jzoz01 Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 A story from work I think you'll find interesting: I got a call from a client who was having difficulty hooking up a reciever and set of speakers they had purchased from me (after turning down install because "they could handle it"). I literally spent 4 hours on the phone with her as she would call back every 5 mins as well as before, during, and after plugging in each cable. Then the same thing the next day as she exploded at me that she had been working on it for a total of almost 10 hours over the course of two days and followed my wiring diagram. She got picture but no sound. She was furious because she thought we had no idea what we were doing as we walked her through the whole process several times over the phone with no result. She claimed the reciever must be defective. I went out to the customer's home to take a look at the reciever and believe it or not, I'm so good I spotted the problem from 10 feet away within 2 seconds. ........... All the speakers were still in the sealed boxes! And she wondered why she had no sound. I pointed it out and it didn't seem to phase her. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mandi Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 Amazing!!!humanity continues to amaze me. I was in retail for about 15 years and I should write a book. We all should write a book. I am sure you have other stories that are similar. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bartdude Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 I (cough) assume she was (cough) a blond? No, actually, I imagine her having dark hair for some reason. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jzoz01 Posted July 23, 2004 Author Share Posted July 23, 2004 Somewhat husky, late 40s, unattractive, and very very annoying. It was an eye opening expirience because I no longer fear hell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fish Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 ---------------- On 7/23/2004 7:56:41 PM jzoz01 wrote: I'm so good I spotted the problem from 10 feet away within 2 seconds. ........... All the speakers were still in the sealed boxes! And she wondered why she had no sound. I pointed it out and it didn't seem to phase her. ---------------- Wow,thats what I call audioretarded.Maybe she was lonely . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pinipig523 Posted July 23, 2004 Share Posted July 23, 2004 MEGA-audioretard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrMcGoo Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 Hell, I thought everyone knew that it's the receiver that produces all of the sound and that all of the "speakers" are just furniture! No hookup is required, since the "speakers" are just furniture. Or was the customer just furniture? Bill Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DrWho Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 was she perhaps expecting sound to come outta the tv instead? that's the only "rational" observation i could make, lol. i woulda asked her why she bought speakers if she wasn't planning on using them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m00n Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 Being in the computer industry you hear of some good stories, but I think this one takes the cake. I can say with all honesty, I may have gotten myself fired at that point. I would have been so fed up with her by the time I arrived and then to see that? Would have sent me over the top for sure. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ironwoods Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 jzoz01- you've got a kean eye, keep up the good work. I find it surprising that they actually made it home. I'd also send them the "install bill".... what do you have to loose? Your only revenge Oh, I forgot "the customer is always right" mOOn- what kind of cake will she be getting? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Olorin Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 Oh my. You kept your composure? Good job. Like m00n, I do the computer thing. I once had a client somewhat like yours -- would always insist she could handle the install, would fail, would call me out, and then would grouse about getting billed for the installation. You know, because TRYING to do it herself relieves her of the responisibility to pay me for my services. One day she couldn't make her printer work, which of course was my fault for selling her a faulty printer. I solved that for her by -- get this -- plugging one end of the parallel cable into the printer and the other end into computer. When she said "I guess you're going to bill me for THIS, too, aren't you?" enough was enough. I smiled sweetly and said, "Nope, this one's on me, with one catch. You have to get a new computer guy." Life's too short to spend it helping unnapreciative people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hooting_monkey Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 My mom once worked in a Walmart electronics section. A lady came up with a VCR. On the box it said "Video Cassette Recorder." She asked if it played the cassettes also. Annother time, a guy came in wondering what he should do with his slightly sticky keyboard. My mom told him to clean it off. The next day he angrily called back wondering why it wouldn't work after he cleaned it off in the tub. