I'm Dealing With A Problem Customer. Opinions Welcome. Kind Of Long.

In My Humble Opinion
1

I am being as even handed as I can in the following scenario, but I need opinions on this matter.

I moonlight as an IT Guy on the side, weeknights and weekends. I have a repeat customer named, “Doris.” The name has been changed to protect the elderly.

She first called me from my ad about a year and a half ago. She was having problems with a really old computer that I could not do anything with. I built her a brand new, state of the art computer, including a monitor, all the accessories, including the Lexmark printer/scanner/copier/fax. It was a beautiful system. I delivered, installed it, and tutored her on it, for a basement bottom price.

Over time, I was happy to come out and troubleshoot, upgrade her software or hardware, or even just to tutor her for my normal flat rate. She is one of my more regular customers. During a dry spell, I could always count on Doris to give me a call.

Now, Doris is an older lady. She lives alone, with three dogs. She collects Social Security, and holds down a full time health care job. She is also a little twichy. She panics over little stuff. Whenever anything goes wrong with her computer, she calls me up. I usually have my cellphone muted during the normal workday. It is not unusual for me to check my phone at lunchtime and see that she had left four voicemails, like today, spaced about ten minutes apart.

…

I have taken a break from typing to go have a cigarette and get a cup of coffee. I have calmed down, and now I will proceed.

Doris has a cellphone that she is enamored with. Like Corvettes and their owners, she trades in her model to get the newest model when it comes out. Her latest phone is really nice, and expensive. It has all the Internet capabilities, email, and a camera that can take still shots and video shots. She was not aware that she could take video shots. I showed her how to do it. Sprint is her provider. Sprint offers server space to their subscribers to store their cellphone pictures on. But, she has gotten into the habit of taking a picture and emailing it to her AOL account, then opening the email to look at the picture. I cannot break her from her habits.

I get a call from her on Monday because the pictures that she receives from relatives that they take with their cellphones, and email to her, are coming through too small for her. I instantly know that the problem is not her computer, her phone, AOL, or Sprint. The problem obviously lies with the settings on her relatives’ cellphones.

Now, I recently had to raise my rates, due to the increased cost it takes to run even a small side business of my own, in the state of Pennsylvania. When Doris called me on Monday about her cellphone picture problem, I let her know of the raise in rates. Keep in mind that I have less overhead than my local competition. I have purposely undercut my competition’s rates in order to be more get more business.

“I can’t pay that much.” she said.

“Okay. Since you have been a long time customer, Doris, I’m willing to go halfway with you and split the difference.” I offered.

“Hmmm. Okay. If you can fix my problem. Fine. I’ll pay it.” she said.

So I show up Wednesday night for the appointment. She typically does this, but she has a bad habit of throwing in tangents.

“While I have you here, my printer isn’t working.” The truth is that her ink had dried up from lack of use. I simply shook the cartridges around, cleaned the cartridge heads with tapwater, and they were working fine again.

“And, my password disappeared. I don’t know where it went. AOL isn’t working.” She had unchecked the “Remember Password” box. She forgot her password. I happen to have it memorized. So, I punched it back in, and saved it for her.

These two things took, literally, five minutes. No problem. She’s a good, repeat customer. So, I move on to the main problem that she called me about: the cellphone pictures. I look at past pictures that she has on her cellphone, and I take a few sample pictures. They all print out huge, and in good quality. I then go back into her archived AOL emails and print a couple pictures that her relatives sent her. What she said was true. They are not covering the whole page, but they are a good 3 x 5 picture.

“When Nancy (the niece) prints them out on her computer, they are big.” I take her word for it. “And when she emails these same pictures to Uncle Sid, they are big, too. My computer is broken.”

“Doris, your computer is not broken.”

“Then AOL or Sprint is broken.”

“…”

I know that what Nancy and Uncle Sid are probably doing is saving the pictures to their computer, where they use an imaging software to enlarge, enhance, and crop the pictures before they print them out. The size of the picture is determined by the settings on the camera which is taking the picture. I start to run her through the image resizing process. Her eyes glaze over.

“I can’t do that. That’s too hard. I don’t understand why I can’t just print the picture bigger. My computer is broken.”

“…” I don’t know what to say here. I can explain algorythms and proprietary software to her, but her eyes galze over too quickly. She continues, “Can’t you call AOL or Sprint?”

