As a freelancer (designer) myself, I would SO have taken that fucker to court. Don’t know about Ireland, but it’s pretty simple and cheap to take someone to the Small Claims Court in Britain. I have also been known to employ the services of a debt collection agency - you have to pay them 15% or whatever, but the satisfaction of making the scumbag’s life hell whilst extracting earned money from them is truly satisfying.
Fuckers like that pray on us little freelancers because they assume we have no back-up. I never let them get away with it.
We tried doing a free diagnosis thing for a short while… We got way too much of this. We then tried to go with a vague diagnosis like “repair corrupt windows install” without writing up what we were going to actually do, and simply stating the simple basic name of a part on the estimate, like hard drive, not Western digital 250GB 7200RPM 8mb cache model AL23456743-kv. to avoid the comparison shoppers on parts.
I have had half a dozen situations where do it yourselfers bought cheapo generic shit, had me install it, then got pissed when I would not replace the drive for free later.
The magic word to stop those assholes in their tracks is “included” as opposed to “free”. I have studiously avoided the term free for years, it ALWAYS comes back to haunt you.
You are basically looking at $1300 worth of never came back over the last 3-4 months.
On the plus side, we can often sell off the used parts for more than the $49 in the grand scheme of things, just sucks to have to go to the effort. Most of these machines are blown mobos on socket 478/754 machines that are of questionable worth even to refurb and sell as used. But its not too hard to get $20 for a used 80gb hard drive and $10 for a used DVD/CDRW, $5-10 for used sticks of RAM, $20 for a used CPU, etc.
I have had a couple people try to pull this on me for stuff. Its alot of the reason I chose the path I did in computers, creative work ends up having little tangible value to alot of people and all too many printers are more than happy to photoshop out a gently applied “proof” on a digital sample for $50 saving their customers the $400 in design costs.
Yes. Even though you’re offering exactly the same deal, it will help avoid confusion.
I’d say:
“We charge a flat fee of $49 to diagnose your problem. If you want us to even glance at your computer, it will cost you $49. Afterward, if you decide to have us go ahead and repair your system, the diagnostic feed will be applied toward the total cost of the repair.”
I worked at a car dealership as a receptionist while I was an undergrad. The place I worked was open until midnight (service and parts) so my job didn’t require much since most people had service’s direct number.
I remember hearing a LOT of people complain to the cashier about the diagnostic fee. She would tell them a lot of what you explained. If that didn’t satisfy them the service manager on duty would come over and do the same.
There was a woman who owned two florist shops who would always want to fight with them about servicing their delivery vans. She was hateful and awful. I remember the service manager trying to tell her “What if I called to have you make me and arrangement for a centerpiece for a party and you spent an hour or so putting it together? What if instead of paying for it I just came in and took a picture of it so I could replicate it myself at home?”
Although I thought it was a decent comparison, she disagreed. Thank goodness the owner of the dealership finally got sick of it and told her not to come back.
I’ll second the suggestion to take a minimum payment up front before you even look at the machine. The shop I work at just implemented a new policy requiring all non-invoiced customers (regular Joe Schmoes off the street) to pay up front for anything they order. We were getting stiffed left and right before this. Most of our problems were from flaky people who decided they wanted a set of business cards or brochures one day and then decided to never return our emails/calls after we’d worked hard on a design for them. And, we had issues with a few customers who we’d nicely allowed to build up a tab. And, of course we’ve had customers who’ve never come to pick up their completed order because they found it somewhere else $5 cheaper AFTER we’d started on their order.
When we first implemented the policy, we were slightly concerned that we’d lose potential customers who were afraid to financially commit before seeing a sample. In the last month, we’ve had maybe 4-5 disappear after telling us they’d have to come back to pay the deposit. And you know what? I’m very thankful those 4-5 people didn’t come back. If you’re afraid to pay up front for customized work, then I will find it very hard to trust your willingness to not shaft us.
Meh. This sounds overtly hostile to me. I agree with the others saying to just charge up front for the 1 hour minimum (i.e., they pay $49 when they leave their computer).
This. I fire on average obne customer a year. Several times I’ve had people come back asking me to do business with them again. So far I’ve always declined. I explain that when I told them to never come back it was because they were being a jerk, and in my experience that sorta behaviour tends to repeat.
sigh! You can smile and say, “Our prices are good but feel free to check around before you decide if you’d like us to do it”
We had a retired gent fixing band instruments who charged very reasonable prices. He’d fix a clarinet for $30 or $40 bucks and people would still bitch.
One lady complained and claimed that the quote was lower {some employee guessing} so I called her and gave her a reduced price. Her husband came in and picked it up and she called me to complain again because the reduced price I quoted hadn’t included tax. Often I feel like saying “You’ve shopped in this country for a few years right?” because people seem so clueless about how transactions work.
Although the customer had no reasonable expectation to get a free set up on stuff he purchased elsewhere , when he called back with a different deal, {just the set up} that would have been the time to give him a price for the set up only.
OTOH I get very tired of customers thinking they have no personal responsibility to ask questions and use a little common sense.
If you agree to pay X for Y service and then ask for something else don’t expect it to be included for free.
I’ve pointed our return policy to people , posted in huge letters in the store and printed on thier reciept and their excuse is “Well you know people never read those things” as if that’s our fault as well.
Hopefully you can use those parts in other repairs and save the honest customer some money. Still, that’s why it’s not a horrible idea to get the basic diagnostic fee up front.
Wow They actually come back after you’ve told them not to?
The nice older gent who fixed horns for us introduced me to that phrase. He said some customers are always going to be a pain and they just aren’t worth it.
My brother turned his hobby of repairing old clocks into a side business. Drove out to a customers house {about 40 minutes} and fixed their antique mantel clock on the spot. Gave the guy a bill and he complained it was too high. My brother explained it was actually very fair considering the house call. The guy continued to try and haggle and finally my brother said
" I don’t have time to argue. My price is fair but pay me what you think it’s worth"
customer “Is $$50 okay?”
brother “No it isn’t, but if that’s what you’re willing to pay then pay it and I’ll be on my way”
The pay off was 8 or 9 months later when then guy called back to have that same clock repaired again.
brother " After what happened when I did work for you before I’m not interested in doing any work for you again"
customer “but who am I going to get to repair it?”
brother " I wouldn’t send anyone I know your way, so you’ll have to find someone on your own"
gotta love those little moments of satisfaction.
I have a question for the people who run a computer shop. Do you guys…look at the pictures in the computers? Because sometimes I have issues and I want to take my computer in, but I have lots and lots of porn on it, to the point where it would be embarassing. Are tech people laughing behind my back when I do need one?
Nope…don’t really care enough to go looking honestly. When we do things like backup docs for a reload we just make sure the backup folder and docs/user folder are the same size.
We have had several folks with pornographic screensavers that we shut off just to avoid upsetting other customers, one lady had the windows screensaver set to my pictures and had an extensive picture collection of herself and several smokin hot friends at the beach, in the hottub, on a cruise, etc. A few guys parked on the couch and just drooled…I could have sold a ton of popcorn.
