Note: this is the luser that inspired "Spam, Spam, TCP Towers and Spam!". This shows why it was quite a relief to loose this luser

Admin	"Is the caps-lock light on ?"
Luser	"I'm not a computer person..."
Admin	"What's your EMail address ?" [3]
Luser	"I'm not a computer person..."
Admin	"What's your name ?"
Luser	"I'm not a computer person..."
Admin	"Do you have a brain ?"
Luser	"I'm not a computer person..."

These Lusers pale into insignificance when compared to the Bastard Luser From Hell (or BLFH).

This one luser has caused more stress at TCP Towers (and at a sister company) than any other luser. Its not that they're clueless about computers, its not that they appear brain dead... its something else. I'm using the pural tense when describing this luser as it is really two people, a husband and wife team (which is even more worrying).

So, what have they done to earn the label of BLFH and be the first customer that I've refused to answer calls for in a year of dumb lusers ? Well, its a long story. Its one that I'm sure John can add to as he has also dealt with this Luser from hell.

It all began a month or so ago, when this luser decided to get a computer. They decided to get a quote from our sister company... however, it quickly turned out that the luser was just going to them for technical support and was going to buy the hardware from somewhere else. The questions were similar to "What is memory, and why do I need it" or worse. After a week or so of questions like this, our sister company stopped returning their calls. The main reason for this was that if the Luser had brought the PC from them, they would have really lost out on the deal thanks to the amount of tech support the LUser would demand.

(oh, and before people comment about the example question above being a valid one (it is after all), you've not talked to this LUser.... any explaination would have taken about 20 mins or so before they'd begin to understand. And they'd still come back a day or two later and ask the same question again. Now, think of the time spent on these LUsers answering such questions again and again. And again.....)

Somehow (I think it was thanks to a leaflet from our sister company), these LUsers heard of our services.

It is here that the troubles began in earnest. The following is from a list I've been writing out over the last few days after getting off the phone with this LUser. I've also been hitting things, screaming and drinking vast amounts of coffee as well....

As I said above (I think I said above anyway) this LUser is infact 2 different people. Whilst I'm half way through explaining something to one of them, they will have to get me to explain what I'd like them to do to another. It makes for some very dis-jointed conversations. It also doesn't help that whilst one is talking on the phone to me, the other is talking to the one on the phone.... this infact confuses both of them and I have to watch out for when the one not on the phone starts talking. The problem is that the other person often talks softly in the background and so I can't hear them :( I also end up repeating everything I say to one to the other.... most phone calls to them last about an hour. In one case, it took me an hour to get them to put a disk into their machine, run a program off it and get them to press the button marked "No" until the question "...replace winsock.dll..." came up, at which point they had to press the button marked "Yes". Why did it take so long, well, one decided to give me a life story inbetween each of my questions that basically whined on about the fact that it wasn't working and how they'd spent all of this money and how people had conned them and..... I had to listen for stuff like that for about 45 bloody minutes. The other 15 minutes were taken up with me telling them how to put a disk in a drive, run a program on it and click a mouse on a button.

• They didn't realise that when Eudora is asked to check mail and comes back empty handed it means that they have no EMail. I know that they've seen what happens when Eudora has found EMail as everyone is sent a welcome EMail when their account is created. All of our customers, bar this one, can understand this. Why not them ?

• They want free consultancy. They have this little network at home (don't ask) and (surprise surprise) are a little confused by it. Even though I've got nothing to do with the running of the network and it doesn't affect how they connect to our service, they still want me to help get it working. I've told them more than once to get the person who built the network (it wasn't them, more on that later) to sort it out and that whilst I'm happy (yeah, right) to help them with problems related to TCP, "I am unable to help them with problems not relating to TCP and our service". The network is a WfWG peer-to-peer botch BTW. Its not just with the network either. Its also with a fax modem, photoshop, windows, BBS (see later) and anything else which is in anyway related to a computer.

