The kinda bullshit we deal with, or love your computer tech.

The BBQ Pit
1

The setting,
Central West Fresno, CA 7:03 PM Thursday, September 2, 2010

Technician: Drachillix arrives on scene.

Customer has a laptop with a non-functional, most likely pirated Windows Vista install (key only present for XP home). Boot partition is a mess, dunno if I can even save his stuff but its gonna take hours for a file scan. Its gonna need to be reloaded.

No internet service in the house, no neighbors with unsecured internet, so only real way to get drivers and such after a reload is to take it back to my shop and do the work there.

I discuss this with the customer, he agrees, I doodle him out a receipt (normally we do them via an internet based service, so I had to improvise)

Data recovery proves challenging, and eventually fails, but I gave it a solid try and let him know, he was more concerned with speed than saving his limewire downloads, so I go ahead and proceed with the reformat and reload. Of course we start the reload about 5pm on Saturday night. We are closed Sunday and for the holiday Monday. I actually came in breifly on Monday for a few things and ran all the driver and basic application installation to make sure it was ready for Tue first thing.

Oh did I mention he called 38 times starting at 10pm Saturday night, our phone message said we are closed Sundays and this monday.

Today

I go to collect payment and drop off computer. Customer informs me he needs to show a relative at a different location where he can get the money and pay me tomorrow. I inform him that I cannot release the computer until I have recieved payment. He starts on an elaborate line of street lawyer bullshit about how I have no right to hold his property, blah blah blah, gets in my face and tries to physically pull the computer away from me.

I don’t budge, and reply, "If you feel I am doing something illegal here, please contact the police, I will wait.

Him: More blathering

Me: Please call the police…

Him: More blather

Me: Call the police

Him: Give me your phone so I can call

Me: Uh, no, go call inside, I will wait. (Like I am gonna hand him my 3gs iPhone)

Him: blah blah, You are gonna end up getting arrested, blah blah

Me: Chance I’m gonna take

This is abbreviated, this whole debate took about 30 min.

He goes inside and calls. Comes out a few minutes later and tells me I am gonna be sorry. He walks down and waits at the end of the driveway for police.

Two police officers arrive about 10 min later, he proceeeds to give them the same song and dance about his rights, my rights, etc. Cop basically says, this is a civil matter, you have to make arrangements you both agree on for this transaction. I cannot force him to hand over the computer, and I cannot force you to pay him.

Other officer asks me a few questions, takes my name, DOB, etc. I inform the officer he was getting a little hostile and I in part encouraged him to call to make sure I could leave peacefully without being forced to hand over the computer without payment for my services via futher intimidation or potentially assaulting me.

The bill:

$98

Now I feel like I should be charging him for the hour I had to throw away onsite while all this bullshit unfolded. I should charge him for another delivery fee to come back out there. Better yet, I should make him meet me at the police station 3 blocks away so he can’t get in my face again. Hand him the bill for the additional time and charges, then see if he thinks his little stunt was worth it.

Shit like this makes me want to go wander the woods or something and never have to deal with another [del]sack of shit[/del] valued customer like this again.

2

Jesus, what a fucking nightmare. Some people are just too stoopid to live.

3

Maybe you could take the same tack as lawyers - charge a retainer up front and then bill them for any excess. Basically it would be a flat fee for a particular type of work. But if the flat fee doesn’t cover you time you spend on the job, then you bill them for the difference.

Ideally, the flat fee would cover 95% of all possible situations with room to spare. The downside is that it might scare people off.

there used to be CompUSA near me and that was how they rolled, except I thing that it was a truly flat fee in the sense that if something took longer than they expected, they ate the difference.

Just a thought.

4

I wonder if casually mentioning that the cops might be interested in the pirated version of Windows he had on his system would have shut him up. Of course, you and I know that the cops aren’t going to give a shit about a pirated copy of windows, but this guy sounds stupid enough to fall for it.

5

nah, pretty sure he knows they could care less, he was already talking shit about how I didn’t fix anything and I am just charging him $98 for nothing.

No problemo Dumbass, all future dealings with you will be in writing. If you wanna get your computer back you can make an appointment to meet me and my partner at my shop, pay cash, then get the fuck out of my life.

Why the hell did he think for a second he could bully his way out of paying.

At one point as I am walking back to my truck to stow the Pc in question, he starts ranting that I am stealing his computer and he wants to press charges.

