100,000 and first time is the charm

[evilhomer]

I got a double dose on this one. I'm delivering and installing a couple of electric height adjustable desks. One of the legs is defective and won't raise.

I apologize to the customer and explain it to him and demonstrate how it's defective. He's cool and has no problem with this, all he needs me to do is raise the desk up Okay, let's try this again. I am sorry, the leg is defective, it cannot raise. I swap the parts out to confirm and demonstrate that it is indeed the leg that is defective, everything else is working perfectly, it's just the one leg that is defective. So I'm sorry, one of these desks will not be able to be raised, is there one that can make due with it at this lower height until we can get a replacement part in. Well this girl has to have a proper desk. Okay great, I'll give her the working one and we'll have to have the bad one for the other person. In goes the good desk, off we go to the other office to put in the bad desk. In it goes and I'm done...... all I need to do is to raise this desk up

So on about the tenth try, I was finally able to convince him the defective leg is indeed defective. I write things up and get some ice on my now pounding head.

Something to keep in mind for part two of the story is how easy these things are. Screw things together, connect all your wires in the only place they can be connected and you're done. If it doesn't work, check your connections, if everything is pushed in all the way, you've done all you can. These things are as idiot proof as can be.

A few days later, in comes the dealer. Well this is completely unacceptable. Obviously I did something wrong. He's sold over 100,000 of these units and he's never had one that's been defective. Okay, well there's a first time for everything sir, now you can say that you've had one defective one, let's show off how good our warranty service is. Oh no, I've got to head off to the site with him so he can inspect my installation. Off we go, hmmm, yeah wires plugged in, I was able to handle that little bit of brain surgery/rocket science/trigonometry/spacial engineering. We swap the wires around, dis-connect, re-connect, play, pry, and pray, all to come to the conclusion that yes indeed, the leg is defective.

Yeah buddy, so kind of like I said, the 100,001st time in the charm eh?

[mhkohne]

A few days later, in comes the dealer. Well this is completely unacceptable. Obviously I did something wrong. He's sold over 100,000 of these units and he's never had one that's been defective. Okay, well there's a first time for everything sir, now you can say that you've had one defective one, let's show off how good our warranty service is. Oh no, I've got to head off to the site with him so he can inspect my installation. Off we go, hmmm, yeah wires plugged in, I was able to handle that little bit of brain surgery/rocket science/trigonometry/spacial engineering. We swap the wires around, dis-connect, re-connect, play, pry, and pray, all to come to the conclusion that yes indeed, the leg is defective.

Yeah buddy, so kind of like I said, the 100,001st time in the charm eh?

Dealer is a bigger idiot than custy-manufacturing errors are a fact of life, I don't care who you are.

[MadMike]

Wow, someone has an awfully high opinion of his company if he thinks it could never, ever turn out a defective product.

[EricKei]

Exactly. Reminds me of one of the classic Dilbert lines: "I haven't listened to a single complaint"

[TheCheerfulTreeRat]

Wow, someone has an awfully high opinion of his company if he thinks it could never, ever turn out a defective product.

I worked for one company that never had one field failure. We once had the very first unit made, back to be refurbished and found a slight glitch on one channel (out of 1,200 channels) that hadn't been noticed.

It was a marvel of defensive design, used no contemporary components, was massively tested during production (both assemblies and final product) and burnt in (and retested) before being let loose with the customer. I think of it with nostalgia when the boss rolls out a poorly thought out and implemented pile of poo.

[evilhomer]

Wow, someone has an awfully high opinion of his company if he thinks it could never, ever turn out a defective product.

It's more a matter of the automatic assumption is always 'installer error'. They immediately assume that we don't know what we're doing. I can't totally blame them for that because there are a lot of morons in my industry, but this guy is a douche who should look at the person he's dealing with.

[Ahbugger]

Yeah I'm sure it was really cheap to send the installer and a managery-type person off to site for a morning of buggering about. Even if the leg wasn't really broken I bet the most cost effective route would have just been to quickly replace it.

[Slave to the Phone]

I once worked at a place that had a printer that jammed all the time because one of the paper feed rails was bent. This of course stopped everything and caused someone to have to unjam the darn thing and then everyone had to reprint everything.

Because I was tired of being the one who was always called on to unjam the printer, I looked up the price of replacing the printer and the price of just replacing the rail. I then kept track of how much time I spent unjamming the darn thing, and figured out how much it was costing a month in my hourly rate.

I submitted my numbers to management, showing that the cost of me unjamming the printer every week was higher than the cost of replacing the rail just once. I also showed that the cost of me unjamming the printer for 3 months was higher than the cost of buying a new printer.

Will it surprise anyone here to learn that management complained that I had better things to do with my time than to run those numbers?

As far as I know, the printer never got fixed.

[Jetfire]

Will it surprise anyone here to learn that management complained that I had better things to do with my time than to run those numbers?

Because as far as they are concerned, you are a sunk cost; they're already paying for you anyways, so you taking time to unjam the printer is just 'part of the job'.

To actually FIX said printer (or to replace it) would be an additional cost that would show up on various spreadsheets and have to be justified in its own budget/management speak ways that have no bearing on reality.

[EricKei]

I would argue that you have better things to do with your time than repeatedly fixing the broken printer...