PC repair clients that make you feel frustrated, and don't seem to ever be pleased.

[VirtualLarry]

I should probably:
1) Refuse to do service on laptops or PCs that old.
2) Establish a minimum (updated yearly) CPU benchmark (as per www.cpubenchmark.net) CPU performance metric for being able to qualify for my flat-rate services, and
3) Any system with a CPU benchmark score below that (thinking around 1500-2000 CPUmark), would either:
3a) incur a "legacy systems surcharge", or
3b) be forced to pay hourly for my labor.

 

[Paladin3]

Even if it directly contravenes what they're telling me? Client: "I DON'T want to have to buy a new laptop.". Me: "Sorry, you WILL buy a new laptop. It's for the best." ("These are NOT the droids that you are looking for...")

As I said "Well, you have my recommendation. I cannot in good faith waste your money for a repair/upgrade that will not meet your needs or accomplish your goals."

No business owner wants to spend more money on tools than is necessary, but it's your job to be realistic and advise them truthfully. If one of my clients disregarded my advise and demanded I do a pointless upgrade, I would have put in writing that I advise against it and am not responsible if it fails to meet their expectations. Or refused the job all together.

 

[Maxima1]

Even if it directly contravenes what they're telling me? Client: "I DON'T want to have to buy a new laptop.". Me: "Sorry, you WILL buy a new laptop. It's for the best." ("These are NOT the droids that you are looking for...")

I thought a part of the reason why you did this was to help people? The OS upgrade was completely pointless. He spent almost half of what's needed for a Ryzen 3 laptop with 8 GB DDR4+SSD, which isn't even a "slick deal" i.e. just a super quick search on bestbuy.

I should have probably gotten a model number out of them somehow, before giving them my recommendation. I thought that any laptop that came with Windows 7, would be robust enough to run Win10, since they are so similar in some ways, as far as hardware demands. I had no idea, that I was going to be dealing with a bottom-of-the-barrel budget laptop, that was slow even when it was new, 8 years ago.

Huh? Windows 7 was ages ago, and obviously this was when AMD was woefully behind Intel. You even mentioned previously about these crappy AMD craptops, so why would you be surprised?

 

[mindless1]

You should have just told them that they wanted Win10 and Win10 is slower.

It can be worse. On Thanksgiving my uncle dropped off a Circa '05 Dell laptop. HDD was toast, wouldn't boot from USB, couldn't justify a new IDE HDD for 14 year old Celeron 1.3GHz w/512MB memory that was lucky to still be running. The HDD 'chute wouldn't even make it reasonable (mechanically stable) to put in a sled with an IDE to SATA adapter board to run a cheap SSD.

Tossed an old used IDE HDD in that I had lying around, put WinXP on it after scrounging up a distro and drivers because he didn't have the factory CDs either, and he's probably going to pay me around $20 someday... family discount and all. He knows it is finished but is in no rush to come get it, so now I have to store it.

I had an odd problem with that one too. WinXP's default IE, what is it version 6? It wouldn't browse the internet. It would load any homepage I set just fine, so wifi and internet connectivity was there, but would not browse to any link from that homepage. I upgrade that to IE8 and it did the exact same thing. Said screw it and put Firefox on it and that works properly.

Never came across anything like that before and there was no security suite, and Windows Firewall was disabled too. Oh well, at least the last WinXP supported version of Firefox was newer and fuller featured than IE8, and more secure once you do some add-ons.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I mean, I know I'm charging probably half or less what BestBuy charges. I'm a slightly cut-rate option, but I try to give professional service non-the-less. (Such as backing up a work laptop, before attempting an in-place upgrade install.)

I had debated, even accepting this job. I mean, other than the abysmal performance (which I feel is inherent in the laptop, and not anything I did, those C-50/C-60/E-300/E-350 APUs are "brutally slow"), everything seemed to go OK.

This isn't my primary source of income, btw. And I don't (currently) advertise, really.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Sometimes I miss doing PC repair on a regular bassis, but other times I'm glad I'm out of it. Dealing with PCs can be ok and even fun. Dealing with people, not so much.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I cannot in good faith waste your money for a repair/upgrade that will not meet your needs or accomplish your goals."

