This is just a rant. If you don’t care about reading about some of the humbug we deal with, no problem, but if you do, please don’t be offended. We are imperfect humans, working on imperfect computers with imperfect customers, and we all have imperfect expectations, and somewhere in there is a “rant” wanting to be heard.
Anyway, I can’t keep this one to myself anymore because it is an “all to common” problem lately. No, not with the computer, but with the customer! We are seeing problems that are getting much more difficult to repair, and time is money, and I suspect the economy has something to do with it, such as making people put off repairs until they get so bad that they are forced to finally pay to have it fixed.
We always have to ask a series of questions when checking in a broke computer so we can give the customer an accurate repair quote as to how much it will cost and how long it will take. We don’t ask every conceivable question because it would just take too long, especially when we might need to ask more technical questions which the customer might not know. If the computer will at least boot to the Safe Mode, we can check it out ourselves while you wait, but if the computer does not work at all, this is where things can get complicated, because we may not find out the underlying problem until after you leave.
We usually tell the customer we need 2 – 3 “business days” to repair “most types” of computer problems. Whether your computer falls into this “most types” category depends on what the customer is willing or able to disclose about the problem and what they may have done already to try and fix it themselves.
For some reason though, customers rarely want to disclose what they have done to try and fix the problem themselves (and this includes their friends or whoever gave it a try as well). Whatever the original problem may have been (which you probably wasted 10 minutes of our time explaining), it was further complicated or even negated by the efforts of the one who tried to fix it.
My point is that the problem you are setting on our check-in counter is not always the same problem anymore as the one you are describing to us. So what do you think we base our quote on? We do a quick performance check when you drop-off your computer to us, but that is in no way a complete diagnostic. One very common example of this is when a customer attempted to run a System Recovery. Customer’s rarely want to tell you this, either because it didn’t work and thought it was of no significance, or they just plain wanted to avoid any mention of it for fear it might cost more to fix. Some people aren’t quite sure what a System Recovery even does. Its just 2 words put together, system and recovery and it sounds worth trying. Never mind reading the instructions about the pros and cons, not to mention any prerequisites. Anyway, you would be surprised how often customers contradict themselves when we start asking questions. We aren’t trying to play “gotcha”, but if you ever saw 2 technicians carefully listening to a customer in contradiction mode, you might want to watch us look at each other. Now I know some of this is because they are not technicians, but a measure of it is fear of revealing too much to the repair man for a variety of reasons. Watch Dr. House in action and you will know what I mean.
The fact is, we have no control over what problems you bring to us, what it is, is what it is, but we will find out. Some examples of how complicated this can be is that we may discover you had a botched System Recovery because you didn’t repair the errors on your hard drive first, or maybe you Recovery Partition was infected. Bottom line is that you may have just formatted your drive and wiped out your original Windows installation as well as your data.
So now we are looking at 2 jobs instead of 1, repairing the computer and a data recovery. Most shops will want to charge for each job, which will somehow surprise you when you think back to what the original quote was. Some customers will be so bold as to say that the problem was not that bad when they brought it in, which is why I always like to boot-up the computer at check-in. But this doesn’t help much when the computer won’t boot to Windows at all, and we have to dig into a bit before we find out just how bad it really is.
I have only scratched the surface here, but I hope I got my point across. Full disclosure is really the best option when checking your computer in for repair. A good technician can usually get the answers he or she needs to provide you an accurate quote for the job, but if the customer intentionally doesn’t want to disclose everything, the technician might notice this and get suspicious to the customer’s motives. We’ll then have to ask more detailed questions which sometimes offends the customer, or we’ll just give you a contingent quote that may vary significantly depending on what you disclosed and what we actually found. Sometimes, we get duped and find out the hard way. But when we find out the hard way, you will get a surprise phone call and we will have to dance back and forth to set things straight.
I think the “repair business” should be the “repair business” no matter if you are fixing cars or computers. For example, not all repair places wash your car and fix body damage when coming in for a transmission trouble (that would be unrelated, additional work). People know that if you only pay to fix your front bumper, that the rear bumper is not included. Strangely, for some reason with computers, people don’t view them with the same mentality as cars. The fact is that there are many systems and components to a computer as well. A computer can have many problems and still be “drivable” so to speak. But you should expect to pay a slightly higher fee for a “complete” repair than for just repairing the front bumper. I think this “I expect my computer to be working perfectly” mentality is because how everything is packaged so neatly into one small box. So do you want your computer “washed”, “washed and waxed”, or maybe even “washed and waxed with two coats of wax”? The price is not the same….We can take care of what you can afford to have done and usually do extra work you are never even aware of, but for the most part, we are a “for profit business” and you pay for what you get.
I can rant more, but I feel better know. Bottom line is that we always do the best job we can with what we have to work with (meaning your computer).
