Onsite Customer issue

Check this out..

A Customer called me up asking if I can come out and take a drive out of his old system, and put it in his new one, and transfer the data. I explain the different between programs, and data, and what I can do, etc. Also tell him my hourly fee.

Go onsite, and the new unit is a CPQ Presario, old unit is a CPQ Prolina. No problem. The Prolina has a 4gb drive, formatted with Max Blast (bypassing the BIOS limits). They dont' have the disk that came with it either.

They only have AOL, so it takes a while, but I get Max Blast, load it to a floppy, and isntall the drive, and get both showing up without formatting either.

At this point it is a matter of drag and drop. This whole process tho took over 3 hours, and they call me out to the hall for a sec to ask me a question. I walk out there.
They lock the door to the computer room, and say I was unable to complete the task in the time aloted, and will not be paid for the time I have been here.

take them to small claims court

Did you get your tools back?

I've got 3 clients right now that I will be taking to court. Together, they owe me a little over 6 grand for systems and work performed. One is a lawyer, one a mortgage company, and one a chain of day care schools. The lawyer just ignores my bills, the mortgage company and day care have each sent letters acknowledging services received but stating they decided the work perfomed just wasn't that important to them after all. Go figure! 15 years full-time in the business and these are the first @#$#@'s that just decided they didn't feel like paying. Too bad I didn't bill them for every minute I spent on them on the first billing (I'm too nice of a guy sometimes (translate--stuuuupid)). I can't sue them for any more than the original invoice + finance charges & court costs. Thanks for letting me vent......:MAD:

That is a crappy deal! If you didn't get your tools back, I'd say sue 'em. If you did, bill 'em, and if they refuse to pay tell them that you'll send it to a collections agency who will see that the bill gets paid. There are agencies who do the dirty work of badgering the customer, and will sue them on your behalf. They take a flat rate per customer. There are also Private Investigators who do this work for a small fee.

What OS were they running? If they were running Win 95/98, you could easily transfer all the files in a short amount of time without Ghost, or program similar.
Just:
XCOPY32 [source] [destination] /e/h/k/c/r/y
The operation takes about 10-15 minutes.

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***the Beast
- Fate drove me here...then told me to get out of the car...

personally i would have given him a round-a-bout time persiod. nevertheless he has NO right to lock the door on your stuff and operations while in the middle of doing something. he could have simply told you to stop and paid you what you were due. i too would take him to small claims court. how were you supposed to know what he expected to pay?

-skut

Sounds like its time to get postal. Did they specify an amount of time they wanted this task done in? Did they say we can only spend this much? Regardless that was just wrong of them. Are you an employee or employer, if an employee then its up to your boss, if not then every penny counts. Don't make it sound like you really need the money but the fact that you are not a charity. Take an ad out in the local paper explaining what happened or something. I would definitely take it to court or something, its just not right. Maybe even call other local computer shops and explain what happened or see if they had the same customer which gave them the same problem. I had customers that would screw ya and go to another shop for work until they reached the last shop and treat that one nice. You need to be paid for doing that especially when it entails AOL.

Tony

I too have been involved in a few incidents like this. The company I work for usually just sends the bill onto a collection agency who charges us a 10% flat fee against the bill. Never have to worry about that customer again and they get perminatly blacklisted in our company. On the rare occasion when we did not send the bill to a collection agency, all current orders on products and credits being processed were halted until payment was recieved (but I already put a $500 down payment on the new computer your building us!! -Then you had better pay your outstanding $60 labour charge)

Our company (CompUSA) has more than a law firm in town locally (Dallas here is our HQ) and they are handleing it. Last I heard they were sueing them for the time out there, and the firms fee's. (Over $3k so far and climbing)

Good job! Those people are going to wish that they would have paid the 3 hours labour fee rather than being stung with a $3,000 law suit!
I'd love to see the looks on their faces when they get hit with the suit!

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***the Beast
- Fate drove me here...then told me to get out of the car...

