Time for worst customer stories again

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by davebdun
Good point about the charge out and phone call issue but unfortunately all our jobs get logged via our Help Desk who receive the calls from distressed client's and we simply get the job sheets and get the jobs done

I find the the most commong problem for inhouse jobs is when client's bring in printers at say "not working at all" and they 90% of the time have empty ink cartridges.

Cheers

Let me preamble this by saying that I am not trying to attack you, I just find this hard to believe and hope to get some piece of mind over it…

As the visiting site technician, don’t you first call them to get some more information, find out what sort of problem it is, to determine if you need to bring anything; even just to let them know you are on your way or get directions?

I mean really, I can’t believe that anyone signed off on the labor charge. If it were my company, and I hired someone and the came in and they charged me to do nothing, I would have to dispute the charge. I can understand a base fee, travel and one hour, but anything above that is not ethical. If you traveled four hours round trip, these people must be out of your business range, and should find someone to replace you, just to save the cost of your travel. And again, if I found out that you charged me for something that could have been handled by your help desk!; hell charge one hour at a discounted rate for the resolution over the phone solution if you must; but to send someone out for something like that…it will eventually bite your company in the a$$, as you may lose customers.

[Cleetus]

So then what do you do, when the help desk asked them to do this, and to check that, and the user lies, forcing you to go out there?

OF course, that would be a rarity, cause as we all know, there is none more honest than the user.

[davebdun]

I see your points, i wasn't taking it as an attack

Re: the 4 hour trip, we rarely get jobs like that which are as simple as plugging in a cable, and our company has a particular area which we cover, but in all fareness we hardly ever do trips any longer that 90min each way. We do phone first but sometimes which i'm sure most of us experience, the client does not know a lot about computers and if you ask them a question they will say stuff like "i'm not very good with computers, i don't know what you are talking about" I do see your points and they are well justified, and i totally agree, though we do have procedures in place, i just didn't include them in my text I tend to find that most of the stupid jobs come from corporate client's who don't mind the charge as it is pretty much pocket change to them, then will eventually learn (i hope).

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by Cleetus
So then what do you do, when the help desk asked them to do this, and to check that, and the user lies, forcing you to go out there?

OF course, that would be a rarity, cause as we all know, there is none more honest than the user.

You are absolutely right, and this is probably the case. If that were the case, and again this were my company that we are talking about, I would only let certain office personnel call the consulting firm, and I would want them to attempt to resolve things over the phone if it is reasonable, certainly authorizing the charge if a resolution is met either over the phone or site visit. I would make very clear to the Help desk, that if anyone outside of the short list called, that they would need to call me to authorize any service request. Companies fall to frivolous spending all too often, because people just assume, “well it isn’t my money”, so they call all the time wracking up charges left and right. Then when it is time to perform a real service, like upgrading PC’s, Servers, it is not feasible because of the inadequate budget forecasts. This hurts everyone.

[NooNoo]

Hehehe, it is also New Zealand Ya_know... you have to wait for the sheep to get outta the way....

*NooNoo fondly remembers toyota ads....

[davebdun]

The sheep aren't too much of a problem, i find that the farmers tend to keep control of them with the velcro gloves and i have "heard" it's quite common for sheep to wear gumboots so they can't run away....

[freddy]

Originally posted by davebdun
The sheep aren't too much of a problem, i find that the farmers tend to keep control of them with the velcro gloves and i have "heard" it's quite common for sheep to wear gumboots so they can't run away....

"are you shearing ?" ,,,,,no find your own !!!

[Diver01]

I got a call from a customer complaining that they couldnt send to their POS system. So I go though all the checks, we did that.. tried that.. blah blah blah.. so here I am, Friday afternoon at 3:00 pm. I have to make a 4 hour drive to get to this place, I walk in the door, check the computer.. sends on the first try....
Customer walks up and says...
"Oh yeah.. we fixed it.. guess we should have called."
I wasnt a happy camper

[Crazy02]

Originally posted by Diver01
I got a call from a customer complaining that they couldnt send to their POS system. So I go though all the checks, we did that.. tried that.. blah blah blah.. so here I am, Friday afternoon at 3:00 pm. I have to make a 4 hour drive to get to this place, I walk in the door, check the computer.. sends on the first try....
Customer walks up and says...
"Oh yeah.. we fixed it.. guess we should have called."
I wasnt a happy camper

In a case like this Hose em charge for the 4 hour drive
maybe they will think a little harder next time

[Ya_know]

Originally posted by Crazy02
In a case like this Hose em charge for the 4 hour drive
maybe they will think a little harder next time

That I agree with!

[Cleetus]

Kind of like what happened a little while ago. E-mail is down, I have three new users to setup, coworker is absolutly useless and I get this call from of our people bitching me out to no end about getting a printer working correctly. I politly tell the that it will take a little time but I will get to them. They proceed to call my boss, my bosses boss and everyone in between that it is a huge emergency. So I am forced to go check out the printer(on our AS400 system which is so damn flakey anyway).

Press the Online button on the HP LaserJet 4 and back on my way to fix real problems. They never even said thank you, or were embarresed about how stupid of an issue it all was. Me, I got left on probation a little longer.

[MacGyver]

Originally posted by Cleetus
I get this call from of our people bitching me out to no end about getting a printer working correctly

I have found that the email server could be a molten pile of goo, the internet could be down, the most important company database offline, but if people can't print, that's when they tend to get real mad!

[FatalException0E]

Originally posted by Diver01
I got a call from a customer complaining that they couldnt send to their POS system. So I go though all the checks, we did that.. tried that.. blah blah blah.. so here I am, Friday afternoon at 3:00 pm. I have to make a 4 hour drive to get to this place, I walk in the door, check the computer.. sends on the first try....
Customer walks up and says...
"Oh yeah.. we fixed it.. guess we should have called."
I wasnt a happy camper

Dude....what POS ya work on? I do Micros, Focus and a few others.
A while back, we got a corporate call 160 miles away, when we were insanely busy here. A few hours later, they called back, pissed that we hadn't gotten there. (they called at the point where we would've gotten there if we left as soon as the call came in)

Anyway, when our tech got onsite, they said "Oh, we fixed it ourselves a while back"

They never bothered to call back and say never mind, so they got a freaking huge bill for the travel time.....he was nice, and didn't charge them the 2 hours OT rate he could've, though.

[KINGofBLEH]

Originally posted by davebdun
Hi guys,2: I had a laptop come in with reported problems of not going into standby mode. The laptop sure wasn't but funnily enough all power management was disabled... Silly client.

Wow! Can we say "system policy"?

[KINGofBLEH]

Originally posted by MacGyver
I have found that the email server could be a molten pile of goo, the internet could be down, the most important company database offline, but if people can't print, that's when they tend to get real mad!

Dude, I support a department with 2 databases, 14 servers, about 30 apps and nearly 120 PRINTERS!!!!

Someone needs to have their corporate credit card taken away I think.