...With friends like these.

[burntheland]

So this is kind of an entertaining story.

A friend of mine that I play guitar with was talking to me about his refurb xbox 360 and how it had crapped out on him. I had never repaired an xbox before, but I do IT repair for a living. So I told him to bring it over and I would take a look.

Four months later he calls me and says he's in a rush and asks if he can drop off his guitar at my house. I comply. He shows up about forty minutes later with his guitar in hard case, and a big chrome box with a handle. I imagined it was recording equipment...or maybe some sort of hard case for a sidekick amp (although I have never seen that done)

Two months later he asks if I have ever fixed his xbox......
I explained that he had never brought it over and he said I've had it for two months and it was in the box.

He sounded agitated at this point so I explained to him that he didn't let me know that's what was in the box and I'm not in the neighborhood of nosing through other people's things. Especially my friends. He calms down and I tell him I'll look at it in the next few days.

Problem turned out to be the three red rings caused by the thermal paste issue. Easy fix. After the repair I played Halo 3 on it for a few hours to ensure it was indeed fixed. Then I proceed to call him and let him know that it was repaired and he could come pick it up free of charge via friend credit.

3.5 weeks later I called him again, "Hey man, you ever going to come get your xbox? It's sitting in the back seat of my car."
"Yeah brah, be right over."

Prior to all this I had tried to talk him into letting me mod his box because well it's fun. Obviously I was going to make him pay for parts and my associate and I were just going to charge him like 40 bucks for the labor. Which we can all agree is next to nothing.

He comes over. Get's the xbox, takes it home, plugs in power....and calls me to bitc* about how it now has 4 rings! He is outraged!!!! He's so glad he didn't invest any money in it!!!!!!! He's so mad he decided to take it to a local repair shop! (meanwhile i'm googling "4 red rings error xbox" at home) He gets to the repair shop, drops it off and I call him back....

"Hey man, 4 rings in an AV cable error. Are you sure you had it plugged in? Because I played on it for like three hours and it worked fine. Perhaps your cable is shorted internally and you just need a new one?"

He goes on to explain that he didn't think that it needed to be plugged in just to power up and see the green lights. I explain that is exactly what that specific error is for. So he turns the car around....

When he gets back to the repair shop the guy has it taken apart. My friend explains to the guy that it actually works and he brought it in by mistake. The disgruntled gent behind the counter starts to put it back together and tells my friend that will cost him fifty dollars since he's been working on it for almost an hour already! Repaired or not!

They argue for a while and then my friend winds up paying the guy to get his xbox back (which DID work just fine)

The moral of the story?

Be kind and have patience with people who have professional training. If there is a lack of communication, it's most likely because you left something out. Frustration will just get your wallet raped by a fat hairy guy in a wife beater with mustard stains! lol

(not to offend any fat hairy guys with mustard stains....as I am fat, hairy, and love mustard.)

I do wish I would have charged the guy though. What a dip sh*t, seriousely.

[artoodeeto]

Hear hear! I used to work in a computer store and heard all kinds of stories of idiotic customers. I hate people that make a mistake and then assume that it's your fault and won't listen when you try and explain it's something they did that can easily be fixed.
I once had a guy, helped him build a computer, huge sale for me, and I kept emphasizing that I'd been building my own for years, it wasn't tough at all. Spent hours of my workday with him. He brought it all back the next day because, if I recall correctly, one of the prewired connections to the front panel of the case didn't seem to fit quite right. Something like that...something that should have been a very easy fix, and he refused to listen. :facepalm: it's amazing how many folks out there aren't willing to put in even a little tiny bit of time to thinking and troubleshooting a problem...course, I guess IT people would have a lot less work to do in that case LOL :D

[burntheland]

true that! lol.......problem solving skills really do start at step .01.....is it plugged in? lmao!

[x88x]

"Yeah brah, be right over."

Well there's your problem. ;)


Seriously though, definitely agreed. It's amazing how little most people are willing to think about something not explicitly defined in their job description...


it's amazing how many folks out there aren't willing to put in even a little tiny bit of time to thinking and troubleshooting a problem...course, I guess IT people would have a lot less work to do in that case LOL :D
Shhh, it's called 'job security'. :P


true that! lol.......problem solving skills really do start at step .01.....is it plugged in? lmao!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smAQZL3Uz2Y

[burntheland]

LMFAO! sexy red head too!

[Twigsoffury]

Hotbox 360 has one of the worst cooling solutions i've ever seen.

Should of used a slim DVD-rom to make enough room for actually actively cooled heatsink

Whats up with the repair guy not turning it on and seeing it work first?

hell thats the first thing i always do is hook it up and see what it does.

