No good deed goes unpunished

[HCHTech]

I had someone drop off a behemoth of a computer a couple of days ago. It was a giant gaming desktop with a case proudly titled "Herculean", LOL. Any, it had been shipped and was delivered damaged. It would no longer boot. The young buck wanted just a diagnostic before proceeding. Fine, says I. We charge a flat 1/2 hour fee for diagnostics, applied to the cost of repair should they decide to proceed.

So I drag this hulk to my bench to assess the damage. One of the feet is broken off, the whole case looks torqued a bit, it's no longer a rectangle, but more of a parallelogram. Clear 1/8" gaps on the top left and bottom right of the side panels, while the top right and bottom left edges were overlapping the frame. The window plexy in the side panel was broken on one corner. This thing was clearly dropped hard. I get it apart and see the drive tray with a 4TB WD-Black is cornerwise in the cage, while the 500G SSD apparently survived.

I pull the spinning drive to test it, fails a short test after 20 seconds with a read failure. Check.

The giant graphics card (what, no SLA?) is partially out of it's slot, so I remove it, do a visual and then re-mount it.

Looking around, I see that every wire is unplugged except for the front panel connections and the EL wire that was everywhere. This couldn't have happened by accident, it must have been done by who ever packed it for shipping. I guess that makes sense (Um...no wonder it wouldn't boot?). So after looking around for anything else that didn't look right (didn't find anything), I hook everything back up. Including the obnoxiously-placed CPU 12v connector that had to be wedged under a little plastic wire race that ran along the back and top edges. Who thinks of these things, anyway?

Run hardware diags on the rest and get a RAM failure. There are 4x8GB sticks, so I go about retesting to see if I can find out whether it is one or more sticks, or one or more bad slots. Can't remove the sticks without removing the water-cooling system radiator - oh great. Have to remove the false plastic top of the case (with spring-loaded louvers for extra air flow!!) and see that three of the 4 plastic clips that hold it down are broken.

So I figure a way to keep the water cooling in place with the radiator propped up, and after 8 iterations or so, find that there is a single bad RAM stick, and all of the slots appear to work ok.

I get it back together without the bad RAM stick or the failing spinning HD, and sure enough, it boots up fine.

Total time invested, Oh, maybe 2 hours. I make my notes and give the guy a call to report my findings and find out if he wants a summary for the insurance company or just to proceed with the repair. "Oh, no", says he. "I can fix it - I just wanted to find out what was wrong -- Can I pick it up this afternoon?"

 

[nlinecomputers]

Why did you expect to fix it if it was damaged in shipment? I assumed he was wanting an assessment of damage for insurance purposes.

 

[altrenda]

I guess I still don't understand this diagnostic thing. For a half hours worth of pay, my response would have been, OK we evaluated it, it will take x hours and X dollars to make it right.

If he wanted a detailed description of the damage, whether for insurance purposes, to shop around the repair charge, or to fix it himself, that's a different type of work and a separate charge, and certainly not for a half hours worth of billable time.

After 1.5 hours of free time, what would your next step have been? What would you have charged him to fix it?

 

[katz]

Sounds to me like this may have been a miscommunication between client & shop. Client may not have understood the level of diagnostic that you were going to perform. For me, if anything arrived with that amount of damage I would have contacted the company/shipper & sent it back for a replacement.

 

[MDD1963]

At the beginning of the story, you said you informed the customer the charge would be at least 1/2 hour labor fee for the diagnostic....

Did you receive it?

(The free repair, unfortunately, will be on you...)

 

[Mercenary Roadie]

I have no idea why you went through all of the repairs you did for a diagnostic? If you couldn't proceed past a point due to a failure you don't repair the failure when you're only doing a diagnostic.

The fact that it was shipped and received damaged should of told you to tell him such and that he needed to file a damage claim with the shipper. I'm willing to bet he would of had a different story if you had

It also sounds like you were taken advantage of when he asked if he could pick it up this afternoon. If he is that close why was it shipped?

Did you tell him everything that was wrong with it or just gave him a summary and price? If you told him everything that was wrong, you through the baby out with the bathwater. Why would he pay you to fix it now that he knows everything that is wrong with it.

Live and learn is all you can do.

 

[HCHTech]

Yeah, I made some mistakes on this one, I'll admit. Normally, folks with high-dollar machines want them fixed. He did say when he dropped it off that he was refused a repair by the shipping company. It's my fault for not getting a fine point on things at drop off. It was left too fuzzy. Let's see what's wrong with it and go from there.

Then, when I started the diagnostics and found the RAM failure, I wanted to nail it down between motherboard damage and merely a bad stick. Normally that's easy, but with six slots and 4 sticks, it complicated the process. I didn't want to say "it could be a bad stick, or a bad slot, we're not sure". A bad stick is $50. A bad slot is $250. It would have change the estimate to repair by quite a bit. What I should have said was "we can't tell until we get into the repair" or something like that.

