Last week I was asked if it was possible to get visitors telephone numbers from Google Analytics. When I said it couldn't be done the client said 'what use is that?'. This same customer has previously asked me why they can't see the CVV code of customer credit cards so they can charge them more if supplier prices go up in the time it takes since taking an order to shipping it.

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I was asked to fix a broken laptop as a favour for a friend. They'd bought it new and it had worked fine to begin with and then wouldn't switch on. When it arrived I asked where the power lead was because I couldn't get any life out of it on battery power. They'd not sent the power lead because they didn't think I'd need it - because they'd only used it once to charge the latop when they first got it and then never used it again.

Can you guess why it wouldn't switch on? Some people should be banned from buying computers.

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We've come into the office this morning and were just starting to think about the week ahead when a client called and asked us the change a graphic on their website so that was 'brighter'. When we said we'd try to look at it straight away they insisted we do it whilst they were on the phone. Not wanting to get into an argument we did so and pointed out to the client that the graphic was actually very bright already and fitted in with the rest of their website. They said it used to be bright, they agreed, but it was now very dull.

10 minutes later when we'd managed to get to the bottom of the problem....they changed the brightness on their laptop back to what it had been before their 3 year had meddled with it and they're now happy. God help us.

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One of our clients must be a world record holder for questions that 2 year olds wouldn't ask.

She has asked why the web won't work when her broadband is down. She has also been known to ring up 5 or 6 times and day and demand to know why no-one has placed an order on her website. Everytime she gets visitors she wants to know why they don't all place an order. Telling her that her prices are three times more than her competitors doesn't work.

Then we have today when she sent an email asking if we could answer her emails whilst she was on vacation because she paid us for hosting so she thought we would do this too.

If anyone wants her as a client, let me know.

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Telephone call received this morning:

Caller : "Hello, can you tell me how much a website would cost?"

Me: "Well that depends on what type of website it is you require and how involved it would be. Could you tell me a little about what the purpose of the website would be and your business/company?"

Caller : "I want a website that would be on the internet. I didn't know there were different places? What do you mean?"

Me : "I understand that sir, but would you want to sell goods online, or use it purely to promote your company without selling products or services on the internet, for example?"

Caller : "Oh I don't understand, forget it."

He then hung up.

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Heard a good one today. Client telephoned to ask about adding a page to their website (custom design, static, no CMS). When I asked about the content they said they wanted it to look like a rivals homepage.

I paused, umm'd and ahh'd a bit and asked for them to clarity what they meant.

They said they wanted to replicate their competitors homepage exactly so they could try to capture their visitors and pretend to be them. When I told them they could be asking for legal trouble, without doubt, by doing that they said "well who's going to tell them, you won't, will you?".

I asked what they thought they'd do about the address, the payment name, the phone numbers etc and they said "Hmm, hadn't thought of that."

Finally they said "Let me think about this. Maybe it would be better to replicate their whole site and set up new phone numbers and stuff."

I sometimes wonder if I live in a different world.

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Had an e-mail from a customer this morning, as you do on a Sunday when you're trying to relax.

Started off bad, got worse, as they do.

First complaint was that their website wasn't generating enough sales and it couldn't have anything to do with the fact their products are, on average, about 20% more than all their competitors.

Second complaint was that the telephone number on their website was wrong because they'd changed their numbers 2 week agos and we should have known. Right.

Third complaint was that they had no News to publish on the website so it had slipped in the search engine rankings and we should be doing more - despite them not taking our offer of Search Engine Optimisation services.

Where do you start? I was thinking of two words.

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Today I was asked what the 'e' in 'e-mail' stood for.

Despite the urge to say exciting, or elephant, or enormous, or elongated, or maybe even 'exaggerated', I resisted.

Instead I said 'easy'. To which they replied 'Oh yeah, of course it would be!'.

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Customer sent us as email, the contents of which are:

Hi,
Why hasn't the news on my website been updated? We have a whole range of new products that I want mentioning in news but youve not written anything about them.
Thanks

Our answer was as follows:

Hi,

We don't maintain your news content, it is entirely within your own control from the CMS. You have previously listed a variety of news items but seemed to stop doing so around Christmas 2010. If you'd like us to talk you through how to do this again, please just give us a call and we'd be happy to talk through it with you.

Us.

Their reply to the above was this:

Hi, thanks for that. I have never put any news on the website, you must have done it.

Our reply to this is:

Hi,

No, we have no maintenance contract in respect of administration or publication of news item, and we've never listed any news items on the site. We'll give you a call to discuss.

Us.

Their reply, within about 60 seconds of the above, was:

Hi, sorry, you are right. Ive realised it was my wife doing the news but she left me in January and hasnt been doing it since.


We haven't replied to the last email. What do you say to that?!

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One of our clients had an admin clerk who we had to train on how to use the website CMS. We spent hours repeating ourselves but the information just didn't seem to be sinking in.

We finally went to see the senior contact at the client company when the clerk asked what time the Internet closed each day.

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One of our clients rang us about a month after their new website had gone live. They were disappointed, and angry with it, with the poor response there had been.

We'd been following the traffic on site though and visitor numbers and enquiries were very good indeed. When we said this to the customer they said they'd had no enquiries at all.

Our systems showed they'd had at least 70 contact forms sent through.

When we told them this they said they'd not received any. So, we asked their permission to access their mail which they said yes to. In the mailbox were the 70+ enquiries dating back to within 2 days of the site going live - none of them had been read.

We asked the client why they'd not been checking their mail (which had also been set to download via POP3 into an Outlook account) and they said "Why do I have to check?"

As if that wasn't bad enough we also said we found it difficult to believe they'd not had any phone enquiries because of the traffic going through the site. They said they'd not had a single call. It was then revealed that the number they'd given us to be published on the site was a dedicated sales line they'd ordered....and then cancelled without telling us or thinking it might have an impact on things..

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Two months ago a client asked me to make a forum. So I made a forum with registration and everything and the possibility of people to post anonymously (he wanted that).

When he saw it he said everything is WRONG and that how would anonymous people know how to login. I explained that if they are anonymous they don't need a login. Eventually I had to make a login form for anonymous people (I made a form that would just disappear on submit :))

After all this stupidity the client asked me if we can find out the emails of the anonymous people and said that it is inacceptable that we cannot.

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Going back a few years with this one but we used to have a guy who never wrote anything in the body of Outlook e-mails. He used to write in the subject header, but there never anything in the body of the mail.

Instead, he used to attach an Excel worksheet to it - and the message would be in there!!!! The thing is, what no-one could understand is why he didn't use MS Word if he didn't realise you were meant to type within the body of the mail, why choose Excel???

His answer was that he didn't know you could type numbers in Word and he always liked to put his telephone number in the message!!!!

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When discussing a project with a new client we happened to mention they'd need an SSL Certificate. The response was pure gold and we struggled to keep it together when they asked if they'd need to go on a course to get the certificate.

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What makes a customer think they can ring me at 6.30pm on a Friday and ask if their website is down.....when they have failed to pay the hosting bill despite 4 requests for payment and are now 8 weeks overdue!

When I told them this they replied "Well did you really need to suspend the site? That's a bit rough."

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