1/4 of the time its something stupid and completely obvious.


Should of seen the guy that brought his computer in after "forcing" SD ram into a DDR slot hahahahahhahahahha. yes SD ram does fit in a DDR slot if you try hard enough apparently.

[burntheland]

I know....the masses are retarded.

[x88x]

Should of seen the guy that brought his computer in after "forcing" SD ram into a DDR slot hahahahahhahahahha. yes SD ram does fit in a DDR slot if you try hard enough apparently.

My favorite was a guy who tried to put in a new stick of RAM while the computer was running...it was the right kind, but he only got it halfway in because as it entered the slot, about half the pins made contact...and instantly were welded in place.. :facepalm:

[burntheland]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.....it's recommended you disconnect from power before changing hardware sir. lol

[diluzio91]

lmfao.... sounds like when my stepdad was target booting his laptop to an esata hdd with linux... he unplugged it and the laptop mysteriously stopped working...

[burntheland]

lol! step .01

never fails

[diluzio91]

lol! step .01

never fails

that being said... theres a large difference between old people and... as red forman would say.... Dumb A**es

[slaveofconvention]

Sometimes they don't even need to listen - just read what's on the damned screen. I just got around to looking at a PC i've had in for repair for a couple of days (customer said she didn't want it back until Friday so I'm not slacking that much).

I built this PC about 18 months ago and just happened to run into her in the street and she said "I've been meaning to call you, the PC you built isn't working - I haven't been able to get it to boot up for the last couple of months...." Yup, MONTHS - this PC hasn't worked since christmas!

I turned it on, let it start up - up came the menu you get when XP hasn't booted last time and I chose - normal so I could see what the issue was... and it hung on the main XP loading screen, so I reset it and chose "last good configuration which worked" and, it's now 100% fine - boots and shuts down without problem....

Question is, now I have to decide how much to charge her for about 1 min 45 seconds labour :p

As it happens, and while it was on, I ran a gamut of AV, spyware and malware scans to see if there was anything else wrong, along with a couple OCCT and Memtest cycles - PC is absolutely fine :p

[artoodeeto]

ha! I love it.

I *do* have play devil's advocate though: somewhat in people's defense, most people's issues are due to not knowing enough about how their computer works. For people like us the basic stuff isn't hard, but we like tinkering. For other people like my younger sister, they just want to turn it on and have it work, and if it doesn't, then pay someone else to spend the time fixing it.

I'm sure if the client had had any clue what she was looking at, or had any idea it was a potentially quick fix, she would have gone to Last Known Good. But my guess is she saw that menu and since it's not normal, the eyes (and brain) glazed over, and she really didn't look at it. There's a lot of people like that out there. And really, I suppose it's better than the bozos who *think* they know what they're doing and screw it up even more trying to fix it. I can talk, I used to be in that category. Course, I also almost never dumped my worsening problem on someone else, I always solved it myself. Never met a computer problem I couldn't at least buy my way out of LOL :D

It's like oil changes in my car - I know they're not hard to do, but I'd rather pay someone else $20 to do it than spend the time and energy doing it myself. So yeah, I can see it from both sides. But there are plenty of times when it blows my mind how many people don't realize that a few minutes of research can yield a fix to their issue...

[Trace]

Yeah. My aunt used to always change her own oil in her cars, when she was young and couldn't afford it. Now, she has a good job and doesn't feel like doing it, so she takes it in. Some computer users are the same way.

[mDust]

Some computer users are the same way.

Lazy? lol, yeah, they are. I change my own oil because I can do it faster, cheaper, and, most importantly, I know it's done right. I'll also be replacing all 4 struts, the outer tie rod ends, and a broken sway bar on my car when the parts get here. It's ridiculous how easy it is to do stuff like this. Most people would rather pay for someone else to do 'it', no matter what or how easy 'it' is. The only way I can see this justified is if you have too much money and can't figure out what to spend it on...after all, the pool isn't going to lounge next to itself while sipping drinks...
It's been my experience that most people have extremely shallow thought processes...or maybe it's 'tunnel-vision' for thoughts. For those of us who attempt to solve our own problems: With billions of us online, many people have had the exact same problem, regardless of what it may be, and have posted a solution on the internet! Google can teach us anything...

