Ted E's Computer Services

"[member name removed] has been a customer of mine since May of 2014. [member name removed] is very personable and would share about events and matters of life during and after onsite service visits at his home as well as phone calls made to me regarding his computer. He expressed to me that in addition to being his computer man, he also considered me a friend. During my last couple of visits to him, I shared about matters of my own personal life, while waiting for the computer to complete diagnostic and malware scans, and download software over the internet. We also continued our discussions after services were concluded before leaving his home. I was very careful to only charge him for time spent actually servicing his computer. After receiving [member name removed]’s complaint, I called him and apologized for mixing my personal life into our business relationship and the confusion and misunderstanding that created. I had no intention of taking advantage of [member name removed] and charging him unfairly. I have successfully been in business full time for over 12 years by serving my customers with honesty, integrity and fairness. Regarding his comment that I told him I don’t know anything about printers, I have always been committed to following up with him when phoning me with questions about using his computer and printer and so I am perplexed by his statement. The only thing I can think of to make some sense about it is that when he called one time wondering if his printer was broken, I told him that if there is some kind of problem electrically or mechanically with the printer I would not be able to correct the problem as I am not a printer repair tech. In good faith, I called [member name removed] and offered a full refund of my last charge to him for 2 hours of work. [member name removed] insisted that I charged him for a 5 hour visit and would like a refund on that. I have diligently checked my record of charges made to him over the past several months as well as check payments cleared through the bank and any credit card transactions and found that a charge was made to him in May for 3 onsite visits totaling 2.5 hours and on June 17 for an onsite visit of 2 hours. I see no indication of an individual charge made to him for a 5 hour visit and have requested that he show me his record of that. I really want to be fair to [member name removed] in handling this matter, and I would like for us to be on the same page regarding the charges made and proceed from there."

"I ran some basic hardware tests to begin with, and after determining that the computer was physically OK, I began to troubleshoot the operating system software. After checking the file system integrity, replacing the master boot record, boot sector, rebuilding the boot configuration and loading a backup of the system registry and critical system files, the operating system still refused to boot, indicating that the integrity of the system had degraded to a point where Windows would have to be reloaded. Running a virus scan on a system in this state is useful for informational purposes, however it usually does not repair the system file corruption preventing bootability, and thus results in time wasted (up to an hour). The customer did not have the operating system or hardware driver CDs for his computer, so I asked him if I could use his nearby laptop to download the drivers from the internet. I do carry my own laptop with me, it was more convenient and time efficient to utilize his laptop which was already on and configured on his network. Regarding the dust, customers usually don't have a problem with me using their vacuum cleaner to clean their desk area and computer. I asked the customer if he had a can of office duster handy (which I also carry in my car), I wasn't expecting him to get out an industrial air compressor from his garage. I always try my best to communicate the problem diagnosis and services performed for the customer in language that they can understand."