Powned by a Belligerent User?

Most of the Support Tickets that reach my desk are about the same 4 questions, about 50 times a day. This obviously doesn't count when something actually breaks and our site goes down- then the number shoots up to about 50 times a minute!

Occasionally I'll receive a ticket that is so over the top, retarded, or hilarious that it gets passed around the department and IT support circles as comic relief. On even rarer occasions, a user uncovers a giant error or omission that we somehow overlooked. Quite a humbling experience when we get those!

Today was the first time that I got one that was all of the above- Hilarious, retarded, and humbling, all at once. So of course I have to share it- and my response, with you today!

Problem Description:
I am a Mac user, and it has come to my attention that neither Safari, Firefox, or even the most up to date version of Internet Explorer on Windows is supported by [your website]. I think that it is a shame that the tools that are necessary for properly functioning at [your company] won't work properly without extraordinarily outdated web browsers. I don't feel comfortable downloading internet browsers that haven't been supported since 2003 in the case of IE 5 and 2006 in the case of Netscape 7. It is my hope that this situation is rectified in the near future.

I read that and thought, "WTF kinda crack is this guy smoking?!" I began to carefully write a reply that was politically correct, informative and non-condescending. But it's pretty hard when you're dealing with idiots. Or is it? Read on my friend! My response:

Between the many students, faculty, and staff who having been using [our website] for several years, I am confident that all versions of Safari and Firefox, and Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7- function with no major problems (Between work and home, I personally use [our website] with Safari v2-3, Firefox 1,2,3, and Internet Explorer versions 6 and 7 on a daily basis). We have not received any feedback from users using Internet Explorer 8 yet. In writing this response it has occurred to me that you may be referring to the outdated FAQs we have on the website. This information has not been updated because ironically, once users stopped using the older versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, most of the problems our FAQs address went away.

If you are having problems using [our website], any additional information you can provide regarding your problem will greatly assist us in addressing your issues. Specifically, any error messages received while trying to use [our website].

In the meantime I will encourage our staff to update the FAQ as soon as possible.

Could it be? Did we just get powned by a belligerent user? I hate it when that happens! He was using IE 5 to send that out so I don't know. At any rate, it's certainly time to update the FAQ!