Dealing with wonky printers is a universal frustration. According to Gartner studies, printers are by far the biggest technology problem, racking up 50 percent of all technical support calls worldwide. And that makes them a very profitable scam.
Here’s how it works. You’re sitting at home and want to print out a bill, letter, or other document and the printer hangs up. The little wheel is just spinning and spinning. After multiple tries you decide to call tech support to fix the problem. After 2 hours of sitting listening to the same song, interrupted by the recorded voice telling you your “call is important,” you start surfing for some sort of help. Your results show three or four sites for printer support and a free chat service.
You click one of them, still waiting on your phone for help, and immediately get someone in the chatbot who is very helpful and asks if they can be connected to your computer to see what the problem is. In the hope of being freed from frustration you click on a link and suddenly your “savior” is moving around your computer downloading “the latest printer driver.” It is only much later that you find he has found your banking information and has sucked your account dry.
Free Membership Required
You must be a Free member to access this content.