Watch out for damaged computers

[River Valley Computer]

Well, 11 years in business and my first time to go to court.

About four weeks ago, a customer brought in a Sony Vaio (apprx. 2 yr old) notebook in for not connecting to the Internet and running slow. We chatted for a few minutes and I found out he graduated 5 years later from the same high school I did in Iowa. Now that I am in Arkansas, I don't see many Iowans. Thought we kinda' set up a repore'. Ran a virus scan, umteen number of viruses. Got it cleaned up - but it was still running slow and just didn't seem right. I ran a test on the HDD and it didn't pass some tests.

He came in 2 days later to pick it up - I set it up on the counter to show him why I felt it was possibly the HDD failing. He paid the bill (which I gave him a discount because he was a 'new found friend' - stupid me. (I didn't deposit his check.)

I asked him to leave it with me and let me do a more thorough test of it. He said OK.

Next day he came back in and I happen to be working on it. I asked him to come back to the tech area and see what I was finding. I said that it could be having a HDD problem because of the apparent cracked case (minor) but could have been dropped. He instantly said "What crack" I that point I knew I was screwed.

You know the rest I'm sure. He said not to do anything more on it - he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with it. He took it. He calls about 5 days later saying he took it to one of our competitors. He suggested I call them. I called and talked to the onwer. He said yes the HDD was failing and he agreed that it looked like it was dropped while in a soft case or on carpet.

The owner accused us of dropping it. We have a hard tile floor - it would have shattered if we had done it. During that period I was the only on in the store since my two other employees were on vacation. I know I did not drop it.

I offered, to protect our untarnished reputation of over 11 years in business and because he was a 'friend', to repair it for free. He said would we replace the case too? I said NO!

Two days later he calls and says he has two options for me. 1 - he would sell the almost 2 year old notebook to me for $750(which he actually got free for points earned from a local lumber yard). I immediately asked him for option 2. He said he would take it to small claims court - I said bring it on.

April 22 - off to court.

The reason for this long discourse is to emphasis something that since this issue we are doing - when checking equipment in maks sure to make detailed notes of obvious condition and any damage to the unit while the customer is there on the Check In Sheet.

Sorry - had to rant!!!!!!!

 

[lan101]

sounds shady to me...if he truly didnt know, than someone he knows that used the computer dropped it.

 

[River Valley Computer]

He said he would bring his wife and granddaughter to court to testify that it wasn't damaged when he brought it in.

 

[acesdeals]

move it from small claims to circuit court so he has to hire an attorney

 

[lan101]

I'm sure someone here can chime in for something like this, but I personally don't see how there is any case. It's just a he said she said deal.

I mean even if you did paper work in this case, what's to say who dropped it?

 

[Boston Pro Comp Serv LLC]

Yea I don't see where the evidence is enough to hold you responsible. It's a he said she said and if you haven't been in court for this kind of thing before I think you will be found not responsible. The crack was obviously not easy to notice. That's a real dick head thing to do, blame it on you. I have had several customer who brought in machines saying they had a virus, and without time to boot it or check it, they get checked in. Then later I find that it has a cracked screen, I informed every customer like this and none of them tried to say we did it. Pint being the guys a real dick.

 

[DocGreen]

Hypothetical question...

Would it be possible to determine how long the hard drive had been failing? If so that could be an indicator of when it was dropped. Even if it wasn't concrete evidence, it might be enough to get the case dismissed.

As for the check-in thing... when I switched over to mHelpDesk recently I made sure to include an entry on the check-in form for condition of the device (ie, any large scratches, chips, cracks, or other visible damage)

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Also argue the fact that hard drives are mechanical they eventually die. You have no way of knowing when it may have been dropped. I get annoyed when customers try to get items and repairs for nothing.

 

[Martyn]

It's something that I don't do and often notice damage later on whilst working on the computer. I cannot give you advice on the on the small claims issue but there are a couple of things to think about. Firstly your reputation. He will tell everyone about his "experience" no matter what the outcome of the court case. Secondly, he may well of not been aware of the damage until he saw it with you in the shop. Obviously you(and me) have to learn from this for the future. I would be trying to resolve this amicably somehow. Maybe you could pick up a scrap laptop off EBay to repair the laptop?

Anyway good luck with it.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Easiest thing to resolve I think is to apologize for the damages, and tell him, I don't believe I caused them, but I apologize. Refund any money he's paid you so he can use it to pay the other guy, and see if he will walk away and drop it.

 

[Scales]

I say take it to court and counter sue for loss of wages etc. If you give in then you are just adding the whole "BIG BOX" Corporation customer mind set. I hate when clients scam, lie, cheat and generally act like tools.

 

[PCX]

Honestly, if you have been business for 11 years and you are just now implementing a physical inspection upon check-in and you still have not started doing even a basic diagnostics like a HDD test, then maybe it is time to go over your policies and procedures manual and make some changes. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[brandonkick]

Best advice here is to stick to your guns.

You didn't drop, you know you didn't drop it and he claims you did. He could bring in his ten best friends, what do they know about how it happened?


You offered a form of retribution, for something your positive you didn't do.

Seems like they are playing the old "check engine light trick".... you take your car into the shop for an oil change and all of a sudden the check engine light is on. They don't notice and when they go to back it out of the shop they say "hey, why is the check engine light on?"

Now your screwed. They're getting you to fix it for free.

I'd ALWAYS do a physical inspection of the machine noting any existing damage and try to boot into windows. It wont protect you in every case, but it will in a lot of them.

 

[River Valley Computer]

Honestly, if you have been business for 11 years and you are just now implementing a physical inspection upon check-in and you still have not started doing even a basic diagnostics like a HDD test, then maybe it is time to go over your policies and procedures manual and make some changes. I wish you the best of luck.

