Customer brings back PC after a month and 6 days?

[silicon]

Not sure what to do about this situation.

Customer bought a Gateway AIO PC from me Sept 03. List price was $500 on Staples' website, I sold it for less than half of that. I acquired it from the store as a demo model, and I used it personally for a few months before I decided to sell it. The price was basically commensurate with the performance, it's not a high-performance machine, but compared to this customer's old Pentium 4 2.8Ghz box that they had asked me about installing Win7 on, it was about 3x the performance of that.

I'm just trying to figure out how to save this relationship with the client, and still try to profit from this transaction.

i would refund the matter as a gesture of good will because they can start to bad mouth you and your business quite easily. At least you will have the upper hand if they try anything else and you will have learned a valuable lesson about clients and their idiosyncrasies.

 

[crashtech]

I agree with the above. There have been times in my business where I have had to pay hundreds of dollars in excess of any anticipated profit just to remedy some situation that has gone bad. The reputation of my business and the satisfaction of my customers are first concerns, because in my philosophy they are the well from which all profits flow.

 

[crashtech]

I wonder whatever became of this? Larry, were you able to make them happy without losing your shirt?

 

[homebrew2ny]

It was a client and a friend, yes? Seems foolish to me NOT to refund the money.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I wonder whatever became of this? Larry, were you able to make them happy without losing your shirt?

I am trying. I offered them $200 credit towards another PC, and am trying to interest them in a custom-built G3258 rig. (That's actually $30 more than they paid, all things considered, but they started getting "imaginative" about what they remembered paying for the AIO.)

 

[corkyg]

That's what receipts are for. 🙂

 

[Blain]

You don't need this drama cluttering up your life.
Refund them, keep the PC and only do "service" work for them in the future...
NO hardware sales (to them).

 

[crashtech]

...they started getting "imaginative" about what they remembered paying for the AIO.)

What the heck... some friends you got there.

 

[aigomorla]

What the heck... some friends you got there.

seriously... that doesnt sound like a friend at all.

Reminds me of some college friends i had, that would drink all the beer at your table, and only chip in like 10 dollars, saying they barely drank anything.
(we don't invite those people anymore to social gatherings anymore)

personally i would of told them, straight up sorry.
They waited too long.

14 day return with 15% restocking fee.
I would of kindly let them know what they get is what i would get if i had to return the requested PC.

Oh and i do build PC's for friends, however i require them to buy the parts.
I learned the hard way never to buy the parts direct and resell, because prices fluctuate so much, they get mad if it went on sale a week after they bought it.

I will assemble, test, and install OS they provide.
I will never buy.

This has always kept me out of trouble.
This way if there is a fault in it, they can handle it, and its not on my end, especially with buyers remorse being the top.