In the end, I was sure he would want it repaired, so I gambled on doing more work up front. I didn't count on him being either willing or able to do the repair himself. C'est la vie. Next time I get one of these uber machines, I'll be more cagey, I guess.

 

[MDD1963]

Always safe to assume a customer would like to avoid being separated from his/her cash, and will jump on the chance to do so if presented an 'out' such as, "I've done all the work, you just need a new $60 drive and a 8GB stick of DDR3!".

Once when shopping for a Minivan back in 1992, I had a Dodge Caravan dealer actually tell me, "Sure, you might be able to beat my price by several hundred dollars by making a few phone calls and shopping around town, but, how much is your time worth?" I found it humorous, truthfully.

 

[NYJimbo]

Don't beat yourself up over this. I sometimes get into a diagnostic and keep going until I fix the damn thing and then tell the customer "I can fix it for $xx" and the customer says "Oh, never mind, we decided to buy a new machine". It happens.....

 

[Mainstay]

This couldn't have happened by accident, it must have been done by who ever packed it for shipping.

Could someone have pilfered parts? I wonder if he tried his hand at it first and made things much worse.

I would definitely assume the whole assessment was for insurance purposes... once had a similar situation with a system that was transported via rail. A $2000 graphics card was jostled around in the case and sheared off. But having the whole case deformed suggests much rougher handling.

In the end, I was sure he would want it repaired, so I gambled on doing more work up front.

I make this mistake ALL the time. I don't get stiffed too often, but I usually make a judgement call and proceed with repairs before getting the go-ahead.

I'll be more cagey, I guess.

I don't like playing that game, but I think we have to... and I also

I sometimes get into a diagnostic and keep going until I fix the damn thing

When you are in the zone and have the time, get the job done as if it were your own system... but occasionally a person will already be planning on a new system. Argh.

 

[callthatgirl]

I get those too, sometimes my "free consults" turn into me just telling the client was is wrong and sometimes if I don't want to do the work, I give them enough info to do it themselves. I can already smell a long ass job/client who will take the mouse =struggle

 

[Dave the Computer Man]

Been there, done that. How about they blame you for the damage, too? "I knew it was broken, but it cant be that broken. You obviously did something..." Document every little thing, you look like a jerk. Don't, you get screwed. No-win.

 

[Gareth | IT Zen]

I can certainly sympathise. I've been there before, and yup the fancy rigs are often a PITA to deal with.

I can't say I agree with a couple of others that said you should have stopped after finding the first fault. I'm not sure what you were supposed to have done next if you did stop the diagnostic. Quote on replacing all 4x sticks of RAM when it was likely most of them were fine? And potentially get burnt anyway if it was actually a slot issue? No - you did the right thing by diagnosing it fully before quoting.

I do agree with others that there should be a point where you realise "whoa, this isn't just a bad HDD or faulty RAM issue". When I see multiple issues I tend to get on the phone to the client before spending too much time. Chances are it will cost almost as much to fix that to replace with something better so that's what most clients will choose (which is a good outcome - I always hate quoting repairs like this. There's only so much testing you can do and there's always the horrible feeling in your gut that something might not be 100% and you could see the person again in 2 months, blaming you for missing something and expecting you to fix it for free.

 

[Krynn72]

What I would have done is at the 30 minute mark, stopped and accessed the system there. I'd tell the customer that the case is damaged, the cables unplugged and mention any other physical damage. I'd inform the customer that obviously I can't test any further without fixing some of these issues, and then quote him that price, as non-refundable and that if there are further billable issues, I'll call him again. If it fixed the system, great, if not then I'd continue the diag from there, knowing I'm at least getting paid more than just the 30 minute fee for my several hours of work.

 

[cypress]

Don't beat yourself up over this. I sometimes get into a diagnostic and keep going until I fix the damn thing and then tell the customer "I can fix it for $xx" and the customer says "Oh, never mind, we decided to buy a new machine". It happens.....

Yup it has definitely happened to me. Join the club lol

 

[SAFCasper]

Been in a similar situation myself on a few occasions. Sometimes it can't be avoided.

What you could have done is 30 mins into the job, when you realised it was taking far too long, call the client with "the damage is quite substantial and spread across multiple components. It's going to require some more advanced diagnostics which will cost $X"

If they decline the advanced diagnostics - report whatever you have and charge the normal fee. You still diagnosed a faulty hard drive and unplugged cables... that's more than enough to bill for.

PS.
I hope you put the faulty stick back in his system and didn't tell him which one

 

[HCHTech]

I hope you put the faulty stick back in his system and didn't tell him which one

That crossed my mind, but I couldn't make it work without the obligatory evil laugh.