Now, of course I can call AOL or Sprint. But that will not solve her “problem”. I suggest that her relatives need to check the settings on their phones. Doris’ phone, I check, and is on all of the correct settings so that she will take the largest, highest quality pictures possible with her phone. But, I’m at an impass with her problem. This is something that I have no control over. I did send her niece an email explaining how to make the pictures larger on her phone. In the end, I was able to calm her down and convince her that the problem existed on the settings of the other phones. I take my check and leave, but not before she criticizes my raise in rates.

Fast forward to today. At lunch time I am on my way over to pick up some lunch for myself. I check my phone in the parking lot. Four voicemails. Ten minutes apart. The last one was an hour before. I listen to all four voicemails. They all mimic each other.

“Chicago, this is Doris. My computer is broken again. I need you to call me. This is a big emergency. This is Doris. Please call me as soon as possible. My computer is broken.”

In the parked running car, I call Doris back. “Doris, what’s the emergency?”

She sounds very distressed. “Chicago, it’s my computer. It’s broken. I’m trying to record video and send it to Nancy. Nancy can see it on her computer. When she records any video and sends it to me, I can’t see it.”

“Okay, Doris. Walk me through what you are doing.”

…

I have to wrap this up, because it is already too long. She describes the whole process to me. Her relatives are taking video with their cellphones and emailing the files to her. Likewise, she is taking video with her cellphone and emailing the files to herself. Nancy and Uncle Sid can click on the link in her emails and instantly see the video. When Doris clicks on the same link in her emails nothing happens. “Nothing happens at all, Doris?” “Nothing. Well, this box pops up saying that it cannot find the program to run the file. It asks me if I want to open it or save it. Or cancel.” She continues.

“Chicago, I was on the phone with Sprint until 3 am this morning. They can’t figure it out. They say that I am supposed to click on the link, and see the video. Something’s wrong. My computer is broken.”

“Doris, your computer is not broken. I was there two days ago, and it was running fine.”

“Well, you were the one who built it. What’s wrong with it?”

I start the process all over again with her. She boots her computer. She signs into AOL. She goes in one of the emails containing a video file. She clicks on the link. I stop her.

"Doris, what is the file nam-. Wait. Read the box to me. The file should have a name. It should be ‘something, dot, something else’. What is that something else?

“Uh. Um. ‘QT’.”

“Quicktime.”

“What? Quick what?”

“Quicktime. It’s a video software. Sprint is using Quicktime to display their videos.” The funny thing is that she had Quicktime installed on her computer. I saw it two days ago.

I have her click on the link and look for Quicktime in the display box, to use Quicktime to show the video. Doris says that it wasn’t there. Okay. I have her open Quicktime from the Programs Menu and try to open one of the saved video files. I hear her panic.

“Doris, what happened?”

“This box popped up. It says I have to pay. Then there are two buttons: ‘Pay’ and ‘Later’. I don’t want to pay, so I closed it.” I explain to her that it is okay. Open it again and click “Later”. My lunch hour is half over, and dwindling quickly.

She does, and obviously her installation of Quicktime is either really old or corrupt, because a random error message pops up that she doesn’t recognize, and cannot describe to me. The solution is simple. Download a new copy of Quicktime, set up the association, and run the videos. I tell her all of this. Her breath quickens.

“I can’t do that. It’s too hard. I don’t understand why I can’t see this video.”

“Okay. Then would you like to schedule an appointment for me to come back out there and take care of this?”

“Not if you’re going to charge me. Your rates are too high.” Keep in mind that the rates are only 25 dollars higher than what they used to be.

“Well, I don’t work for free. I have a company to run here.”

“Oh, you have a company to run. I can’t afford you. My computer is broken. You built the computer.”

Keep in mind, that this video service is something extra that Sprint offers, for an extra 5 dollars a month. But, I did not throw this back at her.

“Doris, this is a new issue. Of course I have to charge you to fix it.”

“Well, I’m sorry I bothered you. Goodbye.” and she hung up on me.

That’s the story. I know that if I cave in, again, and drive out there to fix her problem for free, that she will only try to take advantage of me in the future.

I have more to say, but I’m out of time, and I have a hand cramp.

2

Be thankful that there’s a possibility she might stop calling you!

3

Sounds like yet another person trying to get something for nothing. There are all too many of those these days. Let her call someone else to fix her “broken” computer. When he/she tells her the same thing you’ve been telling her, she’ll feel pretty sheepish.

4

What a shame that if she calls you again, you have a backlog of at least three months and won’t be able to help her until then.

If you weren’t in Pittsburgh, I’d swear you were talking about a woman I know named Delores. Thank Og she stopped calling ME.

5

She sounds like an older person who is trying to keep up with technology and is very intimidated by it. She can whip up a cake from scratch, most likely, but she is terrified she’s going to break something by pushing the wrong button on her computer.