That is just wrong. I know customers can be bull headed and all but to flat out refuse to pay for services rendered, no way. Regardless of the time it took to d/l the files (btw, their fault for misplacing the software), you still have a job to do. If you got halfway done, what the heck were they going to do "lets let him get so far then f**k him"? We are professionals and do our jobs right, we are not Domino's. There is no 30 minutes or less guarantee. Whatever your fee is, it is certain to have added up to much less than the ensuing law suit.


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Artificial Intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.

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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Jon Hutto

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

Tree hours to transfer 4 gigs of data to a new hd. You took em for a NYC cab drive. I would testify for them.

Quote:

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Originally posted by HEHEHEHE:
Tree hours to transfer 4 gigs of data to a new hd. You took em for a NYC cab drive. I would testify for them.

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Still, it doesn't give them the right to obstruct his work, much less "steal" his tools (stuff)...

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

Might help if I could type... sheesh how embarassing....

Well gang, I think we should be reading the posts a little better. Nothing was ever mentioned about keeping the mans tools. Granted it seems like a long time to download Maxblast and transfer the drive, but we weren't there, nor really have all the facts.

Last time I had a customer want to refuse to pay (and this was after the job was done) just called the cops. They got much more understanding once they realized what I was doing and how it was going to look in front of all of their clients for some reason....

When it is in the shop we are very understanding and are happy to put the machine back to its original shape.

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

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.

Well, if some of you readers will read, ( not all of you though ) they said he was unable to complete the task in the time alloted, after the fact they locked him out of the computer room, which probably took time to get back in. Now, he also said that he was about done, all that was left was some drag and drops. Which, I get from the story, they must of known he was close to being done and had planned on not paying, so they had to come up with a way to stop him from completing within his alloted time to work on it. So, that must of meant, he quoted them a price for a certain amount of time to complete it. It doesn't matter how a person does it or how long it takes them to do it, just as long as they quote a customer a price and a time line on when it will be done.

P.S. Oh, by the way, it is also a good suggestion to let the consumer know, after quoting a price, that if it ends up being more, they will contact them to let them know and will not do anymore work until they get the go ahead. You never know what kind of trouble lies ahead in some machines.

[This message has been edited by WhiteWolf69 (edited August 21, 2000).]

So the guy was having a bad one (we all have bad ones)...it doesn't give them the right to lock him out and neglect to pay...as for the perception of incompetency due to the length of time it took, who called who? Jhutto didn't just skate in off the street...he was requested to come. Jhutto, you need to carry the minimum with you...you wouldn't leave the house without your pants, you don't go on site without the tools to do the job. Man, do we eat each other like this all the time?

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Chunga's Revenge
Kill them all, for God will surely know his own....

Let's see now...moving a drive from one PC to another and transferring the data from the old drive to the new one. OK

1. Travel Time
2. Pull the old drive (on a COMPAQ! Ever pulled ANYTHING out of a Compaq? It's murder.
3. Mount the old drive in the new COMPAQ. Ever try to install anything in a COMPAQ? It's murder.
4. New IDE cable.
5. Locate Max Blast software
6. Transfer data.
7. Test Test Test

3 hours? I think he did a great job. My fee for the job, assuming travel was 1/2 hour each way would have been about $250. I would absolutely sue the SOB's.

Of course I have learned my lessons. I encrypt various Windows system and selected application files with a self extracting PGP file so the 'new PC' will not run until I get paid. Then the customer can SUE ME if they think I overcharged, took too long, etc. This of course assumes the agreement is to pay on the spot. If the customer, (and they usually do) cries about not having the $$ after the work is done but agreed to pay COD, I just say fine...your computer won't work until I get paid. Then they either have to call someone else (and pay them to reinstall the OS and apps (if they have the original CDs)) or they 'find' the $$ real fast. Customers like that I have no interest in dealing with a 2nd tme anyway.

Well said.

