Newsgroups: rec.humor




Murphy's Laws Of Online Support

% The user manuals will contain a virtually unnoticeable error that will
  have drastic consequences.

% QA will have missed the killer installation bug.

% If the documentation can be misunderstood, it will be.

% The customer's configuration will be one that you cannot possibly
  duplicate.  Corollary:  This configuration will be one that causes a
  catastropic system failure.  Converse:  If the customer has a configuration
  identical to yours in every detail, you will still not be able to 
  duplicate the problem.

% If your product is part of a system that contains somebody else's
  product, they will blame all of the problem on your product and tell
  the customer to call you.  Corollary:  if your product is being used
  with somebody else's product and you call them up for help, they will
  refuse to talk to you, and possibly even refer you back to yourself.

% If the problem fixes itself, it will be back with a vengeance later.

% If the customer obtains a wrong number and calls you by mistake, he
  will invariably be a flaming SOB who will demand that you fix his
  problem anyway.

% The fix you send out will introduce even worse problems.

% The customer will have an obsolete product for which there are no 
  documents, knowledge, or working examples left in the plant.  Corollary:
  obsolete products come as systems.

% If your product works on somebody else's system, they will invariably
  make a minor change that will render your product -- and only your
  product -- completely incompatible.

% Minor design changes in the product will cause intolerable compatibility
  issues for the customers.  Corollary:  The lab didn't tell anyone about
  them.

% All previous support people who have dealt with the customer will have
  provided misinformation whose disastrous effects you must now undo.

% The problem will vanish when you arrange for a field person to make a 
  customer visit.

% The customer will tell you everything in great detail except for the
  single significant fact that will solve the problem.  Corollary: the
  customer will give you misinformation that will turn a problem that has
  an immediate answer into an agonizing marathon troubleshooting session.

% The lab engineer whose help you desperately need will regard support people
  as an inferior species and have less concept of a customer than he does of
  a scaly pangolin.

% If manufacturing has two unrelated products whose subassemblies can be
  transposed in packaging, they will be.

% The customer will have a lisp, a thick accent, a bad connection, an
  agonizing stammer, or all of the above.

% The information required to fix the problem can only be obtained from a
  lab engineer who never wrote anything down, and has either forgotten it
  all or has left the organization.

% The problem that is impossible to solve will be the sticking point on a
  multimillion-dollar deal.

% The replacement part is always impossible to get.  Corollary:  there may
  be plenty of them around but the paperwork won't be set up to obtain them.
  Second corollary:  Equivalent parts, aren't.

[<>] gvg -- tain't that bad but it just feels like it sometimes