My step mom’s mother has a cell phone with a certain number of monthly minutes. (As do we all.) She is under the impression that she must use all her minutes by the end of the month. My father has tried to explain it to her, but no luck.

She’s calling you because she trusts you. You’re the one who built her computer, ergo, You Are God.

I would give her a few days to calm down, then call her back up and ask her how her computer is working. I see no problem with your increasing rates, it’s perfectly reasonable, and you should not work for nothing. If she would like to continue using your services, I would write down, step by step, in simple English, what she needs to do to troubleshoot problems in the future.

Be patient with her a bit longer. She doesn’t sound bitchy to me, just scared. Don’t give up on her just yet. She’s trying to keep up with the new toys.

6

It sounds to me as though you’ve been quite fair and accommodating to Doris for a long time. The problem is that, since she knows very little about the technology or what the going rates are for tech support, she has absolutely no understanding of just how fair and accommodating you have been. Moreover, her “nervous Nelly” attitude about learning anything beyond the bare bones of what she wants to do (and believe me I understand, I have friends and relatives like this) practically ensures that her understanding will not improve as long as you try to continue helping her.

If she should call again, I would also say that you just aren’t able to help her any more without a rate increase, and weather the response. There are two possible outcomes:

  1. She gets huffy and never calls you again.

  2. She gets huffy, says she’ll never call you again, but then calls once she realizes that other people are more expensive and/or less tolerant of her high-maintenance twitch level.

I understand she has been a good customer in the past, but she ceases to be a good customer when she is costing you a fair rate and makes you dread dealing with her. She compounds the problem by not wanting to/being incapable of learning enough about computers to not have to badger you for every little thing that happens. I would wish her good luck and move on to another client who isn’t so draining financially or emotionally.

7

It’s more likely that the “someone else” she calls will try to sell her a new computer/new software/whatever.

Doris is getting a good deal already but she doesn’t realise it. I’m afraid older people can be quite illogical at times. (I’m one so I know about these things :slight_smile: )

8

That’s your worst customer? Lucky bastard. :stuck_out_tongue:

She’s just a harmless little old lady with some unrealistic ideas about what a normal price for your service is, and who (like plenty of non-elderly, otherwise intelligent computer users) doesn’t understand the difference between a hardware malfunction and a simple software issue. In fact, if you are the only person who ever installs/configures software on that machine, then from her point of view it’s not even completely unreasonable that she blames you when her machine does not play Quicktime files like it does on her friends’ machines.

Remember “the customer is always right”? At least up to the point where they are so much trouble that you’d rather see them go and bother the competition instead. Have you reached that point yet?

Do you really believe that she’s intentionally trying to scam you? If so, ditch her. And if in the future she continues to refuse to pay your new rates, then politely say goodbye and wish her luck in finding a competitor with a better price/value ratio.

But if she is a valuable repeat customer in all other respects, why not consider giving her this one little freebie if it’s so important to her? Happens all the time, at all levels of business, from a huge company deciding not to enforce a clause in a multi-billion dollar contract to your local ice-cream vendor giving your kid another cone when you both know that you dropped it.

It’s your decision. But if this old lady has affected you as badly as it apparently has, maybe you should reconsider freelancing?

9

$25 like $25 more an hr? a week? a session? A lot of older people, no matter what their income level refuse to pay over a certain amount. My grandparents are more than comfortable and my nana refuses to pay more than $1.50 for a loaf of bread. She’d go hungry before she paid that.

Anyway I think you need to consider whether she is worth it. If things go down how you say maybe you’d both be better off if the relationship was severed. You never know, if she weren’t so dependant on you she might attempt to figure things out on her own.

10

I don’t believe it’s an age thing, I know far too many younger folks that do the same exact thing.

11

If her business is important to you, put her on a maintenance plan. Figure out how much she’s been paying per month/quarter/year/whatever, for however many calls, then offer her a monthly/quarterly/yearly/whatever plan for X dollars, and X calls. Build in your increase. That way she writes a set amount of small checks, and continues to get good service. Put in an extra charge for calls beyond a set amount. Example: $40/month for 3 phone support, 1 on-site call per quarter. Additional on-site calls at $50 each.

Put it all in writing, and get her to sign it. You might also consider including some sort of ‘upgrade’ or ‘trade-in’ program with new systems – that keeps current customers coming back.

Contracts put things on a more professional level for everyone involved. It sounds to me like you either fell into or are falling into the biggest trap ever for customer service: doing the customer a favor.

