this is a whole new approach to datamining... maybe a misunderstanding between the CFO and the CEO?
CFO: "Sir, we need to perform datamining to retrieve more information about the interests and needs of our customers..."
CEO: "Ah, you always one step behind me... I already bought the mine, now we are moving the datacenter over there..."
CFO: "That's not precisely what it means..."
CEO: "Zip it!, Less excuses and more productivity! c'mon move your ass"
well, i didn't mean "ideologically" neutral but in the rudeness...
And, as you said, yes, I value the real value of the money as it is, I don't have that social negative prejudgment of it.
anyway...
Damn man, you have a real issue with business and "evil money"
You must have suffered too much in that company, i see.
Are you saying that technicians should charge less than the minimum wage and get a sandwich for their job? or at least a minimum wage for a full qualified guaranteed service?
What kind of world are you living?
It is not being greedy, man. Money is not evil if it is not squeezed by abuse. If the customer gives you money with a smile thanking you and calls you again is a way to demonstrate that the customer is satisfied with your service or your product. It is wrong if you overprice or change the contract after it's been agreed or you can't fulfill the contract and specially knowing before hand that you were incapable of providing a solution. If you force people by deceit that is fraud, that is scam, that is abusing.
When customers comes to you by referrals, that is a sign that you are in the right path.
That was three years ago, now I don't want to come to the repairing business it is too stressful sometimes.
But you are still thinking of it as a hobby and you feel guilty for charging for something you think it should be free. You say that people are happy because you are fixing things for them for free. I would be happy too If I had to save 30 dollars from my pocket. But after that you mentioned another thing, that changed the "free repairs" thing completely, you were offering a "customer service". Your business is not based on fixing computers but offering other services. That is "customer care" and I am 100% with you with that. (but you must be thinking, damn you, you are always thinking in money, not in the "customer")
The objective of successful business is not making money but making customers to come again. And that is accomplished not by only reducing prices, but by offering a DISTINGUISHED SERVICE, QUALITY, HONESTY and a EFFICIENT job. But mainly by creating TRUST. The smile is the outcome of this, and it has to come from the customer side, not from you. And that has a ADDED VALUE, and people appreciate that. You are too fixed on the money thing, you are almost obsessed with it.
I can understand that you could had a very painful experience with greedy bossy bastards, but money is not evil itself.
MONEY IS A SIGN OF RECOGNITION OF YOUR JOB. Period. Anything else is just air and financial gibberish.
Unfortunately we are not living in a bartering system, we are under a capitalist system where we need money to literally survive.
You mentioned something about graves to me my friend. I am in the funeral business now, yes. And I gotta tell you, unfortunately the average casket costs 3 thousand dollars. Plus the embalming, makeup, permits, death certificates, funeral service, priest, hearse, pallbearers, flower car (if many flowers come), burial (or cremation), graveyard (or crematory), headstone or plaque, vault, it rounds up something between 15 to 50 thousand dollars, depending on the services you select.
Yes it sucks, you need money even to die decently. If you think that it is too expensive, you can choose a cardboard box that costs around 300 dollars (for cremation only).
If you can't even afford that, the hospital sends your body (bypassing the funeral home) to the morgue so medical students can play with your body or they send it to a common grave with no plaque with other ten people in the same pit.
So concluding, it even costs money to die. That is the reality where we live.
well, yup, but it seems that he really suffered in that company to react like that.
But i thought it was pretty clear the neutral tone of my response after the "wrong..." line.
I knew this would happen sooner or later. This had to happen when the clueless windows users begun using linux as a desktop system. It is just the migration of administrator accounts to root accounts.
Linux has been doomed from the single moment that its user interface and user friendliness became a priority. That was the main filter that kept clueless users away.
The stupid clueless mind is the main vulnerability of the systems. And now windows users invading the linux realms are going to say, "meh, linux has viruses just like us". NO!, you just brought the plague with you!
By the way your aggressive tone is totally uncalled for.
I am not overcharging, I am charging for my time. How hard is that to understand?
If the problem is solved in the first five minutes, no charge.
From five minutes to 3 hours, 60 dollars.
Usually it doesn't take longer than that. If does, I charged every 30 minutes of work.
Once the job was done, I offered a lifetime warranty, under very special conditions.
If they didn't accept the conditions, then only a week of "probation" and free repairs in that week.
Do you really think it is a ripoff? I think it is quite fair for me, and it keeps real trivial problems free for "the community".
We technicians, we provide a service. We provide a knowledge they don't know. We solve their problems. And you feel guilty for charging the time you spent to help them?
And having such options and services made me more valuable than any other technicians I have ever met.
Businesses and customers don't really need a smiling face, they need reliability no matter the price. And that is not squeezing the pig, that is reality.
No man, I excuse you as well.
And you and I are not really that far as it seems.
First point:
You hated me for being treated as trash by people who are completely clueless. Do you think I really like that? What kind of masochist do I have to be to enjoy being treated like shit? Especially by all kind of arrogant customers who think that they know everything about technology just because they read pcworld, cnet, find cracks in astalavista and download torrents from pirate bay.
