[rmc]

Us techies like to laugh about how the idiots in tech support always ask us to do stupid things like "Turn it off and on again".

But honestly, do you know the level of computer knowledge of 90% of callers to the tech support line of residental ISPs? Requests like "is it plugged in?" or "turn it off and on again" do help lots of people who don't know about these things.

What's worse is often people think they know about computers (and actually don't), and then ring up tech support. This is why "I know computers, I know it's not that" will never work with tech support. For every person who says that & knows computers, there's people who say it and think that (say) the IP address 192.168.1.2 must be on the 2nd port on their router (because the .2 means second port, see?).

Just accept that you have to go through the motions.