Onsite Customer issue

Wouldnt it have been simpler to patch the old software to the newer version then install the new version on the new drive. Way it reads he installed this old version on the new drive also? Patches are available by doing a simple web search. After both drives are seen you can do the xcopy command and then reinstall the os over the top if there are problems or delete the enum key and reinstall drivers. Customer loses no data and the os is fresh. One othe tip for onsites just in case you run into AOL or slow isps. We have a good local ISP that is fast. We go onsite and if we need to set up our own internet connection which is always faster if we need somethng. I use winimage for disk images I need. Carry a windows hard drive and an extra modem ISA jumpered to comm 2 irq 3 just in case the one on their machine is bad.
The whole thing here is not clear. In this day and age I would say people are aware that lawsuits fly and to do something like this (lock someone out of a room) they must have been perturbed. I would never stay onsite that long. By the time I reached the max for the time I suggested it would take it would be time to tell them the work could not be completed here and take the machine back to the office for completion. BTW the hard drive I carry is a wd 420 so I dont run into bios limits

this is very interesting 4 pages of comments. it's interesting to see how each tech has his own idea's of how to fix the hardware problem. but, don't think that is the question here or there would have been more detail on the job it self. think this is more of a warning as to what to look out for when dealing with customers. think the question is "what would you do with that type of customer?". i have been in different business's over the years (before computers were invented) and could write a book on bad dealings with customers. we all think we are the best at what we do and we are. but, we have to convince the customer that we are so they will call us first the next time. i see good tech's looking for work because they can not talk. i see bull****s haveing more work then they can handle because they can talk (most of which are lies). as the saying goes, for every happy customer, you may get 1 new customer. for every unhappy customer you will lose 100 new customers.
so my advice would be to sue with out gustion. but also to save court cost, bad mouthing, etc. i think i would try to come to terms with the customer first. get what you can. if they pay anything, then that means they were not totally unhappy. if you get no ware then sue.
for you tech's working for someone else. my advice is that this could happen to you also and even thou you do not have to deal with the final answers to the case. remember it's your job on the line. no customers, no work, no pay.

I also work for a CompUSA call center up North and I also do some work on the side. I pick and choose my clients very carefully and upon getting my clients (which are 98% buisness) I make sure they know all the risks when I fix their machines. I also double the time I think it might take and after guessing wrong alot, I am much better at estimating times. I tell them it will take say 8 hours even if I know I will get it done in 4 so their expectations are not only met, they are exceeded. I don't feel we can judge the situation you encountered without being in your shoes and as a tech I have learned that lesson harshly at times. Only stop learning when you die.

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Originally posted by compaddict:
I hate to say it but you took way too long to do the task. I think that even though YOU may be an OK tech if you take too long to do something (while maybe fumbling with this and that) it can give the consumer the feeling that you are not competent. In my experience less than thirty percent of the people that do what we do are competent. If by chance you looked like one of the other sixty percent (at least to the customer) who can blame them.

Vince

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Thirty plus Sixty is only Ninety. What about the other Ten percent? Are they the ones who claim the status of "Elite"? https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/09/1.gif

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Originally posted by Weil:
OK, some problems with some of the responses here.

1) Who are you to judge his competency based upon the little information presented in the forum? He apparently just gave the vanilla facts, didn't address any other problems he might have encountered... yadda yadda. It seems to me these 'clients' were the type sitting behind him asking questions left and right.

2) He never said it took 3 hours to copy files. He said the 'whole process' took about 3 hours. Gathering info (which we know can be a pain in the *** with (l)users, going though AOHell to track down the required files, getting the whole thing setup and finally xfering the files.

Wile

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I have to agree with you on the fact that not enough information was presented to be able to judge this tech's "abilities". I've personally had days where I've ripped through systems like a tornado and days where I've sat there, scratching my head over one system. There are just too many things to factor in to say whether someone was taking too long or not. Just my two cents. https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/09/1.gif

I can attest to on-site being a drag like this. If the guy is running a 386 with a 28.8k modem, needs a new install of Win98, and has no drivers whatsoever....... Things tend to take a long time. In my West Texas experiences, they then to take much longer than they're worth. I didn't charge a hell of a lot (15 an hour) and people took advantage of that AND insisted upon not paying me for the entire time I was there. West Texans piss me off.

