Why are some techs so bad?

[anglian]

Just picked up a new client today, they are a small business with 3 workstations and have been using a local firm since 2009 for regular maintenance. Client admits to knowing nothing about computers, so they have theirs serviced every 6 months.

I took one away today to fix on my workbench.

CPU fan hardly moving, clogged up with dust. (client works in a pretty clean enviroment)
Defrag scheduled at 03.00 every wednesday, hadn't ran since December 2009
DVD drive didn't work (plugged it in to fix it)
2gb of documents and cah register database have never been backed up.
No user accounts, boots into Admin. Owner has business accounts, employment contracts etc on here and the other staff are free to use it.
No anti virus installed.

It's almost embarrasing to take it back tomorrow and tell them how they have wasted money having the things serviced by the other tech firm.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Might be a touchy situation. I would try to ease in what hasn't been done. You don't want to upset them with all of this "stuff" that needs done that they assumed was being done, but if done properly sounds like they will be impressed and you should end up with a good customer.

 

[PCX]

Unfortunately, this is just how it is. Most so called techs or even shop owners are horrible technicians and really have no business touching a computer. In all reality, they choose to be this way for one reason or another.

Anyways, its a very sensitive situation that you are in, but you will have to break it to them and let them know what you have found. Hopefully (if you have not fix their computer yet) you can take pictures and document all that they have found. Sympathize with them and explain that there is no way they could have known, but that this is an issue that is going to have to be resolved before they have more issues down the road. This is assuming that they have not already gotten rid of their original IT guy. If they have already done so, then just reassure them that you offer a better service and that if they ever have any doubts, you can produce documentation for the services and diagnostics that you have done and answer any questions they may have. Take the time to show them some of the things you are doing so they have a better grasp as to what is going on. If they are the type of customer who would rather not be bothered with the details, then just make sure that there is a noticeable difference when you leave, even if that means going a little above and beyond.

 

[RedFoxComp]

Unfortunately, this is just how it is. Most so called techs or even shop owners are horrible technicians and really have no business touching a computer. In all reality, they choose to be this way for one reason or another.

It's so true. I just took over an account and they had an SBS 2003 server on 12 year old hardware. That's just the tip of the iceberg though.

-All 9 user account passwords were 'password' (I kid you not)
-Single consumer level hard drive with all data on it and no cooling.
-Only 1GB of RAM on the server so the thing was getting slammed paging and heating up like crazy! That single disk was at a constant 60%+ utilization.
-Tape backups using Backup Exec, no successful backup in over a year
-2 users RDPing into the SERVER to use quickbooks on default port with admin passwords of, you guessed it, 'password'.
-No AV on ANYTHING and GP was not set up properly. Workstation users all had admin rights.

This is by far the worst I have ever seen.

It's ignorance from 'technicians' that start a business just because they've been building and fixing computers for their friends and family for years. Then suddenly they have their first business customer with a server and they have to 'fudge' it the best they can. The reason they get away with it and can keep getting away with it is because its impossible for a customer to know what they're doing right or wrong.

If you're a terrible drywaller the results of bad work are immediately obvious. Bad technicians lie their way out of problems caused by their own ignorance, or even more terrifying they don't realize that they caused the problem.

I also see a lot of consumer systems come in with misdiagnosed hardware issues. A bad techs solution is almost always 'reinstall OS' and then new computer if that doesn't solve it. Anyone else gotten lots of systems over the years with bad caps from frustrated customers that have paid for software solutions to a hardware issue?

 

[MotzTech]

I think most of the people who do work like this are just in over their head. It's like RedFoxComp said, people get tagged as the "computer guy" and can sometimes get pulled into stuff they don't really understand. I can't count how many times I have asked "who takes care of you network?" and gotten a response of some family member or friend who "knows computers".

 

[PCX]

Willful ignorance makes me so mad sometimes. It's one thing to be a green tech who is ignorant in certain areas, but is actively growing and gaining experience and knowledge. But it's a completely different thing when it comes to so-called techs who are either stuck in their ways and lazy or just plain shady. If your (the general you, not you specifically) a person like that, your not just ignorant by choice, your an idiot by choice.

To be completely honest with you, when I first started out in this business I did not have heaps of knowledge or tons of experience (although I was an active Linux user which put me ahead of a lot of so-called techs), but I did have a good amount of common sense, deductive reasoning skills and business experience.

Common sense alone saved my butt many times. Sometimes common sense simply says "instead of screwing over your customer by trying to do something that is way over your head, sub it out to someone who has the necessary knowledge and experience." Common sense also says that if you want to do that particular service as part of your business then either do the necessary research and preparations or find someone to teach you and make sure you have a good grasp before you go out and do it yourself. Anything less is just willful ignorance and laziness.