But... it would have, and I guess did, "accomplish their goals", which was to upgrade to Windows 10, WITHOUT re-installing the software. They just need to be a little patient with the system, I guess. SSD would have helped, I told them 20-30% faster. I told them that the laptop was both CPU- and Disk- bottle-necked.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I mean, I know I'm charging probably half or less what BestBuy charges. I'm a slightly cut-rate option, but I try to give professional service non-the-less. (Such as backing up a work laptop, before attempting an in-place upgrade install.)

I had debated, even accepting this job. I mean, other than the abysmal performance (which I feel is inherent in the laptop, and not anything I did, those C-50/C-60/E-300/E-350 APUs are "brutally slow"), everything seemed to go OK.

This isn't my primary source of income, btw. And I don't (currently) advertise, really.

If it's somebody's work laptop, their work should be dealing with it, not you.

If you ID something as "not worth fixing" then don't fix it. I wouldn't do a brake job on a buddy's car if the oil light was on and the floor was rusted through.

 

[turtile]

In a different line of business, I have the same issue sometimes. If they are asking something really bad, I refuse to do it. There's no point taking the money or losing the business if it makes the clients unhappy. No matter what you tell them, they will blame you for the problems they caused. It's not worth the effort. You basically wasted a ton of time for nothing and now you feel bad and are wasting time on here.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I thought a part of the reason why you did this was to help people? The OS upgrade was completely pointless. He spent almost half of what's needed for a Ryzen 3 laptop with 8 GB DDR4+SSD, which isn't even a "slick deal" i.e. just a super quick search on bestbuy.

I do help people, and this particular client, I have given (for free), a Dell BayTrail dual-core Atom laptop (that I had surplus), with an SSD upgrade, a Win7 OEM refurb I picked up cheap (after feeling bad that they paid me to re-format their ancient P4 / XP rig a few years back, after getting scammed by an "Indian tech-support call") (Edit: And they still used their P4, and left the Win7 OEM box alone.), and a brand-new but basically un-saleable FX-6300 / GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 "Gaming PC". (For kids)

As far as the "OS upgrade being pointless", it was a requirement of the business software (Which they were adamant that they didn't want to have to re-install on a new laptop), that needed to be upgraded to Win10 before the end of the year.

And as for $100 being "almost half" of a Ryzen 3 laptop, and "isn't even a 'Slick Deal'", uhm, today was Cyber Monday, ALL of their laptops (pretty much), ARE "Slick Deals".

That said, I actually did, a month or two ago, advise this same client, that Walmart had some really good laptop deals, with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD (*Real SSD, not eMMC), for under $300. (I started a thread in Hot Deals about it too, kind of a messy jumble, but the links were there.) I told them (I believe) about the Ryzen 3 3200U HP 14" Slim laptop that I had picked up locally for $269 + tax. It's only 2C/4T, but it performs really well, and I upgraded it from 4GB to 2x8GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs.

Bottom line, they just didn't want to spend the money.

Huh? Windows 7 was ages ago, and obviously this was when AMD was woefully behind Intel. You even mentioned previously about these crappy AMD craptops, so why would you be surprised?

I didn't know what was actually IN the laptop in question, until they had actually dropped it off for service, and were expecting it (probably in a few hours).

I guess I could offer them a refund, but I did provide the service that they requested, as far as I can see. They just were expecting "new PC feel", I guess, and it wasn't quite that.

 

[Paladin3]

But... it would have, and I guess did, "accomplish their goals", which was to upgrade to Windows 10, WITHOUT re-installing the software. They just need to be a little patient with the system, I guess. SSD would have helped, I told them 20-30% faster. I told them that the laptop was both CPU- and Disk- bottle-necked.

They didn't hear a word you said and were only thinking they could resurrect the dead on the cheap. The fact that they complained to you that the system was still slow is evidence of that, and probably that they think it's your fault.

Your reward for doing someone a favor.

 

[VirtualLarry]

You should have just told them that they wanted Win10 and Win10 is slower.

It can be worse. On Thanksgiving my uncle dropped off a Circa '05 Dell laptop. HDD was toast, wouldn't boot from USB, couldn't justify a new IDE HDD for 14 year old Celeron 1.3GHz w/512MB memory that was lucky to still be running. The HDD 'chute wouldn't even make it reasonable (mechanically stable) to put in a sled with an IDE to SATA adapter board to run a cheap SSD.