We have NEVER had an issue like this before. Evidently just lucky. That does not mean it is right to not inspect, but where and when do you stop trusting your fellow man (woman).

As far as a HDD test, yes we do do them, but not always on a 1-2 year old unit and especically for viruses as the user stated. After we got into it, that is when we ran the HDD test. It did not show any abnormalities. It was gut instinct making me think it was the HDD. He took it from us before we could go any further. And yes we did not charge him - that was our first attempt at good will.

Yes, we are going to implement the physical inspection and notes effective 2 weeks ago!

 

[PCX]

We have NEVER had an issue like this before. Evidently just lucky. That does not mean it is right to not inspect, but where and when do you stop trusting your fellow man (woman).

As far as a HDD test, yes we do do them, but not always on a 1-2 year old unit and especically for viruses as the user stated. After we got into it, that is when we ran the HDD test. It did not show any abnormalities. It was gut instinct making me think it was the HDD. He took it from us before we could go any further. And yes we did not charge him - that was our first attempt at good will.

Yes, we are going to implement the physical inspection and notes effective 2 weeks ago!

River, had you been testing those HDDs over the last couple of years, you would have probably found that at least half of those computers that come in for software issues (to include virus removals) and for things like screen replacements have failing HDDs. I know you have been doing this for a while, but things have changed. HDDs are not as reliable as they used to be. Many HDDs that are a year or older (even newer especially if they are Toshiba HDDs) fail with a Read Error if nothing else. Besides, what does it take? Five minutes of your hands on time and maybe a few hours of testing? Not a whole lot of time to ask for, especially when it comes to testing the most crucial and likely to fail part in a computer.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

I don't know a out pcx, but most pc's I work on are not for dead drives. I mean here and there some machines turn out to be dead drives. When we take machines in there is paperwork a customer is to sign basically stating we are not responsible for data loss etc. Pretty much in my opinion if people want me to work on their PC they need to understand that those things to with the territory. That said maybe we all should learn, probably would have been better to say that testing is indicating hard drive failure and not say more than necessary.

 

[PCX]

I don't know a out pcx, but most pc's I work on are not for dead drives. I mean here and there some machines turn out to be dead drives. When we take machines in there is paperwork a customer is to sign basically stating we are not responsible for data loss etc. Pretty much in my opinion if people want me to work on their PC they need to understand that those things to with the territory. That said maybe we all should learn, probably would have been better to say that testing is indicating hard drive failure and not say more than necessary.

Your right, most computers don't necessarily come in for hard drive replacements, but almost half of the computers that come in to the shop have bad hard drives anyways. The fact is, many of those computers that come in for software issues can either be linked to a bad hard drive or in the least, the computer would have to come back for other issues in the future if a bad hard drive is not addressed. No sense in wasting your customers time and money when you can catch the problem from the beginning instead of putting a band-aid over the issue. And as the OP learned, not checking for these things can also be a big waste of your own time and money, whether it be because you completed a job in vain or because you were trying to troubleshoot a software issue that was actually caused by a hardware failure.

Anyways, while having your customer sign a waiver saying that you are not responsible for data loss is a good idea, it shouldn't be an excuse not to do a diagnostic. In my opinion, if you are a good tech, you should know that hard drive failure is extremely common and should be checked every time. And if you do know this, than not checking for it is nothing less than shady. I understand that being on-site is a little more difficult to run tests, but there are still things you can check for and in the least you can run a short test while on-site. That said, if you are in a shop setting, you really have no excuse not to run a diagnostic on the hard drive, if nothing else.

 

[DocGreen]

PCX-- What are you using to run HDD diagnostics that's finding so many failures? I use Parted Magic's disk health check SMART readings and to run, at the very least a short test and a conveyance test on everything just to make sure it wasn't damaged on the way back to the shop (potholes can be pretty nasty around here this time of year, lol). Yeah, I do find the occasional bad drive, but for the most part the tests come back clean.

Are you using something more in-depth that I just haven't come across yet?

 

[Tony_Scarpelli]

He wants you to pay him for a new computer but he brought you a broken one to begin with.

If it wasn't broke what was it doing in your shop?

I'd play it out. Very good chance the judge will drop it. His wife and kids are not going to be considered reliable witnesses so its your word to his.

If you get a typical judge I'd say 66% chance it gets dismissed with no fault.

If you get a bleeding heart judge trying to buy future votes then perhaps 1/3 chance he will split the difference with you paying half the repair and customer incurring half the repair.

There might be 1% chance if you come across guity looking in court that you can get charged with the whole bill. Just do not be over defensive or look shiftless. If you have anyone who was in the shop when you checked it in, bring them as well. They won't be more reliable than his wife/kids but what the hec?

If you have not had any problems for 11 years, I wouldn't worry about revamping your processes of checking in computers. Run your business profitably for your best customers not for the bad ones or the very seldom exceptions. It makes no sense to spend even an extra 5 minutes on thousands of future customers on the off chance something like this might happen again. Take 1/10th of an hour times thousands you it costs you thousands in wasted time and resources. Do not overreact, that is the amateurs mistake. Its just another cost of doing business with the public.

 

[Magic Miguel]

There comes a point where you have to admit defeat and just fix the entire thing for the client. I've had to do it in the past, not many times, less than a handful of times but you gotta do what you gotta do. I know it's hard as heck to admit defeat like that, trust me I'll be the first to stand my ground. But I've learned so much throughout the years that I know now that it's easier to fix it for the client than go through all the court fees even if it's small claims court.