[x88x]

I always prefer to do my own car work as well, but when you live in an apartment complex with annoying (but understandable) rules about what you can and cannot do in the parking lot, sometimes it's not really feasible. Any work I do myself these days has to either not require much space or disassembly, or be able to be completed in a weekend (at my parents house). Unfortunately, nobody seems to rent out small apartments with garages...I can't imagine why.. :P

[artoodeeto]

I always prefer to do my own car work as well, but when you live in an apartment complex with annoying (but understandable) rules about what you can and cannot do in the parking lot, sometimes it's not really feasible. Any work I do myself these days has to either not require much space or disassembly, or be able to be completed in a weekend (at my parents house). Unfortunately, nobody seems to rent out small apartments with garages...I can't imagine why.. :P

That's actually a good point - I too am in an apartment and am lucky I'm allowed to wash my car in the lot (they have a separate spot for that but my last apartment didn't allow it at all), so I definitely can't do my own oil changes. Really what it comes down to is needing to have someone show me how the first time so I don't screw it up. Once I've done it once, I'm good and will prefer to do it myself. But I've also had bad experiences buying my own car parts, getting substandard parts unknowingly, that sort of thing, and not always getting my money back, and then still having to fork over $$ to have a shop do it right...I'm understandably a little leery of doing car work on my own without a knowledgable person to walk me through it at least the first time. And I'm sure a lot of computer users are like that too. course, at work the overwhelming majority aren't the slightest bit interested in solving their own problems (I'm sorta the mini-backup IT, at least for basic issues).

[Luke122]

That's actually a good point - I too am in an apartment and am lucky I'm allowed to wash my car in the lot (they have a separate spot for that but my last apartment didn't allow it at all), so I definitely can't do my own oil changes.

I have friends who own homes, with garages. It's a good trade to help them with their vehicle maintenance so you can do your own in their garage. :D

[mDust]

...I'm understandably a little leery of doing car work on my own without a knowledgable person to walk me through it at least the first time. And I'm sure a lot of computer users are like that too. course, at work the overwhelming majority aren't the slightest bit interested in solving their own problems (I'm sorta the mini-backup IT, at least for basic issues).
As for the car work, eHow.com or similar sites have videos you can watch on just about any topic. Here (http://www.ehow.com/video_11_change-motor-oil.html)is a video on how to change your oil. Watch it, then examine your car and find the oil fill-port, dipstick, oil filter, and drain plug before you start. Take the used oil to AutoZone or a similar store that disposes of oil. If you have any questions, make a new chatterbox thread and I'm sure you'll get a bunch of replies.

And I'm not sure if the problem is people not 'being interested' in solving their own problems as much as it is them lacking critical thinking skills. Nobody wants to look stupid when someone else solves the problem for them by basically doing nothing, but it happens all the time. It's my theory that they simply can't concentrate on what the problem is and imagine possible solutions at the same time...so they just sit there and do nothing or try the same non-solution repeatedly.

[x88x]

And I'm not sure if the problem is people not 'being interested' in solving their own problems as much as it is them lacking critical thinking skills.

Nope, it's that they're not interested (at least in my experience that's more common). For example, two of the guys I work with just could not understand why on earth I would want to do my own car work. ..granted, neither of them has any knowledge or experience in the subject, so that might have something to do with it..

[artoodeeto]

Nope, it's that they're not interested (at least in my experience that's more common). For example, two of the guys I work with just could not understand why on earth I would want to do my own car work. ..granted, neither of them has any knowledge or experience in the subject, so that might have something to do with it..

I agree. People like my mom are very intelligent, but she's not the slightest bit interested in how computers work, and so will never be able to solve any but the most basic of issues due to a complete lack of desire to learn enough about how it works to troubleshoot it. For her, it's faster and easier to have someone else do it. To a certain extent too, how people think is important. I know I'm pretty good at problem solving, envisioning things in my head before I build them, etc (all of which come in handy while modding), but many people just don't think that way. I wouldn't necessarily fault them for it...although mdust has a good point - a LOT of people feel like they look dumb when someone else comes along and fixes the problem in under a minute. The only thing that makes them dumb is putting up with a problem solely for that reason...
And of course there are chronic assistance-abusers, you know the type. They seem completely unable to think for themselves and come running to you for solutions to every single problem. And they seem to have an inordinate amount of them too. I used to work with someone like that, and it was horrible. She finally got let go, but while she was a coworker she consistently amazed me with her complete lack of critical thinking capacity.

[dr.walrus]

I've got a friend who I've just replaced their laptop hard drive and re-installed windows for - I charged them the cost of the drive plus a bottle of wine. I've had exams and a two hour job has taken 6 weeks and they haven't complained once. They've asked me about it two or three times but never been pushy because they understand it's for free, even though it's started to become an inconvenience.

That's how people SHOULD be if you do them a favour :)