Tossed an old used IDE HDD in that I had lying around, put WinXP on it after scrounging up a distro and drivers because he didn't have the factory CDs either, and he's probably going to pay me around $20 someday... family discount and all. He knows it is finished but is in no rush to come get it, so now I have to store it.

I had an odd problem with that one too. WinXP's default IE, what is it version 6? It wouldn't browse the internet. It would load any homepage I set just fine, so wifi and internet connectivity was there, but would not browse to any link from that homepage. I upgrade that to IE8 and it did the exact same thing. Said screw it and put Firefox on it and that works properly.

Never came across anything like that before and there was no security suite, and Windows Firewall was disabled too. Oh well, at least the last WinXP supported version of Firefox was newer and fuller featured than IE8, and more secure once you do some add-ons.

Ok, well, you come in with a sob story, someone else always has had it worse. You win!

Seriously, though, I had a heck of a time, the last time that I installed XP (don't touch it any more), I had a heck of a time getting IE6 on the internet, to get the updates, to the Windows Servicing Stack (*Windows Update itself), as well as the IE8 update. It's like a crazy catch-22 situation. You need another PC, and a supply of USB 2.0 flash drives to get it going. Total PITA. I'm talking about XP SP3a, too.

Edit: Oh, and the reason that IE6 is useless for browsing the web, these days, is out-dated cypher suites, modern web sites won't even connect.

Edit: To get it bootstrapped, use the FTP.EXE FTP client, to access ftp.mozilla.org, and download the newest XP Firefox installer binary to the system. (Don't tell me that you've never used FTP... )

 

[sdifox]

Lol why do you bother

 

[VirtualLarry]

Lol why do you bother

Just griping, I guess. After I spent like 8.5 hours total on the thing, and made a $100, that's like, what, $12/hr? Kind of like working minimum wage! But for tech-support.

Anyways, I should leave the griping to Boomer and Olds, they deserve it more, I guess. (*)

(*) I meant, let them gripe, not griping about them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Does anyone have some suggestions, to make the customer happier?

1) Full refund,
2) Offer to do labor to install the software onto a new laptop, for no additional cost. But they would have to have original install media, and proof of licensing or proof of purchase.
3) Rinse my hands of this whole thing, and if they buy a new laptop, tell them to take it to BestBuy and let them install the software for them.
4) Tell them to get an IT person at their work.

 

[Paladin3]

I do help people, and this particular client, I have given (for free), a Dell BayTrail dual-core Atom laptop (that I had surplus), with an SSD upgrade, a Win7 OEM refurb I picked up cheap (after feeling bad that they paid me to re-format their ancient P4 / XP rig a few years back, after getting scammed by an "Indian tech-support call") (Edit: And they still used their P4, and left the Win7 OEM box alone.), and a brand-new but basically un-saleable FX-6300 / GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 "Gaming PC". (For kids)

As far as the "OS upgrade being pointless", it was a requirement of the business software (Which they were adamant that they didn't want to have to re-install on a new laptop), that needed to be upgraded to Win10 before the end of the year.

And as for $100 being "almost half" of a Ryzen 3 laptop, and "isn't even a 'Slick Deal'", uhm, today was Cyber Monday, ALL of their laptops (pretty much), ARE "Slick Deals".

That said, I actually did, a month or two ago, advise this same client, that Walmart had some really good laptop deals, with 4GB RAM and 128GB SSD (*Real SSD, not eMMC), for under $300. (I started a thread in Hot Deals about it too, kind of a messy jumble, but the links were there.) I told them (I believe) about the Ryzen 3 3200U HP 14" Slim laptop that I had picked up locally for $269 + tax. It's only 2C/4T, but it performs really well, and I upgraded it from 4GB to 2x8GB DDR4 SO-DIMMs.

Bottom line, they just didn't want to spend the money.


I didn't know what was actually IN the laptop in question, until they had actually dropped it off for service, and were expecting it (probably in a few hours).

I guess I could offer them a refund, but I did provide the service that they requested, as far as I can see. They just were expecting "new PC feel", I guess, and it wasn't quite that.

