[RESOLVED] Customers who follow you back to the tech room

[shawnMt]

This is a pet-peeve of mine. Customers who ignore the employees only sign and just follow you back to the tech area.

It happened a couple of weeks ago, but with a twist. This guy buys a NIC from us and says he will install. Next day shows up with his little Gateway mini tower - no POST. He tells the guy up front he cannot leave it and wants us to look at it now. So the sales guy comes back to tell me this so I say bring it back. Customer then follwows the guy back and here is the conversation that followed:

Sales guy - Sorry sir, but we do not allow customers in this area
Customer - Why not?
SG - Our insurance doesn't allow customers in the back
Cust - What insurance?
Me (thinking) - Do what??
SG (hesitating) - Im sorry sir, is there a problem?
Cust - What if I sign a waiver agreeing not to sue?
Me (thinking) - WTF??!!

The guy is standing right next to my chair so when I stand up I'm right in his face. "Dude - we do not allow customers back here." He then says he will wait up front. What the hell kind of idiot asks that??

The sales guy comes back and says "please tell me he needs a new motherboard or worse."

Welp, I really couldn't get the machine to POST - unhooked/pulled everyhting. Not even a flicker. Turns out the machine was on when he pulled the original NIC out. Someone told him he could hot swap it. He got charged for that one

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GENERAL FAILURE READING DRIVE A:
(A)bort, (R)etry, (G)et a beer?

Paint your old laptop!

[NeuromancerIV]

Dear gods!

Did this customer have the intials RA? cause the very same person was in my store last Friday! We were building a sweeeet PIII933 for him and he wanted to go watch the assembly. I explained our policy of "NO customers allowed for any reason in the tech lab...period" I explained this simple phrase nearly 6X, but he insisted "since it's his money he deserves the right to observe." He eventually got the picture, but then called all day: every forty fu**ing five minutes to inquire if we were done yet!! The tech lab was nearly ready to kill him, me and destroy his system by the end of the day.

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"I don't care about apathy."

[SavagePenguin]

Every once in awhile a customer will follow me back to the room. I hate that.

There's no posted policy against it. Heck, every once in awhile I'll bring a customer back to show them that it it works/tests-OK/whatever, but usually I plug in their computer up front for that.

One time a man with a beard that would have been white if not for the cigarette-induced yellow stain around his mouth... a really creepy guy who's power supply had enough cigaratte residue to stink up the entire shop... came in into the back room and would not leave despite our constant hinting. His hard drive was full of bad sectors and was about to crash, and I guess he lived alone and had nothing better to do. He wreaked of B.O. and cigarettes. He could have used a bath with an extra helping of Head & Shoulders as well. The guy was a filthy old hermit.
Everyone including the manager and owners tried to get him to leave. We had a high school girl working up front as a receptionist so I actually preferred to have the filthy guy back there pestering me than pestering her. We finally ended up slapping an old (250MB) hard drive in his machine to get it working and only charging him labor.

He called a few times after that, but thanks to caller-ID those are the times the entire shop took breaks. Whenever he called the netire shop would point to me and laugh, since I got stuck with him and he'd always ask for me on the answering machine.

He showed up a few weeks later, talking about a web site that sold parts "really cheap." (He though they were cheap because he compared the price to the over-inflated retail price). His plan was to buy the parts and have us put the computer together, so he wanted a list of what he needed.
I used a *lot* of big, confusing words. I explained how everything would have to be compatable or the coumputer could be useless. I also explained that it'd be cheaper and in his best interests to buy a wonderful computer at Wal-Mart or Best Buy or CompUSA. We (for that day anyway) only sold computers to businesses.

[klenard]

I usually tell them that if they insist on following me to the back, then they are endagering their hardware because of ESD.

"What is ESD"

"Electrostatic discharge, you know, like lightning?

"Can that harm my stuff?"

"You've seen what lightning can do right?

"Oh, ok. I guess i'll wait out here."

then i usually go back and start trying to muffle the laughter.


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You have to be smarter than what you are working with.

[ShadowWynd]

We had a customer who walked past the "Employees Only" sign and walked into the shop area.

Not only that, they started fiddling with the computers on the bench. Although they left before they did too much damage, several small jobs had to be restarted and the techs were ready to kill.

If I go to NTB and wait in the garage while they rotate my tires, I would not go over and start disassembling another car with the nice pneumatic wrenches they have.

Why does this mentality not apply to computers?

[ReBoot]

Customers who follow you back to the tech room, get charged double. period.

