Customer calls and says this..How should i prepare?

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Shawn5800

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Hey guys, new to the forum. Not really new to computers. I had an interesting call today that im going to service tommorow sometime. She says her computer has tons of popups. She can only run in safe mode and browse the internet for a short period of time before it shuts itself down. . What should i be prepared to do in this case? I have seen alot of issues but not familiar with this.

I did resolve an interesting one today that none of my other "techy" friends could figure out. Someone had a password on there POST screen and couldnt figure out why, so my friend reset the jumper and seated it back in. Turned it back on. Everything spins up, fans, hdd, psu, just no video. Very strange.

So i start looking at it, and notice that there was a screw laying in the case wedged between the metal and the mobo. Pulled it out and it started right up no issues and password cleared! He must have knocked it loose pulling the case off.

Pretty cool :)
 
After a while of doing service calls for random and unknown problems I've learned 1 important thing. Never try to figure them out by the description the customer gives. To end users computers are chaotic and random. So their perception of a problem will only be confusing to a person with a better understanding.


I dislike the service calls that appear to be "a piece of cake." I love the difficult calls.
 
I agree with the previous comment, my first instinct was :

"Oh well just use shutdown -a" to abort the shutdown"

But then you gotta wonder is the computer blue screening and she just hasn't got disable restart on.

And then you can start to wonder if it is actually overheating. Or faulty RAM, since less things using it in safe mode lasts a bit longer. You can go on forever. I would pretty much start from scratch when you get there, ignoring (politely) the vast majority of what the client told you. At least to begin with.
 
Shawn5800 said:
She says her computer has tons of popups. She can only run in safe mode and browse the internet for a short period of time before it shuts itself down. . What should i be prepared to do in this case?
Click to expand...

I'd agree with the other comments. Never give too much weight to a users problem description and especially not to their (or their relative who knows computers :eek: ) diagnosis of the problem they are having. If you go in having made your mind up what the issue is, it can send you in totally the wrong direction, waste time and sometimes make the problem worse.

However the 'tons of popups' would probably make me look for Malware first - after i'd seen what happens when trying to boot into windows normally.
 
You should prepare by first telling this lady that you don't have any idea where to start with her problem BUT you'll happily charge her money to learn at her expense. Once she gives you the go ahead you're sorted.

Oh wait....
 
Tell her you offer pickup and delivery. Say its a flat rate of $50 to do the work. Then give her a pickup receipt and figure it out at your house.
 
There's nothing wrong with being new at this; there is something wrong about misrepresenting your skills.

Clarification: Misrepresenting here, not to the customer (which is also bad).
 
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I don't think he is necessarily misrepresenting his skills. He isnt saying he knows how to fix that, but that he will fix it.

We are not able to practice fixing all things before we start working on customers computers. This could be a bad hard drive, just one bad sector preventing it from starting properly or a virus. we have all gotten computers from customers with something we haven't seen before.

We as techs are much better at figuring out the problem, and if he is new, he probably has a good chance of figuring out how to fix the problem, because of our mindset.

I just dont advise to him fixing it there if he is unfamiliar.
 
I'm not going to bash you but I'll give you my advice. You are obviously new to the business and we all started somewhere.

She has a serious virus infection...very serious. I would be surprised if she didn't have some rootkits in there too. My advice is to tell her you need to take the pc back to your place to repair it. I know alot of guys here fix these type of problems on-site but I'm not sure how. This could take hours of sitting in front of the computer and you might also need internet access to research some of the problems you find.

Get her to sign a work order and liability release (can be found on this forum with some search) and find out exactly what need to be backed up and have her sign off on that also. I would back everything asap. Then go to work on figuring it out. It might take a nuke and pave but that is always the last resort, don't jump to that conclusion right off the bat since you don't have alot of experience yet and it often seems like the easy way out. Use that option sparingly.

Charge her a fair flat rate and don't keep her pc a week. If you can't figure it out, use Google and ask for help.

Good luck sir, I wish you all the best. Let us know how it works out.
 
