[Si_Crewe]

Okay, apologies for the silly title but I couldn't think of anything more descriptive.

I've been sorting through stuff here today and I've currently got 2 PCs and 3 laptops belonging to other people, all in bits, neatly bagged and tagged and 4 smart-phones in a similar state.

These are ALL items that other people have asked me to look at and which I've diagnosed the faults, got on ebay (or similar), found the required parts, printed them out, handed the print-outs over to the owners and then been told "Okay, I'll get you some money soon" and then never heard from them again.

This is something that's starting to cheese me off a bit.

I mean, if your car is making a strange noise, or fails to run at all, and you take it to a garage to get it fixed it will hardly come as a surprise when the garage tells you it's gonna cost a bundle of money to get it fixed.
Surely most people take their car to the garage with the expectation that they're gonna have to put their hand in their pocket and are prepared for that?

When people get techies wo "look at" broken PCs, do they expect that they'll magically be repaired at no cost, with no replacement parts required?

Alternatively, do people just want somebody to diagnose the fault and then return the item so that they can, hopefully, find a new LCD or HDD or GFX card down the back of their sofa and make the repair for free?

I've got one Toshiba laptop here, for example, which has a dead screen.
The owner was moaning because she's already had the screen replaced once.
I looked at the manufacturing dates on the various components and the laptop was made in about 2009 but the replacement screen she's had fitted was manufactured in 2004 (FFS!) so it's hardly surprising it didn't last long, given that it was twice as old as her bloody laptop.
Now she's upset that she was charged £150 by some chancer and seems to think it's unfair that I am telling her it's gonna be another £60 (they're actually quite cheap for this laptop) for another new screen.

Equally, I've got a couple of Android phones here with hugely smashed screens (from being sat on or whatever) and people seem surprised that a repair will involve purchasing a new screen.
Do they think I can just glue the existing screen back together or something?

I'm sorely tempted to start charging people an inspection fee, up-front, AND threatening to bin stuff that goes unclaimed after a couple of months.

[/rant]

[JulesandSand]

It's you.

You did ask.

Seriously though, as far as technology goes, people do seem to expect a lot for free. I suspect it's to do with all the free software that's out there.

I just had a quick look at all the software on my PC and the only thing I paid for was MS Office (via software for students) - and that's it, and I could have obtained a free alternative, not to mention obtaining it for free via p2p.

[zx50]

Some people certainly are weird when it comes to computers/laptops.

[ironjade]

Get a deposit first then you'll know who's serious. If they leg it then at least you've got their kit and some of their cash.

[Maxatoria]

i'd get out of the fixing stuff as it'll only end in tears due to them thinking you can fix anything since you know something about computers, and as for the gear you have in the house just drop it back to them and tell them to get back in touch when they have the cash as after all why should you have to store their broken crap

but if you want to carry on then start charging upfront to diagnose the problem as that'll put off the chancers who think you'll slap in one of your old parts to get it going for free as its amazing what even charging a fiver to look at a faulty machine will do to weed out the idiots

[IvanIV]

That would be an ecumenical matter I think people think of fixing a computer as just typing in something even if there's apparently some damage. Or that to look and think isn't a real work. Tell them - finding the problem - that much, repair a cost of parts plus work, I need half in advance and such. Not knowing exactly before can be a problem.

[Batwing]

Originally Posted by Si_Crewe

Okay, apologies for the silly title but I couldn't think of anything more descriptive.

I've been sorting through stuff here today and I've currently got 2 PCs and 3 laptops belonging to other people, all in bits, neatly bagged and tagged and 4 smart-phones in a similar state.

These are ALL items that other people have asked me to look at and which I've diagnosed the faults, got on ebay (or similar), found the required parts, printed them out, handed the print-outs over to the owners and then been told "Okay, I'll get you some money soon" and then never heard from them again.

This is something that's starting to cheese me off a bit.

I mean, if your car is making a strange noise, or fails to run at all, and you take it to a garage to get it fixed it will hardly come as a surprise when the garage tells you it's gonna cost a bundle of money to get it fixed.
Surely most people take their car to the garage with the expectation that they're gonna have to put their hand in their pocket and are prepared for that?

When people get techies wo "look at" broken PCs, do they expect that they'll magically be repaired at no cost, with no replacement parts required?

Alternatively, do people just want somebody to diagnose the fault and then return the item so that they can, hopefully, find a new LCD or HDD or GFX card down the back of their sofa and make the repair for free?