You are too nice, which isn't a bad thing. But it's their responsibility to have a decent computer to run the software necessary for their business. You shouldn't be subsidizing their business with free equipment or reduced rates.

And I wouldn't offer any refund. You told them win 10 on that dino was a bad idea, but they insisted. It's not your fault they aren't happy.

And, I'll take it one step further: every time someone does a job like this for way less than it's worth for a cheapskate business, that's one less decent job for someone trying to make a living at PC repair.

 

[sdifox]

Just griping, I guess. After I spent like 8.5 hours total on the thing, and made a $100, that's like, what, $12/hr? Kind of like working minimum wage! But for tech-support.

Anyways, I should leave the griping to Boomer and Olds, they deserve it more, I guess. (*)

(*) I meant, let them gripe, not griping about them.

Yeah I refuse to touch those things.

 

[sdifox]

Does anyone have some suggestions, to make the customer happier?

1) Full refund,
2) Offer to do labor to install the software onto a new laptop, for no additional cost. But they would have to have original install media, and proof of licensing or proof of purchase.
3) Rinse my hands of this whole thing, and if they buy a new laptop, tell them to take it to BestBuy and let them install the software for them.
4) Tell them to get an IT person at their work.

Declare them persona non grata. You are trying to make money, not lose it.

 

[Hoober]

Does anyone have some suggestions, to make the customer happier?

1) Full refund,
2) Offer to do labor to install the software onto a new laptop, for no additional cost. But they would have to have original install media, and proof of licensing or proof of purchase.
3) Rinse my hands of this whole thing, and if they buy a new laptop, tell them to take it to BestBuy and let them install the software for them.
4) Tell them to get an IT person at their work.

How can we offer a suggestion not knowing what the contract stipulates?

You did sign a work order, right?

 

[Paladin3]

Does anyone have some suggestions, to make the customer happier?

1) Full refund,
2) Offer to do labor to install the software onto a new laptop, for no additional cost. But they would have to have original install media, and proof of licensing or proof of purchase.
3) Rinse my hands of this whole thing, and if they buy a new laptop, tell them to take it to BestBuy and let them install the software for them.
4) Tell them to get an IT person at their work.

5) Value your time, effort and knowledge higher. Be brutally honest with clients who want moon landing miracles done at moon pie rates. Don't charge less or offer refunds to clients with ridiculous expectations. Educate and advise them honestly, then charge extra if they insist you waste your time trying to bring the dead back to life or otherwise waste your time.

 

[VirtualLarry]

And, I'll take it one step further: every time someone does a job like this for way less than it's worth for a cheapskate business, that's one less decent job for someone trying to make a living at PC repair.

Point taken, but although this isn't my primary income, I do have dreams of making it that. And I guess, I don't have a good feeling for "what it's worth", in the market. I haven't raised my rates for the last five years for flat-rate services. (Though, I did raise my hourly rate to $50/hr, from $45/hr.)

Maybe I should stop doing free up-to-15-minutes tech-support over the phone too, as it almost always takes longer. (Speaking mostly of my, err, "poor" friend, that always calls me for tech-support when he needs it.)

Edit: And to be clear, I've been putting "work" laptop in quotes, as it was a "Home Edition" Windows laptop, that my understanding was, it was owned by the person, and not the business. It just happened to have a program on there that they used for their business.

 

[Maxima1]

I do help people, and this particular client, I have given (for free), a Dell BayTrail dual-core Atom laptop (that I had surplus), with an SSD upgrade, a Win7 OEM refurb I picked up cheap (after feeling bad that they paid me to re-format their ancient P4 / XP rig a few years back, after getting scammed by an "Indian tech-support call") (Edit: And they still used their P4, and left the Win7 OEM box alone.), and a brand-new but basically un-saleable FX-6300 / GT 1030 2GB GDDR5 "Gaming PC". (For kids)

Yes. I've seen you give stuff for "free", but you also to try part away with obsolete stuff for a premium, since you accumulated deals that had since depreciated.

And as for $100 being "almost half" of a Ryzen 3 laptop, and "isn't even a 'Slick Deal'", uhm, today was Cyber Monday, ALL of their laptops (pretty much), ARE "Slick Deals".