• They didn't realise that you have to be actually log into the network to be able to use it. I know its a bit much, but our documentation does actually say that you need to connect to the network before it will work. They also thought that they could use some fax software to connect to the net. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but most terminal servers don't really understand group 3 faxes.... Oh, and our letter detailing the log on details have in big bold letters the message that they can't use programs like windows terminal, fax software, etc to connect to the Internet.

• Comments like "They're all mad!" being said by the luser not on the phone when I'm talking to the other luser doesn't help.

• Having to explain what an attachment in Eudora is... this isn't so bad. If it wasn't for me taking them through getting a file attached and having them send it.... and then them asking me how to attach a file to an EMail in Eudora. My thought is "wait a minute... I just told you how to do that". Worse is when they ask me to help with them out with WinZip....

• Repeating pretty much everything to them at least 4-5 times. I guess each time I tell them, a little more of what I'm trying to tell them actually gets into their brains rather than hidding in fear on the surface.

• Winzip. Its a front-end to PKWare stuff that I've never used (much easier to use the command line stuff instead). As far as I know, it has never been a way to transfer files via a network. Someone has told them that it is. It has taken me a long time to convince them otherwise.

• Getting strange EMails that I have to ask myself "Do I answer this and have the problems of more dumb questions or do I ignore it and wait for them to phone up asking if I received the EMail ?". The answer is that I reply to the EMail in the best way I can (ie mono-sybalically (sp ?)). Not I expect them to actually collect the EMail, leading to the above phone call anyway and then the explaination about how to use Eudora.... again.

• I've also decided that Windows for Workgroup networks really don't mix with Lusers such as this..... especially when they are sharing drives and suddenly they say to me "Our D: drive has disappeared on the client computer" (I don't even want to explain that its a peer-to-peer network and not a client-server one... both machines share each others resources, files, printers, phone books, etc. You name it, they share it. I could shoot the person who set it up). Now, I don't know if this is a real D: drive or a network one. I guess it was a networked drive.... and attempting to diagnose network problems on WfWG across a phone to a dumb luser is not the easiest thing in the world. I passed the buck back to the person who set it up originally.

• They also used Compu$erve as well... and when they installed an update to the C$ IP s/w, they fragged the winsock.dll for Trumpet. Now, the C$ installation program does ask you if you want to frag an existing winsock.dll before it goes away and plays with your hard drive. Infact, the docs that come with the s/w also say that installing the new C$ IP s/w on a computer that already has an internet connection via another provider is a bad idea and that you should call C$ technical support (probably to persaude you to switch to using C$ for all of your internet access, but that's besides the point). What did they do ? Yep, you guessed it, put the C$ winsock over the trumpet one. That was fun to put right, especially as they wanted to keep the C$ connection to the Internet as well as our one. It took me a while to persaude them that they use either C$ or us to connect to the net (I was hoping here that they would go completely with C$, but no such luck). I had to tell them that whilst they could do it, it was hard to do (it would be for them) and it wasn't such a good idea. One of my colleagues told them the same thing, but they wanted to hear it from me for some strange reason.

[sigh] there have been more than this, but I've just realised how long this post is getting and I know a bar I could be drinking in.

It was cut down in a really hot bath wasn't it ?

[1]	Mr "I'm not a computer person" does seem to have a little bit of a clue these days. Whilst there was a lot of blood and tears shead when he "upgraded"[2] to Win95, we don't hear from him that often. It seems that once he has a system that works, he leaves its configuration alone. Whilst he really isn't a computer person, at least he was honest about it.
[2]	I prefer to think of upgrading to Win95 as a way of upgrading the bugs in the OS to more asethically pleasing bugs. It is also another way of computer shops upgrading the hardware on a PC :)
[3]	Our lusers, bless 'em, don't understand things like usernames and such like. We have to ask them for their EMail address as they sometimes remember that... although we have had one or two lusers who've asked "What is an EMail address ?". It does mean that we also have to hear the '@tcp.co.uk' bit as well tho.

Posted on 13th Dec 1995