Tight and Dumb...what a combination!?

[orange]

Expanding from the phoning customers topic with warranty quibbles, howabout the hardware replacement tightasses?

Example:

Customer has an AMD K62/333 system, all reasonably specced out with nice video, 128MB ram, good size HD. Phones me with the 'Just a black screen' routine. Take a look at her system, motherboard is fried. Price up a replacement - £50 for the board, same for labour, call it £100. Run a few scenarios, also price up a minimal upgrade to a K62/500 and a Duron 700. Call customer, give them the option, £100 for what you had, £140 for the K62/500 and £175 for the Duron.

"Ooooh...a hundred pounds...thats rather a lot of money isn't it?"

Try to put across the benefits of upgrading to the Duron, tell her how fast it will be, how cost effective, spend 20 minutes assuring her that yes, Mavis Beacon teaches typing version 2 will run fine on it and what happens, she goes for the £100 job! I mean, it makes no difference to me, same amount of labour, i make the same money, i'm just trying to provide her with a better service and system. They always seem to think your trying to con them.

OR...scenario 2:

The system is a POS 486 thing that they want 'upgraded'. You price the upgrade and its horrendous because you need to replace *everything*. So you price a new system, give them a little trade-in on the POS and call them.

"What!!??? Your only going to give me £50 for my computer? But i paid £1200 for it just 3 years ago!!"

(Yes but you were ripped because you went high street instead of local). Try to re-iterate that they are getting a brand new system for only two thirds the price they paid for the POS but you know you've lost the sale.

I learnt from my mistake here...i now either do not tell them how much the PX value is on their old unit, or, i artificially increase the PX value and then the new system cost to compensate.

Anyone else have this/these problems?

[Sowulo]

Gee, what we could do with this topic title....

I never give a trade in so no frustration gets directed specifically at me when I give a system "last rites." If it works at all I tell them to donate it somewhere and just write-off $1000--Computer System, under 'charitable contributions' on their tax returns.

[Darren Wilson]

I always say to the customer when they ask me how much it is worth, at least 3 times, that I don't want to insult them by pricing it. If they keep asking me I will tell them the truth, but I have at least warned them in advance.

[auxegro]

The world must be full of those cheap tightwads. On another note, I love the folks that come into our store inquiring about upgrades. We ask them what they need and they say, "Motherboard and CPU". We sell them their requested products, but sometime later they're back saying, "It won't fit in my case," or "My RAM won't work". Most of the time they realize their mistake and buy the case and RAM, but too many times their impatient, crabby, and cheap and we reluctantly have to give them their money back... minus our restocking fee of course.

Get educated folks... don't upgrade your computer without really knowing what you need.


Then after all is said and done... they want free phone support.

[jimmr13]

For a minute I thought I was some place else
I almost said Blond or Red Head.
If its worth fixing no problem, But I have a Teacher been at the High School?? she was a young teacher when I was there, But every 3 months she brings in her old 486 DX for a tune up?? and for $25.00 we clean it up for her, open it clean it out w/canned air delete all the internet junk get rid of the cookies and and stuff! She swares she only does term papers and writes test just her word procesor and e-mail! She won't upgrade or buy a new one??

[Sparky625.NET]

First of all...

Originally posted by Sowulo:
Gee, what we could do with this topic title....

Now... people just don't like that they either have to learn all the mumbo-jumbo of computers or pay someone that already knows it. When people don't want to upgrade their old computers, that's annoying to us because we know what the difference is. They don't really understand, and they just want their computer to work again for a little as possible. Poor cheap consumers...

Oh well, this kind of thing is why we have Doom, Quake, & Unreal, no?

[Darren Wilson]

Originally posted by Mr. Jimmr:
For a minute I thought I was some place else
I almost said Blond or Red Head.
If its worth fixing no problem, But I have a Teacher been at the High School?? she was a young teacher when I was there, But every 3 months she brings in her old 486 DX for a tune up?? and for $25.00 we clean it up for her, open it clean it out w/canned air delete all the internet junk get rid of the cookies and and stuff! She swares she only does term papers and writes test just her word procesor and e-mail! She won't upgrade or buy a new one??

$100 a year just to spray a bit of air and delete some txt files I think the money would be better sent on upgrading the system

[SubZero]

You said it. If my grandmother ever did that with her computer, I'd freak. I could give her computer a "tune-up" for a beer.

Originally posted by Darren Wilson:
$100 a year just to spray a bit of air and delete some txt files I think the money would be better sent on upgrading the system

[jimmr13]

I offered to up grade it for free (she gave me an A in english) But no just tune her up!
and when I tried not charging her She don't except charity?

[Darren Wilson]

Jim

You could always put the money that you charged her to one side in a fund say and then when she has enough built up, tell her that she has won a customer prize draw that you had been running and she has 'won' $XXX amount of upgrades

[parning]

Originally posted by Mr. Jimmr:
I offered to up grade it for free (she gave me an A in english) But no just tune her up! and when I tried not charging her She don't except charity?

Jeez, Jimmr - she gave you an "A" in English, and you said that "She don't except charity"?

No further comment........

[Kyr0n]

those two words describe most of my customers

[http://forums.windrivers.com/cgi-bin/forum1/noncgi]

I used to get these kind of people all the time at CR.

"I want to sell my Pentium-133. How much will you give me for it?"

I check the latest buy chart. "Looks like... $50."

"$50?!?!? But it has 64M of RAM! And an 6G hard drive!"

I check the chart again. "Oh, in that case, $55."

*click*

No one could ever seem to grok that by the time I've finished testing and refurbing it, I'll have put at least $100 of parts and labor into it, and I still have to try to sell it for a profit, and nobody was interested in buying old Pentiums, only PII's and PIII's.

<hr>

I also have a friend who never buys new equipment, just tries to upgrade. He's currently looking for an AT compatible Duron motherboard....

[Joker1]

Originally posted by Captain Packrat:
I used to get these kind of people all the time at CR.

"I want to sell my Pentium-133. How much will you give me for it?"

I check the latest buy chart. "Looks like... $50."

I think one of the Tyan trinity boards will do that and for cheap to.
"$50?!?!? But it has 64M of RAM! And an 6G hard drive!"

I check the chart again. "Oh, in that case, $55."

*click*

No one could ever seem to grok that by the time I've finished testing and refurbing it, I'll have put at least $100 of parts and labor into it, and I still have to try to sell it for a profit, and nobody was interested in buying old Pentiums, only PII's and PIII's.

<hr>

I also have a friend who never buys new equipment, just tries to upgrade. He's currently looking for an AT compatible Duron motherboard....

[clascomp]

Originally posted by Mr. Jimmr:
I offered to up grade it for free (she gave me an A in english) But no just tune her up!
and when I tried not charging her She don't except charity?

Man, if you got an "A" in english you must have carried a lot of apples.

We get this kind of call all the time.
Customer calls, earlier this week, and basically demands that we give them $200 for a 486/50. They're really angry that we aren't interested in the system at all! They try to tell us WE can get $500 for it, and they're just going to put it in the paper if we don't want it. Trouble, is some poor sucker will probably buy it, and in a couple of months we'll have to tell them it's not worth anything.

Unfortunately, all we can do is be honest with them. If they choose to go elsewhere, because we were honest and they thought we were screwing them, we probably didn't want them as a customer anyway.