Funny/horror stories about your clients previous techs

classonepc said:
Our local City Hall asked me to look at a problem with one of thier workstations. It would not connect to the server or web. After the usual diagnostic procedures I quickly realize that the onboard NIC had stopped working. Very common. I explain the problem and offer to put in a new NIC card to correct the issue. Before I couold begin the City Clerk comes in and says "I am very sorry, it turns out we have a contract with (xyz comapny) for pc maintenance. We have to have them do the work". I state that I understand and even agreed not to charge them for the diagnostic.

They call "xyz", they come and evaluate the problem and tell them that the cat5 running to the server room is no good and has to be replaced. For this service call under contract only costs them $125! They call a cable installer who charges them $275 and then they have a new line and NO internet or server access. They call xyz back. They come back and then say that the machine is to old to accept updates and the machine needs to me replaced!

At this point the City Manager tells them to call me back. I come, replace the NIC and have them back online within 15 mins.

The City Clerk is ****** because it turns out her nephew works for xyz company and they shouldn't have let me do the work.

They still have xyz contract! These are my tax dollars at work!!!
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Wow you virtually never have to replace the cabling. At worse a network keystone jack in the faceplate on the wall or even a patch panel (Less likely). Generally speaking, if there is a problem with the cabling it is at the terminations where a human messed up, or it got hit by a door, tripped over, kicked... whatever...
 
Had a client call once... Couple of workstations downstairs couldn't connect to network. Tested lines from patch panel (fluke microscanner)and both showed a break about 75' out. Went to the chase between floors, found out alarm company installer, who was there the previous day, had simply slit the jacket and used two pair off of each CAT5 so he wouldn't have to fish through.

They had to pay for that one.
 
kaiser715 said:
Had a client call once... Couple of workstations downstairs couldn't connect to network. Tested lines from patch panel (fluke microscanner)and both showed a break about 75' out. Went to the chase between floors, found out alarm company installer, who was there the previous day, had simply slit the jacket and used two pair off of each CAT5 so he wouldn't have to fish through.

They had to pay for that one.
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Did they use the Blue and Brown pair? limiting things to 100 mbps??
 
NETWizz said:
Wow you virtually never have to replace the cabling. At worse a network keystone jack in the faceplate on the wall or even a patch panel (Less likely). Generally speaking, if there is a problem with the cabling it is at the terminations where a human messed up, or it got hit by a door, tripped over, kicked... whatever...
Click to expand...

The company I work for full time is the exception. I have had to replace one run already this summer and I think I may have to replace it again. Right now I have a wireless bridge set up until I can fix it.
 
I often get customers coming in from a shop down the street. In the course of 1 week, I had 3 customers with the same issue, resolution and comments;

Issue: Wireless of laptop not working (no networks detected, etc)
Resolution: <FN> + <F2>
Comments: "I just came in here for a second opinion, the place down the street told me I need a new motherboard and it would be around $300 - 500. Thank you so much!!"
 
SmithFamilyDesigns said:
I often get customers coming in from a shop down the street. In the course of 1 week, I had 3 customers with the same issue, resolution and comments;

Issue: Wireless of laptop not working (no networks detected, etc)
Resolution: <FN> + <F2>
Comments: "I just came in here for a second opinion, the place down the street told me I need a new motherboard and it would be around $300 - 500. Thank you so much!!"
Click to expand...

From an actual shop?
 
Yes, an actual shop. Its a shop that I had applied at before my current employer and was turned away because I was too qualified. One of the customers was a "gruff" older gentleman that informed me he was going back down there to show them the fix and let them know what he thought. I now also service an entire apartment complex because of another one of those customers.
 
This was really a scam rather than a previous tech but same general idea.
Had a client last week who had a call from a man claiming that his PC has viruses and corrupt files (How did they know? They received the error reports from microsoft of course :p). Anyways they show him the event viewer with all of the errors (Viruses of course). I'm sure you guys are familiar with these types of calls. Apparently they are particularly bad here in Queensland. I usually get a few a month. So he is convinced and they direct him to the payment page, Only $99 for their antivirus, bargin! He was using google chrome, which warned him that the certificate was not valid and that he should not proceed (Big red intimidating looking screen) and he clicks proceed anyway. Pays them the money and allows them remote access to install the antivirus. 7 hrs later they are finished and he calls us to see if he has made a mistake. They removed his Kaspersky A/V and ran some cleanup tools but didn't even install their A/V. So I cleaned it up and ran some scans. Called him to find his Kaspersky details to reinstall. Apparently he got it off Ebay for $11 (Another bargin!) and was emailed the licence by the seller directly. Regular price is $39.95. Believe it or not the licence would not activate. Rang Kaspersky and sure enough it had been purchased as a boxed package in the UK and had been activated 50 times already. Just can't win some days. ;)
 
I worked for an ISP for many years. I had an elderly lady call in one day that had been having problems trying to use a linksys e3000 router with her service.

