I can't tell you how long it'll take me to fix until I know whats wrong with it

[Aressel]

"Sir... sir... diagnosing computer problems over the phone is like diagnosing brain cancer with a pointy stick"

I love it! Can I use it as a sig?

[ahanix1989]

Go for it, I didn't originally create it....
http://bash.org/?635741

[earl colby pottinger]

And can be wrong

Why is it so hard for people to understand these three simple facts: I cnat diagnose over the phone, I can't tell you how long its going to take until I've figured out what the problem is, and diagnostics take time to run. I may call myself a technomancer, but I don't actually have magical powers. (Although some people think that we do )

Worse, your phone diag can be wrong. Just because of how the problem was described over the phone made it sound like a easy and quick fix does not mean that is what you will find once it is on the bench. I hated it when people accused me of inflating the bill, I was paid a salary, I made exactly the same no matter what I charged the customer.

[earl colby pottinger]

I wish

Because most of these people have a home-based business and/or just started out working for themselves and have not yet learned that backing up data is just as important as saving receipts and keeping hard copies of invoices. Chances are, these yahoos will be out of business within a year, because they are irresponsible and karma works that way. These also tend to be the same people that think "home-based business = slacking off all day + free money" and get a very nasty surprise from Uncle Sam in January when it turns out they didn't pay taxes on any of that income.

I wish it was just small business, but I got the problem in multi-billion dollar companies and huge government organizations. The really bad part is the central IT department does the backups daliy, but only on the networked drives. No matter how often the users are told not to do it they get lazy and store on their local drives. And sometime in places no sane person would think to look either.

Then they complain when they come back from vacation and there is a brand new machine on their desk.