The cops beautiful reply " I refuse to take that report"

took every scrap of discipline I had not to snort with amusement.

I left as he was demanding a supervisory officer.

I must admit I breifly fantasized he might go totally apeshit and end up a guest of the county. Probably should have pulled out my phone and videotaped the eventual conversation from the inbound supervisor/ Sargent.

Now thousands will be denied the opportunity to hear the stupid dribbling from his pie hole.

6

He’s probably been successful at bullying his way out of a bill before, and figured he could do the same here. I’ve seen it happen in retail, fast food, plumbing, roofing, computer repair, and auto repair.

Having to put up with jackasses like that is one of the reasons I loathe working with the public.

7

I certainly don’t envy you for that job. I work in IT for a small company and the worst thing that ever happens to me is that people think I am their personal computer fixer because I fix work PCs, and decide to bring their home computers to me to be fixed.

Some of them seem to think I AM an on call home PC repair tech. Just fixing my dad’s PC on a regular basis gives me pause. Fixing anyone’s PC who will (or refuses to) pay you is pretty rough.

8

Ha! Very funny story. This sort of stuff happens to me all the time.

We give people a price and then they do not want to pay or start haggeling.
After all, data recovery and reinstall of your Windows is not real work since it only takes 5 minutes, so why should they pay me €90.

The story about coming back in 5 minutes to pay is so old and these 5 minutes can span from 5 min to 3 hours, 3 days, one week or never. So, as a result; goods do not leave the premises (or I do not leave their premises) untill payment has taken place.

9

Wow, he called the cops on you? Good on you, OP, for standing your ground! And no way in hell would I go back there alone next time. Bring someone with you, or better yet, tell him he’s got to come to the store because of threats of intimidation, and bring his damn money with him.

10

It’s too bad your professional ethics prevent you from “finding” that large volume of highly illegal materials on his hard drive. :smiley:

11

CYA to avoid problems. You need a brief paper form that customers sign. Reading the boards it seems that everyone who does verbal agreements runs into this.

Require a non refundable diagnostic fee up front that goes toward the bill if they want it fixed.
State clearly that you’re not responsible for data loss.
State clearly that their item will not be released until the bill is paid.
State clearly that you are not responsible for items left over 30 days after repair notification. {record the days you call them on the bill}
If their hardware is worth anything you can wave the deposit. You can be flexible on the 30 days. The up side is when you get the occasional unreasonable jerk you don’t have to argue. You have their signature.

It amazes me the shit people will try to pull. It should be common sense that you don’t get your property back until you pay the bill. 99.9% of repairs of anything are done that way. The exception might be long time customers who are allowed to run a tab.

You had every right to turn and walk away rather than listen to his bullshit but you were probably right not to risk any physical confrontation. You also had a right to tell him that your labor goes up if he keeps wasting your time.

Get a form, brief and to the point.

12

Just out of curiosity, what did you use to reinstall his “most likely pirated” OS? Recovery partition?

13

$98 dollars for attempted data recovery and a Windows re-install? With two home trips?

Can you do my jacked-up desktop, please? It doesn’t even need the data recovery, and only one home visit, I promise. I’ll even pay in cash.

14

I was wondering about that. Did you reinstall Windows XP instead, since it was licensed? And I’m amazed that you only charged him $98 since it sounds like you spent hours on it.

15

I reloaded xp home, we are pretty flexible with our time in the shop because we tend to multitask alot. Start windows load on machine A, go install virus scanners and start them on machine B, work on assembling machine C while other machines are doing their thing.

We are the nice guys.

16

No shit! The OPer needs to charge waaaay more.

17

Surprised nobody noticed this gem.

Unless it differs from state to state, I was under the impression that using unsecured wireless internet for any reason is theft, even if you are harmless and providing a service using it.

Ironic.

18

Yup and it would be my last resort, I have actually run across customers who connected to a neighbors unsecured internet and honestly didnt realize wireless internet service was not a built in free service.

19

Oh no doubt about that one. There are plenty of people that think wireless hotspots (with names like “Smith Family”) are provided by the state or something. Truly amazing.

I’m just interested in how it’s a resort at all for you. I’m not some prude here. I’ve done it, sure, but I don’t do it while fixing a customer’s computer. I’d think one somewhat intelligent customer would notice and report you.

20

An intelligent customer likely (but not absolutely) already has WiFi