And asking for a picture resolves any of these questions... how?

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 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?".

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.

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.

“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".

This is making me start to feel cold shivers due to barelly supressed memories...

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.

Yes, Moss. Did you catch that ludicrous display last night?

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.

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.

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:

1. 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.

2. 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.