Sofa said:
tek-monkey said:
They insisted a screen fault was because the customer hadn't purchased Norton with the laptop, and had used AVG instead.
That sounds fairly criminal to me. Which firm would that be, or near which part of town should I not be looking to go to to avoid that sort of service?
That was PC World. You gotta bear in mind they're box shifters, the staff are trained to sell not to advise (apart from where their commision comes in anyway). Although if you have a repair center, you should be able to fix stuff. Especially if its your kit, and in warranty! This was such an obvious fault it was embarassing. I wrote out a detailed description of what was wrong, exactly what the fault was, which components were affected and why there was no way it could be software related. I even included the shop phone number and my name at the bottom, and asked them to call me if there was any doubt whatsoever that I was wrong. They refunded her almost immediately, and I sold her a new one that afternoon based on what she actually needed (and saved her a few £ too, on a faster machine. 512Mb on Vista, I ask you!)
As for the £20 charge just to boot a PC, much as I'd like to pour scorn on the company I can't. The fact is that if you run a business with premises, staff etc. then every minute you're doing freebies is a minute you could have been earning money to pay your rent and staff wages. Times aren't great, and its shops as well as customers that are feeling it. From my experience in a customer facing roll if there is no fixed fee, it leads to arguments because people will always know someone you charged less, and expect the same. The thing is, every fix is different, so what do you charge? A fixed inspection fee solves this, you do basic work within that fee or difficult work is diagnosed properly and costs advised. The easy ones balance out the complete gits that take 2 days of diagnostics to repair. You can't charge on time taken unfortunately, people won't buy it. They will with a car, or for a guy on their washing machine, but I've seen first hand that they won't accept it on PCs (hence why I think yours is a good business model, although maybe not for you!). I'll be completely honest and say at the start I didn't see it that way, and wanted to give away freebies. I soon realised it doesn't add up though, and if you do someone a favour it often comes back and bites you in the ass.