[RESOLVED] Do-it-yourself people

[Mongo]

Normaly I don't mind do-it-yourself people, seeing how the give me lots of bussiness, but lately things have gotten a little weird. I just had two computers back to back with people trying to do things them selves.
The first one he bought all the parts from us and wanted to put it together himself to save money. Understable. He brought it back saying it don't work, will not boot, will not see floppy drive. Well the flopppy drive was not plugged in on the motherboard. Then working on why it will not boot, it turns out the back of the motherboard is all scratched up near the cpu, and he didn't have it groundend properly. Well time to buy new.
The next guy was a little better, he bought a hard drive and wanted to plug it in himself and do all the work. Understable. Well he brought it in and he had the ide cable hooked up right, he had the normal IDE power plug in correctly, but he had taken the jumpers off for the slave/master setting and pluged in the floppy power cable there. Now the hard drive is dead.
Normally the guys up front do a good job of explaining how to hook things up, but this is a little weird, two people in a row.

[Damned Angel]

Oh well...now they have to buy new parts to replace the ones THEY smoked, and probably pay you to do the work this time. I really don't mind people who don't know how to install hardware/software because they are always ready to pay me to do it for them.

--------------------------------------------
- I'm not racist, I hate everyboady equally.

[AlienDyne]

I believe only 10-15% of my customers know exactly what they're really doing.
I've seen many dead motherboards, many HDDs working perfectly after putting their jumpers on the correct pins, many vga cards "on the air", etc...etc...
The worst part is always their replies. "Listen. I put it the correct way. I know what I'm doing. I'm in a hurry, you know. I want it fixed today, ok?"

I don't have any problem with customers trying to build the parts themselves, either.
But in my opinion, we don't charge enough money, when we find out that it's their mistake.
THAT'S our mistake!

------------------
God created human.
Human created computers.
God then got mad and created customers!!!!!

[UncleMarv]

Just to quicky chime in... used to love the do-it-yourself, wannabe tech. Got a lot of business that way. But had to leave my tech shop for businesses who would pay more money to have me do it in the first place. It's a lot easier to justify a little extra cost to a client to have it done right than trying to explain to some weekend techie why the motherboard doesn't work after he plugged the power supply cables in the wrong way

[houseisland]

Wait a minute here! Most of the older techs I know (highly skilled and very knowledgable) are former "do-it-yourselfers." Their casualties were things like Trash 80s and XTs. There were no A+ classes back then, and very few, if any, institutions offered anything in the way of hands-on training. The only way to learn was to jump in and screw up - the process is called "trial and error" (not "trial and success") for a very good reason. Why deny these new do-it-yourselfers the learning experience, especially when they are willing to buy hardware from you and doubly especially if they are willing to pay you to help them pick up the pieces?

[Danrak]

But what about the people that screw the things up themselves then get mad at you and argue about buying a new part? We get a few people like that. they'll buy something, we tell them how to get it to work, they take it home and screw it up then complain the part was bad or they bought it that way with a big burn mark on the product. I don't mind people that do it themselves as long as when they screw up they don't try and blame us for it. Thats what gets me upset. Poeple always want to do it themselves but when it doesn't work due to something they did, atleast say so and don't blame us.

[GOOFBALL]

and then the ones that even after they messed the first one up, buy a second one hust to destroy that one, we older techs may have started as "do-it-yourself" but we could learn from mistakes not so with a lot of them now

[Simpleman]

Im a do it yourselfer.never had my pc in the shop and have listened and learned from many skilled techs.Ive learned alot of technical info in the past 8 years.having started with a Lazer 286 SX with less than a meg of memory
and now at a 450 mhz 128 meg 20 gig.I have come a long way and give all the thanks to the many techs that put up with me coming to the shop and asking sometimes very simple questions.Someday i plan to further my education to become a tech and help others in the same way many of you have helped me .Once again thanks guys...

