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I have never had any luck asking the owner to describe the problems they are having, or even what they want. They tell you the computer does nothing and you assume it will not post. You get there and the modem is bad and will not connect to the net. They say they need RAM or memory when they need a bigger hdd. That's another reason not to do service calls, you take a pair of 32 meg ram chips when you needed a 40 gig hdd.
My company performs on-site work primarily for our larger clients' networking issues. Unless the average customer is willing to pay the (admittedly steep) on site fee, all work is performed in-house. I agree, one must be careful about on-site work, people will (for the most part) try to screw you over. I have too many horror stories; almost all begining with...." Is THAT ALL YOU HAD TO DO?!, I could'a done that!!"
So go ahead, sue that waste of flesh.
"Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate that."
[This message has been edited by NeuromancerIV (edited August 22, 2000).]
About the time..
First, the old drive was formatted with an old version of MaxBlast. The new version wouldn't read it (I have a boot disk). They didn't have the disk. So I had to find and download from there FTP site an old version through AOL.
That part alone took over 2 and a half hours.
Installing, and configuring the drive once everything was setup took maybe 20 min.
About tools and having things needed for most jobs..
I have tools with me, and a number of disks/CDs. Just not a 4 year old MaxBlast. As I said before. Newer Maxblast didn't work.
It's not like I had a bench either. was a desk in a room, had to do most of it on the floor because there was no room.
If they had a cablemodem I'd of been out of there in a hour +/-.
btw. Compaq's are easy to work on. I think. Esp the newer Deskpro's.
Another reason to not do house calls... Having to work on the floor. People want you to come to their house because they are too lazy to unhook and transport. They then don't want to pay your travel time. They don't know where their drivers are. The hassel isn't worth the effort. Then you get other techs second guessing you about the time it took.
I can see both sides of the tech vs. customer battle, but some of y'all are talking like "know it alls". You were not there, you don't know the working conditions or the connectivity speed. Give jhutto a break... do you think that he would post a story here that was blatently poor service knowing that the "know it alls" would badger him with criticism? We all have had situations that have taken a lot longer than we expected.... bottom line is, if the customer could figure the problem out, they wouldn't have called us! Take the bastards to court!
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If you don't like what I say.... byte me!
Hello, a buisness using a Presario, this is always a warning sign for me. If they cant afford a Deskpro or some other Buisness class system than you should expect them to be penny pinchers when it comes time to paying the bill.
Sad Sad Sad...
If you were simply installing a drive and doing a data transfer, you should have be in and out in well under an hour. Geez.. any bios overlay utility will let you bypass bios limitations, and if the bios overlay utility (such as EZ-Drive/bios) doesn't allow you to data x-fer, just use Symantec's Ghost to xfer the data.
Either you didn't include all the info.. or you are a worthless tech. What was your hourly rate? I could do that simple task on my lunch break.
Hey Rasper, you surley don't use ghost to fix customers machines? If you do you are commiting software piracy! unless every customer pays for the software.
Rasper, i think you are obviously the worthless tech, there wasnt any problem with bios limitations, the problem was the new computer which dosent need a bios overlay utility, couldnt see the old one which was fomated with maxblast, so he needed to put it on the new drive so it could see the old one, & you cant us any overlay, program ever tried using one from western digital or somthing & putting it on a maxtor?, it wont work without a WD drive in the system & ghost isnt the answer either, he wasnt trying to copy the entire drive to the new comp, he was just moving some data & did it the only way he could in that environment.
good thing they didnt send you out there they probably would have been really mad & looked you out after you ghosted an old hd over their brand new one, but the difference is you would have deserved it.
To be redundant..."experts" like Rasper think (I use the term loosely) they have all the answers and end up billing unsuspecting clients for incorrectly done or unfinished jobs. I have seen so many people bilked...
Many years ago in response to this problem, I started telling wary customers (victims of rip-offs) that I will come out and look at their system. If, when I'm ready to leave, the customer doesn't feel that their problems were satisfactorily resolved then I will not bill. In over ten years of using this policy I have not once gone unpaid. Talk is cheap (and sometimes dangerous) results get the referrals.
Sowulo,
I'm glad you're in OR and not GA. I don't need any smart competitors!
Been doing it your way for 3+ years, and it's been working fine for me.
Comp Usa huh my my my They must have heard the stories!!!!
Here's a story similar... a guy brought in a 386 (yea, with Win3.1 too) and asked us to fix his email. Well... that in itself is a chore, especially using Netscape 2.x and etc etc... you can imagine. We told him it would take a while... he had Windows totally screwed from "self-repair" and there was a lot of work to be done... more than the system's worth obviously (a 386 is worth maybe $10, heh). Anyways, he told us he NEEDED it and he brought it in at 3pm (and we close at 6pm).. we were in Christmas rush and backedup... and he wanted it TODAY. Well, some idiot said we could so myself and another tech stayed late (not for the same system) and worked until it was done. After all was finished (and he had thrown a few MORE problems at us AFTER we had said ok) he had maybe a 2hr bill. Okay... we let him scratch out a post-dated cheque (small town and in 7yrs we'd never had a cheque bounce) and he was on his way. We cashed... and found he'd stopped payment on us (similar to "step into the hallway please") AND contacted the BBB. In the long-run... he had his old 386 working, we were out a couple hours labour, and the BBB became our best friend (the guy had holes in his story... of course because it was lies). So the moral is... you don't know WHO you can trust. We've now modified our on-site tech'ing to "We'll send you a bill" instead of "money NOW" because it's keeps *ME* out of tight positions and let's my boss handle them (with his ppl skills) and he usually wins them over.
Oh, and get off this poor guy's back... I would have done generally the same thing... and you're talking about a Compaq of course data xfer is slow. And btw who you work FOR doesn't affect your WORK.
Has anyone else noticed that when do do the customer a favor, like staying late, or not charging them full price that they seem to be the ones who are not satisfied with the service. I think they take your niceness as weakness and try to stick it to you.