Thanks for your help(to those who helped) and to those that criticized. What i have say to that is, we all have to start somewhere. Any of you will admit, you can never prepare for what a service call will bring.

To the poster that linked back to my yellow pages just to ridicule me and call me a scammer. Shame on you. If i can work for $20 an hour and still make money, thats my business. Not yours. Im charging according to my skill level. $20-30 p hour for someone still in classes for there A+ is appropriate.

I appreciate all your help and comments, im just trying to start out in the pc business. Just like the majority here. I dont see anything wrong about that. I thought this forum would be a bit more friendly...
 
Shawn5800 said:
Thanks for your help(to those who helped) and to those that criticized. What i have say to that is, we all have to start somewhere. Any of you will admit, you can never prepare for what a service call will bring.

To the poster that linked back to my yellow pages just to ridicule me and call me a scammer. Shame on you. If i can work for $20 an hour and still make money, thats my business. Not yours. Im charging according to my skill level. $20-30 p hour for someone still in classes for there A+ is appropriate.

I appreciate all your help and comments, im just trying to start out in the pc business. Just like the majority here. I dont see anything wrong about that. I thought this forum would be a bit more friendly...
Click to expand...
Actually, I think his concern was with you leaving a review about how you had someone else fix your computer. Instead, you indicated it was your business that was linked to. That means you left that review for yourself; shame on you.
 
The person who worded that review was a customer i was sitting next to in there household. He was happy with my service and stated if i ever needed a recommendation or anything to let him know, so i told him about how i list on yellow pages and review would be great. He was not interested in signing up for an account just like every other non-internet savvy person. So i just used my account because it was quick and easy for him.

Why all the hate in this forum? Anything else i need to explain?
 
Shawn5800 said:
The person who worded that review was a customer i was sitting next to in there household. He was happy with my service and stated if i ever needed a recommendation or anything to let him know, so i told him about how i list on yellow pages and review would be great. He was not interested in signing up for an account just like every other non-internet savvy person. So i just used my account because it was quick and easy for him.

Why all the hate in this forum? Anything else i need to explain?
Click to expand...

Next time you do something like that I suggest you make a note on the review that it was written by a customer.
 
Shawn5800 said:
Thanks for your help(to those who helped) and to those that criticized. What i have say to that is, we all have to start somewhere. Any of you will admit, you can never prepare for what a service call will bring.

To the poster that linked back to my yellow pages just to ridicule me and call me a scammer. Shame on you. If i can work for $20 an hour and still make money, thats my business. Not yours. Im charging according to my skill level. $20-30 p hour for someone still in classes for there A+ is appropriate.

I appreciate all your help and comments, im just trying to start out in the pc business. Just like the majority here. I dont see anything wrong about that. I thought this forum would be a bit more friendly...
Click to expand...

Because you can't make money charging $20.00 hour, at least not enough to make it worth the time and effort it takes to running a business. Lets break it down. For the sake of argument lets say you do 2 jobs a day 5x (being a new business I doubt you're anywhere close to that many jobs) so anyways lets say it takes you 2hours per job....so $40.00 x 10 = $400.00 per week GROSS, Lets figure at least one gas refill per week at $40.00, down to $360.00, food? Lets be conservative and say an average of $10 a day and you have to eat 7 days a week so $70.00 down $290.00, Do you advertise at all? Business cards? Flyers? $50 a week or so sounds about right, so were at $240.00 since you're not taking out taxes yet you'll take a big hit come tax time, probably a couple thousand.

And I'm sure your business is registered with the State, you have all your appropriate certificates, your paying your business taxes?

People are upset with you here because most of us are experience computer techs a business men and women who got their experience by working on friends and families computer, or working along side an experience tech, or in a help desk environment first. We pay to have our businesses registered properly, pay our taxes, etc. If your still going to school to become A+ certified there's no way your experienced enough to fix a paying customer's computer whether your charging $10 or $100 an hour. And your OP illustrates that point.
 
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