Ah yes, the classic “it don’t work, pls fix” issue report.
- What is the nature of the issue? Is there water pressure? Is the water cold? Does it look/smell/taste contaminated?
- What is the extent of the issue? Does it only affect a single faucet, multiple faucets, the apartment, or the entire building?
- When did the issue start? Is it constant or intermittent?
- Does the cold water present the same issue?
- (optional) What steps have been taken to remedy the issue?
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.
Going out of their way to be unhelpful? Oh please, that’s not what’s happening here.
Solving the underlying issue, I’d agree.
But you don’t go to a doctor and say “I’m broke, fix me”.
There’s a basic expectation that the patient/tenant will describe why its not broken. What is expected, and what’s it doing instead. (sometimes that needs to be reiterated back to the patient/tenant in order to move, and that’s where the landlord failed here.)
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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.
It boils down to experience with diagnosing that kind of problem when reported by a common person.
The amateur landlord so common in our age isn’t going to have that experience and unless they work in an area where it’s common to have to diagnose and fix technical problems they’re not going to be used to the kind of sistematic step by step approach used to pin down the exact nature of a problem so will have trouble even improvising it effectivelly.
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
They’re not responsible for fixing the problem, but they are responsible for ensuring that the problem is fixed, since until it’s fixed the don’t have hot water.
In this case ensuring that the problem is fixed most importantly entails telling the person who has to do the fixing as much about the problem as possible.
If you need help with something, you have to help your helper if you want it to be effective.
“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.
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.
I’m assuming you recognize this is you’re ex’s kitchen sink.
I doubt he is “ex’s kitchen sink”
This is making me start to feel cold shivers due to barelly supressed memories…
“the hot water isn’t working” could be understood to mean “the hot water refuses to go out and get a job”, but it could also be understood to mean “the hot water is just sitting around in it’s boxers all day drinking beer”.
In America we have both in the same faucet so the photo is less useful over here
Not sure what you’re talking about. Hot and cold water definitely use different pipes. I’m not even sure how that would work with one pipe unless you were mixing right at the water heater or something.
The faucet not the pipes. The picture is of a faucet and there is one. Likely because hot and cold water both come out of it
The faucet tends to have some sort of control apparatus (maybe a “valve”, sometimes festooned by a “knob”) to enable the user to interactively choose the amount of water from each pipe that goes into the faucet.
Now, such apparatus might be comprised of two valves, each one for hot and cold water separately, or a single control which may be rotated to select the mixture amount, or an automaic thermostatic apparatus with a target water temperature dial that the operating user may set to a target temperature which may be called “hot” or “cold” and will adjust the water mixture from the hot and cold water pipes accordingly.
OP’s picture seems to have been sent in bad faith, but it does include a control apparatus comprised of a valve with a knob, which can be construed as the tenant showing they had done their due diligence in discovering it is by turning the pertaining knob to open the hot water pipe valve, and nothing else, that after a reasonable waiting period, the water coming out of the faucet is indeed still cold and not hot as intended by the expected behavior of the installed mechanism.
If the tenant misled the landlord by showing a tap which had only a single cold water pipe connection, or failed to correctly operate the valves connected to the faucet in order to produce the desired hot water, then the landlord could fairly charge them with any delays or extra charges incurred from being provided with false information, like the cost of sending a plumber to check on the heater… instead of a dog with a stick to bonk the tenant for being an idiot and not turning the right valve to the faucet.
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?”.
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Is your water running?
Better go catch it!
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.
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:
- water is running, meaning: the faucet works, the pipe to the faucet works, the water is not shut off
- the faucet seems to be of a two valve kind, meaning: if the tenant is not an idiot and didn’t turn on the wrong valve, and they did wait a reasonable time for hot water to come out, then the problem is not with the faucet but with the heater
- the faucet can not be the problem, meaning a plumber does not need to carry a spare faucet, but the pipes could be hooked up wrong (hot pipe to cold valve and vice versa), which could be and easy fox for the landlord themselves without having to pay a plumber
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.
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 :(
I like the updated Bluffball guide, this one rings so true, or at least used to:
Have you heard (insert any good Southampton player) is linked with Liverpool?
https://www.balls.ie/football/bluffball-updated-guide-379606
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.
Or the client sending all written content as screenshots of the word files.
Do expensive phones have infra-red cameras nowadays?
You specifically want an external accessory like FLIR for that, only a rare few industrial range smartphones have heat cameras built in
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.
No.
Pixel 8 Pro has a thermometer. Not sure if it works on water.
Who said anything about “on” water? Is the Pixel 8 Pro waterproof… and does it work “under”-water?.. 😛
Yes. It works under water. Check the water resistant stats.
They do on the Yautja planet.
No but my cheap work phone does have an adapter.
Some of the Ulefone Armor phones have IR cameras. Unless you love construction it’s probably not the best purchase for the average person.
Some do yes we have FLIR on the cat S62
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.
No, but they’ll try
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.
No cause that may imply hot water doesn’t come out. A better phrase would be that the water is always cold.
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So what kind of photo would you send?
A photo of the water heater. The landlord could have been clearer though
I don’t think the water heater would have looked very different than normal either.
My water heater has status lights, it would be my first debug step.
That’s cool!
I didn’t know that was a thing, but yeah in that case, it’s absolutely a reasonable and logical move!
That’s also assuming they have access to the water heater
I think it’s safe to assume they have access
Unless they’re renting a whole house or townhouse no, it’s not.
I just thought that if the landlord is asking, they would have access. Maybe I’m wrong.
Let me introduce you to some of my old college apartments.
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Do you have a thermometer?