Second point:
Your source of revenue is not pc repairing, it is service. That is a whole different story, you are offering customer support. In my case I offered only computer repairings. It would be completely brainless to offer a free repairing if it wasn't in my warranty period that I offered. But as you know I can't fix for free for problems that can happen for user negligence. And if you are so experienced you must know how does it feel that after a clean installation, a full update, application installing (for "free"), and security measures, they call you the next morning saying that the whole system is down. I went to see what was wrong, and what I missed (I was worried about the rpc dcom that was very wild those days) but I took all the safety measures available. They had the windows in Catalan. THE WHOLE WINDOWS IN CATALAN. And they were "oh, I never touched the computer". Yeah, sure, the whole windows in another language by itself and in a single night, right? So, under your principles, should I have made the new maintenance for "free"? When the customer obviously did something wrong but "doesn't remember".
I offered warranty and thanks god I never received complains. My time has a price, but my job is guaranteed. If I missed something in negligence, it was my fault and I do it again at no charge.
In your case, you don't care, you don't do it for a living. It is a complimentary job to keep your customers satisfied as an extra free service.
you said: "If I can walk in and out in under 15 minutes I tell the lady "No charge." How's that grab ya? Can't handle the fact that someone actually treats their customers with respect because I LIKE my customers and I care that they are happy with my service?"
No charge, of course no charge, that is not your business. You are comparing a quiet grandpa farmer with a nice apple tree in his land giving them away happily to their neighbors with a farmer who has to live selling apples.
There is no comparison at all.
It is not about simplicity, but about practicality.
And it is impractical as hell. Damn, I am already having cramps just for thinking about hardware problems.
Who said that brute forcing is complicated? it is the simplest and dumbest method in the world.
Trial-and-error, is simple as hell, but practical? hell no!
I am wondering how much do you charge for leaving a whole night running, coming twice, discard the possibility of a ram problem the next morning and keep diagnosing.
BIASED BIASED BIASED over hyped sensasionalist investigation. It is the first one I see and it will be the last one for sure. If you want cheap food, cook it by yourself. But don't blame the restaurant for charging ten times it cost, they have the chef, the assistant cooks, the produces, the rent, and the service provided by the waiter.
If you want cheap produces, have your own farm. But if you want to buy it, don't cry when you buy it with its added value at the grocery store. You have to pay the farmer, the logistics, transportation, the distributor, the wholesale supplier and the owner of the grocery store.
Then why on earth are you guys whining for a RAM that not only comes to your door, but it even gets installed in your machine for free. Are you pretending to have a in-house service at the cost price? Yeah, you know what? I can get it even cheaper in bulk and from a wholesale.
By the way, do you guys know, no probably not, that a hardware problem is a very tricky one and a fast diagnosis is: "Hardware problem", which one? unknown, but probably hard drive, why? because it is the most common one. And the customer doesn't need actually deeper knowledge, it just make them confused. They want things fixed, not a computer lesson. So the simplest answer for the simple mind: a virus. But in this case, it was clear that the hard drive wasn't the problem, in a quick overview you can tell that there is "something related" with the motherboard. Which means, cable connection problems, power supply, memory ram problems, video card. Even Sound cards and modems in very odd cases, as I HAD before personally. A deeper analisys (something very rare in-house service since it would require much more time) would eventually reveal a ram failure.
And actually, hard drive surface scan, backuping, repartitioning and reformatting is a very standard measure, cost effective, and solves even hidden problems not detected but potentially prone to fail in a future. This is a very professional standard procedure. That "professor" recommending a simple "reinstall" is just saying crap. Yes, she would do that because she knows exactly what happened, but a system failure is not something that happens everyday, and its potential causes can be from corrupted partition table, bad sectors (which means a dying hard drive), virus, corruption by spywares, etc... Repartitioning and Formatting is a huge umbrella that covers all those potential causes (which we don't really need to know). And by practical reasons that is what every self-respected experimented technician who values his time would do as a standard procedure.
Reporters, practicality and charging for added value is not unethical as far as I know.
Probably the guy who does all that is really worthy enough to not be called a clueless tech-wannabie assh0le. BUT, experimented techicians would:
If there is an instability: 1) Check hardware problem: Check Mother, ram, pins contacts and twisted pins (everywhere), power supply, temperature, hard drive bad sectors, partition table... 2) Software problem: Format! (backup files and reinstall, and backuping again the whole disk image once finished)
If there is a spyware problem: 1) Format! (backup files and reinstall, and backuping again the whole disk image once finished. I never saw anybody doing a imaging but that would be a great service.)
If there is a Virus problem, Idem Spyware solution
You made a terrible choice recommending ad-aware, it is not as efficient it was when it came to the market in the beginning, replacing grc's antispyware. Nowadays Ad-Aware sucks greatly, and I haven't found any reliable antispyware in the market yet. Only Webroot's is just decent, not good, decent. And for Antivirus the *ONLY* reliable two are *NOD32* and *Kaspersky*.