It amazes me every time I read a post or talk to a so-called tech who claims to run their own business and yet has very little to no grasp of basic troubleshooting or technical skills and or has very little general IT knowledge or experience. If you are going to do something professionally, then do it right, if you can't do it right, then work for someone else and grow as tech till you can.

Anyways, sorry about the little rant.

 

[onetech4all]

Re:

Why are some techs so bad?

- they probably do not care enough. The situation that the OP anglian described is pretty bad.
It could be that the technician probably does not see the possibility to make more money out of that or are just not trained enough technically to handle more difficult situations or just lazy, but I am sure they have a very good excuse

 

[NETWizz]

Just picked up a new client today, they are a small business with 3 workstations and have been using a local firm since 2009 for regular maintenance. Client admits to knowing nothing about computers, so they have theirs serviced every 6 months.

I took one away today to fix on my workbench.

CPU fan hardly moving, clogged up with dust. (client works in a pretty clean enviroment)
Defrag scheduled at 03.00 every wednesday, hadn't ran since December 2009
DVD drive didn't work (plugged it in to fix it)
2gb of documents and cah register database have never been backed up.
No user accounts, boots into Admin. Owner has business accounts, employment contracts etc on here and the other staff are free to use it.
No anti virus installed.

It's almost embarrasing to take it back tomorrow and tell them how they have wasted money having the things serviced by the other tech firm.

You are not being fair giving benefit of the doubt:

CPU fan hardly moving, clogged up with dust. (client works in a pretty clean enviroment) <==Why would a tech check this? I have worked in environments with thousands of PCs... NOBODY pops the chassis covers to look if fans are spinning unless there is a ticket indicating overheating or excessive noise.

Defrag scheduled at 03.00 every wednesday, hadn't ran since December 2009 <== XP didn't necessarily run Defrag by default, and it doesn't really matter. I have seen networks of thousands of computers... they never really get defragged and don't need it. The image is defragged, and most software is pushed. They never surpass maybe 20% of their HDD used and never have any performance issues.


DVD drive didn't work (plugged it in to fix it) <==Unless a user put in a ticket indicating there is a problem, or you were refurbishing a computer to sell, why would you check for this?


2gb of documents and cah register database have never been backed up. <== NOT GOOD! Previous vendor should have setup some form of backup!!!

No user accounts, boots into Admin. Owner has business accounts, employment contracts etc on here and the other staff are free to use it. <== NOT Good for security, but it is pretty typical of Windows XP to make the user(s) Administrators by default. Presumably they have a WORKGROUP... NOT a domain with 3 computers! What do you expect? Someone to lock down three individual systems with different accounts for each user??? Then deal with complaints that Sally can't access Jen's computer and on Wednesday's Jen needs to be able to logon to the front desk when Lisa is out but doesn't have a password? Bottom Line: WORKGROUPS SUCK! Windows Default Security stinks, but micromanaging everything gets to be exponentially more work.

No anti virus installed <== NOT GOOD - Did the client pay for it? If not, what are the licence terms of a free one like Security Essentials? I MUST say that it is NOT free for all businesses. I KNOW that at some point you have to buy Forefront End-Point from Microsoft... or licence another product.



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ You don't know the cause! It could be a PITA working with this customer if they are really, really cheap! What if they ask you, "What will you do for me for $150?" Personally, I would walk out and not take a small job like this, but if you do... don't get too tied up in office politics.

 

[nesrinamb]

@ NETWizz

I agree with you on everything except the fan issue and AV issue.

1)I always check the inside for dust everytime I do scheduled maint. Plus I always check for swollen capacitors. Even if it has been only 6 months.

2) This is a business they should have had AV since their probably working with some type of private client information.

The company that was doing the work should have made sure of these things since they got paid to look after the computers.

 

[oldtech]

I'm with Netwizz on this one - in what way is any of that the previous tech's fault. All of those issues may have been flagged to the client but declined. Should really check that holier than thou attitude at the door.

 

[anglian]

I'm with Netwizz on this one - in what way is any of that the previous tech's fault. All of those issues may have been flagged to the client but declined. Should really check that holier than thou attitude at the door.

No attitude here, my biggest issue if how I explain all this without making it seem that I am deliberately trying to make the other tech look bad.

The other tech had "serviced" the workstations every 6 months, and seeing the amount of dust inside had never cleaned them. If a client asks me to service their PC's every 6 months @ £80 each I would definately be removing covers and squirting a bit of compressed air inside. I would love 200 clients like this!

