Thanks for that Joe - what you say about 'free' repairs makes good sense.
These people are definitely experts at screwing up systems.

Their speaker system was one of the last things that went wrong - 'all of a
sudden' the volume control stopped working.  However, after a little
investigation, it was revealed that the dog had come tearing into the house
and got tangled up in the leads under the table, knocking the volume control
to the floor.  Which hadn't worked since.

One of the first indications that their new system was in for a demanding
life was about 8 weeks after I delivered it, when the mouse and the keyboard
started to behave erratically.  Turned out someone had spilt coffee over the
keyboard. Hmmmm......

Ian Porter
Computer Guys Inc.
Arrowtown
New Zealand
[log in to unmask]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Lore" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2003 10:03 AM
Subject: Re: [PCBUILD] Troublesome customer


> Hi,
>
> I have always offered a limited lifetime labor (hardware replacement)
> warranty on the systems I build for people for the hardware I used.  It
was
> a selling feature that helped sell the systems and the hardware with in.
> It brought back many people, so I could then "sell" upgrades, over the
> years.
>
> They would pay for the part after 1yr, but I did the labor for ZIP.  But
> more often than not, when they came in for the Free labor, they would ask
> what could be done to "upgrade" the system.  The end result was they ended
> up paying for an upgrade and my labor to do so instead of a "free" labor
> hardware repair.
>
> I only give them one FLUBBER for software problems.  I showed them the PC
> was operating correctly on delivery, and everything worked and was fine.
I
> told them they had only 1 software screw-up repair at gratis for the first
> 6 months, after that it was $95 to reload the system and they had to bring
> all the software back in that I was giving them on delivery.  Somehow just
> about all of them managed to not have to spend that additional $95.00 and
I
> probably only did 1% software reloads gratis.
>
> To answer your question, I would "upgrade" them to windows XP PRO.   With
> XP Pro is mopre bullet proof and user freindly, and you can use the remote
> control feature and possible help them on line, at your convience, rather
> than on shop time.
>
>
>
> At 08:46 PM 02/18/2003 +1300, you wrote:
> >I have a customer who I'd have to classify as 'difficult'.  18 months
ago, I
> >built him a 1.4Ghz\256 DDR W98SE system.  Since then I've lost track of
the
> >number of rebuilds and repairs I've had to do to keep it running.  He,
and
> >his family, just keep breaking it.
> >
> >I'm going to give it one last shot, but it's occurred to me that maybe
these
> >people need an OS that'll take more of a hammering than W98SE  (like
maybe
> >an abacus)
> >
> >So, what do you think?  Win2K? XP? NT?
> >
> >Suggestions welcomed.
> >
> >
> >Ian Porter
> >Computer Guys Inc.
> >Arrowtown
> >New Zealand
> >[log in to unmask]

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