(no subject)

[moopet.livejournal.com]

I get this all the time, and here are

Customer comes in with a laptop that's completely dead. We ask her if she used a surge protector. She says, "wha...?" We explain what one is. She says that she would have used one if she'd known about them, and it's our fault for not giving her one when we sold her the laptop. Hang on... weren't you the woman who came in two months back with the same problem on your last laptop? Yes. Didn't we tell you the same thing then? Yes. So how is this our problem? "Because you told me about it last time (despite me not admitting that just now) but didn't make me buy one". Huh.

Customer comes in with a laptop complaining it's not got genuine software on it and it doesn't work. We're a bunch of pirates, etc, his friends have been scammed by the likes of us in the past.
So I turn it over, see a Vista HP license - check, fire it up. Watch it say, "welcome to Windows Vista Ultimate". Hang on... didn't we sell you this with Home Premium on it? Yes. Have you tried to upgrade it yourself without buying a license? No. "All I did was stick in the Vista Anytime Upgrade CD like I'm supposed to and follow the instructions." And then wait until the machine would no longer let me log on before coming in to get it fixed, right? Oh, you have photos on there you need to keep? We can get those off for you, but it's chargeable. Then you simply restore the machine to its factory defaults using the CDs it nagged you to create every time you logged in... oh, wait, you didn't do that either? We'll do it for you. It's chargable. He angrily throws his Vista CD on the floor and says it's our fault for shipping a CD that could break his computer or for not telling him not to. I analogise: "Sir, if you bought a car, and it came with a spare wheel, it's not the seller's fault if you threw it through the windshield, nor would they fix it for you undedr the car's warranty."

Comments

[the-reda.livejournal.com]

I just love me a good entitlement rant.

Some people really think the world revolves around them.

[hisamishness.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of the occasional idiot who would take home the system we had just built for them, actually read the instructions, and first thing, put in the DOS disk and format the drive & install DOS.... THEN wonder why their system was empty.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

Just where the fuck is this person plugging her laptop into that she's had two surge related problems in two months? I've plugged one of those old Compaq Plus "portables" (they weighed about 40 pounds, looked like a sewing machine case) into a Honda portable generator deep in the forest, I've lived in rural Quebec where you had to reset the clocks on the microwave, vcr and coffee machine every day because of power glitches (which Hydro Quebec blamed on branches hitting the lines), and I've used a computer upstairs from an enormous stamping mill that shakes the building every time it hit. I've never seen any of those things harm a computer.

The only power related computer failure was when lightning hit my house and killed both the TV set and my modem.

[manuka.livejournal.com]

Heh, I grew up in rural Quebec - there's a reason we had a ginormous UPS on the line, and this was way the hell back in 1986.

Especially with laptops - most laptop power supply bricks are meant to operate from 100-250V in a range of frequencies... Those things will work quite happily on the flakiest power you can dream up (and I know people who use them on the grid in Uganda without any issues.

[moopet.livejournal.com]

Oh, we tend to call any unexplained main board failure the result of a power surge. It saves time.

[ptomblin-lj.livejournal.com]

That's pretty stupid on your part. She's probably got a cat that pees on it or something. She'll buy a surge protector, and then blame you when it still happens.

[moopet.livejournal.com]

Oddly, we actually have a laptop in for repair currently suffering from pet pee. My olfactory technical skills make sure it's not in the "unexplained" pile.

[shirenomad]

"I'm sorry, ma'am. This time we'll chain you to the counter until you agree to buy one."

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

Heh. Reminds me of how for a week I would run DOS (3.01?) from floppies at startup, not quite understanding the utility of the brand-new 30MB hard-drive that Dad had just bought, and how it "loads the floppies for you, idiot," as my dad explained later.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

These people never ponder that awful dystopia where computer salesdroids have coercive power over literally captive buyers. "I *really* can't let you leave without this green marker to keep your music CDs in proper tune."