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"Well, everything worked fine until you installed that [Chrome | Firefox | Opera] thing on my computer." Doing free tech support for non-technical people is a

"Well, everything worked fine until you installed that [Chrome | Firefox | Opera] thing on my computer." Doing free tech support for non-technical people is a wonderful thought, but it can also provide a harsh lesson in the dangers of unlimited liability for open-ended, no-fee, no-contract work.

pasbesoin 15y ago
I just recently wrapped up (hopefully) some donated work for a relative's business while it was struggling, financially. The relative's business partners were repeatedly dismissive, disrespectful, and ungrateful. The financial bind they'd gotten themselves into made my life more difficult in either having to pony up, myself, for what they needed or spend extra time and effort working around their financial constraints. The only reason I did it was my commitment to this relative, and the fact that they were now "in for a penny, in for a pound" with them. That business relationship between this relative and their partners is now unwinding, and I am glad to be shut of the latter. Once they started having some cashflow, their first concern was to spend it on other things rather taking care of past obligations, e.g. offering me even token compensation -- or building up some reserve, as I had suggested and in as much as I was not seeking payment. I write all this as a preface to the not infrequently commented observation: (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical. TANSTAAFL, even when you're buying.
- fl3tch 15y ago
  > (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical. Maybe people don't want to believe that they wasted their money, so they minimize problems with things that they pay for, while a free product entails no personal investment, financial, social or psychological. Maybe a low price (including zero) is a signal of a low quality product, which comes with the expectation of something to be criticized. (Their thinking might be) why would you be providing these services to us for free if they didn't suck?
  - pyre 15y ago
    On the other side of the coin, most of these anecdotes are instances of doing favors for friends/relatives. If you tried to charge them, a number of them would be critical of your decision to not 'do them a favor.'
    - drdeadringer 15y ago
      I wonder if a comprise would be compensation other than money, e.g. whatever you need that their specialty might be.
melling 15y ago
Yeah, I got heat earlier in the year when I had my girlfriend upgrade her 80 year old dad's computer to IE9. Something was different with his favorites. Impossible to troubleshoot over the phone. Hopefully, he's over it by Christmas. :-) My sister still gives me the "my computer runs slower now" after I had her do IE9. Personally, I just take the opportunity to work on my sells skills. After all, IE9 is only a Microsoft blessed upgrade. My mom asked about Chrome because she saw a Google ad. Let's see if I can "sell" her on it. Keep up those ads Google.
Kylekramer 15y ago
Oh god, tell me about it. Once I came to my parents' house to find the family laptop having gained a wonderful feature where every search result would redirect to spyware. Did my best to clean the mess and get everything somewhat reasonable, and then got a call a few weeks later saying my "porn watching" ruined their computer and deleted their bookmarks.
highriseo 15y ago
Remember that this article is advising that you upgrade to the most recent version. That means if your parents are running IE 6, let it update itself. Although I agree with you're point about not contract work, I think that upgrading to a newer version of the same software holds low enough liability (esp when compared with changing to Firefox/Opera/Chrome)
sjs 15y ago
Did you read it? > The Atlantic advises a conservative approach: don't switch to a different browser, just give them the latest version of the browser they're already using. Be on hand for the first time or two they use the browser, just in case they notice the change and have questions.
- MarkSweep 15y ago
  Even that's not safe. I remember a lot of angst when I upgraded someone's IE 6 to 7 about the missing menu bar.
  - sjs 15y ago
    Was anyone harmed? ... I'm joking of course. So they were frustrated for a second and then you showed them how to get the menu bar and everything was ok, right? Why was there a lot of angst, and why was it unsafe?
    - InclinedPlane 15y ago
      It's about "moving the cheese". Most people are creaturea of habit, when you move their cheese it forces them to change their habits and instills panic due to fear of the unknown. More so if the person affected isn't tech savvy. They are afraid they won't be able to do what they did before, they are afraid they'll make some new mistake that will have disastrous consequences, they are afraid of being embarrassed with making some novice blunder that will cause everyone to laugh at them, etc. For these folks changing their browser, even a little bit would be like you or I walking into the bathroom and finding the toilet paper replaced with 3 seashells. You can get past that moment of panic with some coaching but some people don't like to be helped so there may or may not be anything you can do. My philosophy: if you're getting tasked with being the family IT department, lay down some rules: they use what you suggest or they don't get support. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese
    - joe_the_user 15y ago
      It is "unsafe" for the would-be helper to help people who aren't asking/paying for help and who don't understand the difference between a easily changed default setting and installed spyware. With such people, you never know when they will simultaneously accuse you of "breaking" their computer and remove your access to said computer so that whatever you've done that they believe "breaks" the computer indeed becomes "permanent" and is something they can be permanently pissed at you for.
kmfrk 15y ago
I stalled the laptop purchasing decision for my mom and grandmother and ended up letting other family members get my grandmother a laptop (Windows), and I let my mom get talked into buying a Mac by some friends and family members and abdicated all tech support responsibility by arguing that I only knew how to use Windows. It worked; all blame is shifted away from me (as it should be) to the electric contraptions and other people who talked them into getting the laptops in question. I think I increased my life span by twelve years and freed up a couple of hundred hours a month by that. I am basically the Machiavelli of tech support.
- lparry 15y ago