Good god man, you suck big time...3 hours to transfer 4G of stuff?

Thats funny...you should cut off of the drugs buddy. Drugs and work dont mix...

Dudes i dont know, but i would have gone MAD!I swear if that happend to me, nothing would have been coming from my mouth after him telling me i wasnt going to get paid. All he would have saw was 5 knuckles barreling towards his face. After he hits the floor from an shocking impact from a pretty big strong young man like me. I would have taken the keys away from him and opened up the door, got my tools, took out the new hard drive, spit in the guys face and laugh, then walk out as if nothing had happend. I dont know everyone has theyre own way of dealing with problems. But you dont **** with me, i will be paid.

Have you ever heard of Norton Ghost?....ya dumdum? I would not pay you either, and I would keep your tools, to prevent you from hurting yourself!

In my opinion 3 hours is a long time, but I'm pretty sure I don't have all the facts either. I also know that in our buisness there are no absolutes. The most important thing that I know is... I don't know everything about computers, and the people that think they do are the ones in trouble.

The only thing that really shocked me were the comments from certain individuals. Apparently they are the people that give good techs bad names... they are the ones that screw up the machines I end up working on.

But getting back to the topic... you deserve to be paid for your work. No matter what. The doctor gets his money, even if he can't figure out what's wrong with you. Why not the same thing for technicians.

Finally the people that put viruses, encryptions, etc. on the machines they work on... you are walking a very, very fine line bordering on the illegal ... you are already in the unethical area. In my opinion, you are the same as spyware authors and distributors.

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Originally posted by TheCelt:
This happened to me once as well lesson learned was now i load a trojan horse on all systems i am called out on. That little gem stays in place until invoices are paid then a quick fix with the disk for the trojan horse and the land mine is gone. If the invoices aren't paid the trojan horse goes off wiping out the hard drive and all info. Underhanded maybe, effective You Bet since that time i have not had 1 customer refuse to pay an invoice.

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What type of shady so-called tech do you think you are? Sounds to me like you fix computers about as well as a 14 year old BBS hacker. I hope you have an excellent attorney, because one of these days you'll have a class-action lawsuit on your hands. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD

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If you make it idiot-proof, someone will make a better idiot.

to the norton ghost individual...

I use ghost everyday... and it doesn't alway read the all the dynamic drive overlay packages that exist, and when it does it put's it back the same size it picked up... so what good is that?

and besides they are 2 different machines...
yes i know you can delete the enum key(s) in the registry...
but a real tech... would do it the right way.

I personally would have tried to get rid of the MaxBlast software.

It seems like everyone is missing the point here, he wasnt tranfering the whole HD, not apps, windows, no need to do delete enum keys, no need for ghost, he was just moving DATA, on to a new computer that probably already had on OS & apps on it, they just needed the DATA moved, I would have put the old HD as master in the new machine, the new HD as slave, then the overlay on the old one would have seen both HDs, then boot into MS dos mode & not windows so the old HDs OS didnt start detecting the hardware in the new machine, tranfered the data in dos. I usualy carry a zip drive which might have helped in that situation too.

But anyway, its time for a new topic!!!
Driverguy where are you?? = )

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Originally posted by jhutto:
I don't normally judge, but it was a house/business with 3 guys living/working there together. 2 Bedroom, 1 computers/work, 1 Other with king size bed.

Soo... well.. frankly..

Figure it out for yourself.

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I resent the hell out of your implication. To suggest that one's sexual orientation means a damn about willingness or ability to pay is on the same level as if you had said the same regarding persons of color. Realize that you just insulted a great many of your fellow professionals.

I think the whole point here is hes not weeping about it .. es warning us to be more careful on people who are just starting in the field .. also people who snap at his work each one of us has different ways to fix things and maybe it works or maybe not .. the issue is this is a place for people to help one another and be a team .. you guys dont know how many times i come here and read tech tales and other things to make my day better and help me fix something after having a rough day .. so i say for the people who complain about one persons choices call a customer and ask where the any key is .. i as most of you join here for team work and information and a laugh now an then at life, work, and even bill gates. no wonder we need things censored here its the adults acting like kids ...

well put jvaguy

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Originally posted by lazy tech:
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.

