It would be cheaper just to bring it in.

[Aressel]

Not incredibly sucky, more of a "WTH is going through your mind?" sort of call. The fact that this involves computers is kinda incidental.

What the customer wanted done: Add an email account to Outlook Express (5 minute job)

Cost of a service call (including hourly rate): ~$125

Cost to do in shop: $~17.50

Customer did not want to bring the computer in, instead opted to "shop around" for someone who would do a service call cheaper. (We are one of the cheaper shops in town.)

The kicker: Customer has a laptop.

[karma_gypsy]

Wow, you know . . . she could have, just like . . . Googled (or Yahoo'd!) it . . . or even bring up a <B>HELP</B> file.

But, alas, that would be simpler . . . and cheaper.

[Aressel]

But that would make sense, and as we all know, thats not allowed!

[GolfCart34]

But that would make sense, and as we all know, thats not allowed!

You took the words right out of my mouth with that comment!

That's always the case though. Somebody needs something blatantly simple done on their computer, but wants to have said task done in the most difficult and inconvenient way possible.

[AKWalMartCartGuy]

one of my co workers said hes talked to IT guys who've been asked where they "any" key is

but jeez WTH, why not just bring the laptop in?

[Andara Bledin]

Hey, if I can walk my boss through how to do an Instant Payment Required buy on eBay over the phone, anyone can be walked through just about any basic operation.

A laptop and a $20 for the operation, and that's too much trouble. Well, I guess we can't really expect too much from people still using Outlook Express (which I like to call the virus delivery service that also happens to be an email client).

[no offense to Outlook users, but it's so full of holes my company actually removed it from all our machines]

^-.-^

[digilight]

hehehe idio...err i mean customers like that are the reason that some companies are in business. I could possibly understand not wanting to bring it in if it were a desktop from back in the day when everything had very unique connections. But hell now a days most computers have USB/wireless everything so you really just have to pop your mouse/keyboard/printer into a usb port and plug your monitor back in. Hell most PS2 Keyboards and Mice were even color coded to match the plugs on the back of the computer.

I get stuff like this from time to time where folks just don't give a crap and would rather pay me to typeset their simple document or whatever. Hell the fun ones are the rush jobs that I get to charge the OT rate to.

Case in point. I had a job a few months back that was a major rework of a previous version. This was a CD that gets distributed to potential client facilities about the companies project. Well they had used the same disc for the US as well as Europe for many years prior. They decided on a tuesday that they needed a US only version to comply with their legal department for a conference on saturday. This required me staying up 5 am to get the work done (working all night from 3 pm thru on it). with a 50% increase in the hourly rate I had no problem. Surprisingly the customer didn't even blink at the bill. The reason for the overnight work, is they had to approve the master before I could run the 300 discs and the guy needed them in hand by friday.

[Geek King]

one of my co workers said hes talked to IT guys who've been asked where they "any" key is

but jeez WTH, why not just bring the laptop in?

Hell, you can talk to one right now.

I've also seen a guy in the computer lab using the CD tray to hold his coffee. For Real.

Then there was the girl who came to me in tears. She said she had "killed the computer" and couldn't afford to replace it. SHe kept repeating "I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" over and over as we walked back to her spot in the computer lab.

She had accidentally quit to DOS.

If I didn't about these things, I'd probably