  I went the opposite way and dumped windows and started telling people I had no idea how it worked anymore (Vista was a blessing, moving everything around into new places :P) which reduced my tech support to pretty much nothing. Now whenever a novice asks for advice on what computer they should buy, I point them towards a Mac. For the most part, people just dont have problems; but when they do I tell them to go in to the genius bar so I _still_ dont have to do tech support. I offer advice, Apple handles support. Wins all round from my perspective!
  - ben1040 15y ago
    Likewise for me - after dealing with my in-laws and their insufferable Windows machine, I bought them a Mac mini last year. To justify putting them through that change I told them it would be easier for me to fix it for them since I could more easily remote in from my Mac at home. In reality I never set up remote access because I haven't needed to. They love the thing and have never had trouble with it now.
  - kmfrk 15y ago
    Outside of major countries, you will not, for the time being, find any Apple stores (Stores?), unfortunately. Instead, you get certified premium sellers or something nebulous to that extent whose only relation to Apple is that they sell Apple products; they are basically normal retail stores with some kind of accreditation from Apple, whatever that entails. I assume Apple will expand globally eventually, but the niceties of the Apple store are a privilege, not a guarantee. :)
ugh 15y ago
You must all really have very inflexible parents. My parents are very non-technical (when it comes consumer electronics – my dad can engineer a kick-ass water supply infrastructure for you if you need it) and generally clueless about many things having to do with computers but they never had a problem with me switching browsers for them (from IE to Firefox to Safari to Chrome; they are currently using both Safari and Chrome depending on which computer they use). Maybe it has something to do with the features they use? What my parents need is Google as a start page, the back and forward buttons and sometimes the address bar. All browsers I installed for them had those features in the same places and looking (approximately) the same. What I want to say is this: all parents are different and you shouldn’t be discouraged by the experience of some not to update or change browsers. Before you do so I would recommend watching your parents how they use their old browser. If there is some feature they use that is in a different place or has a different name or works in a different way or isn’t there at all you have an uphill battle ahead of you and maybe you don’t want to change anything. If not you are fine.
lwat 15y ago
The trick is to do it in such a way that they don't notice, and without telling them you did anything at all.
code_duck 15y ago
I don't have a problem with unlimited liability to do work for my parents... Anyway, I installed Linux on my mother's system over Win XP years back and it couldn't have gone better. She has been doing great with Ubuntu for 2 years now. The spyware, failed updates and odd networking failures I was summoned to her house to fix frequently went away entirely, so thankfully it was the opposite of your warning. I guess the lesson there is to only provide the best technology, that you trust. Linux is pretty rock solid for home users today, especially people like my mother who primarily use a browser.
- jamesbkel 15y ago
  Similar situation here. My Dad uses his laptop for browsing and email, maybe to scan a document every few months. After getting fed up with all the calls about spyware and other generally weird issues I installed Ubuntu. Since then, I've had two support calls from him: 1) "Is it safe to enter my password when it's installing updates?" 2) "I'm at my friend's house... how do I add a new wireless network?"
  - simon 15y ago
    Yup. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers for members of my congregation and provide them technical support. After one or two calls, it gets real quiet and they just enjoy using it. My mother-in-law has Ubuntu on her laptop and brought it with her while they visit for Thanksgiving. I'll show her a few new things this weekend, but that's about the size of my technical support burden.
  - jiggy2011 15y ago
    Whilst it seems like a good idea to install Ubuntu on other peoples computers there are 4 things that would stop me from doing it. 1) Flash player, this crashes allot under Linux and seems to have some weird issues with sound where you will be listening to a video and all of a sudden the sound will start playing from the beginning of the video in addition to the current sound. 2) Wifi , this generally works, but Network Manager doesn't seem to be the best piece of software and I've often had problems with it just not showing up wireless networks which should be there. No idea why. 3) Distro updates, you have to live in fear of the time when they will accidentally or intentionally click the "update to latest ubuntu" button when it asks and half the drivers stop working and/or it replaces their whole user interface with something else. 4) Other software , even if your sure they only need a browser because all they want to do is read the news and browse cookery sites there's going to be some point they decide to buy an ipod and ring you up asking how to install iTunes, sure you could go and spend some time coaching them how to do this under banshee or something but they might be concerned about why they have to do this differently. Of course they are also likely to buy the 1 scanner / webcam / printer etc that is known not to play well with Linux.
notatoad 15y ago
You're doing it wrong. The most important part of upgrading somebodys browser is to not tell them about it. Nobody cares about these things until you bring it to their attention.
- JWLong 15y ago
  Yeah... no... I tried that one too... and all I got was "What's this Firefox thing?" "Does it cost me money?"
  - billpatrianakos 15y ago
    You're still doing it wrong! You don't switch browsers, you upgrade the current one. For years I tried to explain the merits of using anything over IE. over the years my explanations got dumbed down to the point where I tell my parents "It works better" or "You won't get a virus" instead of the other simple-but-complicated-to-them explanations involving standards, accessibility, etc. In the end, my dad actually got on board with Firefox which was awesome! But then Chrome came out and he won't try it and I'm not about to try to push it more than the passing comment I made about it a few weeks back. My mother on the other hand won't switch to anything. She won't even let you upgrade from IE7. She's now dating a guy who does IT work for the IL State Gov and she listened to him and at least upgraded. Thank god for her new boyfriend. Now I go to him whenever she needs computer help. I call and say "hey, you're the new computer guy in the family. Mom needs X done. Can you go over there?" and I no longer do computer support for my mother.