12

On re-reading, that was rather snarky and not warranted by the situation. This kind of customer can certainly be a mayor PITA, and I can’t blame you for being irritated and wanting to blow off steam.

All I wanted to say is, this kind of thing happens all the time: the customer believes (based on their faulty understanding of the technical issues) that the problem is your responsibility, and you can’t convince them otherwise, so you can either suck it up and make a little sacrifice for the sake of the long-term relationship, or lose the customer.

The timing of your announcement to raise your rates may have been unfortunate, too. If you had made the announcement after successfully helping her with a legitimate (in her eyes) problem, she might have accepted it with just a little grumbling. But now that it came at the end of an episode where she (incorrectly) believed she should not have had to pay in the first place, she is (wrongly) feeling as if she is being taken advantage of.

Oh, and I’m certainly not saying you should let your customers walk all over you. If they are constantly making unreasonable demands, just stand your ground and tell them to take it or leave it. And if they are more trouble than they are worth, dump 'em like garbage. Just don’t confuse an incidental conflict with a lost cause.

Martin “yes, I’m always this wordy” Wolf

13

Leave her a few days and let her calm down. She’ll call you again soon enough anyway, because if your already undercutting your competitors prices, then shes not going to find anyone cheaper anyway.

And the other posters are right, if shes the worse customer you have, consider yourself lucky!

14

So tell her as a special, long-term customer, you’ll continue to charge her at the old rates. But every time she has you make a house call, she has to pay you with a home-made cake in addition to the old rates.

Of course, this may end up costing you more in fees to join an exercise club!

Danalan’s suggestion of putting her on a maintenance plan may be a good idea. (Though she might see it as ‘charging me every month to fix it when the computer he built breaks’ and refuse.) Also might be worth scheduling a monthly on-site session to clean up her computer, defrag, run anti-adware, download updates to the OS, current versions of software she uses, etc. Or maybe you can put all this into the Task Scheduler for some time she’s not using the computer, like Sunday mornings when she’s at church.

But on a maintenance plan, make sure that you are very clear on what is included and what comes as extras. For example, multiple calls on the same problem: "you fixed it last week, but now it’s doing the same thing again (and she can’t remember how you told her to fix it) – she will likely think that since it’s the same problem, all these should count as just 1 service call. If you won’t accept that, make sure the service contract covers it. (Even so, she’s likely to forget that part of the contract when it happens. It might help to email her a written list of the steps you had her do to fix something, and ask her to save it in a folder “HowToFixThings”. Then you can refer her to that if the problem happens again, and eventually, she may be able to look there and re-do the fix on her own (maybe).)

And she’s likely to consider several different problems the same if they have the same results for her: “I can’t see the pictures my neice emailed to me”, and expect them all to be counted as 1 service call.

Finally, if you do have her on a service plan with say 4 free calls per month, be aware that she is even more likely than now to hit you with several additional, unrelated problems while she has you on the phone. You may need to put some kind of time limit on each service call (except if the original problem takes 2 hours to fix, you have to give her that and keep working until it’s fixed).

And do be nice to her, even if she’s annoying. She isn’t trying to scam you, she really doesn’t understand the problems involved, and just wants her computer to ‘work’. And she really trusts you and your expertise to do that, and can’t conceive that there might be a problem that you can’t solve. Rather flattering, really.

15

First of all, I thank all of you for your suggestions. It is kind of eerie that they pretty much all said the same thing, but each one offered good ideas on how to deal with Doris. I seriously expected some heavy flaming for this post. Thank you, especially, to ivylass and Martin Wolf. You two are probably not aware of how much I agree with you two on most subjects.

Although, I did not post this thread to look for support. Honestly, I wasn’t looking for ammunition against Doris. “Doris, most Dopers agree with me! Take that you seasoned citizen!” I was seriously looking for where I went wrong with Doris. I went to pains to accurately describe the scenario above.

After I got off of the call with Doris, I was seriously expecting a call from the Better Business Bureau. “So, Chicago Faucet, why exactly are you picking on elderly ladies?”

Doris has not called me back from this afternoon. I never did get to eat. Matter of fact, I ended up coming back from lunch a minute late. I spent the whole time in my car, talking to Doris, smoking cigarettes.

Quick clarification. My rate, which differs from my competition on several levels, is based on a flat fee. Not an hourly fee. I charge a flat rate for the spanse of correcting the problem. Mostly, this is 100 dollars for a couple hour visit. If hardware and/or software is necessary to fix the problem, I let the customer know before hand, and then charge a little extra to cover the sales tax and interest rate for the purchase. The rate increase that I recently enacted was from 50 dollars to 100 dollars. When Doris and I split the difference, we agreed on 75 dollars for the cellphone camera visit.