I've got one Toshiba laptop here, for example, which has a dead screen.
The owner was moaning because she's already had the screen replaced once.
I looked at the manufacturing dates on the various components and the laptop was made in about 2009 but the replacement screen she's had fitted was manufactured in 2004 (FFS!) so it's hardly surprising it didn't last long, given that it was twice as old as her bloody laptop.
Now she's upset that she was charged £150 by some chancer and seems to think it's unfair that I am telling her it's gonna be another £60 (they're actually quite cheap for this laptop) for another new screen.

Equally, I've got a couple of Android phones here with hugely smashed screens (from being sat on or whatever) and people seem surprised that a repair will involve purchasing a new screen.
Do they think I can just glue the existing screen back together or something?

I'm sorely tempted to start charging people an inspection fee, up-front, AND threatening to bin stuff that goes unclaimed after a couple of months.

[/rant]

You are being too nice about it. Officially or not you are running a business and should treat it as such.

[Orbitalzone]

Si - is this a part time thing you do for friends/neighbours or a proper business?

You do need to take an 'inspection fee' at £20 or whatever you think... explaining that this is deducted off the final repair but non refundable - if the repair is not cost effective or they don't want you to do it, or never come back that's paid for your time (to some degree)

Be careful of throwing customer's equipment away though as it's still their property and they could come back a year later demanding you return it (repaired or not)

Locally there was a woman who used to take her kettle to be fixed (this was years ago!) and the repairers threw it away after a year of non collection, then 18 months later shed damand it back and they'd have to give her a replacement... it seemed she did this on all her electrical goods with a number of different repair workshops and got lots for free over the course of her lifetime!

When I ran a repair workshop we found that by charging £25 inspection fee it sorted out the time wasters, if they didn't want to pay £25 then they'd never pay for the repair.... some thought we'd just write the items off and earn £25 for doing nothing so a bit of chatting to make them understand the process was required.... most people seemed to understand that you can't pay engineers to diagnose faults for free, especially as sometimes you have to repair the item before you know how much it'll cost and whether more parts are required.

You need to lay out the rules and get them to sign something that says they understand the inspection is not returnable (unless you want to bail out of a repair) and property that's not collected after you've contacted them twice will be disposed of after xx amount of month.

Bear in mind that my workshop charged £25 and that was 20 years ago when TV-Video etc cost a lot more relatively speaking. Some things aren't cost effective to repair like a £60 smartphone, I can't see much point repairing other than for your own use. iPhones are probably of course.

[alanwarwic]

The strange thing is that people prefer not to pay a small fee for a real diagnosis and thus many end up stumping £100 for a $10 repair.

[max99]

Originally Posted by Maxatoria

it'll only end in tears due to them thinking you can fix anything since you know something about computers

Originally Posted by IvanIV

I think people think of fixing a computer as just typing in something.

That's one of the things that annoy me. People think that you intrinsically know everything about all technology and that all you have to do to fix something is press a few magic buttons.

'I've just bought a new TV and it's not working, there's a message on the screen which I haven't bothered to read, what do I have to do to watch Coronation Street?'

I don't know, I'm on the other end of the phone, I can't see your TV. I've never even heard of the make, so no, I can't tell you which magic button to push to get it working.

[Maxatoria]

and dont forget the fixing of the machine is only the start as now you're 24x7 support not just for that machine but for everything in the house so getting 3am calls since they cant get online with their daughters laptop so can you pop around for 5 mins to give it the "once over" so she can get her school work done will become the normal

and then lets get onto the housecalls where they say theres no power to the machine so it won't turn on and they expect you to rerun the electrics for the house so they don't have to run a 4gang and your callout is cheaper than a sparkies since they saw you had a couple of insulated screwdrivers and a multimeter in your toolbox last time you fixed their computer

[Knarf44]

Having worked in PC and laptop repair myself I sympathise with the OP and agree with the other posters about the need to charge a non-refundable inspection fee.

However, the fact remains that there will always be customers who want something for nothing or who think that charging any more than £10 for a repair is you simply ripping them off. Then there are the repairs you do such as change a hard drive and a week later they come back to you with a different unrelated problem demanding you fix it for free because you must have put in a dodgy harddrive as it worked fine with the old hard drive!!