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Let me ask you this, when you go to to a job do you ask if they own their home,car,computer. The point is if the computer is in their home and the software is in their computer is that really any of your bussiness. Go ahead and use Ghost!

Well, I must say to all the wankes out there who 'claim' they are a better 'tech' than others, dont tell me you have never been on that job where nothing is going right and it drags on, out of your hands.
I sir, are one of the very competent, and 4gb transfer with driver managers in 3 hours, not a problem, I would never tell any of my techs they took too long, because ive been there, you so called 'fast techs' , sure you can copy the data quickly, but does it work? and how many trips back do you do for your pissy little 30min charge? hmmm. you copy data, customers comes back and says they're microsoft something isnt working? you all wankers except the ones who agree with me, 3 hours work, you get paid 3 hours. of course you must provide a break down of the time, and if that time was used, then its used. simple as that.

OK chaps. We have now said our piece. It looks since 911 took over that it has created an influx of flamers. The majority of them being unregistered. I ahve asked Scott to change the forum's back to being used by registered members only. Sorry to you unregistered users, but if you wish to use the forum still you will have to register first. It seems like the site is becoming more of a joke now than a serious site for 'true' techs and other sites that work in the same genre must be rubbing their hands together now.

I don't have the time and I am sure that Scott & Shawn also do not have the time to sit down and view every single post that appears.

I can remember when these forums were totally SERIOUS.

Sorry Scott, i just wanted to put a point across. The guy who posted this originally only wanted to know what we would do if the same thing happened to us, yet all the flames started.

My reply to this topic would be to go back to the house, demand your tools back and visit the local police. Tell them what has happened and you want to press charges if you do not get your tools & money for services rendered as in the UK it would be classsed as FRAUD, THEFT and OBTAINING GOODS UNDER DECEPTION.

Go take it to them.

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why are our jobs so interesting??????

For a different ' angle ' on life visit my NEW homepage @ The Carpers Lodge - The UK's No.1 Non-Commercial / Independant Carp Angling Website

Does this person have any tall buildings or water towers near his house? You could borrow my Barrett M82A1 and snipe the whole lot of them...... No seriously, I would either take them to small claims court or find out about local laws on taking a lien out on thier property or cars, its pretty easy in my area, and I almost got a car for $125.00 from a guy until the tow truck showed up to repo for me and the guy forked over the cash.

I thought about asking Scott to go back to where only registered members could post also and I think it's a good idea. This is getting out of hand. And Darren is right, we all work full time and don't have the time to screen every post.

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Cannot find REALITY.SYS. Universe halted

Paint your old laptop!

Good idea Darren, feel sorry for jhutto, he was just looking for advice and a bunch of yo hons tears him up, to bad it had to come to this

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What do you think this is ? The Holiday Inn...

I'm Not trying to be flippant here but what was the outcome of Jhutto's experience.

Did he get paid and did he get his tools back ?

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feel free to comment on my website. http://www.bytesback.fsbusiness.co.uk

Instead of just going straight registered vs unregistered give us a choice. Let us decide when we start a thread if we will allow only registered users or both. Just a thought

Amen to this. One would expect that multicasting one single AP500 with a 9gig (50pin) scsi drive (2gigs used) on a 10/100 switched network wouldn't take more than 6 hours but it did..

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Originally posted by sowulo:
Sometimes if the hardware is not in perfect shape data transfers can take a long time. I had an upgrade on my bench once that was a straight drive to drive copy 100Mb to 2Gb that ran 18hours overnight and completed without errors. Just for grins I ran some diagnostics on the 100...the drive failed completely before scans were completed. I got the data off just in time....After 15yrs as an independent consultant I've learned a few things about the "competition"--those who talk the "biggest game" (e.g. "that should never take more than...") are most often the ones that make me the most money cleaning up. ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE--that's why we give "estimates" and don't accept payment in advance.

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Originally posted by Jvaguy:
You what the sadest thing here is this is for all of us .. we all join here cause were weaker in some areas then others ... so all of a sudden pointing fingers and saying well your a crappy tech ... how disappointing

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This is so true, all techs have strengths and weaknesses. I have had some techs who did not know DOS very well but was a God with WIN NT. I have also had times when I had a brain cramp where the steps that I thought would not take much time goes for a long time. The point is that the customers did not have the knowledge of doing repair themselves and he got the job done. That is what we get paid to do, fix problems on the computer that other people cannot get done.