Client knows they should do backups but doesn't know how. Previous tech sold them nero and showed them how to use it but they got confused the first time they tried (will demo offsite backus to them today when I return this PC)

They didn't know if they had anti virus or not, thought it might have been included in the service fee but are more than happy to buy a license (up to £50 per station)

Is this client cheap? First impressions are that they don't have much money to spend on IT, but will do their best. They were worried about the cost, especially with it being easter weekend, and didn't want this PC fix to cost more than £150 (if it did they would buy a new one)

 

[PCX]

I'm with Netwizz on this one - in what way is any of that the previous tech's fault. All of those issues may have been flagged to the client but declined. Should really check that holier than thou attitude at the door.

oldtech (assuming by your name that you have been doing this for a while), if you really think this way, then you are one of those ignorant by choice techs that I am talking about.

In what way is any of that the previous techs fault?

Let me ask you this, in what way is it not? These are all legitimate concerns that should have been addressed by the IT guy before any Managed Service Agreement was made. If the customer was not interested in doing things properly then they should have never ever ever taken the job. So it is 100% the techs fault as well as it is 100% the clients fault. Any IT guy that takes a job like this is either ignorant and hopefully learned a good lesson or just plain stupid. If you run your business like this, you will either run your business into the ground, ruin your name or make very little to no money.

No attitude here, my biggest issue if how I explain all this without making it seem that I am deliberately trying to make the other tech look bad.

The tech looks bad because hes an obvious idiot.

The other tech had "serviced" the workstations every 6 months, and seeing the amount of dust inside had never cleaned them. If a client asks me to service their PC's every 6 months @ £80 each I would definately be removing covers and squirting a bit of compressed air inside. I would love 200 clients like this!

Most definitely. This would have to be a part of your Managed Service Agreement. You have to make sure that the customer understands that part of your time is going to be used in maintaining their computers so that there are less break fix issues. Anything less is just stupid. There is no way that a good tech would let a computer go 6 months without at least checking any one of the issues you originally listed. Again, if the customer was not willing to pay for your time, then its time for you to move on and find a customer who will.

Client knows they should do backups but doesn't know how. Previous tech sold them nero and showed them how to use it but they got confused the first time they tried (will demo offsite backus to them today when I return this PC)

They didn't know if they had anti virus or not, thought it might have been included in the service fee but are more than happy to buy a license (up to £50 per station)

These are things that the tech should have never allowed to become an issue. The tech should have been able to know if the person was going to be confused by the process and setup an automatic backup for them that required no interaction by the client. Even if the tech as not smart enough to set that up, he should have seen the red flag go up on his FOLLOW UP call that made sure everything was good to go. Same goes for the AV.

Is this client cheap? First impressions are that they don't have much money to spend on IT, but will do their best. They were worried about the cost, especially with it being easter weekend, and didn't want this PC fix to cost more than £150 (if it did they would buy a new one)

Again, it comes down to if the customer is willing to pay what your worth. If they are not, then decline the work.


Again, how is this not the techs fault? Does anyone actually have a real logical answer that does not give them an excuse for being a bad tech themselves?

 

[sorcerer]

If you've seen any of my previous posts you may know that I've only been trading since the beginning of January. However, even as a 'noobie' I always start any tune-up or service with a visual inspection of inside the case and blow out any dust. More often than not I'll also put fresh thermal paste on the CPU/heatsink assembly too.

There really is no excuse for not opening the case for a visual inspection at the very least.

 

[iisjman07]

More often than not I'll also put fresh thermal paste on the CPU/heatsink assembly too.

Glad to see other people do this; the amount of computers I see with crispy thermal paste....

 

[anglian]

Result.

Took the PC back, all working well.
Client ordered anti virus from me (Kaspersky) for all 3 PC's
Monthly maintenance agreement @ £75 per month (£25 per PC), I don't use GFI yet, as I am just learning to use it but have agreed with them that I will visit them every 6 weeks until I have GFI and then I can do the monthly maintenance work remotely with an onsite inspection every 6 months.
Client also purchased offsite backup for all 3 PC's with 10gb storage per PC for a total of £25/month.
Client will also replace all 3 PC's over the next 12 months (currently 1xXP & 2xVista)
Contracts signed sealed and delivered

They also gave out about 15 of My biz cards to their clients whilst I was there.

 

[PCX]

Result.

Took the PC back, all working well.
Client ordered anti virus from me (Kaspersky) for all 3 PC's
Monthly maintenance agreement @ £75 per month (£25 per PC), I don't use GFI yet, as I am just learning to use it but have agreed with them that I will visit them every 6 weeks until I have GFI and then I can do the monthly maintenance work remotely with an onsite inspection every 6 months.
Client also purchased offsite backup for all 3 PC's with 10gb storage per PC for a total of £25/month.
Client will also replace all 3 PC's over the next 12 months (currently 1xXP & 2xVista)
Contracts signed sealed and delivered

They also gave out about 15 of My biz cards to their clients whilst I was there.