Personally I feel there is a dwindling market for computer repairs. As the price of technology keeps falling and the inevitable migration of people to smarter phones, tablets etc out of warranty repairs will almost become non existent. Instead people will simply bin their equipment and buy new.

[Orbitalzone]

I think most electronic goods are hardly worth repairing, assuming there are parts available and people able to do the repair. TV's are harder to repair with less engineers around to do them.. no surprise when there's no money to be made when many people go buy another Technika from Tesco.

Computers are far easier to repair than a TV, DVD, Blu Ray player or such like because of their modular and fairly interchangeable standardised parts and somehow people seem to think that they're a 2 second fix for a techy person.... usually I would be told "oh my teenage son knows all about computers and said he'd repair it but he's away or too busy" and so that automatically devalues your skills..... funny that I never actually saw any evidence that 'the son' was capable of repairing computers though, fact is they would keep clicking on things until it worked or gave up completely.,,, then the parents use the PC and think they've broken it because their kids wouldn't ever break it and so they called me in.


Usual disclaimer: not all teenagers are incapable of computer repairs or are too busy/lazy/ etc.

[Orbitalzone]

Do a search for forum member stateoftheunion to see how terrbily depressing and loss making it can be when doing computer repairs for a living.

[Si_Crewe]

Okay, so I guess it's not just me, then?

I should say that I do, genuinely, like helping people out with this stuff.
9 times out of ten stuff gets screwed up because the owner has screwed it up ("I just clicked a link that popped up on a porn site offering me a free virus check and after that my computer stopped working") but they usually blame the machine for it and it's kinda nice to sort that stuff out so they can, hopefully, get on with using it AND be a little wiser next time.
I'm also a big fan of avoiding the "throwaway" nature of our society today so I like to help people avoid replacing items if that's not neccesary.

I should say, I was probably being a bit melodramatic when I said I would skip all the unclaimed stuff. That's really not in my nature but when I see all this stuff cluttering up my command module I do sometimes think about doing it.

Interestingly enough, though, a mate of mine was sued last year after disposing of a broken outboard motor that the owner left in his garage for over a year.
When it went to court the judge ruled in my mate's favour, saying that he had no responsibility to store the motor indefinitely if the claimant didn't make any attempt to claim it.

[alan1302]

Originally Posted by Si_Crewe

When it went to court the judge ruled in my mate's favour, saying that he had no responsibility to store the motor indefinitely if the claimant didn't make any attempt to claim it.

A sensible judge there

[LION8TIGER]

I did one over the last week, a neighbour of a friend.
Spent a couple of hours there and another couple of hours on it using Team Viewer (a Godsend) went back and installed a new printer, 2GB RAM to replace the 512MB that was in it.
Viruses removed and lots of crap removed with Ccleaner, put on FF with Adblock+, changed Adobe to Foxit, removed toolbars, removed AVG for Avira (had to run removal tool), put on a decent hosts file, put on WOT add-on.

My 'wages', 2 x £10, 60 fags and the 2 old RAM sticks that I can get maybe £5 for on Ebay.

Certainly wouldn't be able to make a career out of it at those rates but I was grand and happy to get it up and running as it should be .... it was dog slow. She was delighted and that is worth a lot to me as I didn't start out hoping to earn anything, just went in for a 'quick look' as I was at my friends .... that quick look took a couple of hours ..... as they do.

With Team Viewer I was able to sit at home, run scans like malwarebytes which took over an hour and cook the dinner at the same time .... if it was in the customers house you may face an hour of 'what's that', 'what does that mean'.

So £45 -50 (in total) seems to keep me feeling happy enough when all goes well and the customers smile is worth it's weight in gold (almost ).

[Maxatoria]

a good tip if you're just sorting out the software side is to image the drive before hand and if they start complaining/refusing to pay just restore the image and hand them back the machine and tell them where to go

[DJGM]

There is a piece of legislation than can help out when you have peoples computer bits and bobs unclaimed by the
owner(s) for several weeks than can help out here, called Torts (Interference with Goods) Act 1977. With this law,
you can reserve the right to dispose of components you have in your possession if they've not been reclaimed
by the owner(s) after a period of say 5 weeks, 10 weeks or however long a waiting period you choose.

As long as you have this clearly stated in your terms and conditions, and that you remind your customer that if
he/she does not reclaim his/her item(s) within X number of days/weeks, then you reserve the right to dispose
of the item(s) in whatever way you deem appropriate, and the ncustomer forfeits ownership of said item(s).


