Daily Remarks

A customer actually came in the store and tried to claim their equipment that they left with us 9 months ago for service. We looked back at the notes and we had called them every month for 3 months straight. They never called us back. We left numerous messages. Our policy which is on the wall and is also on our service tickets states that equipment left with us gets donated or recycled after 30 days. We didn’t discard the equipment until the 4th month just to be sure. The laptop which the customer left was 7 years old and it would have cost more to repair than it was worth. We were very nice about it and told them that the equipment had been discarded according to our policies. The customer then became extremely angry and used a few choice words. We just kept repeating what the policy states and that we tried to contact them. We finally had to ask them to leave because they were becoming verbally abusive. I personally wouldn’t even consider getting my equipment back after that period of time. What do you think?

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The bank calls me today about my refinance on my house. They ask about a loan that shows up on my credit report. They give me the details and I tell them that it is not my loan. I called the credit company for the rogue loan and of course they can’t give me any detailed information. I managed to get out of them that the last name matched mine and that the first name began with a D. I figured out that the loan belongs to my dad and his wife. My dad and I have the same name, he is Sr and I am Jr, but we have the exact same name otherwise. My dad and his wife are going to resolve the problem. It was totally unintentional. This happened once before when my dad bought a wedding ring and it ended up on my credit report. Has one of the credit agencies ever caused you any problems? Have you ever had problems with credit companies putting wrong information on your credit report?

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A customer calls and asks about the status on his computer repair. We tell him what the computer needs and we discuss all of his options. He asks a bunch of questions. 5 minutes later his wife calls for status. She doesn’t know that her husband called and she proceeds to ask a bunch of questions which are basically the same questions her husband asked. Obviously husbands and wives don’t communicate.

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One of my employees shows up today and wants to talk to me about his situation. He gives me all the details about his windshield being cracked and he tells me he couldn’t afford to get it fixed, and because of that he couldn’t get his car tags without the windshield being fixed. He was hired to be an on-site technician. Over the weekend he gets pulled over for no tags on his car and they impound his car. He says he should have a car within a week to do on-sites. He has to buy another car because the original car was impounded and it will take 30 days to get out of impound at $23 per day. He tells me that 30 days in impound is required by Arizona law. Not sure about this law, but I don’t have time to check on it. Seems like a pretty severe penalty for a non moving violation. I can’t believe he let his tags lapse. He does have insurance. The tags on his car would cost at most $50 per year. He could have saved himself a ton of money by just paying the tags in the first place. The fines will be close to $300 to $400 plus the impounds. Pretty expensive mistake. In the meantime should I pay him and have him work in the store or should I send him home? What do you think?

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Why do people stand by the front doors and move around and make the buzzers go off over and over again? Kind of like hitting the little bell on a counter in other stores. Just had a couple come into the store and they kept milling around in front of the doors. I guess they didn’t put 2 and 2 together. Move and buzzer goes off.

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My Lunch

Went to In and Out Burger yesterday for the first time and they have fast service and good food. They even had time to visit us at our table and ask how our food was. I have never had a fast food service business do that. Simple menu, fast service and good food. Expert combination. I recommend them highly. The one I went to is located here: 1979 EAST AJO WAY TUCSON, AZ

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We went to the swap meet over the weekend and as we were getting ready to leave we noticed three moms with their kids. It was late in the day and the kids had obviously been out for a while so they were tired. One kid starts to cry and they all cry. I guess misery loves company. They were all really young kids.

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The city has some strange taxes for businesses. The first tax is the sign tax. They actually charge me a tax for signs on the building that I rent. It is a flat fee plus 12 cents per foot. The fee came to $21.84 which isn’t a lot, but it is still a nickel and dime fee from the city that doesn’t make any sense to me. The second tax is the what I like to call the furniture tax. The tables, chairs, desks in my business are all taxed based upon their value. Now this isn’t the sales tax when I purchase them, but a yearly tax on their value. The city used to tax us on hazardous waste which we don’t have any of, but they taxed all businesses for this. They dropped this tax finally after enough complaints from businesses. The small businesses in this country help to pay most of the taxes and the various governments seem to be coming up with various ways to take the maximum amount of income from us.

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I received my credit card statement today from the bank and I am checking it over and I see a charge for $213.41 from Dell. Now I know I didn’t buy anything from them since last year and I am trying to figure out what this charge is for. So I call the Dell phone number on my credit card statement and I get India techs support. I go through 3 people on the phone and no one can tell me what the charge is for. They keep transferring me hoping that I will get aggravated which I did. I finally hung up and called the credit card company instead. I filed a dispute. I was told it takes 60-90 days to process the request. In the meantime I have to pay the amount on the credit card and wait to be reimbursed or I will get charged interest. Awesome, its like money grows on trees.

Update on this: I received the money back from Dell by disputing the charge. The lady from the bank called the number on my credit card statement and she couldn’t get anywhere with them so she put through the dispute for me.

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Purchased a brand new HTC Hero phone last night 11/3/09 and left the store and sat outside the store to play with the phone at around 7:45 at night. The store closes at 8:00. I noticed that I could not connect to the internet so I went back inside the store before they closed to get the phone checked and they managed to fix the internet. I left the store and sat outside again to check the phone and I couldn’t make a phone call. I know the phone part of the phone was working because I checked it before going into the store. The techs must have disabled the calling function when fixing the internet. By this time the store had already closed. The next morning at 10:20 I took the phone into the store to get checked again and the whole sprint network was down. All of the computers in the store were down and I couldn’t make a call from my old HTC Touch Pro or from my new HTC Hero. So I sat there for a few minutes and the network came back online. Sprint fixed my calling capability on my phone, but they said to check my internet throughout the day to make sure that it is working correctly because of their network difficulty.

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