My grandpa recently was chomping at the bit for a new laptop over the summer, and we quickly got one at the bestbuy site. It was a Ryzen 3500u with 8GB 1 DIMM DDR4+SSD+Win10 for $340. I'm quite certain Ryzen 3 has been around approximately $200-300 on the site for awhile.

Bottom line, they just didn't want to spend the money.

Yes. But somehow you're perplexed that they're annoyed they spent over $100 on a basically worthless laptop. It's obvious that this was likely to happen. You're showing contempt for their intelligence.

 

[Paladin3]

Point taken, but although this isn't my primary income, I do have dreams of making it that. And I guess, I don't have a good feeling for "what it's worth", in the market. I haven't raised my rates for the last five years for flat-rate services. (Though, I did raise my hourly rate to $50/hr, from $45/hr.)

Maybe I should stop doing free up-to-15-minutes tech-support over the phone too, as it almost always takes longer. (Speaking mostly of my, err, "poor" friend, that always calls me for tech-support when he needs it.)

I've had people try to pay me $50/hr for my photography, say, to shoot a wedding. I laugh. I have to pay self-employment taxes, cover the cost of my equipment, supplies and business insurance, travel expenses, health insurance premiums, advertising and all the other assorted costs of doing business out of that hourly rate. I have to work 3-5 days doing computer work and marketing myself for every day I get to shoot. And what about my retirement and future? And none of this includes valuing my skill as a photographer at all. God forbid someone trips over a light stand cable and I get sued, or I have an accident on the way to a gig. Or get sick and am unable to work for a few week.

Do good work and charge appropriately after carefully calculating all your costs and paying yourself. If these folks could do the work themselves they would. If they are too cheap to pay then that's not your problem. And the lie that you have to work for nothing to get established in a business is just that, a lie!

 

[zinfamous]

Really should have told them straight up that this laptop can not handle Windows 10, SSD upgrade or not.

Now, I'm not saying that they would have listened or understood that, but at least you give them full disclosure:

"What you are asking me to do will make this machine worse--It's just physics and math, man. ...and that is free advice" Maybe would have saved you 8 hours of your underpaid time on that.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yes. I've seen you give stuff for "free", but you also to try part away with obsolete stuff for a premium, since you accumulated deals that had since depreciated.

I'm not sure why you're putting "free" in quotes there, unless you are referring to the fact that I won't ship people free PCs cross-country, AND pay for their shipping. (I'm not a charity.)
As far as selling "obsolete stuff for a premium", I've been trying to sell off my Z97 PC Mate (BNIB) mobo for a while now for $80. No takers. BNIB Z97 boards on ebay go for $200. I don't generally (mostly never, unless it's someone I have a beef with) price-gouge. Perhaps your definition and my definition of "depreciate" differ slightly, I try to get out of things what I paid for them originally. Maybe you think that's not "fair" somehow, but that's the market. Most obsolete stuff is price-gouged horribly.

My grandpa recently was chomping at the bit for a new laptop over the summer, and we quickly got one at the bestbuy site. It was a Ryzen 3500u with 8GB 1 DIMM DDR4+SSD+Win10 for $340. I'm quite certain Ryzen 3 has been around approximately $200-300 on the site for awhile.

$340 is more realistic for a non-Slick Deal, and bit more than "double $100". Can you admit that you were being a bit disingenious, or perhaps just exaggerating, with your original claim?

Yes. But somehow you're perplexed that they're annoyed they spent over $100 on a basically worthless laptop. It's obvious that this was likely to happen. You're showing contempt for their intelligence.

Or they're showing contempt for mine, and my abilities. By "threatening" that they could just buy a brand-new PC, for a couple hundred, so implying that I need to do this on the cheap. When they know full-well, that if they were to buy a new PC at BestBuy, they would be looking at probably at least $200 on top of it, for A/V program, bloatware cleanup, and installing their business program.

I gave them a damn bargain. And the laptop in question, I did not sell to them originally. Whether they consider it "worthless", is up to them, I suppose. They considered the laptop valuable enough to bring to me to have it serviced, after all. I don't honestly see why you think that I have contempt for their intelligence, if I did what they asked of me for that laptop.
After all, they did say that they DID NOT want to buy a new one. You seem to think that I should have brow-beat my client into changing their mind?