Warranties...

[clowninasack]

So a computer comes in for warranty work today. No big deal, right? There are a few DAYS left on the warranty. To top it all off they left for Hawaii and had their son bring it in with a very vague, second-hand description of the problem. They also did not leave their password, and their son does not know it (I managed to crack the password so this is not a big deal) So not only am I left wondering WTF the problem is I am also only able to contact them by email which they are probably only checking every few days.

[myswtghst]

Wow. Although, sadly, I'm not terribly surprised. It happens much too often around here that people send units in for repair (sometimes they're even paying for it!) with only a vague description of the problem (i.e. unit does not work) and then are upset when the units are returned un-repaired, or still with the same original "problem."

If you don't tell us what is wrong, how the heck are we supposed to fix it?

[clowninasack]

Yep, I bet these people will be pissed when the warranty is up and they haven't contacted me yet. I've done pretty much all I can with the vague description given. I'm not about to go throwing random fixes / tests at it! They'll probably say "but we dropped it off to get fixed within the warranty period!".

My boss' wife wanted me to start ordering random replacement parts for it. WTF?

[myswtghst]

We have that problem too, sometimes, where people will call about a unit when it's just about to be out of warranty, decide to wait to set up the repair, then are upset when, even though they were warned, it's out of warranty by the time they follow through. Not my fault if you don't listen.

[technical.angel]

I had a computer come in with the description "Acess"

Thankfully, I do know about what's wrong, but still.

[Geek King]

I had a computer come in with the description "Acess"

Thankfully, I do know about what's wrong, but still.

I'd still be tempted to send it back with the note, "Denied."

[SpyOne]

This can cut the other way too.
I heard this (probably urban legend) story decades ago when I was a kid:
Lady buys an iron, it breaks during the warrenty, she sends it off to the maker with a brief letter explaining the problem and what she suspects is the cause.

Manufacturer writes back, requesting further details. And sent back the iron.

So she sends it again, this time with several pages explaining what went wrong, under what circumstances, and what variables were different on occasions when the iron didn't fail.

It comes back again, with another request for clarification/expansion.

This happens several times.

Fianlly, she sends it back with a single page note, scrawled crudely, that read, "My iron she no make hot".
Iron came back fixed.



Now, computers are considerably more complex than irons, and there are more nooks and crannys for problems to hide in, but I really think corporate america is to blame for much of this: decades of the policy of trying to pump anybody who seems able to communicate for all the information possible has conditioned people to say as little as possible when bringing something in for repair.
That and the withering looks from technicians when you describe what was going on.
"I'm telling you, the car wouldn't start. It would turn and turn, but it just wouldn't fire. And every time I turned the key from "on" to "start", the radio would change stations."

Informally helping out in a college computer lab when I was a teenager (they'd let me use the computers if I helped clueless students), I often found myself saying, "I am not in any way saying that I doubt it was doing that to you. But it won't do that when I try, because it knows that I know it can't possibly be doing that. So, there you go: it's fixed."

[Pedersen]

I often found myself saying, "I am not in any way saying that I doubt it was doing that to you. But it won't do that when I try, because it knows that I know it can't possibly be doing that. So, there you go: it's fixed."

Sounds like me. Happens so often around me. I tell people the computers are afraid of me, since they know that I have a reformat disk, and am willing to use it

[Geek King]

Sounds like me. Happens so often around me. I tell people the computers are afraid of me, since they know that I have a reformat disk, and am willing to use it

Heehee...I have a whole room full of PCs that have been subjugated to Derik's Boot n' Nuke. One more won't matter. <evil laughter>