Well I WILL BE DAMNED! Look what I got to work on today (Story time!)

[thecomputerguy]

<Shrug> Nothing wrong with that – welcome to my world.

Not really: more like, "you know there's an oil leak? You really need to get it seen to." But you say that you pointed out the bulging caps, so I withdraw that aspect of my griping.

A $5000 car? I don't usually go that high ...

Hmm, maybe. But not with those caps.

Yeah man I pointed out that the thing was shot, which is almost assumed on a 20+ year old computer, again why I instinctively pointed to mobo because of the caps I've made it clear that the computer is toast and if I bring this thing back to life by the graciousness of baby jesus it's gunna be a miracle. They understand that and that's all they want. Make it live so we can get rid of it.

Price gouging? It's not what it's worth to me it's what it's worth to them. If I priced everything on what it's worth to me I'd be broke. If i fix this garbage for $1500 so they can sell it for $30k then who cares.

 

[thecomputerguy]

It goes back to the old IBM printer guy.

Why did you charge me $500 for a $1 part? Well I didn't I charged you $1 for the part and $499 for the knowledge of what part to replace.

To you and me and you guys that seems unfair but to a client who has no knowledge, shop space, vehicle, testing equipment, and the correct part in stock it makes perfect sense.

 

[thecomputerguy]

I guarantee you that if you tell them that you put a band-aid on it and that it could go at any time because you left leaking capacitors in there, they'd be f*cking P*ssed. That's a pizza tech move. If you charged pizza tech prices they might be okay with it, but you charged them a crap ton of money and they expect the thing to be fixed and work for the foreseeable future. It would be one thing if you had informed them of the problem and given them the option, but you just ignored it and called it fixed because the thing fired up.

I understand it's old. You could've re-capped the board and something else could go out on it the very next day because the sucker is so old. But to actually SEE a problem and not tell your client about it and give them the choice to fix it is terrible.

I'm never one to say that someone charged too much. You can charge whatever you want so long as you do things right and everyone is satisfied in the end. What you did (or didn't do in this case) was wrong not because of how much you charged, but because you saw a problem and ignored it. You approached this whole job so flippantly, demanding to be paid whether you actually fixed it or not, jury rigged it together, then tossed it back to them like a hot potato with the attitude of "*shrug* not my problem." Absolutely disgraceful.

But for real calling me a pizza tech when I have a client base that allows me to do 5+ jobs a day in ADDITION to what I have with MSP in addition to what allows me to provide for my family as a breadwinner and support a household is incorrect, I must be doing something right and mostly right by my clients to maintain those relationships. Who knows maybe I'm doing it wrong.

I'm just real, you gotta do what you gotta do to make those benji's when they are there bad caps or not.

 

[sapphirescales]

calling me a pizza tech

I didn't call you a pizza tech, I said that what you did was something a pizza tech would do. If you told them about the caps and they refused to have you fix them, then what you did wasn't a pizza tech move. I just hope you got something signed so they can't come back and blame you when the thing dies a week later.