I could probably write a book on the Study Of Doris Gray. It would be a full color expose of the mental workings of Doris, with fold outs. I know her so well. She is one of my oldest customers, but she is also one of my crankiest. She puts me in bad situations where the only realistic outcome that an onlooker would say is the typical Contractor Complaint, “Damn Contractors.”

I truly am an honest man. The profit that I make barely covers the expenses.

I don’t feel that she is taking advantage of me on purpose. I think that she just doesn’t understand. But it is a technology that she doesn’t understand, so trying to explain something to her is truly like trying to teach her Spanish. Much like another customer, a Chiropractor, who once hired me as his Software Guru:

“Yes, Chicago, I need you to reprogram the computer-.”

“Reprogram? Reprogram Windows XP?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

So where am I at? Let’s go over the options, most of which have already been stated above:

[ul]
[li]Forget about Doris. [/li][li]If she calls, fully explain the problem. Then be sure that she understands that I will charge her the full amount.[/li][li]If she refuses, tell her to find another computer guy.[/li][/ul]
The main problem here is my pride. This was a very beautiful system that I built her. Top of the line, for basement bottom price. She doesn’t realize what she has. She doesn’t appreciate it. I built her computer, therefore, I am the source of all of her problems. It just hurts to know that I am being blamed for something, like the Spyware problem she had before, that isn’t my fault.

I tried to explain Defrag and Disk Check to her, as periodic maintenance, so that she wouldn’t have to call me. But when I was there two days ago, she mentioned that she is now suffering from intermitten problems that I KNOW Defrag and Disk Check would fix. I just didn’t have the time to perform them. I guess she expects me to come over and do that periodic maintenance for free.

“Do you get your car oil changed for free?”

“Do you get your furnace cleaned for free?”

16

I had vaguely similar experiences with, uh, I’ll call her Mrs. B. Mrs. B was a neighbor, a very sweet old lady, but somebody you definitely did NOT want to work for. She went through landscaping people like crazy, because she was always up their butts about the work. She seemed to figure that as long as she was paying, she owned you. And plus, she could never quite understand why it was that after she strictly and clearly told every guy who worked for her to cut her tree branches down to practically stumps, the tree would die. Of course, this was the lawn guy’s fault. :rolleyes: My family helped her for free, teaching her newfangled things like learning how to use an adding machine. We found we really had to draw boundaries, otherwise she’d be calling us all the time.

Unfortunately, I think the only way she’s gonna learn is if you hold firm on your prices - do not be a wishy-wash! Don’t let her guilt you into anything. This is your business! If she tells you she’ll go to someone else, be nice and say that that would be too bad or some such thing. She’ll see that she can’t get the same expertise for the same price and come back. Probably refusing to admit that she was wrong, but she’ll come back.

17

The Guy calls the IT saviours. “My computer is broken.”
IT “Could you be more specific?”
Guy “Its dark, no picture, no sound”
IT “Ok, Hit the restart button.”
Guy “Where is it?”
IT “Its on the tower upper right.”
Guy “I can’t see it.”
IT “Why not?”
Guy "Because my office has no windows. "
IT “So, turn on the light.”
Guy “Can’t. Someone hit a transformer outside.We’re in a black out.”
IT "Oh. OK. I can fix your problem. Do you still have the box and packing materials?
Guy “Yes. Is it that bad? I’ll have to bring it in to be fixed?”
IT “Nooo, You’re too stupid to be using a computer. You need to box it up and put it away”
IT hangs up.

18

Again, you are blaming a customer for not using proper terminology, which is a bit irrational because if they had your level of expertise they wouldn’t be your customers.

Next time, try something like this:

:wink:

19

Well, it all depends on whether you want to keep her as a customer. If this is the first PC you’ve built, wouldn’t you like to be able to use her as a reference to build more PCs?

I mean, you built this lovely piece of equipment. It would be a shame for it to go to waste because of lack of use.

20

I can’t help you with Doris- you seem to have been extremely patient- but a few years ago I enjoyed getting rid of virus’ from older folks computers. One guy I dealy with had been sailing for a few months and let his son use the computer- end result, about 43 different virus’.

It took me a couple of hours to clean it. That was fine, but he knew I had a pet cat (Moofie Bunny). Anyway, his son also happened to be a truck driver, and all this cat food had fallen off the back of his truck… I had enough dried cat food to feed Moofie Bunny for over 12 months. I think his gizzard hurt from eating stolen cat food. Yeah.

:confused: