Ebay gave me a customer for life! You get what you pay for!

[angry_geek]

I just returned from a customer's office. They called me in a panic today because the police were at their office to seize all their computers. Here's the story. About 3 months ago, this customer called me to get a price on 12 new desktops for his office. I quoted him Vostros or Acer Veritrons at $575.00 each plus the cost for MS Office. All told, the bill would be just shy of $11,000.00 as he wanted some other things as well. He called me 2 days later to let me know that he found the same computers I was quoting him brand new on ebay for $480.00 each with Office already on them. I told him it was probably a scam, but he ordered them anyway. Turns out I was right. After busting the seller for selling stolen machines on ebay, the feds tracked down all his buyers.

Now my customer has only one computer in his entire office. The feds did allow time for me to transfer all data off the systems for him before they took everything. So far, this is what he has shelled out in this fiasco:

• 12 new machines from ebay: $5,760.00
• 12 new LCDs from me: $2,400.00
• Data transfer & setup for the new machines: $900.00
• Data backup before turning the machines over: $500.00
• 12 more new machines that he ordered from me today: $7,800.00 (the price on the models he wanted went up $75.00 since my last quote)
• MS Office for new machines: $2,760.00
• Rush shipping on everything: $400.00
• Data transfer to new machines when they come in: He offered to do my taxes for free this year.
• Total spent: $20,520.00 plus the free tax work.

As an accountant, he is freaking out and now realizes he should have just ordered from me to begin with. Sometimes it takes a hard lesson for people to learn that you get what you pay for.

 

[seedubya]

I don't know how you say it in the States but over here it's "Penny wise and pound foolish".

 

[angry_geek]

We use that here too, along with a few others.

 

[ClickRight]

Wow, you definitely called that one before it happened, and it looks like you got a great deal of work out of it. My only question is: how did you get the licenses for Office so cheap? Over here it's around $200 with no media (not too sure how that works?,) and $400 with media, and that's for the standard version of Office 2007.

 

[angry_geek]

Office Small Business OEM edition runs between $200 and $250 depending on what day of the week it is.

 

[bagellad]

Thank you, This is a perfect example of what happens when a customer tries to be cheap.

 

[anonymous Mac Tech]

He called me 2 days later to let me know that he found the same computers I was quoting him brand new on ebay for $480.00 each with Office already on them. I told him it was probably a scam, but he ordered them anyway.

Can't say you didn't warn him. Its amazing what people will do/risk to save a buck. They just assume its never going to happen to them. If he would have just paid under $100.00 per machine more in the first place this would've never happened. Good for you, lesson the hard way for him.

 

[NYJimbo]

The problem here is there is a lesson to be learned, but nobody will learn from it. No matter how many warnings you give these people or how many horror stories they hear, they will continue to go on the cheap and regret it later.

 

[ProTech Support]

Office Small Business OEM edition runs between $200 and $250 depending on what day of the week it is.

Am I the only who finds this funny, but true..