Going for A+ Certification

After studying for over 6 months, I've decided it's now or never for getting A+ Certified. There's always more and more stuff to learn, but if I keep waiting, I'm never going to be "ready". That, and since 2011, all future A+ Certs last 3 years instead of for life. So I'll have to recertify or pay a monthly fee and demonstrate my "Continuing Education" to Comptia.

I know my way around most PCs, but I tend to get stuck in my assumptions. An example I keep using goes like this:

Question:  A client calls and says their headphones stopped working this morning, but were fine yesterday. After going through numerous solutions, you cannot fix the problem. What do you do?

1. Research the problem on the Internet
2. Scold the client for being an idiot
3. Escalate the issue
4. Recommend the client buy a new set of headphones

4, while a valid solution, doesn't address the problem of the current headphones not working.
2 goes against best practices as outlined in the A+ book I'm reading. Also, I don't do that. Additionally, it isn't good for getting return clients.
1 is something I'd do off the bat while running the client through solutions I could think up.
3 looks like the best answer here. I can't fix the problem which means it could be a) something I've overlooked or b) this is a symptom of a much larger problem, not the problem itself. If escalation will solve the problem when I couldn't, I'll escalate it.

So, I chose 3. The correct answer was 1. Why? The test assumes once you get the call, you run through everything you can think of AND THEN you research the problem on the Internet. Everything is in steps. There's probably more to it, but I'm no psychologist.