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffinator Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 I did 2 years at Best Buy doing the same thing. I finally started intimidating people in the store by showing them the backs of receivers, scrolling through the setup menus, etc, etc. Cured the problem in a hurry. Even the most stubborn cheapskates would break down once I started explaining the finer points of speaker positioning and compensation (using as much lingo as possible) and pay for installation. The irony is, the ones who were the most stubborn about buying install were inevitably also the ones who walked in with the absolute least knowledge. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ygmn Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 now that is funny...... It amazes me how much just comes as common sense to me....but others have no idea.... Like ya need to take speakers out of box...hook them up....for them to make sound hehehehe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boomer9911 Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 JZ01, glad to see I'm not alone, I work in audio\video part time and have done several setups for people HT wise I sold systems to. Unfortunately people think it's like the "old era" when you pressed power, play, volume you got action. A tip for you, after inital install(paid by hour), plus "1" freebie service call, your payin my friend. You'd rather "play" with the remote than "read" the manual so be it...your choice...be upfront....you do deserve to get paid for your time, it's not "your" system they bought....EVERYONE thinks you have to do it for free because they bought it from you, you just "steered" them in the right direction, sorry...my time is $$$$$$$... PS...hang up the phone, sorry we got cut off...you don't deserve BS... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Audio Flynn Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 there is a huge community of tripple dopey people out there. Still in the box; hard to beleive stuff is amazing. Real life is funnier than fiction. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 ---------------- On 7/23/2004 7:56:41 PM jzoz01 wrote: A story from work I think you'll find interesting: ---------------- That sounds like something for Tech Tales! Being in the computer field and once working part time at a local Babbage's as well as helping a couple of my friends get a computer repair/sales shop started, I know all to well these kinds of things. Still remember the one time when we had a lady come into my friend's computer shop complaining that Windows would not boot up. Upon inspection of the machine, found out the harddrive was nearly completely full, thus Windows did not have enough space to create its swap file and thus basically threw a fit. This was a brand new machine, that she has gotten only about a week prior, so we went to figure out what she did to fill the harddrive up so fast. Turned out that when she went to play this one game, she installed a new copy everytime, thinking that it "went away" when she got done playing! There was something like 30 copies of this game on her harddrive, each one in a different directory! We cleanup all of the copies accept the most recent one and very politely explained to her that once she installed the game, all she had to do was click the little icon and it'll start up again, although she did need to make sure the game CD was in the drive due to a copy protection issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike stehr Posted July 24, 2004 Share Posted July 24, 2004 A buddy of mine when he was a tech, had a guy call him and wanted to delete the windows program files so he could get more hardrive space. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted July 25, 2004 Share Posted July 25, 2004 I worked at ComputerLand back in the early / mid 80's. I had: People that folded a 5.25" disk in half so it would fit in the 3.5" slot on the Macintosh; People that got apoplectically mad at me when I explained that just because you had a printout of a document didn't mean you'd actually saved it someplace on the computer; People that insisted that they weren't going to buy anything unless I could insure them that it would still be state of the art in 4 or 5 years; People that couldn't believe I wouldn't just "throw in" the $4500 database program they wanted, cause it was just a few cheap diskettes; Mostly, though, what amazed me about retail was the large number of people who honestly believed that if I sold them a $5,000 system, my store made $5,000 in profit, like we grew these systems somewhere at no cost to us. You can't imagine how many people assume that when a store sells something for xyz dollars, the store pockets xyz profit. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skonopa Posted July 25, 2004 Share Posted July 25, 2004 ---------------- On 7/25/2004 12:39:18 AM Ray Garrison wrote: People that folded a 5.25" disk in half so it would fit in the 3.5" slot on the Macintosh; ---------------- Oh, I could do one better than that! While in college, I also did work as one of the lab assistants for the main computer lab on campus (hey a few free course credits plus some money on the side!). I've seen the "folded a 5.25-inch disk to fit a 3.5-inch drive" situation myself. However, we had one student that actually took a pair of scissors and trimmed a 5.25-inch disk to fit it in a 3.5-inch drive! He than had the nerve to get all pi$$y with us when he couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work. Fortunatly no situations where somebody try to insert a CD-ROM in a 5.25-inch drive since CD-ROM drives were not quite readily available at the time (late '80s, early '90s). Did have somebody that tried to insert a 3.5 into a 5.25 drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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