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Got call from extremely angry customer, our product is shit and doesn't work. At all. Important customer so I went to visit.

He had the perfect setup, our product to the left, our competitor's to the right.

He connected the Ethernet cable to their product, it worked. He plugged it out and connected to ours... Nothing. Shit.

I started to debug on the premises, took logs, everything. It seemed like our product didn't receive any data at all. What the fuck? Tried everything, debugged low level, still nothing. Sweating as hell.

After two hours I got a strange feeling. So I swapped place, our product to the right, competitor's to the left. Now OUR product worked, competitor's zilch.

THE FUCKING ETHERNET CABLE HAD A GLITCH. IF YOU BENT IT TO THE RIGHT IT WORKED, IF YOU BENT IT TO THE LEFT IT WAS BROKEN.

I had never seen a customer be this embarrassed in my life. He apologized to me, my boss, his boss, the Queen, everyone.

We got the contract.

Comments
  • 184
    The fact that I got surprised by the clients apology is really disturbing. Or sad.
  • 48
    Cool story!

    Even if he jumps right to conclusion, I'm glad your client understood his mistake.
  • 41
    You're one lucky man. Just as well you had the sense to go and visit. Imagine having to debug an ethernet cable over email or telephone.
  • 7
    /r/thathappened 😂
  • 4
    @Snatched He should’ve jumped to the left. BA DUM TSS
  • 16
    @divil Yes of course.
  • 11
    @divil only in his dreams
  • 2
    This happened to me with my stereo system!! It was an old system that used RCA cables, if I twisted the wire a certain way the left speaker would cut out. Spent an hour re-wiring the whole thing not knowing it was the input aux cable 😂
  • 5
    Probably the customer had a rough day too but when I read he apologized made me rather relieved
  • 2
    whose the Queen?
  • 0
    That had to be a satisfying feeling
  • 3
    He jumped -right- to the conclusions, and thus, he was -left- red faced.

    *sorry*
  • 0
    The select was broken
  • 0
    Proud of you
  • 2
    I will never understand why a cable will stop working for no apparent reason. shit, you’ve been lying there on the floor for a year and you just stop sending traffic! WTF?
  • 0
    Plugged out.. </giggle>
  • 0
    I love ur customer xD
  • 0
    Mine was backwards: Cabling was great. It was the Ethernet drivers that magically dropped packets at a rate of 96 percent, but only in full duplex mode.

    An update (surprisingly) fixed it.
  • 0
  • 0
    I would have liked to be there to see the customer's face. I'm glad he apologized
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