She purchased it from a local tech who wasn't able to get it working. The internet service worked perfectly fine without the router connected. The modem we provided btw was an AM300.

After passing the buck several times and even for some reason replacing her NIC and the router even though the original one was in perfect working order, telling her the issue was with either the ISP, which she called us several times, or that she would need to contact linksys, she finally reached me.

Everybody (including the other support reps at our company) failed to diagnose the issue. Within about two minutes of her explaining I knew exactly what the issue was, both the modem and router had dhcp enabled with 192.168.1.1 gateway, I bridged the modem and the service was working perfectly.

She told me she had paid the tech she purchased the router from for several service calls even though he was never able to get it working and charged her for a NIC she didn't need and for two routers (he told her linksys would refund her for the defective one which wasn't defective at all) and that she had almost $600 total into trying to setup a wireless router which she only purchased in the first place because her granddaughter was coming to stay with her and she wanted to get online with her laptop and had came and gone by this time. This was truly a screw up on the part of everyone involved, the other reps for not figuring it out because using the am300 it was a common occurrence when setting up routers, linksys for not knowing that two of their products had the same gateway and thus wouldn't work together with the default settings, but most of all i was disgusted with the tech that charged an elderly woman probably most of her social security for the month to do the same thing over and over and never actually fix the issue. this was actually one of the reasons i decided to go in to business for myself, I have millions of stories like this just from customers that called in to the helpdesk, there are only two shops here and it would seem both specialize in screwing the customer.

The other company I've gotten several of their previous customers and know someone that use to work there that told me its common practice to not completely fix issues, like leave straggler trojan virus' behind or disable auto updates on their av software to keep the customers coming back for more repairs.
 
AdamP said:
The other company I've gotten several of their previous customers and know someone that use to work there that told me its common practice to not completely fix issues, like leave straggler trojan virus' behind or disable auto updates on their av software to keep the customers coming back for more repairs.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure what I would do if, face to face, anyone ever admitted to me that they did this.
It screws all of us over.
 
ljtechservices said:
I'm not sure what I would do if, face to face, anyone ever admitted to me that they did this.
It screws all of us over.
Click to expand...

well it is one of the reasons i started doing this. and probably the main reason i'm doing so well in just a month of doing it full time even though with some things i charge a bit more. when customers options are pay less 20 times or pay more once, they usually choose the pay more once option.
 
Hi, guys, I'm new here. But I have some interesting stories about the "computer guy next door".

1st one:

We got a client that wanted to recovery their DATA, she had been in the "computer repair shop next door" and they wanted 100€ to copy her data from her HDD to a new one. She refused cause it was a lot of money (here normally we charge 50€ top for data backup, our minimum wage, which most of the people earn, is small 500€). She hands us the HDD and it was literally broken inside, in small pieces, like it was sand, we said: "sorry mam but it is impossible to recover/copy data from that HDD". It was not, amazingly the "computer repair shop next door" could recover all her data. I was mesmerized!

Until when last year their main technician started working with us. I ask him "how the f... could you get her data from that drive??"

The answer:

"Ohhhh, well, ahhhhhh..... That drive she brought here, was not the same drive we recover the data, when she refused to pay what we asked her, we sent her a super broken HDD and we kept hers, then we just wait for her to come back"

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG!!!!

But I have more...
 
Just the normal stuff mostly pirated software, iffy quality.

The only one that really stood out to me was a computer a client bought from some computer shop that advertised on craiglist, it kept making rattling noises so they called me, I'm their regular guy anyway and I go over to see what they bought, mind you this is 2016, and they paid $600 for this computer.

First the computer they spent 600 on was nothing more than a Pentium D 820 on a throw away ECS 775 board, but the tech had flashed the bios so it said core i3 on the splash screen, and then I looked closer. The motherboard was secured with 2 screws one at the top right and one at the bottom left corner and that was it, all the stand off's where their just not the screws, moving on, the fans where attached with a single screw and where the source of my rattle, yes the 2 case fans where held on with a single screw, same with the optical and the hard drive a single screw holding them in, but at least the power supply had 4 screws lol. I advised them to try to get their money back as they got ripped off, which they couldn't get ahold of that "shop" again.
 
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