Onsite Customer issue

I say go for it but becareful, the judge you get may not understanding to your side. I sold a Pentium 90 computer with W95a two years ago. He bought for a great price ($225) but I put a floppy version of W95a. He went out a bought a new printer but could not get it to work with the computer. He brought the computer back yelling at me saying it does not work. I looked at the computer and determined that he did not load the right drivers. I offered to load the drivers for $25. He got so angry I had to have him removed from the premises. He sued me! At trial, the judged sided with me but said I needed to supply a CD version of W95 (that had nothing to do with the problem) and only awarded me $200 of the $500 lawyer fees. The judge said that he thought I was trying to scam the customer and mentioned he did not know much about computers. I no longer sell used computers!

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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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And that has to do with what?!? While I don't think they have any right to just lock you out of the room in the middle of a job (I would've requested to call my manager right then and there, and put the customer on the phone to explain why the door was locked, then sue em) what you mentioned here has nothing to do with the situation. While nobody is perfect by any means (nomatter who or what you are), comments like this do nothing but create problems. I'm no lawyer, but if they found this they could claim harassment! I've been in the computer business for 8 years and dealt with many low lifes, and from what I remember there's at least been one from EVERY walk of life.

Well, it sounds like your a lousy tech.
First of all, you cannot use MaxBlast on a Compaq of that age because the Diagnostic Partition does not install properly and without the Diagnostic partition, the machine will not work right. Second, a job like that takes 30 minutes at most, if you use the right tools. GHOST for example...

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Originally posted by Q:
Well, it sounds like your a lousy tech.
First of all, you cannot use MaxBlast on a Compaq of that age because the Diagnostic Partition does not install properly and without the Diagnostic partition, the machine will not work right. Second, a job like that takes 30 minutes at most, if you use the right tools. GHOST for example...

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Gotta love the "Techs" like Q and Rasper, it's their smart-*** attitudes and incompetence that keeps the real techs schedules jammed full!!......I mean honestly no matter how great a tech you are, or what certs. you have, and I don't care if you've been builing systems since you were in diapers, everybody runs into problem calls that are going to take more than the 30 minutes it would take you "EXPERTS"

Also, I agree totally that the comment about the 3 guys living together is totally out of line and Jhutto, you had better hope they don't stumble onto Windrivers.com !!!


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They could sue if he mentioned anything about them. I have had 10 minute jobs take hours just because of the stupid little things. I used Max Blast on my old system. Hated the thing. When I built a new one I had to do the same thing, downloading over a 33.6k line it took longer than it was worth, so the time frame he gave is pretty good all things considered. My favorite was doing network repairs for a company that had their secratary doing the net admin jobs. She would &*(# up the servers something fierce (like doing registry hacks she found in a book)then complain that it took three to four hours to rebuild them. With onsite fees over a few months, it would have been cheaper to hire a college student who needed to intern full time to do the daily tasks. As for carrying around drivers, I used to go out to the site, and if I found that it was going to take hours to download drivers, I would head back to the shop, start the download, and start kicking out more billable hours while I waited. But if you work for someone, who cares how long you take on an onsite, let them deal with the bill collection. Oh well, such is the state of the world.

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 ..
he lost his tools .. and he should be billed .. cut and dry .. and all of you who say this person is a crappy tech .. go find another board .. the people in this one are a team if one is weak were all here to help .. it doesnt matter whos better .. its the matter that we are all one !!!!!!

I had a few bad deals with customers. Although only being in the business officially for a year or so. Now we will not release any systems on a trust basis, ie they pay BEFORE they take the system home. As for onsite, I basically work for myself with the service work, so i prefer cash on the spot. If not, I will bill them with a set time period to pay. I haven`t had one not pay yet *touch wood*.

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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 ..
he lost his tools .. and he should be billed .. cut and dry .. and all of you who say this person is a crappy tech .. go find another board .. the people in this one are a team if one is weak were all here to help .. it doesnt matter whos better .. its the matter that we are all one !!!!!!

