A customer's Laptop

[Adam P]

I have a "prospective" customer who wants me to order him some laptop parts. After further questioning and inspecting his laptop I have discovered that 1)The laptop he has he bought in partially disassembled condition. 2)According to him the motherboard was damaged after being stolen from the previous owner and the ram, hdd were forcibly removed and in the process the motherboard was damaged. The laptop is a Acer Aspire 5517 and he wants to replace the motherboard and hdd, ram and case (which was also damaged). After a little bit of research and some common sense I've found that there is very little out there for motherboards other than ebay (which I am very hesitant to use for electronics). At this point ordering his parts is going to cost the price of a decent refurbished laptop. He says that he wants to put the laptop back together himself although after talking with him a little bit he isn't even sure what certain parts are.

At this point my recommendation to him is going to be to find a decent refurbished laptop. He is going to have to eat the $100 he spent on the disassembled laptop.

What do you think I should do?

[iptech]

Originally Posted by Adam P

What do you think I should do?

Walk away before your fingers get burnt touching this one, it's obviously still hot.

[Adam P]

I thought about that as well. The laptop as pretty much junk as it is especially with how much it will cost to fix it. I'm just wondering if a thief would go through that much trouble?? The guy seems pretty serious about wanting to fix it.

I dunno maybe I'm too trusting. Probably best to just cut and run so to speak.

[14049752]

The stolen issue aside, never order parts for a customer to install themselves (especially for a laptop). They'll inevitably install them incorrectly, break them, whatever...and guess who they're going to want to bug for support?

[basic]

From a common sense perspective, with the amount of replacement parts needed, you should just tell the customer to buy a new laptop. If they are so enamored with that specific model, they could probably buy a used one for roughly the same amount (this is without knowing the specs of the unit or the prices of the parts).

[Adam P]

Originally Posted by 14049752

The stolen issue aside, never order parts for a customer to install themselves (especially for a laptop). They'll inevitably install them incorrectly, break them, whatever...and guess who they're going to want to bug for support?

At first the guy sounded tech savvy. However after talking to him tonight and inspecting the machine in question I'm betting he won't even know how to put the thing back together. You are 100% right there that he'll be back bugging me when he breaks something, and probably expecting a refund...

I'm definitely not going to order the parts for him.

Thanks a bunch for the input guys. My gut instinct was telling me the same thing...