Sep
25

Customer buys from store then goes shopping on the internet

A customer comes into the store and drops off his computer to be worked on because it is dead. We look at the computer and determine that the video card is toast and that the system has viruses/spyware on it. We call the customer and give him the diagnostic and he says go ahead and do the work and install a new video card. We get the work done and he picks it up and takes it home, but it doesn’t work on his dual monitor setup because it doesn’t have the right connections. The customer needs 2 DVI connections and the card in the system that we sold him only has one. He wonders what else we can get for him.

We call him back after researching video cards that will have the outputs that he needs. We call him back and tell him all about the video card and we quote him a price. He says that sounds good, go ahead and order it. We order the card.

The customer calls back within an hour and says that he found the card cheaper on the internet and wonders what we can do for him. The service manager comes and talks to me about it and I am a little bit ticked because we spent time and money on purchasing a new card for the customer. We tell the customer that we can pull the card and refund him the money. The customer then asks if he can get the install labor back and can we let him borrow the card until his new video card comes in. I lose my mind at this point, although I don’t let the customer know that. I tell him that we didn’t charge him labor to install the card, we only charged him labor to fix the viruses/spyware. We basically install the card for free because he is buying the card from us. We also tell him that he needs to bring the computer back today so that we can uninstall the video card. He isn’t happy with that, but agrees to bring in the computer. Within an hour or so he brings the computer back and we uninstall the video card and refund on the video card. We give him back his old video card that is dead. I would be willing to bet that he will try and get the old video card to work in his computer while he waits for his other video card to show up even though we told him it is dead. (which it is)

I can’t believe that people will tell you that they want you to special order something, then they go shopping for the same item. I wonder how I can take care of this in the future. I can have someone pay in advance for special orders. (This puts them out because they have to make a special trip to make the payment) Or, I can wait 24 hours knowing that they might change their minds. Or, I can tell them up front that special orders are final and they are no refunds. Any one of these options puts a burden on the customer. I can’t win mo matter what I do.

What do you think?

Sep
01

Phone Service and Good Phone Skills

I just received a call from Nissan service for my car which is great. They were reminding me that my next service on my car is coming up and they wanted to schedule that for me. They asked about my email and address to make sure that it was correct. I then asked what the mileage should be for my next service. The lady on the phone didn’t speak very good English and I had to ask her twice what the mileage needed to be. At no time did she slow down and try to enunciate the correct mileage. After the 2nd time I just let it go and I figured I would just look in the manual for the correct mileage. I believe that if you are a phone operator trying to get someone’s business then you should speak the native language fluently and have good diction.

Aug
05

Customer’s Poor Attitude

A lady comes in with a used computer she purchased the night before just as we were closing. She brings the computer in as soon as we open and needs help with it. She removed the anti-virus and installed a different anti-virus with registry cleaner and file remover capabilities. She uses the new program remover to remove necessary files from the computer and now the computer doesn’t even boot. She told us she did this. She is all upset with the equipment and with us and she needs the computer right away for a court case she is involved in. She caused the problem with the laptop, but she won’t own up to it.

I take the computer in the back so a technician can look at. She proceeds to tell another person in the office that she has been involved with the law her whole life and she is in the middle of suing someone right now. (I wonder why she brought this up, maybe she is looking to coerce us into doing something, or maybe I am cynical). We end up checking the computer in to be looked at for free.

She then asks about another computer she dropped off for repair. The laptop she dropped off for repair needs a motherboard and it is old so we tell her it isn’t worth repairing because of the cost. She then questions what exactly is wrong with the laptop. We tell her that we ran diagnostics on the computer, we changed out the ram, we tried another ac adaptor, we tested her ac adaptor, as well as a bunch of other diagnostic things. She isn’t happy with that and says that she has 2 other techs look at the computer before us and they say that the dc connector is bad. We tell her that that is part of the laptop and because of the age it isn’t worth fixing. So we go round and round with her trying to explain that the laptop is old and she shouldn’t put any money into it. We are trying to help her not throw her money away, but she can’t see it. She takes the laptop that came in for repair, but she changes the pickup paperwork wording to state that she is unsatisfied with our work and then she signs the paperwork.

We end up giving her a full refund on the laptop she purchased the prior night because frankly, ” we don’t want to deal with her anymore”. She is antagonistic and I don’t need people like that in my life. Have you had an experience like this?

Jul
31

Answer customer’s computer questions and they buy somewhere else

A customer comes into the store and asks several questions on how to fix their computer. I spend 15 to 20 minutes with the customer answering his questions. I believe that knowledge has value and my time has value. The customer asks if we have any canned air. I say sure we have canned air and the price is $7.99. The customer proceeds to tell me that he can get canned air at the dollar store for $5.00. Now if I was the customer I would have purchased the canned air for $7.99 instead of trying to nickle and dime the store owner for the extra $2.99 because the store owner just spent time helping him out with his questions. Isn’t my time and knowledge worth something? It would have taken him hours to research the information I gave him for free and he probably wouldn’t have fixed his problem without the knowledge I provided. Has this ever happened to you?

Jul
30

How did my computer get infected

A customer drops off their computer to be diagnosed. They say that it is running really slow and it is impossible to use this way. So we check it in and diagnose the computer. We call the customer and explain that they have viruses and malware on the system. The question they ask is “How did that get on the computer?”. I feel like saying, ‘how do I know what you did to infect your computer, I wasn’t there at the time!”.

We tell them that they should be careful of what websites that they go to and that they should be careful of opening email attachments also because they can re-infect the computer. We also tell them that they should remove Limewire from the system or we can do that for them because you can get viruses from the files that you download from that p2p software.

We clean all of the viruses and malware off the system and tell them it is as good as it can be without a full reload of the operating system. We tell them that Windows updates need to be done to protect the computer and we took care of that for them, but in the future you should make sure that they are done. We also install a free anti-virus like AVG Free anti-virus.

Sometimes the customer takes the system home and they re-infect the system again within a few days. They call us in a huff and tell us that we didn’t do out job right. We explain that they went to where they were supposed to go on the internet or that they opened an email attachment with a virus attached. The funny thing is that they go home and check their email and click on the same attachments or go to the same websites and re-infect their computer all over again doing the exact same thing that caused the problem the last time. It is a viscous circle. The customer doesn’t understand or doesn’t want to understand. Have you been on either end of this?

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