[quote=“Stardog Champion”]
[quote=“herbie_popnecker”]You don’t tell them it’s crappy. You explain it’s long ago passed it best-before date. They appreciate a little honesty if you tell them you can fix up their old one, but they could get a brand new one for $100 more.
eg P133 Win98 box in shop yesterday
0.5 hours - set up and determine hard drive goes clak clak
1.3 hrs - pull drive, slave to another, rescue some files. Find out its partitioned from Win95 days, rescue 2nd partition
2.0 hrs - find old useable HD, install windows
1.5 hrs find drivers cuz Win98 cant find its own ass in dark
1.0 hrs - figuring out you burnt old files to CD, but you have to temp put a new CDROM to install old files
call customer, brings important software disks
1.0 install software, repairing every other floppy along the way. Close box, writeup Svc Order:
old Harddrive $20, 7.3 hours @ $60=$438 =$458
Customer shits bricks. Takes 1/2 hour of managers time. Feels bill should be ‘about $40 max’. Manager can either seiz a $20 computer and piss off customer or ends up charging $75 that doesn’t cover your labor let alone his time or overhead. Must then repeatedly mention that you only recovered the files that were readable, etc.
Customer goes home, calls back screaming cuz Works 4 Windows is gone, all his high game scores are lost, you ripped him off, he just saw your ad for new systems from $499 and you tried to screw him for $450! Tells all his friends, who start calling your tech at home an offering him “a whole $20” to come do similar jobs at their house. All go to Suture Shop where they say “sorry they don’t make harddrives that fit anymore” and walk away. Chase after salesperson and come home with new Cicero with no modem and bunch of worthless rebate coupons feeling good. Find out when they get home has no ISA slots for old scanner, no COM2 for the dongle and makes laughing noises at them trying to install Works4Windows1.0. Go back to Suture Shop and happily pay for new scanner, modem install, Works2003, and new dongleless XP compatible software. Need a blankCD cuz they ‘formatted’ the sample one and go back to your local store. It’s shut down for good and they’re all pissed off they have to drive to the Suture Shop in the other town just for a $1 CD.
Isn’t that more like it?[/quote]
I think you’ve missed the point. Yes, it is better to be honest with the customer straight away. However, your attempt at humor will probably be misconstrued as you trying to tell them that the customer is stupid.
How would you like it if you brought your beloved dog into the vet’s office because it wasn’t eating, and the vet decided to tell you that the dog had to be put down by bringing out a shotgun and saying “here, you wanna do the honors?”
There are plenty of ways you could have made your point. Handing a customer a sledgehammer is hardly one of them.[/quote]
I highly doubt he would seriously hand them a sledge hammer, however most clients I have had will tell me their hardware is out of date and they want to smash their computer with a hammer after only owning it for a year due to spyware etc.
Honestly though I dont work for just anyone who calls/comes to my door I choose not to work for people who are a pain in the ass. so if someone brings in a 486 and wants it fixed they can either put up with my humor or go somewhere else. It might sound arrogant but there are plenty of customers out there and someone else can have all the shitty/cheap ones.
In my experience the people who wouldnt be able to take the joke are hte cheap ones who will try to stiff you or get a “deal” those clients just dont pay off in the end.