A customer brought in a computer to have us work on. Simple task, just put in a secondary hard drive and hookup a fan to the motherboard. Well we installed the hard drive and tried setting it up in Windows XP, but it would only see the drive as a 128 gig hard drive. The hard drive we were installing was a 400 gig hard drive. Well we realized that the Windows had never been updated so that was causing the problem. So we updated all of the service packs 1, 2, and 3 and installed the hard drive and it worked fine. We realized that the primary drive was not being seen by the system correctly, (this is where it goes bad) so we repartitioned the hard drive to the correct size. The hard drive was a 300 gig and it was showing as 128 gigs so we figured it needed to be corrected. The partition software gave an error at the end of the repartitioning. Needless to say the system didn’t load, but we were able to save the data and reload the OS. Took us 4 hours and we made a whole $25. Should have been a 15 minute job. Sometimes no good deed shall go unpunished. The customer is happy so it all worked out in the end.

Getting rid of your junk is a sure fire way to safe yourself some money.

I’ve always thought that putting your stuff in self storage was a bad idea. If you leave it there for a long time it will cost you a fortune. I have helped friends put their junk into storage time and time again. Most of what they put in is junk. If you can’t fit your junk where you live then get rid of it.

I really hate it when people call me and they are talking to someone else when I answer the phone. I pickup the phone and I hear them talking to whoever about whatever when they should be paying attention to who they called. This is just being discourteous. I basically give it about 2 seconds then I hang up. If they feel it is important to talk to one of us at the store they can call back. How do you handle this?

A customer came in with a computer that was crushed. The customer fell down with the computer in his hands and he landed on the computer. We just rebuilt the computer 2 weeks before. He requested that we look at it and see what we could do. So we check it in and diagnose the computer. The case is destroyed and the motherboard is damaged. The customer is expecting warranty repair on the system because hd told me as much. I told him that we would look at the computer and see what the problems are. He is a very good customer that we have been doing business with for along time. My choices are call him and tell him all of the problems with the pc and make him pay for everything and lose him as a customer or take care of the motherboard under warranty and charge him for the labor and the case and keep him as a customer. I will be going with option 2, but what would you do? Better to break even on it and keep him as a customer than to lose any future business.

A customer actually came in the store and tried to claim their equipment that they left with us 9 months ago for service. We looked back at the notes and we had called them every month for 3 months straight. They never called us back. We left numerous messages. Our policy which is on the wall and is also on our service tickets states that equipment left with us gets donated or recycled after 30 days. We didn’t discard the equipment until the 4th month just to be sure. The laptop which the customer left was 7 years old and it would have cost more to repair than it was worth. We were very nice about it and told them that the equipment had been discarded according to our policies. The customer then became extremely angry and used a few choice words. We just kept repeating what the policy states and that we tried to contact them. We finally had to ask them to leave because they were becoming verbally abusive. I personally wouldn’t even consider getting my equipment back after that period of time. What do you think?

The bank calls me today about my refinance on my house. They ask about a loan that shows up on my credit report. They give me the details and I tell them that it is not my loan. I called the credit company for the rogue loan and of course they can’t give me any detailed information. I managed to get out of them that the last name matched mine and that the first name began with a D. I figured out that the loan belongs to my dad and his wife. My dad and I have the same name, he is Sr and I am Jr, but we have the exact same name otherwise. My dad and his wife are going to resolve the problem. It was totally unintentional. This happened once before when my dad bought a wedding ring and it ended up on my credit report. Has one of the credit agencies ever caused you any problems? Have you ever had problems with credit companies putting wrong information on your credit report?

A customer calls and asks about the status on his computer repair. We tell him what the computer needs and we discuss all of his options. He asks a bunch of questions. 5 minutes later his wife calls for status. She doesn’t know that her husband called and she proceeds to ask a bunch of questions which are basically the same questions her husband asked. Obviously husbands and wives don’t communicate.

One of my employees shows up today and wants to talk to me about his situation. He gives me all the details about his windshield being cracked and he tells me he couldn’t afford to get it fixed, and because of that he couldn’t get his car tags without the windshield being fixed. He was hired to be an on-site technician. Over the weekend he gets pulled over for no tags on his car and they impound his car. He says he should have a car within a week to do on-sites. He has to buy another car because the original car was impounded and it will take 30 days to get out of impound at $23 per day. He tells me that 30 days in impound is required by Arizona law. Not sure about this law, but I don’t have time to check on it. Seems like a pretty severe penalty for a non moving violation. I can’t believe he let his tags lapse. He does have insurance. The tags on his car would cost at most $50 per year. He could have saved himself a ton of money by just paying the tags in the first place. The fines will be close to $300 to $400 plus the impounds. Pretty expensive mistake. In the meantime should I pay him and have him work in the store or should I send him home? What do you think?

Why do people stand by the front doors and move around and make the buzzers go off over and over again? Kind of like hitting the little bell on a counter in other stores. Just had a couple come into the store and they kept milling around in front of the doors. I guess they didn’t put 2 and 2 together. Move and buzzer goes off.

My Lunch

Went to In and Out Burger yesterday for the first time and they have fast service and good food. They even had time to visit us at our table and ask how our food was. I have never had a fast food service business do that. Simple menu, fast service and good food. Expert combination. I recommend them highly. The one I went to is located here: 1979 EAST AJO WAY TUCSON, AZ