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Who needs a life, I have Internet!
Jim & Sue's Free Files | Jim's Modems

[FU_MAN]

I had a customer follow me back to his machine. I told him he had to go up front and wait. Just as the guy got up front another tech blew up his power supply. "umm... sir it will a little longer than we thought"

Another time the customer just drifted into the back when I was looking something up for his machine. I turned around just in time to see him DROP his hard drive and try to sneak back up front. "BUSTED!" He thought he was going to pin this one on me! I told him how much the new drive was going to cost, and installed it for him. He was very embarassed, and he has not been back since.

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hAS ANYONE SEEN MY "cAPS lOCK kEY"?

[protechpc]

I have a sign posted. Actually 2 signs. One says HIGH VOLTAGE AREA DO NOT PROCEED BEYOND THIS POINT. It still doesn't work, so I simply installed a door across the area to the tech benches. Some still ask, but I simply say NO. There are occasions where I will invite a customer back to review an problem, however they are normally a regular.

My other sign says:

RATES PER HOUR
If you tried to fix your PC $99.99
If you want to watch $125.00
If you talk $145.00
General Chatting $89.99
Technical Questions $25 each

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I'd rather be fishing


www.protechpc.com

[archangel]

I do a lot of work in people's homes and it never fails when they have kids. As soon as I open the case, the parents call their kids so they can watch and "learn" how to fix a computer. All they do is play with the tools and ask a lot of questions. Good thing I charge by the hour, so if the kids want to slow me down by asking me what every thing does, its OK by me.

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www.el-mono.com

[klenath]

Working in a retail store that is known for doing repairs on all types of PCs, we regularly get people trying to pull the "let's follow that guy everywhere" routine. We have many signs posted by the entry to the tech room that say "Employees ONLY" and other similar things, but apparently nobody reads anymore now-a-days. The handy thing is we have a door for the entry way and I regularly close it when I know a customer I'm doing a RAM install for will probably follow me back (we do RAM install while you wait as well as BIOS battery).

I've had to physically get in front of people making the attempt to walk into the back and say they're not allowed due to liability. They normally don't argue since I'm a rather large fellow (6'4" @ 230lbs.) and have a solid tone to my voice when I say they can't come back -- one that says, "Don't argue with me" (or something).

On occasion I'll take a customer back into the tech room so they can see for themselves what exactly is going on with their system, but that is a rarity to be certain.

The only thing I hate about the tech room is it has an open, non-closable window for customers to bug me through. When I'm in a bad mood or I have a lot of work to do, they like to come up to the window and start talking. I can't really ignore them, 'cause we'll lose a customer that way. I'm as nice as I can manage, but I usually start using a lot of buzz words and shoot technical jargon to the point their eyes glaze over and they stumble off in a dazed state -- I LIVE for those moments.

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CUSTOMER.EXE cannot find file BRAIN.DLL - program will continue to talk anyway

[jbar1]

I seldom have a customer in the bench area. one exception is when I do a crashed HDrive recovery. I can show them what I have been able to recover, where I put it and how to access the files. I never have a customer in the area during hdware upgrades except to show them the pound of dirt and spider nest that is causing their system to run hot and do strange things. For the most part KEEP THEM OUT!!

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If life is a bitch then what is death? I believe I will take the bitch!

[Jason#7]

Personally, I hate customers who try to come back to my area.........But if she is good looking I encourage it!!!!!!

[RLD]

If customers to stand in your work area, delete all the downloaded porn from their machine when they are not looking.

[pm4345]

Yup, retarded customers who don't listen or are jerks get their porn deleted. Safe way to get back at them. They are usually too embarrased to say anything......

In the shop that I worked, we always had customers coming to the back. Because the owner and the service manager never discouraged it, people became accustomed to walking into the service station. Infact our office manager would tell customers to just go on back. Never liked that too much.

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Say what?

[CobraTekMax]

I'm not totally against customers coming to the back, as long as they keep their mouth shut, and more importantly, don't touch anything. The reason is because of the fact that we have a few regular customers who do it, that I legitimately like, and I wouldn't ever dream of telling they aren't welcome in the back. New customers see it, and they want to be let in as well. Besides that, letting them come to the back shows that you have nothing to hide, and you're being completely honest with them. And once the average user spends 5 minutes in the back with a bunch of techs speaking in technonese, they usually don't want to come back ever again.

And OF COURSE if I see a cute girl bring in a computer with a simple problem, she is MORE THAN WELCOME in the back to watch me fix it. I like working in the field...but somedays I LOVE staying in the shop.