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Ah yes, the classic "it don't work, pls fix" issue report.
And asking for a picture resolves any of these questions... how?
It doesn't, both sides are dumb.
(edit) Actually, it confirms that the water is clean and that there is water pressure.
It could also be the landlord meant a photo of the water heater / boiler / whatever they use to get hot water. But he should have been more explicit. Most of these devices have a light or a display that indicates if there's a problem and what the problem is, so the landlord can take appropriate action.
This is a common issue in tech support, not realizing what the other person doesn't know. You don't want to treat the person like a small child and tell them what to do. But on the other hand if you make assumptions about what they know how to do and they don't, it can cause a lot of miscommunications.
It's really a everyone sucks here situation. Sending a picture of the water obviously isn't helpful, a simple response could have been: "Alright I'll take pictures, can you specify what exactly I need to take pictures off and where to find that". Then again the landlord just saying need pictures isn't really helpful either.
No. It is not the tenants responsibility to troubleshoot issues for the landlord.
Id the tenant says the hot water isn't working, the landlord needs to show the fuck up and do the work to figure it out.
Which translation do you prefer?
I'm not responsible for fixing it, so I'm going to go out of my way to be as unhelpful as humanly possible
or
It's not entirely my problem, so I'm making it your problem, and I'm making sure it's a problem.
That mentality is immature and anyone who thinks like that is a bit of a dick.
Sometimes asking for a picture is just the easiest way, instead of going back and forth describing something in words, especially if it requires technical detail or nuance Remember, not all tents and landlords have 100% mastery of the language.
Neither are dumb. Just limited by assumptions and possibly jaded by past, frustrating experiences.
I mean...those are all valid questions.
Any or all of which could've been asked.
Too bad this isn't tech support and it's the landlords job to show up and troubleshoot it himself. The tenant bears no responsibility here besides informing the landlord there is a problem.
It's the tenant that has no hot water though. The more information they give the landlord, the faster they will get hot water again.
but just a bit of cooperation from the tenants side could help him prepare a lot better for the job
"the hot water isn't working" could be understood to mean "the water in the hot water tap is not hot", but it could also be understood to mean "the water is not flowing out of the hot water tap".
The picture helps clarify the original statement. OP, this interaction is not nearly as bizarre as you make it out to be. It's pretty typical of virtually all support requests. It's incredibly common, when asking for support, that the requester assumes information is obvious when it is in fact not.
It's still kind of a weird way to request that information. They could have just upfront asked "is the hot water tap not working at all, or is it just not hot?".
Having worked in IT I can tell you that often asking for specifics (even simple ones like what you said) will just get you a reply of "I don't know it's just broken. Fix it." If you even get a response at all. Asking for a screenshot (or a picture in this case) is an action that you are requiring the user to take and is much more likely to at least get a response even if the response isn't always helpful.
If the landlord had just asked for clarification I wouldn't be surprised if they just got a response of "It just doesn't work." Which is far less helpful than even that picture.
Yep. During my very short (6 mos) stint as a tech support rep for Dell, I've learned to assume your customer is an idiot. Even when they're using techie terms or jargon (and at times more so). Never assume other things besides that or you'll probably regret it.
You have to be very clear and precise. A single misunderstanding can take a simple problem a lot of time to get fixed.
15 out of 16 times, or more so, they're useless.
This is making me start to feel cold shivers due to barelly supressed memories...
While I agree with everything you wrote, this conversation is far from a typical support request. Both sides are fucking idiots without any common sense.
See, you may laugh but the landlord now knows that the water is still flowing, so the cause isn't an area-wide outage or a burst pipe, but instead there's a fault in the system that heats the water.
Probably giving them too much credit. If they wanted to know that they probably would have asked specifically "Is the water still running?".
Well yeah. They didn't say the water isn't working, just that the hot water isn't.
Bold move assuming a user report is accurate.
Have you tried turning it off and then on again?
Yes, Moss. Did you catch that ludicrous display last night?
Thing about Arsenal is they always try to walk it in.
I miss that show :(
None of y'all are plumbers and most of y'all work in IT and it fucking shows.
This is not a case where a photo is required or even all that helpful.
A photo shows that water is running. Is it hot, is it cold, is it lukewarm? Who knows?? Certainly not the landlord.
Probing questions sure would have been helpful. Like is the water lukewarm or cold?
If it's either it doesn't matter, the heater is not working and a plumber is required.
Now what if the water isn't running? Well then the response would indicate that.
"No there's no water at all when I turn on the hot water."
Ok that's an entirely different problem, could be the heater, could be someone turned a valve off.
But even that much information isn't all that important because no matter what the problem is, or where it's located, the tenant will not be able to resolve this issue, a plumber is required. They'll need access to the premises, because water heaters are generally inside the unit, which means the tenant will likely need to be present when the plumber shows up.
The plumber is absolutely not going to show up with a water heater based on what information he can get out of a text. He's going to come in, and investigate the issue. Sometimes it's a quick fix, sometimes it's a problem. Generally the tenant is going to have absolutely no way of resolving it themselves, and generally a landlord wouldn't want them to.
This is not an IT ticket, it's a "call a fucking plumber my shits broken " ticket.
None of y'all are plumbers and most of y'all work in IT and it fucking shows
You're not a plumber and you lack problem fixing skills and it fucking shows. 🙄
The photo shows:
Probing questions would be only useful if the tenant spent some effort on answering them, instead of, for example:
is the water lukewarm or cold?
A: Yes.
what if the water isn't running?
A: There is no hot water.
This is not an IT ticket, it's a general problem solving procedure issue.
Finally! A use for a Pixel 8 Pro's temperature sensor!
Tenant providing bear minimum information and impatient landlord. Engaging post OP.
It reminds me of a client at a former workplace. The client says, the popup window doesn't open, and sends a screenshot showing the underlying window with the popup window not being there.
Do expensive phones have infra-red cameras nowadays?
Digital photo cameras often actually filter out infrared. But even if they wouldn’t it probably would be hard to tell if something is warmer than the surrounding by looking at a photo or video. What you need is a specific device that is calibrated for a specific spectrum of infrared, such as a thermographic camera.
I think there was actually at least one smartphone that had a thermographic camera installed, but that’s a very specific use case for e.g. construction work.
You specifically want an external accessory like FLIR for that, only a rare few industrial range smartphones have heat cameras built in
No.
I imagine he only asked so that in court he could say that he asked only for you to become combative, that's proving that you were responsible for the issue not getting fixed.
No, that's just false. The landlord can't avoid responsibility because a tenant isn't polite.
It sounds like one of two things to me:
For a small landlord: some kind of hack taught at a "get rich quick" slumlording class. Something to add friction to the exchange, so the problem either fixes itself or the tenant forgets/misses a message.
For a big corpo landlord: probably complying with some really stupid corpo policy surrounding "objective evidence" in a "not my job" kind of way.
“The how water is not working” is just bad phrasing. “There’s no hot water” describes the problem better. Boiler issue. Burners go out. Boilers go bad every 5 years. Owning a house is becoming a burden. Shit like that.
Do you have a thermometer?