ARRGH! WHERE'S MY F&$*ING CATTLEPROD?!

[theBeast]

I had a customer call up yesterday fairly pissed that his computer wasn't working properly. The system is just 2 years old, which he purchased from us. He b!tched that he "had the system in our store 3 times in the past year!" I remembered this customer vividly. He was pi$$ed from the get go at one thing or another. The system was ready a day later than anticipated (though we did call and tell him that we had parts on back order).
So, I tell him to bring the computer in, and I will take care of it right away. I will also go over it with a fine-toothed comb, and ensure that ALL the hardware was working fine.
So...he brings it in. Even though there were others that were ahead of him, I thought it would be in our best interest (to save us from a screaming drunk) to take care of it immediately. So, I put it on the desk. He claimed that the "Intel" logo would be on the screen for "five minutes", then would come up with "Non-system disk or disk error".
Fearing the HD crashed, I prepared myself for the worst...with a Win 98 boot disk in hand.
Sure enough...it goes RIGHT into windows. I get a few illegal operations (MMSYSTEM, TaskMon, RunDLL). So, I reboot, and go into safe-mode. Things are OK in safe mode...I get an illegal operation going into Control Panel...but it loads up anyways, and everything seems hunky dory. So, I go into "My Computer", and check the properites of the C drive. Hmm...it's a 10Gig hard drive, and he has 1.5 gig free! So, I clean up temp files, cache files, etc. Ok. Now it's 1.8 gig free on a 10 gig hard drive. So, I check scandisk. Hmm...it had been run 377 days ago, as did Defrag. Our store's policy is that everytime we work on a computer, we run Scandisk and Defrag... So, according to this, he had brought his computer in ONCE in the past year...and it was a couple months after he bought it. So, I checked our records. Sure enough it was brought in last February. His motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Hard Drive had to be replaced. I suspected a power surge of some kind. We had not seen nor heard from the system since.
So, I clean it up (including the killer dust bunnies inside). I reinstalled Win 98 overtop, reinstalled IE5.0 overtop. Everything runs perfectly. So, I investigate where all the space is going. Hmm...he's got 600 megs in MP3s, and 6 GIGS!!! in WAVs. No wonder the system is slowing down!
How do you guys handle customers like this? We will not likely charge him (though the fault was obviously software related, and not hardware), but I'm certain to make mention of the fact that the full hard drive along with the fact that maintenance had never been performed on the system.

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***the Beast
- I only came for the platypus soup

[theBeast]

Oh, I also failed to mention that the system has an HP CD-RW in it...and our store doesn't sell HP CD-RWs...we sell LG, Sony, and Yamaha.

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***the Beast
- I only came for the platypus soup

[MacGyver]

You can get revenge. It's called an INVOICE! Why give the guy a break? Charge him extra for a rush job.

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sHIFT hAPPENS

[jimmr13]

Yo Beast, like you new bever! Where you find it? As far as the customer?? We all get that kind Like hay you guys built the system !
But we did not install the slave HDD, or that Burner, Or the one that killed me "my nephew is a computer genius and he said it's running to slow!" "And got it here so you have to make it faster again" yah it was almost 4 years ago it's a PII and the HDD is .95% full Wave files, Mpg's ect.
I feel for ya Beast, can't quite reach ya! But I feel for ya!

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If all else fails read the directions !

[WebJedi_Master]

With my luck, I likely dealt with the same guy--except he would have been complaining about the internet access I sold him...

I used to be, how shall I say, quite co-operative with such customers, but nowadays I'm a little more interested in treating them as I would any other customer.

"Yes sir, the waiting time will be 1.5 days on that. See you tommorrow."

I used to jump when customers like that came in, but then I realized that you train them to expect that type of service every time. Either that or they'd always be mad about one thing or another.

So one day I said forget this I'm not going out of my way to get the jerks out of the way faster, they can take a number like everyone else.

I had an interesting experience with a lady a while ago. (about 1.5 yrs)

She was screaming at me at my desk, insisting that the ISP I work for pay for her $300 phone bill. "Somehow" her system was suddenly dialling in to our Guelph access number, and she was in London. Hence she was getting nailed long distance every time she used the internet for about 2 hrs a day, 7 days a week.

Well I look at her phone bill, and lo and behold, there was an exact date where she stopped using one number and start using the wrong one.

I told her that someone (I avoided at this point saying "you" ) had changed the number on this date.

She then started yelling at me again, claiming that there's no way she would have changed the number--one of our tech support guys must have told her to do it during a tech support call.

I check the support logs. Only 1 or 2 incidents with this lady listed, neither of which mentions any phone number change.

THis all took about 45 minutes to this point, during which I am trying to keep my cool. She then tries the ludicrous claim that the software changed the setting "all by itself".

I told her this wasn't possible.
"How would you possibly know.?"

I compiled the dialing software and tested it like crazy before we released it ma'am, so I have a slight idea...

So then I finally ask--
This is the exact date you changed the phone number--WHO ELSE WAS ON YOUR COMPUTER THAT DAY???!?

She checks her daytimer.

Her grandson was over to visit that day.
Guess what he was doing during the visit.
If you said "playing on the computer" you were right.

Well I have never seen an angry customer vacate the premises so fast. Only now she was angry at another individual other than myself...

It was kinda nice to win one for once...

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BREAKFAST.EXE Halted...
Cereal Port Not Responding

[theBeast]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by jimmr13:
Yo Beast, like you new bever! Where you find it? As far as the customer?? We all get that kind Like hay you guys built the system !
But we did not install the slave HDD, or that Burner, Or the one that killed me "my nephew is a computer genius and he said it's running to slow!" "And got it here so you have to make it faster again" yah it was almost 4 years ago it's a PII and the HDD is .95% full Wave files, Mpg's ect.
I feel for ya Beast, can't quite reach ya! But I feel for ya!

</font>

Renee found it for me. It's not just ANY beaver...it's a killer beaver!

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***the Beast
- I only came for the platypus soup