Also, stop with teh Norton Ghost, unless the 2000 version is different, I have never gotten it to work with HD Bios overlays.

Whoa

3 hours?? 40 mins??.. Wow you guys are fast, I did something simialar and it took me 6 hours. And no, I am not a tech :P I came in doing it as a virgin, not knowing about bios limitations and OS limitations, hell I didn't even know what fdisk was and the whole ordel was a pain in the a$$. But eventualy I learned overnight, was kinda fun actualy. My friend asked me if I could do something similar to her system and I did and guess what no problems at all to both systems. Now if I went to school and taught all that stuff and been asked to go to some strangers house work on the floor and been given a a wack on the head saying your not "fast" enough and not paying you thats just not right.

Sorry jhutto, looks like you got screwd and pay no attention to those lamers saying how fast they are, they just showing off. Cuz they are afraid of a younger faster guy who is willing to do it for cheaper and better then they can. So they advertise there skill and take down other techs, kinda like the discover channel huh?

I don't think I want to be a "tech" anymore considering on how everyone behaves on this thread.

Irons

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Originally posted by compaddict:
I hate to say it but you took way too long to do the task. I think that even though YOU may be an OK tech if you take too long to do something (while maybe fumbling with this and that) it can give the consumer the feeling that you are not competent. In my experience less than thirty percent of the people that do what we do are competent. If by chance you looked like one of the other sixty percent (at least to the customer) who can blame them.

Vince

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Hey bud, 30 and 60 does not equal 100 and who do you think you are telling someone that they took too long. You were not there so just shut your pie hole you ill-informed puke.


[This message has been edited by APCSI (edited August 27, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by APCSI (edited August 27, 2000).]

Yea would like to know how jhutto made out?

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What do you think this is ? The Holiday Inn...

I think we all know what the other ten percent are! (It was a typo on my part).

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Originally posted by APCSI:
Hey bud, 30 and 60 does not equal 100 and who do you think you are telling someone that they took too long. You were not there so just shut your pie hole you ill-informed puke.


[This message has been edited by APCSI (edited August 27, 2000).]

[This message has been edited by APCSI (edited August 27, 2000).]

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OK... So Register!

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Originally posted by IIIBradIII:
Has anyone else noticed that the one's who think they know it all and try to stir up trouble are also unregistered? Just a thought...


Yes, yes, I know I am too, but I'm also not the one pointing the finger! Put that in your pipe and smoke it! :

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Life is like a magnet. Positive or Negative energy. While they both MUST exist in equal amounts at all times, that creates a convenient and simple way to make everday decisions. If it's good, then all that derives from that can ONLY be good. Be good to your fellow man. Do not dabble in thier negative energy. It leads to more negative. Jesus Christ is who you should concern yourself with. The Bible holds all truths.

I would like to know how he made out also, but the other thing I am dying to know is did he even really lose any tools? If you look back through all 5 pages of these posts, he never once said a word about losing tools, that just came up from out of nowhere, and everybody just assumed he lost them....people need to look at the posts more carefully before starting to flame!!

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[email protected]

WOW! Some some long replies here, but all very interesting. I'll keep mine short and simple:

1) We should not consider the time it took him to do the job. What counts is that the job was done right.

2) Intstalling time bombs/encryptions in computers is outright criminal and wrong. You people need to learn some ethics.

3) COMPUSA (and I stress that) should get their money.

4) IF the tools are missing, TECH should get his tools.

5) We are all one big happy Windrivers family. Lets keep it happy and show CONSTRUCTIVE critism.

Ok so 3000 posts later.....

To offend someones technical abilities is just plain stupid. Every one starts out somewhere, we are not born to know how to fix complicated problem, we learn them just the same as anyone else. Who cares if you call yourself an "EXPERT", you where not one when you first decided to learn about computers. Who cares if you have x amount of years of computer experience, it does not justify the berratement of anyone else, you will never know everything, so just stop it.

DAMN PEOPLE

I posted this like a week ago or so, mainly because I thought it was odd, and it keeps going and going and going.

Let me clear up a few things

1) I had my tools with me when they closed the door.

2) Being about a 5 year old version of maxblast the new versions wouldn't see it. Neither would Drive Copy, Ghost, or anything else I had on me.