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Excellent comment... i use several Buletin Boards to troubleshoot, or just bounce ideas and problems around... Constructive critsism is one thing, plain flaming is another

Oh, and another thing or two. i will quote or estimate shop work, and on site work but also let them know 1. that it could be more or less than that figure, 2. if i need to go over the estimate, 3. if i come across any unseen problems.

and i try to carry a good selection of drivers and utils. I seem to remember a list on here of the most common utils to carry? Anyone ever made up one selection of cd`s with most common drivers on?

Hey Q and Rasper -- I am sure that after your ranting and flaming of this tech, you will receive loads of help from the rest of the guys in this forum.....

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Don't take life too seriously -- It isn't permanent

www.protechpc.com

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Originally posted by protechpc:
Hey Q and Rasper -- I am sure that after your ranting and flaming of this tech, you will receive loads of help from the rest of the guys in this forum.....

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They don't care, 30 Minute Experts like them don't need help anyways!!!



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[email protected]

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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 absolutely agree. Who the heck are these self-proclaimed "supertechs" out there to judge anyone else' work. The total time it takes to finish a job varies greatly according to the environment. ALL of us can finish jobs much quicker in our home turf. If that "supertech" wants to prove his prowess, I have a "simple" HDD cloning situation that I can use to test him any time he is ready. Let's all do our best for our clients and ourselves and be more understanding of our fellow career mates.

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Originally posted by protechpc:
Hey Q and Rasper -- I am sure that after your ranting and flaming of this tech, you will receive loads of help from the rest of the guys in this forum.....

I feel for you jhutto. I've been doing Tech stuff for many years. My favorite stuff has to be hdd transfers. They are usually easy but soetimes they really test your logic skillz. Especially when throwing in 4 yr old drive overlay software. Sure put me in a shop and I can do a data xfer w/ d.o. software in about 20-45 minutes, size depending. On new drives. On a reasonable MB, with all the software available to me, and with a constant DSL connection. In jhutto's case, we're talking onsite. Usually you can almost double the time due to customer interference. Driver download on modem. add 10min - 40 min depending on availability of connection, connect rate, availability of download. + searching for the software. Add to that the physical transfer, which from what he stated was not a wholesale transfer, but a "what do you want me to transfer" situation. Which involves time and interaction with a less than knowledgable customer. "I think all the files are in this folder, but I'm not sure..." Seems to me like three hours is not too bad. That type of job can take usually 1-4 hours. What I normally recommend to customers is to let me take the computer, do the transfer in the shop, and just charge them for actual bench time. So, for all of you who judge, come to my shop and try this. I've seen data transfers and recoveries that will make you cry b/c you don't know what to do. Ghost is a useful tool, but not an answer to everything. Last time I used ghost in a similar situation to what jhutto described, I got all the data, but chopped into 8.3 format. ie: drive controller software is always an unknown.

PS: I carry a CD w all the most commonly used drivers, patches, and drive overlay software on it. If any of you are interested, email me at [email protected]. I'll get you the disk for media + shipping. It's a great tool for onsite stuff. I've built on it over the course of a year, so it has almost everything you need. Well, at least everything I need. https://forums.windrivers.com/images.../2000/09/1.gif

I used Ghost 5.1a the other day on a hdd runing Win2k, it copied the files over OK apart form pagefile.sys and would not let me get into windows whatsoever even in safe mode!!! Good job I could just place the old drive back <phew>

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Hang on all you goody two shoes hollering about flaming this poor individual. There was no tech question here. He posted a whining story. Asked for no help left it open to comment. He got that good and bad. We dont have to protect him. If you read what was said there is some good advice in here with some light hearted kidding not flaming. If I think he did a bad job I have the right to say that. If I want to side with him that is also my right or for that matter anyone elses. Posted in these forums are all kinds of goodies if you read. Also posted here are tips like this one and if you read some of it including the kidding can help you. Ignore the comments from the guys with the sticks up their a__es as they are no help at all they are too busy policing everything someone says to learn anything. Go do that in the chat rooms on IRC everyone here is an adult and dont need hall monitors.