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Whenever we close a support ticket at my company, we note the resolution to the problem so that future technicians can see what we did to solve the issue. We also send the resolution to the customer so that they can see what we did to fix the problem.

On occasion, the problem will be fixed but we do not know why. We usually put "the problem has been resolved", but this doesn't really give any information to someone looking at the ticket in the future.

I'm looking for a word or phrase that means essentially, "The problem fixed itself", "We don't know how this was fixed", or "We don't have a resolution, but it works".

The issue with these phrases is that if a customer reads them, they might feel like we're incompetent, or that the issue isn't fixed.

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    I think here the best response would just be "problem cannot be replicated."
    – Andy
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 19:09
  • I suppose I wasn't clear enough, but I see where you're going. This pertains to an issue where we can see the problem or issue, and the issue goes away while we're trying to troubleshoot. "Problem cannot be replicated" would only work if we are told about the issue, but can't make it happen.
    – Alex McKenzie
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 19:11
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    self-solved problem (maybe)
    – ermanen
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 19:46
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    You could borrow "in remission" from medicine, meaning that a disease is not currently active, but hasn't necessarily permanently gone. My car's battery drainage is in remission, but I'm still keeping a starter pack in the boot.
    – AndrewC
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 19:59
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    @ Alex: I think you have a somewhat non-standard understanding of what cannot be replicated actually means in such contexts. Most support workers would assign that classification to any problem which cannot be consistently replicated, in order to allow proper debugging which would lead to full confidence in any resolution. If you're able to reproduce the problem several times initially, but at some later point it never occurs again, you can't test your fix properly anyway. So it should be thus classified.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jun 17, 2014 at 20:29

4 Answers 4

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The appliance repairman who tried to repair the interlock on my dishwasher could not replicate the fault. He made no repair, and the dishwasher worked fine thereafter. He marked the ticket, "FM." He said this was standard US Air Force lingo for such a situation, with the 'F" standing for same as in SNAFU, and M standing for "Magic." In my opinion, if it's good enough for the men and women who keep our jets in the air, it's good enough for me.

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You could use the phrase, "resolved on its own".

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The self-explanatory term self-correcting may do

Correcting oneself or itself without external help

If you seek to emphasize your utter lack of understanding of the mechanism which brings about the consummation devoutly to be wished, you could say

inexplicably self-correcting

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Not quite the same situation, but when an issue has been rendered irrelevant by other factors, we close the ticket as OBE - Overtaken By Events.

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