Quote:

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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 disagree totally. If I don't have the drivers I need for a machine in my shop, I can download them and do other work while they are downloading, and therefore, I do not charge the customer for that download time. However, if I am out onsite, what can I do while that data/drivers is downloading, NOTHING, that's why the customer has to pay from the time you leave until you return, because they are taking all your time, time that if you were not there, you could have billed to somebody else. And as far as him having it with him, honestly, how many of you carry around MaxBlast with you? Do you think the furnace repair man who comes to your house has every part to every furnace out in his truck? I don't think so. There is just no way to have every tool/part with you for every job.

Goes back to the days when the company I worked for contracted with this onsite company to do work for us. We paid this company a flat rate per call. Return visits killed the project because it became too expensive because of inept techs they hired out of the local phone books without ever checking them out. One guy called me because he was getting a conflict i/o ports! Nother one did not know how to slave up a hard drive. Service should be service. When I'm on a job making friends with the client as I work is the first order of business. I explain the procedure as I go along and tell them if I hit something that slows me down. I tell them what is expected of them also i/e you are expected to have the modem video and sound drivers etc if you do not have them I can get them probably but it will take longer. When I reach the quoted time I ask them for additional money to continue if I need it and explain what is going on. I see this from both sides. Consumers are leery now days and as a consumer myself when I look at how long this took I would wonder why 3 hours for such a simple task. The way they did it by fooling the guy out of the room leads me to believe he was had but sometimes by stalling you can cause this type of behaviour in clients. I did a modem job for a guy at a real estate office couple weeks ago. 2400 baud modem they wanted. Program they were using could only use 2400 baud modems and that was fast enough for what it did. Told the guy how much he agreed on a flat rate went over dropped the modem in tested it and went for my money. He said man I should have taken the hourly rate instead of the flat rate. Took 10 mins. They are all looking for a break.

I agree that the customer should be billed if you have to download drivers from the internet. At the computer shop I in which I work, we have well over 500 diskettes and CDs with various drivers and utilities. It would be ludicrous to lug around the drivers for every piece of hardware made in the past 15 years. The tech should guess which to bring (Diagnostics, Ghost, Disk Doctor, Winders 95/98, etc.), and have the skill to use them, but if a situation arises the tech will need to be able to download whatever is needed.

Man!!!
This woeful tale reminds me why I left the sunny ;-) shores of techdom and now work as an "Electronic Specialist" for a Gov't Contractor.
This type of RIPOFF is easy to see with 20/20 Hindsight. The folks you were helping took your expertise and are reaping profits from it now, count on that. The tech shop where I worked longest had a policy of "Doing the work while you watched". I can't count the # of times I was surpised by the statement " Gosh I could help my neighbors with their problems now that you showed me....(fill in the blank).
My sympathies....

I know everything has been convered more than once on this topic, but I totally understand where everyone is coming from. There are many scenario's that can extend the service call. Such as the persons speed of their computer, the HD access time, and etc. All of these have to be taken into effect when working on a clients computer. Sure it took you 10 mins to copy your files, but you're running a gig, with 512 mb ram, and a 10,000 rpm hd. Download time also comes into play here. Normally I try to get the entire jist of what may be wrong and try to bring an assortment of drivers and the like. But you never know what you might need on the job. Sure, you could download that file in 2 mins, but sometimes im stuck at a clients house using a 33.6 dialup, and im sure as hell that'll take a wee bit longer. Theres no need to rant and flame senselessly, regardless of the time it took, they had no right to act the way they did. Im gun-ho for suing them, and I hope I never experience a client with such immature and unprofessional behavior!

Reading this reminds me of why I suspended service calls except for network problems a year and a half ago. If they had brought the machines to the shop... no problem getting paid. Sure I lost some trade, for a while. But they soon came back with their machines underarm. I know a lot of techs have to do what their boss says, I encourage you to be your own boss. One last note, did they buy the new Compaq from your company? If not my estimates for services like that is double. Besides, most peoples "irreplacable" files are just porno and smut.

Before you go out to do an onsite job you should ask the consumer some questions about there system and then think about it decide if you want or think you can do the job and pick out waht tools/software you'll need if your good you can figure this all out by going by the hardware specs and type of machine.

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.