3) I spend maybe 1 day every 2 weeks onsite somewhere. 99.9% of what I do is in shop, so I don't have a dial up Net connection I can use onsite. (Cable at home, and T1/4DSL/2Cable all in the shop)

4) I work better and faster when someone isn't standing over my sholder asking questions about everything I'm doing. He was. Asking me "how do you know that is the right jumper", or "Why is slave the second drive" etc. This is fairly common on small business onsites.

5) This thread has gone on WAY WAY too long.

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Jon Hutto

That happened to the company that I worked for. A lawyer didn't pay for the services that we provided.

We set a fax on autodial sending reminder notices to the client. This clogged up his fax line for 2 days. Everytime they turned the fax back on they'd get another lot of fax's. Eventually (once we'd crippled their bussiness) they paid there bill.

You should know as well as anyone else that a job can include a number of other things which complicate it. You should also know that to take every single utility that you may require with you when you go out to a site would mean many a cd to carry (assuming of course that they can be loaded from a cd). To make sure you do a job well, its better to spend the extra time in making sure everything's right, instead of the client calling up later and saying "this isn't fixed" or "that doesn't work the way it used to".

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Originally posted by HEHEHEHE:
You doont have the tools with you to do the job d/l'g them off the net should be on your time not theirs. They should have paid for the service call thats all, Just for kick I took a hd out of a mchine hooked it to another machine went on the net using aol d/l maxblast (didnt need it carry that and all major hd companies diagnostics) transferred all the files to the new hd deleted the enum key in the registry reinstalled all drivers. Took 45 mins and I was not rushing

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I have a related story....

A woman came into my store one sunny arizona afternoon carring her computer like it was a rattlesnake that was coiled to strike and dropped it on the service counter. I asked her what seemed to be the problem. "My husband just bought this new motherboard for his computer and it doesn;t seem to work - can you guys fix it - it should be under warranty." "Okay - do you have your reciept?" "Sure" she says, then proceeds to hand me a reciept from another computer store in a town 60 miles away. I explain to her that she didn't buy her part here and that there was no way we could repair it under warranty, so please take it to the store she bought it from and let them deal with the warranty issue - I didn't want the customer to have to pay for my labor when the part could have been under warranty. She insisted that we work on her computer - her husband was out of town on a business trip and the computer was a sore in his side before he left, she would like to give him a welcome home gift when he returned. I explained our labor rates and told her that if, for whatever reason, some hardware was bad that we would not be able to provide any type of warranty on the parts from another store. She agreed and I told her I would call when the diagnosis was complete.
I opened the machine and found that her husband had purchased a Pentium mainboard and tried to put a Cyrix chip in backwards, didn't use standoffs and bolted it directly to the case backplane, frying the mainbaord and CPU. I called the customer and told her the diagnosis, again stressing that the only shot she had at any type of warranty was to return to the place she bought the new parts from and beg for mercy, but once again, she insisted that we install new parts. I quoted her a price (discounted because I felt pity for her) and installed the parts. She picked up the machine and payed the bill - took the machine home and made her husband happy. (I return all replaced parts to the customer with their machine) and I reccommended that she try to get a warranty replacement on the mainboard - It's worth a try and I have given warranty replacements and store credits for that in the past. She seemed grateful and left the store.

A month passes and I get a letter in the mail from the BBB stating that we had charged them instead of replacing the parts under warranty and never allowed the wife to decide if she would like new parts of to try to get warranty service from the existing equipment. Basicaly they claimed that I did not say all those things I stressed to her on more than one occassion.

I responded with a three page certified letter with dates and times of conversations with the man's wife an told the BBB that at no point was the husband available to speak with (in his letter he said that he spoke with me - by name). I called the BBB and their complaint was removed and they never sought to cheat us again.

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Originally posted by jhutto:
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.

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Ah...and the truth shall set you free. I figured the d/ling was taking a while. After about 6 months with a tech shop, I told the owner (actually it was a copier center, I was just helping) that we couldn't take any more Compaqs. Between the old software you couldn't get anymore, lack of support for legacy stuff, and locked BIOSes that only function with a CD available from Compaq, I had had my fill of the company. Now, they're a completely different story. Then? A nightmare.

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"...and the only time we chill is when we kill each other. It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other."

- Tupac Amaru Shakur -