Why even bother?

[sld72382]

Lately I am have getting calls for support on machines that are not even worth the money they paid ($99) to fix them.

1st one:

I get a continued support call, and even though the previous agent ran 2 scanners, it was still slow. I do my work and I ask him how old the PC is. He goes, "2-3 years."
I took it upon myself to look in the system properties and it's a P4 1.3 with 128mb of RDRAM, so you know it's at least 6 years old. I get it up and running as good as I can get it and he actually wants me to do more. I tell him that it's because this PC has basically no memory and doesn't seem to care that RDRAM is no longer available retail, so he has to buy a new PC if he wants better performance.

2nd one:

Front line rep tells me this PC has XP, yet when I start the support and use our remote access software I find out it has '98se with 64mb of RAM. My boss tells me to stop support, refund him and tell him to buy a new PC. I decided to help him anyway as this guy was older and saying that would be viewed as discrimination just because he has an older PC - big mistake. After getting the PC back up and running (he had a Norton Antivirus that was expired for 6 YEARS), I didn't want to leave him without security so I installed AVG Free (the only software that will work properly with his amount of memory) and rebooted, only to have the PC totally lock up. Rebooted, same issue. So I went into safe mode and had him uninstall it, and when I went into regular mode it gave a missing driver error! He needed to format but of course doesn't have the restore disks and you know Gateway would not sell him CDs for an 8 year old system. He tells me that he never thought to buy a new system, because he only uses it for emails and occasional webpages. I couldn't help it at this point, I tell him that is like keeping the same car in your driveway for 30 years because you just use it to travel to the grocery store, even though it needs a new transmission and the radiator is leaking. For some reason, he agreed with me and said he will buy a new PC.

3rd one:

Same day, ANOTHER piece of shit running 98se. This time, the drive was already formatted, all it needed was to have the O/S reloaded. Easy, right? Her 98 CD was pirated and wouldn't load, and I told her if she can't find a 98 CD she would have to buy XP. She started bitching about how much this was costing her ($99 for the phone support and $199 for a full copy of XP, not to mention the cost of a memory upgrade). I wasn't even going to tell her my car analogy as she was already pissed at that point and telling her that probably would have sent her over the edge!