pasbesoin 15y ago

I just recently wrapped up (hopefully) some donated work for a relative's business while it was struggling, financially. The relative's business partners were repeatedly dismissive, disrespectful, and ungrateful. The financial bind they'd gotten themselves into made my life more difficult in either having to pony up, myself, for what they needed or spend extra time and effort working around their financial constraints. The only reason I did it was my commitment to this relative, and the fact that they were now "in for a penny, in for a pound" with them. That business relationship between this relative and their partners is now unwinding, and I am glad to be shut of the latter. Once they started having some cashflow, their first concern was to spend it on other things rather taking care of past obligations, e.g. offering me even token compensation -- or building up some reserve, as I had suggested and in as much as I was not seeking payment. I write all this as a preface to the not infrequently commented observation: (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical. TANSTAAFL, even when you're buying.

fl3tch 15y ago
> (Most) people value service in and to the extent they pay for it. If it's "free", they can often be endlessly if ignorantly critical. Maybe people don't want to believe that they wasted their money, so they minimize problems with things that they pay for, while a free product entails no personal investment, financial, social or psychological. Maybe a low price (including zero) is a signal of a low quality product, which comes with the expectation of something to be criticized. (Their thinking might be) why would you be providing these services to us for free if they didn't suck?
- pyre 15y ago
  On the other side of the coin, most of these anecdotes are instances of doing favors for friends/relatives. If you tried to charge them, a number of them would be critical of your decision to not 'do them a favor.'
  - drdeadringer 15y ago
    I wonder if a comprise would be compensation other than money, e.g. whatever you need that their specialty might be.

melling 15y ago

Yeah, I got heat earlier in the year when I had my girlfriend upgrade her 80 year old dad's computer to IE9. Something was different with his favorites. Impossible to troubleshoot over the phone. Hopefully, he's over it by Christmas. :-) My sister still gives me the "my computer runs slower now" after I had her do IE9. Personally, I just take the opportunity to work on my sells skills. After all, IE9 is only a Microsoft blessed upgrade. My mom asked about Chrome because she saw a Google ad. Let's see if I can "sell" her on it. Keep up those ads Google.