[Jvaguy]

but us older techs who are do it yourselfer .. had it tough ... today boards are jumperless and automatic so we say plug and prey ... but wait .. how bout everything with jumpers .. now thats the way we learned ... with no A+ and no plug and pray .. its gotta be in the blood otherwise why would we be still doing it ... I guess i enjoy my job

[pcshark]

I agree with JvaGuy to an extent. Yes, we learned on equipment that requird more thought than just unscrewing a case and jamming a card in a slot. Plus we learned OS managment on a COMMAND LINE. Let's not forget that. I have a beef with the schools that churn out techs with no DOS training whatsoever. Our shop has put together a couple of DOS machines for new techs to break themselves in on. Even in this world of Windoze, command line is extremely important for troubleshooting. And let's not forget the future and Linux. What's a Windoze tech gonna do with a BASH shell command line? What do you do with an ailing NetWare server when all you've got is the System console?
OK, I know I've gotten way off subject. Bottom line is you learn by doing. That's how I learned, and that's how most of you learned. Granted, the majority of our customers will never be techs and don't want to be. So we smile, fix their machine for the umpteenth time, and hand them the bill. It's bozos like that that pay our salaries. Don't forget that.

------------------
R. Bret Walker, CNE

In space, nobody can hear you fart...

[lysergic]

And just to think WindozeME will do away with that horrible command line. Well there goes half my utils for getting a crashed windows install in working order... And just to think what happens when some of these machines now coming out that will have no floppy drive. Who else is looking forward to spending 30 minutes getting some of these cases apart just to hook up a floppy drive so you can get to a command prompt? But this is a bit off the subject...

I personally have nothing against the weekend warrior tech who wants to do it themselfs, but I also agree with the above posts. Computers do have a high learning curve and it is a fairly expensive obsession (or hobby depending on how you look at it) and a lot of these people bring in parts they have bought claiming that they are bad when they just did not know what they were doing. Or how about when they want a refund after tossing the retail box and manuals and just bring back the bare board and then get pissed when we will not give a refund?

[houseisland]

Ok, so I'll concede that there are sociopathic jerks who buy computers. They are the same ones who give car dealerships, TV-Stereo shops, furniture stores, etc, etc, major grief. I had a friend who sold carpet: some people to whom he had sold a wall-to-wall installation came back wanting a refund; he went out to look; the carpet looked like a suburban swingers' club had held a crisco party on it. As techs, you are not alone in dealing with these kind of people, and I don't think they form the majority of customers, even do-it-yourself customers.

As for the cost of the learning curve being different now than before, does anyone remember just how much a killer XT with an enormous 20 MB HDD, something like a Commodore PC20 III, actually cost when it was new? Convert the figure into constant dollar terms, and you are in for a shock. Trust me. Screwing up in the old days cost a lot more than it does now.

[Shard92]

Yes, the "weekend techies" bring us alot of business but they can bring all kinds of headaches too. Whenever we have a do-it-yourselfer come in we try very hard to explain to them that, yes we can sell them just the parts, but we highly recommend letting us put them together, especially if they are new! It's one thing if it's someone who "tinkers" and some elst if they just want to "save money". Usually the money savers are the ones to crash big time and being money savers, expect you to replace the parts or make them work for free!! I did have one guy buy parts, screw up the assembly, bring it in to have us to it. Great! BUT every month or so he "tweaks" his computer and then comes in with comlaints of faulty or poor quality parts! He also started spreading his thoughts of us! Luckily those you know us are spreading the word a little faster but what are you gonna do!!!

[cordon]

Make a deal with the guy, if he wants the system tweaked, you'll do it for him. Put maintainance seals on the case. If he opens the case all warranty is null and void.
It is REALLY important to stop someone like this from giving you a bad rep.

Alternatively you could make a fair profit selling copies of 'Building and repairing PCs' to all these DIYers. Or even get some free labor from a 'PC enthusiasts workshop'.

'Save money and learn a new skill by paying us to tell you how it's done!!!' muwhahaha ahem, excuse me.



[This message has been edited by cordon (edited March 30, 2000).]

[chemwiz]

I just had a customer who bought a full system bring it in because he couldn't get power. It turned out he'd screwed the mobo directly to the case, no standoff's- except one plastic one upside down in the center! Gotta smile about it! The board still worked after I reinstalled it, too, so the ATX power on pins must have been grounded, kept it from smoking.