Got a friend down in DC who's a contractor pulling out all sorts of salvage computers.We sort thru the stuff I pull the best stuff for sale on the net and the rest goes to a local Fleamarket where my friend has a guy working for him
the employee at the fleamarket gets 10% commision on whatever he sells and gets to keep any labor costs when folks want stuff rebuilt/configured.I was asked if I would occasionally helpout at the fleamarket and the other guy was told in front of me that I was in charge of the show and that he needed to keep in close communication with me as to sales,etc or if somebody asked for something that we didn't have on hand or any complicated build/install
incident number 1-guy comes in with an old system that employee had sold him,wanting his cash back because his kid couldn't play his games on it- turns out the rig had only a 500 mg hard drive- and the moron employee hadn't given him a license for the OS of course !I knew nothing about this sale.I was able to answer the guy's computer questions and was t able to build him another more powerful rig with bigger hd and of course full,legal OS, guy ended up spending more money but left very happy. My friend who was in town read the employee the riot act about the license issue but decided to left the cash issue pass for now because it wasn't a huge amount of money,the guy was on commision and the fleamarket thing is slow in summer.
2 weeks later, he asks me if I'd help out today,I said sure,as we were driving down I asked him about last weekend's sales-he tells me that he did one simple repair but no sales, I'm in the booth looking for tools and come across a sales slip for a 17 in monitor from last weekend, that's $55 of my friend's money,skimmed ... but it gets worse
A little old man comes in lugging a computer,one of ours, he's also holding a bare dvd drive which he bought from a competitor at HUGELY inflated prices... turns out the employee had sold this poor old guy a P200 mhz with 2 mgs onboard video,nic,cheap sound card,used 17 inch monitor for $400. Instead of calling me to get the guy a bigger hard drive and a hardware modem,this jerk decides to pocket the cash and sent this poor old man to a local place that charged him HUGE money for the hd and also nailed him for close to $130 for a bare dvd drive.
The employee installed Win98SE on the hd-without running the maxblast blast utility so the rig could only see 8 gig. He then takes the computer to the guys house,plugs it in and calls that "service" no modem,no internet the poor guy's sitting
there with a useless DVD drive
I get the computer here, flash the bios,run maxblast,reinstall the OS,put in more ram,a hardware modem and a 4 mg video card,before I knew the whole story I had told the old fellow that I'd install a modem for him,come to his home,help him configure his internet access and that the total bill would be $150-$200
After hearing the whole story I don't know what to do,on one hand I don't want to take further advantage of a nice old man who has probably paid close to $700 for this system thus far and had I been contacted initially he'd have a MUCH better computer.On the other hand,I didn't do this, I didn't overcharge,didn't screw up the hd configuration and spent the better part of my sat night fixing it and will undoublty have to go to this guy's house to get his web access configured.
My friend's going to deal with the employee(who I'd originally told he'd get some of the money I was to get paid before I knew what had gone down with this sale) but what do I do about the money thing for the onsite appointment coming up monday ? Instinct tells me to just do it for free and let the old guy know I wanted him to receive full value for what he'd alreasy spent-only problem is,he didn't spend any of it with me .
Help
the employee at the fleamarket gets 10% commision on whatever he sells and gets to keep any labor costs when folks want stuff rebuilt/configured.I was asked if I would occasionally helpout at the fleamarket and the other guy was told in front of me that I was in charge of the show and that he needed to keep in close communication with me as to sales,etc or if somebody asked for something that we didn't have on hand or any complicated build/install
incident number 1-guy comes in with an old system that employee had sold him,wanting his cash back because his kid couldn't play his games on it- turns out the rig had only a 500 mg hard drive- and the moron employee hadn't given him a license for the OS of course !I knew nothing about this sale.I was able to answer the guy's computer questions and was t able to build him another more powerful rig with bigger hd and of course full,legal OS, guy ended up spending more money but left very happy. My friend who was in town read the employee the riot act about the license issue but decided to left the cash issue pass for now because it wasn't a huge amount of money,the guy was on commision and the fleamarket thing is slow in summer.
2 weeks later, he asks me if I'd help out today,I said sure,as we were driving down I asked him about last weekend's sales-he tells me that he did one simple repair but no sales, I'm in the booth looking for tools and come across a sales slip for a 17 in monitor from last weekend, that's $55 of my friend's money,skimmed ... but it gets worse
A little old man comes in lugging a computer,one of ours, he's also holding a bare dvd drive which he bought from a competitor at HUGELY inflated prices... turns out the employee had sold this poor old guy a P200 mhz with 2 mgs onboard video,nic,cheap sound card,used 17 inch monitor for $400. Instead of calling me to get the guy a bigger hard drive and a hardware modem,this jerk decides to pocket the cash and sent this poor old man to a local place that charged him HUGE money for the hd and also nailed him for close to $130 for a bare dvd drive.
The employee installed Win98SE on the hd-without running the maxblast blast utility so the rig could only see 8 gig. He then takes the computer to the guys house,plugs it in and calls that "service" no modem,no internet the poor guy's sitting
there with a useless DVD drive
I get the computer here, flash the bios,run maxblast,reinstall the OS,put in more ram,a hardware modem and a 4 mg video card,before I knew the whole story I had told the old fellow that I'd install a modem for him,come to his home,help him configure his internet access and that the total bill would be $150-$200
After hearing the whole story I don't know what to do,on one hand I don't want to take further advantage of a nice old man who has probably paid close to $700 for this system thus far and had I been contacted initially he'd have a MUCH better computer.On the other hand,I didn't do this, I didn't overcharge,didn't screw up the hd configuration and spent the better part of my sat night fixing it and will undoublty have to go to this guy's house to get his web access configured.
My friend's going to deal with the employee(who I'd originally told he'd get some of the money I was to get paid before I knew what had gone down with this sale) but what do I do about the money thing for the onsite appointment coming up monday ? Instinct tells me to just do it for free and let the old guy know I wanted him to receive full value for what he'd alreasy spent-only problem is,he didn't spend any of it with me .
Help
Facebook
Twitter