Customer Support Tales

I thought this may be a good place to share some of these magnificent customer support experiences we all have. Let me start with this one, a bit colorized, but genuine dialogue.

CLIENT : I bought your theme and i’m drooling all over it. I can’t really find the place where it stores newsletter signups. Could you help me out please?
ME (researched the client quickly, found out who’s their hosting provider): Sure! Thanks for purchasing the theme! The emails are stored inside /public_html/username/wp-content/themes/themename/emails.xml file on your server. Use FTP or your account’s admin panel to access it.
CLIENT : Err. Thanks! I can’t really do that right now. I may try calling wordpress tomorrow to see if they can’t help out.
ME (couldn’t stop myself): I would strongly discourage you from contacting WordPress directly. A comparison that seems quite appropriate here is calling Mitsubishi in case of having problems with mounting a child seat in the back of your car. You are guessing right – they simply won’t help.

That was obviously not the end of my response. I offered additional support to close this case successfully, but this client’s email made me choke on scrambled eggs this morning.

Pathetic, i realize. Now, any other stories?

Did you eat scramble eggs while you answer support mails?

Absolutely! I love typing while having meals, and vice versa. A sort of soundless speaking with your mouth full, if you may.

So many threads about this already… some will come and say “don’t do that, if a potential client reads this thread he will be frightened to be made fun of and run away.” … and at one point this whole thread will be a copy/paste story of Clients from Hell. I meh this, even tho I love those stories.

The key is to never disclose any details about the client. That particular person mentioned above was in fact amused by the reply they got. I remember being friendly-fired-at by some people from exotic (at least to me) business fields, and it only made me feel good about the whole thing.