of prog rock is now a thing.
Poor Applejack, I feel your pain. This story came at the best time, GREAT story.
AJ, I feel your pain...
I love stories like this. Poor Applejack.
Have yourself a moustache.
This better get featured.
You forgot the part where the automated machine replies "Sorry, I couldn't understand that. Could you please repeat?"
Well it's nice to see the Smurfs are doing something with themselves after their series ended, although I think they can do better than farmed-out customer service 'technicians'.
3664885 I subverted that because you'd EXPECT it with Applejack's accent.
you sir, just earned a follower, a favourite, and a like
You, brilliant sir/madam/extra terrestrial being, described the pain and suffering of all those unfortunate to call this wretched number in that single paragraph. You deserve a medal.
3666069 I regret that I didn't also get the chance to include the automatically hangs-up-on-you type of customer support call router in this, which is one I've had to deal with far too many times myself.
ProTip for everyone: If that automated call routing system is really pissing you off, press zero. If pressing it once doesn't do it, press it twice. Pressing zero twice will NEVER fail to connect to an actual person.
How did you go this whole story and not take advantage of the golden opportunity of having that automated voice recognition system have difficulties with Applejack's accent?
3666694 See above: it'd be a cliche, and I felt like subverting it.
These are feels that I know all too well.
Reading this while actually connected to Canternet.
What the heck is Applejacks mouth doing in the cover art?
3668810 I have no idea, but when I saw that pic, I thought, "That's EXACTLY what I look like when I have to call customer service."
I guess I'm blessed by every conceivable deity that I've never had to call support.
Oh god this is so unbelievably relevant to the shit I had to put up with about a week and a half ago.
Excellently done. Upovte from me.
3666342 THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHA-
assets.diylol.com/hfs/54d/dff/96d/resized/pinkie-pie-smile-meme-generator-it-s-so-beautiful-0c5789.jpg
I'll add this to the list of things I will ask a VA to say if I ever attend a con and get to the mic at a panel.
3669227 lol, I wouldn't know, I never have to call CS
3670859 I, unfortunately, have had to deal with my fair share of this nonsense, and I always dread it. At my previous apartment, I had crappy DSL from AT&T, and was on the phone to them about it at least three times a year. More recently, my cell service provider provides more customer service frustration than actual cell service.
3671077 Ouch. Comcast. I'm with Time Warner now, have been for almost a year, and have had exactly one 30-minute outage which was a network problem.
3662355 BOTH sides? Im guessing you had some fun calls over the years.
Canternet... Equish... I love these words!
Equish, Fancy, Zebrikaans, Ponese... what else?
I'm Indian and I STILL had trouble with the outsourced customer service..
3671807 Even when the tech support isn't Indian, even when they actually clearly speak your language, they tend to be unhelpful unless you're fortunate enough to accidentally get a supervisor on the first try. That's because most of the people you actually get when you call tech support have no clue what's going on, and are just following a script and doing computer lookups.
That cover pic is so fitting.
3671740
Ever try to talk to some old lady who doesn't know what 'right click' is? Not a fun time.
3666699 Where I worked, they had a tech team from Siemens (Germany) and Matsushada Heavy Industries (Japan) and we specified they had to speak to each other because their systems were to interface. We were assured they spoke English. They did, just not well enough for the other group to understand them.
I spent half-an-hour to convince them not to translate units out of metric (which they both understood), incorrectly into English units, 
and six hours translating English into English. 
A criminal would have been perfect.
I don't know if there were no muggers around when I left work, or if they saw my expression and just ran for it, I was rather looking forward to dismembering somebody on my way home.
3672255 Any time someone "assures" you a team of Japanese workers speaks English, you are automatically in for a day from hell. What the Japanese call "speaking English" is what everyone else calls "are you fucking drunk"?
3672198 Sounds like you might've made a few submissions to Computer Stupidities in your time. Ever hear the one about the sweet little old lady who blew a hole in her Mac with a 12-gauge? And then asked tech support to fix it?
3672325
Nope, but I did have a client rip out his cd-rom drive with a crowbar and send us back the computer, with a sticky note on the drive asking if we could get his data off of it.
The case looked like a wolverine had attacked it.
Then there are the people who make a copy of the icons on their desktop, thinking that backs up their data. Fun times.
3672344 At least those are FUN cases of user stupidity. I tried and failed to save my aunt and uncle's PC last week. There's at least two major pieces of malware I can't get rid of (RegCleaner Pro being one of them), their version of Norton is the most obtrusive piece of nonsensical shit I've ever seen, Firefox broke two weeks ago and refuses to work or even reinstall, and IE can't be opened without spawning at least one malware popup. Also, IE8 won't install. On a Vista SP2 system. Oh, and no Windows installation CD, so I can't use the Final Solution to fix their problem. Told them they need to call Geek Squad because I just don't even want to fuck with that mess anymore.
3672325 The Japanese team wasn't half as bad as the Germans. The Japanese at least knew their Engrish wasn't goodly. (I will always remember the 'evil-grabbing priers': vice-grips). Germans, in speaking, with malaise aforethought, sentence structure and near-synonyms muchly and proudantly mangled.
Sounds familiar to me...ok I didn´t have the luck to be forced to call a foreign customer service but all of this stuff AJ encountered...sigh...sometimes I really was on my last nerves...and my problem is still not resolved...
Well, nice little story and so true it is painful
3672534 "Evil grabbing priers"....oh my god, that sounds like something out of an 80s stereotype!
Oh, tell me that happened 20-30 years ago. PLEASE tell me that happened 20-30 years ago.
3672778 I can't, 1995. For those of you who don't get it, they were using knock offs of vise grip pliers
hi.atgimg.com/img/x/3772/038548990699_ca.jpg
That had vice-grip stamped on them. 'Evil-grabbing' was appropriate.
3662301
Scammer: "Hello, I am [name], from Microsoft. We have detected a virus on your Windows."
Me: "Really? But I just had my windows cleaned."
Scammer: "I assure you sir, there is a virus. Now, we can-"
Me: "No, really, the window cleaner literally just left ten minutes ago."
Scammer: "No... I meant your computer! Your Windows on your computer has a virus."
Me: "I certainly don't have a window on my computer."
Scammer: "No, Windows! That's the program that makes it run!"
Me: "I really don't have any windows on my computer."
Scammer: "It's a program! It's what makes your computer run, and it's got a virus!"
Me: "No it isn't."
Scammer: "Yes it is! Windows makes your computer run."
Me: "No it doesn't."
Scammer: "Okay then, when you turn it on, there's a logo that appears, right?"
Me: "Right."
Scammer: "What does the text say?"
Me: "Ubuntu."
*click*
3673068 *DIES* Submit that to Computer Stupidities! That's awesome.
3673021 Man...even with that, those must have been some STRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGE dudes. Unless whoever wrote the kanji for it only wrote the kanji for 'evil' (aku) and left off the kanji 'fuu'. I mean, there are literally HUNDREDS of words that start with the same kanji!