Good work, I hope it all works out. Just make sure you do not cut corners and that you take care of your clients. Don't do anything over your head, if you have to, sub it out to another tech and be there to over see the work.

Good luck!

 

[oldtech]

@ OP glad you got the client to spend the necessary money.

@ PCX thanks for the personal attack - nice one out of the gate. You're probably right my business is going to fail. But having grown a ~$35M technology service business from nothing should at least give me some breathing space when the companies like yours come by to take our clients.

Let me point out to you again that the title of the thread was "Why are some techs so bad?" There was no evidence provided that indicated it was in anyway the tech's fault that the conditions existed. Please go back and reread - I did not comment and say the conditions were acceptable.The OP was not privy to prior conversations nor was he given prior invoices to look at - he simply drew a (imho) premature conclusion based on a conversation with the client.

 

[PCX]

Let me point out to you again that the title of the thread was "Why are some techs so bad?" There was no evidence provided that indicated it was in anyway the tech's fault that the conditions existed.

There was no evidence . . . ? What, really? Lets put you back on the court. If you walked into a clients office and assessed their situation and wrote them up a contract and then started to provide them with IT services and you let their computers either A. Get in the condition that was described by the OP or B. Never put in the contract to fix the preexisting condition / issues, then that is 100% your fault. If you discussed this with the client and they decided that it would cost too much, then it is 100% your fault for taking the job.

So again, how is it not the techs fault?

Please go back and reread - I did not comment and say the conditions were acceptable.The OP was not privy to prior conversations nor was he given prior invoices to look at - he simply drew a (imho) premature conclusion based on a conversation with the client.

It seems to me that he made a pretty good educated guess according to what the customer described to him. Apparently (confirmed) they told him that there was a previous tech who did pretty much nothing for them.

I am pretty sure that Anglian is not an idiot and can use deductive reasoning well enough to put this all together.

 

[oldtech]

*Sigh* PCX Let's look at the assumptions you've made then you are welcome to apply your "logic" to them as you will.

1. There was a contract for maintenance in place by previous provider and that the 6 month service was not T&M.

2. The unit in question had ever been serviced by previous company. Who is to say the client did not drag it in from his basement in the recent interval?

3. The "clean" environment had always been that way before the day in question.

4. The lack of antivirus and multimedia drive being disconnected were not intentional. I can cite a few examples of where this would make sense.

Anglian's mental acuity aside I do not see anything concrete in the original post that would lay the fault at the previous tech's feet. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt until there is a reason not to. *shrug*

 

[PCX]

*Sigh* PCX Let's look at the assumptions you've made then you are welcome to apply your "logic" to them as you will.

1. There was a contract for maintenance in place by previous provider and that the 6 month service was not T&M.

Contract or not, your missing the point. The service that was provided was subpar and again, if the client was only willing to pay a subpar price, then tech should have never taken the job.

2. The unit in question had ever been serviced by previous company. Who is to say the client did not drag it in from his basement in the recent interval?

Wow, I guess I could think way too much about this and assume that the OP is an idiot. In any case, what would the client gain by telling you that it was previously serviced? No really? What would be the logic behind that?

3. The "clean" environment had always been that way before the day in question.

Your right, because dust does not collect in clean environments and typically people do not keep their computers on the floor where people track dirt. Sorry, I had not thought about that.

4. The lack of antivirus and multimedia drive being disconnected were not intentional. I can cite a few examples of where this would make sense.

There is so much speculation that could be drawn from this, but looking at the obvious track record, its pretty safe to say that the tech could have and should have done a follow up or did a better setup. In any case, had they followed up and the client said it was all good to go and they only paid them to come every 6 months, then your right, it may not have been the techs fault at all.

Anglian's mental acuity aside I do not see anything concrete in the original post that would lay the fault at the previous tech's feet. I tend to give the benefit of the doubt until there is a reason not to. *shrug*

Yeah, benefit of the doubt is fine and dandy, unfortunately in this field, thats given out way to often. Now does that mean that you should slander the tech to the customer? No. But the simple fact of the matter is, this a frustration that many good techs have to deal with on a regular basis.

Finally, I apologize for the personal attack, but honestly I cannot see how you were unable to draw the same conclusion as myself and most anyone else.


Anyways, this conversation has gotten way out of hand. Anglian was simply expressing a frustration that many of us have to deal with in the field, no need to turn to this into something it is not.