Are we responsible for customer's backups? What if something is lost?

[rrsjr]

I had a computer upgrade I had to do today. Looked simple (of course they are all simple to a tech with magic powers). Ha ha. I was told to put this nice asus p2-ab board, amd k6/2-400 in a sytem with a cr** p 133-110mhz computer. the computer had win95 upgrade from win 3.1. Of course there's a problem. Win95 won't run an amd 300 or above. I guess the salesman overlooked it(maybe because he use to be a cars salesman), and knows nothing about computers. Yes the simple solution is to wipe the drive and install win98 on the new upgraded computer, but someone(above car salesman) said the upgrade would not affect his data already on the hard drive. So I waved the magic wond and so how I upgrade a win95 that was upgraded from win3.1 (dos 6.2 as shown on the hard drive label). Then I installed the new MB and CPU. I could not tell U how it worked but the system is running fine and will probably be crashed when I check on it in the morning after the burn in test that is running on it. Why didn't I just call the customer and tell him the only option is to wipe the drive and do a fresh install of win98? I don't have a clue. My only answer is that is was on my workbench and I could not admit that it wouldn't work. I knew it wouldn't work, and tomorrow I will have to call the customer and tell him it has to be formatted. Do U think he made a backup of his data before he brought it in? I hope so because I didn't back anything up.

[jhutto]

I got a better one than that!

About 18 months ago a customer came into my shop and said her Fujitsu notebook was bad and she needed it fixed.

We don't work on Fujitsu under warranty, and it was only 6 months old. I refereed her to Fujitsu, and she refused. After a long argument she left to call Fujitsu.

4 days later she came back with the notebook saying that Fujitsu had sent her a replacement hard drive and we needed to install it for her. We Explained the charges and she again refused. Yet another argument began.

Come to find out she is a lawyer, and she was threatening to sew us. I stopped right there gave her our legal departments number and said I can no longer help you. All of a sudden she began to relax and let us work on it, and she paid for the work.

We got it back there with the new drive, and the unit didn't have an old drive, and the bracket that holds the drive in place was missing. I called her and told her. She said she sent it to Fujitsu. I told her we need it, and another argument insued. ended when I gave her the Fujitsu price for the bracket our of warranty. (about $30 if I remember)

2 weeks later and 3 more arguments (2 of which ended with threats again) she came in with a bracket from Fujitsu, and started demanding we give her her data back. (the hard drive has not been at Fujitsu for 3 weeks)

Answer.. NO. More threats. after 2 days of constant arguing she started calling Fujitsu. 2 more weeks went by, and she brought us her hard drive from Fujitsu. It had a head crash.

2 more days of arguments, and more threats. Then I make a sorta clean box, and simi repair the drive. Enough to get most of the data off the drive. Charge her what I quoted her of $750. Took a day and a half, but hell.

Now I hand her her computer with the new drive restored with all the factory software, and her data in a separate directory.

3 months later she sues us claiming we purposely destroyed her data. It was thrown out.



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Jon Hutto

[Jman]

Was it worth it? I probably would have told her to leave now and quit bugging me or I'll call the police. Hey she's a lawyer, she should now you can to that.

[Jman]

Can't forget guns. My neighborhood is going down the tube. I think (I'm Not, I repeat NOT, trying to be racist) if a big black guy came in I wouldn't put up much of an argument. I'd do everything possible before I'd tell him that everything's gone. If I did lose it all I'd probably give him a free hard drive or something rather than loose a tooth or my car windshield