Section 8 of our T+C's states:

Unclaimed Items:
Once the customer’s item has been repaired, declared irreparable, or awaiting a response from the customer
after a quotation has been given, it must be collected within 5 weeks from the time the customer is informed.
If the customer fails to collect the said item, the customer will lose ownership of the item. We reserve
the right to dispose of the item via 2nd User Resale.

We reserves the right to treat Products as abandoned, if retained by us for more than 5 weeks after:

The due date for payment for Services.
Customer has cancelled the Contract; or has failed to authorize us to proceed with some or all Services,
and has not paid transport or incidental charges for return of the Products to Customer.

Abandoned Products will be sold or used and/or proceeds applied at our sole discretion.
As the Interference of Goods (Torts) Act requires we will send out a written Intention of Disposal
after 5 weeks. We then give you a further two weeks to collect the equipment, following this we
send out a Notice of Disposal letter via Recorded Delivery postage. Once ownership transfers
to us following this final letter, we give customers two (2) weeks to collect personal data
(in the case of a computer/laptop). You must bring us appropriate media to recover data
to, we will NOT provide it. If this is not done, the data is destroyed to military standards.

[cnbcwatcher]

Originally Posted by Orbitalzone

Computers are far easier to repair than a TV, DVD, Blu Ray player or such like because of their modular and fairly interchangeable standardised parts and somehow people seem to think that they're a 2 second fix for a techy person.... usually I would be told "oh my teenage son knows all about computers and said he'd repair it but he's away or too busy" and so that automatically devalues your skills..... funny that I never actually saw any evidence that 'the son' was capable of repairing computers though, fact is they would keep clicking on things until it worked or gave up completely.,,, then the parents use the PC and think they've broken it because their kids wouldn't ever break it and so they called me in.


Usual disclaimer: not all teenagers are incapable of computer repairs or are too busy/lazy/ etc.

I'm actually quite good at computer repairs. In fact when I was 14 I reformatted the hard drive of our desktop when it crashed and reinstalled Windows and all the relevant software. I'm better at software repairs (eg malware removal, helping people cope with Windows Vista , OS reinstallation) than hardware ones though. I'm usually the personal helpdesk for friends and family. Sometimes though I have to Google to find a solution or ask on here. And I'm a girl btw

[Helbore]

Originally Posted by Si_Crewe

When people get techies wo "look at" broken PCs, do they expect that they'll magically be repaired at no cost, with no replacement parts required?

In my experience, that is EXACTLY what a lot of people think. I can't count the amount of people I've dealt with who seem to think working in IT means you are the Gandalf of technology. You just click your fingers together, say some magic words and any computer will come back to life. They assume that any requirement to hand over cash is just you trying to rip them off, because they know you can fix it with magic.

It is amazing the amount of people who seem to think IT engineers should be willing to fix stuff for free. I never tell anyone I meet that I work in IT any more. I got fed up of strangers immediately going "oh really! Well I just bought a new laptop and it doesn't work. Fancy coming round and fixing it for me?" No intention of paying for it, of course. Now I just say I'm an office worker if anyone asks!

My boss came up with a good response once, though. Someone asked him what he did and when he said IT, they asked if he'd come round and fix their computer for free. So my boss asked what they did and they said they were a builder, so he asked if they would be willing to come round and build him an extension for free.

[alan1302]

Originally Posted by cnbcwatcher

And I'm a girl btw

Wow! LOL

[_SpeedRacer_]

Unrealistic expectations are the bane of the IT repair person, it basically boils down to total ignorance of what's required on their part. Maybe because it requires less "physical" labour it's not seen as requiring adequate compensation?

Not to mention that even if you fix the original fault you could then be blamed for future ones. If you replace the monitor and Word stops working, it's your fault.

[cnbcwatcher]

Originally Posted by alan1302

Wow! LOL

I said that as some posters have thought in the past I was male and I wanted to make a point that girls can be good at computers as well I would have gone into IT/Computer Science if I wasn't so bad at maths.

[Maxatoria]

Originally Posted by cnbcwatcher

I said that as some posters have thought in the past I was male and I wanted to make a point that girls can be good at computers as well I would have gone into IT/Computer Science if I wasn't so bad at maths.

Generally you need to know sweet FA about maths for general IT stuff but while it helps with modern calculators/smartphones able to handle all the maths the only time you'll need pen/paper is when the power goes down and at that point theres nothing to support