Kylekramer 15y ago

Oh god, tell me about it. Once I came to my parents' house to find the family laptop having gained a wonderful feature where every search result would redirect to spyware. Did my best to clean the mess and get everything somewhat reasonable, and then got a call a few weeks later saying my "porn watching" ruined their computer and deleted their bookmarks.

highriseo 15y ago

Remember that this article is advising that you upgrade to the most recent version. That means if your parents are running IE 6, let it update itself. Although I agree with you're point about not contract work, I think that upgrading to a newer version of the same software holds low enough liability (esp when compared with changing to Firefox/Opera/Chrome)

sjs 15y ago

Did you read it? > The Atlantic advises a conservative approach: don't switch to a different browser, just give them the latest version of the browser they're already using. Be on hand for the first time or two they use the browser, just in case they notice the change and have questions.

MarkSweep 15y ago
Even that's not safe. I remember a lot of angst when I upgraded someone's IE 6 to 7 about the missing menu bar.
- sjs 15y ago
  Was anyone harmed? ... I'm joking of course. So they were frustrated for a second and then you showed them how to get the menu bar and everything was ok, right? Why was there a lot of angst, and why was it unsafe?
  - InclinedPlane 15y ago
    It's about "moving the cheese". Most people are creaturea of habit, when you move their cheese it forces them to change their habits and instills panic due to fear of the unknown. More so if the person affected isn't tech savvy. They are afraid they won't be able to do what they did before, they are afraid they'll make some new mistake that will have disastrous consequences, they are afraid of being embarrassed with making some novice blunder that will cause everyone to laugh at them, etc. For these folks changing their browser, even a little bit would be like you or I walking into the bathroom and finding the toilet paper replaced with 3 seashells. You can get past that moment of panic with some coaching but some people don't like to be helped so there may or may not be anything you can do. My philosophy: if you're getting tasked with being the family IT department, lay down some rules: they use what you suggest or they don't get support. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese
  - joe_the_user 15y ago
    It is "unsafe" for the would-be helper to help people who aren't asking/paying for help and who don't understand the difference between a easily changed default setting and installed spyware. With such people, you never know when they will simultaneously accuse you of "breaking" their computer and remove your access to said computer so that whatever you've done that they believe "breaks" the computer indeed becomes "permanent" and is something they can be permanently pissed at you for.

kmfrk 15y ago

I stalled the laptop purchasing decision for my mom and grandmother and ended up letting other family members get my grandmother a laptop (Windows), and I let my mom get talked into buying a Mac by some friends and family members and abdicated all tech support responsibility by arguing that I only knew how to use Windows. It worked; all blame is shifted away from me (as it should be) to the electric contraptions and other people who talked them into getting the laptops in question. I think I increased my life span by twelve years and freed up a couple of hundred hours a month by that. I am basically the Machiavelli of tech support.

lparry 15y ago
I went the opposite way and dumped windows and started telling people I had no idea how it worked anymore (Vista was a blessing, moving everything around into new places :P) which reduced my tech support to pretty much nothing. Now whenever a novice asks for advice on what computer they should buy, I point them towards a Mac. For the most part, people just dont have problems; but when they do I tell them to go in to the genius bar so I _still_ dont have to do tech support. I offer advice, Apple handles support. Wins all round from my perspective!
- ben1040 15y ago
  Likewise for me - after dealing with my in-laws and their insufferable Windows machine, I bought them a Mac mini last year. To justify putting them through that change I told them it would be easier for me to fix it for them since I could more easily remote in from my Mac at home. In reality I never set up remote access because I haven't needed to. They love the thing and have never had trouble with it now.
- kmfrk 15y ago
  Outside of major countries, you will not, for the time being, find any Apple stores (Stores?), unfortunately. Instead, you get certified premium sellers or something nebulous to that extent whose only relation to Apple is that they sell Apple products; they are basically normal retail stores with some kind of accreditation from Apple, whatever that entails. I assume Apple will expand globally eventually, but the niceties of the Apple store are a privilege, not a guarantee. :)

ugh 15y ago

You must all really have very inflexible parents. My parents are very non-technical (when it comes consumer electronics – my dad can engineer a kick-ass water supply infrastructure for you if you need it) and generally clueless about many things having to do with computers but they never had a problem with me switching browsers for them (from IE to Firefox to Safari to Chrome; they are currently using both Safari and Chrome depending on which computer they use). Maybe it has something to do with the features they use? What my parents need is Google as a start page, the back and forward buttons and sometimes the address bar. All browsers I installed for them had those features in the same places and looking (approximately) the same. What I want to say is this: all parents are different and you shouldn’t be discouraged by the experience of some not to update or change browsers. Before you do so I would recommend watching your parents how they use their old browser. If there is some feature they use that is in a different place or has a different name or works in a different way or isn’t there at all you have an uphill battle ahead of you and maybe you don’t want to change anything. If not you are fine.

lwat 15y ago

The trick is to do it in such a way that they don't notice, and without telling them you did anything at all.

code_duck 15y ago

I don't have a problem with unlimited liability to do work for my parents... Anyway, I installed Linux on my mother's system over Win XP years back and it couldn't have gone better. She has been doing great with Ubuntu for 2 years now. The spyware, failed updates and odd networking failures I was summoned to her house to fix frequently went away entirely, so thankfully it was the opposite of your warning. I guess the lesson there is to only provide the best technology, that you trust. Linux is pretty rock solid for home users today, especially people like my mother who primarily use a browser.

jamesbkel 15y ago
Similar situation here. My Dad uses his laptop for browsing and email, maybe to scan a document every few months. After getting fed up with all the calls about spyware and other generally weird issues I installed Ubuntu. Since then, I've had two support calls from him: 1) "Is it safe to enter my password when it's installing updates?" 2) "I'm at my friend's house... how do I add a new wireless network?"
- simon 15y ago
  Yup. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers for members of my congregation and provide them technical support. After one or two calls, it gets real quiet and they just enjoy using it. My mother-in-law has Ubuntu on her laptop and brought it with her while they visit for Thanksgiving. I'll show her a few new things this weekend, but that's about the size of my technical support burden.
- jiggy2011 15y ago
  Whilst it seems like a good idea to install Ubuntu on other peoples computers there are 4 things that would stop me from doing it. 1) Flash player, this crashes allot under Linux and seems to have some weird issues with sound where you will be listening to a video and all of a sudden the sound will start playing from the beginning of the video in addition to the current sound. 2) Wifi , this generally works, but Network Manager doesn't seem to be the best piece of software and I've often had problems with it just not showing up wireless networks which should be there. No idea why. 3) Distro updates, you have to live in fear of the time when they will accidentally or intentionally click the "update to latest ubuntu" button when it asks and half the drivers stop working and/or it replaces their whole user interface with something else. 4) Other software , even if your sure they only need a browser because all they want to do is read the news and browse cookery sites there's going to be some point they decide to buy an ipod and ring you up asking how to install iTunes, sure you could go and spend some time coaching them how to do this under banshee or something but they might be concerned about why they have to do this differently. Of course they are also likely to buy the 1 scanner / webcam / printer etc that is known not to play well with Linux.

notatoad 15y ago

You're doing it wrong. The most important part of upgrading somebodys browser is to not tell them about it. Nobody cares about these things until you bring it to their attention.

JWLong 15y ago
Yeah... no... I tried that one too... and all I got was "What's this Firefox thing?" "Does it cost me money?"
- billpatrianakos 15y ago
  You're still doing it wrong! You don't switch browsers, you upgrade the current one. For years I tried to explain the merits of using anything over IE. over the years my explanations got dumbed down to the point where I tell my parents "It works better" or "You won't get a virus" instead of the other simple-but-complicated-to-them explanations involving standards, accessibility, etc. In the end, my dad actually got on board with Firefox which was awesome! But then Chrome came out and he won't try it and I'm not about to try to push it more than the passing comment I made about it a few weeks back. My mother on the other hand won't switch to anything. She won't even let you upgrade from IE7. She's now dating a guy who does IT work for the IL State Gov and she listened to him and at least upgraded. Thank god for her new boyfriend. Now I go to him whenever she needs computer help. I call and say "hey, you're the new computer guy in the family. Mom needs X done. Can you go over there?" and I no longer do computer support for my mother.