Then we need a very basic communist educational system: divide them. Make the gifted ones to be the most productive in the area that they are more confortable with. And make the laziest ones to be the most productive in the area they find interested. Both at their highest level of effective productivity.
If still there are unproductive ones in the education system, then send them to farms or to the army. No excuses. The teachers don't waste time, and the students don't waste time either.
factory job? Are you a teenager writing that?
It is as if they're preparing these kids for the rote factory jobs of yesterday instead of the knowledge-critical jobs of today
Lets see, what is the basic study program of a highschool? Maths, Natural Sciences, Physics, History, Art, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Accounting, English, foreign language. So, for you all those are "factory job" subjects, what would you replace then, programming and system architectures?
I think that being geek narrowed too much your vision of the world, to understand that this world still needs doctors, nurses, businessmen, lawyers, carpenters, butchers, farmers, cooks, artists, and yes, engineers and qualified workers working in a factory and logistics to provide yours produces all the way to your fridge. You know what? if there is a huge electromagnetic blast from the sun, penetrating the ionosphere and destroying every single electronic and electrical equipment on Earth, your IT skills will become quite useless.
You know what? The knowledge that the education system is trying to provide is not flawed. What it is not working is the didactics to keep them amused with learning.
Have you ever considered the moral and/or ethical reasons behind not charging someone for a service not fully rendered?
By they way who said that the service is not fully rendered? Obviously that would be unethical. I am not charging you for the time I failed repairing the computer, I charging you for diagnosing the problem and telling you if it will be hard or easy to fix it or inform you of its condition.
Diagnosing is a hell of a work my dear. Usually computer technicians for sake of practicality in repairs of home computers they claim that the PC has a terrible virus and a full reformatting and reinstalling is mandatory. Since you are knowledgeable of "repairing my own computer", have you ever tried to repair a computer infested with spyware? It took me 10 hours in the house of the customer to remove a single unknown undetected Korean hijacking spyware. Yes, a Korean spyware.
So What is more unethical? To wish a perfect and clean restoration saying that it is impossible a "cleaning" of it (advising a clean and cheaper reformatting), or saying the truth that nothing is impossible in the computer world by removing them by hand? Of course, nothing is impossible if you sweep the hole registry for awkward entries, but does your time and the final result worth it? Probably it will still be crippled for obscure corruptions in the operating system ('esoteric', I call them). And what if the customer chooses the "no, don't erase and redo everything just remove the virus" and a exaggerated prices comes because of the customer's naive choice? ("the customer is always right", doesn't quite apply here). You have no idea what a nightmare a clueless customer is for the technician. "I never touched that", we are used to hear thousands and millions of times.
Miss, our time is valuable and we have to make them sure to know that it is. And the only way they will value it is by establishing a price for it.
Diagnose, $x. Repairing, $xx.
Actually having a penalty fee for making repetitive dumb errors wouldn't be that bad at all...
No, miss, the reason that you will be going with the other guy is because he is cost-effective (cheaper), even in the case you know he is a little (it has to be just a little, not too much) less knowledgeable than someone who charges fully his time.
Wrong!, very wrong. You are clearly thinking like a technician, not a businessman. There is a golden rule in business: time is money.
It is nothing unethical to charge for the time that took you to diagnose the problem. Not charging the diagnose is actually a "free service" provided by technicians to attract customers, but not clearly it is not the normal thing.
Charging ridiculous amounts is unethical, but charging for the time it consumed YOU (whatever it was) is perfectly ok.
In the service business (private teacher, schools, colleges, sky diving lessons, transportation, whatever), whatever service that requires scheduling most of the times they charge you a time slot, if you don't come or come late, they don't refund you the money. In the Industrial/Goods Business, the product is money. In the Service Business, Time is money. Much more critically than the goods industry, since it is your only limited and not renewable "raw material" from which you can generate revenues.
lol! Customer: "er... sir, I wonder if you can help me, I have some problems starting up the computer..." BestBuyGuy: "Uh, oh, yeah, that is typically because the flux-capacitor is getting to the end of its lifetime. Bring your computer so we can fix it, unfortunately it will be quite pricey, you know, there aren't many flux-capacitors available...the replacement costs 500 dollars" Customer: "flux-capacitor? what is that?" BestBuyGuy: "It diverts the time/space continuum fabric in the harddrive delorian sector, you know. It usually goes in the back of the machine." Customer(trying to be funny): "damn!, that sounds like quantum 'continuum' physics, huh?, heh, heh... BestBuyGuy: "..." Customer (scratching his head embarrased): "...*ahem*, as you can see i am completely clueless... so how much was it?" BestBuyGuy: "700 dollars."
Now having the priorities at hand, I see everything much more clearly.
The 90% of the agents must be taking up the Priority 4:) ...and outsourcing the priority 10 to the 'geek squad'...
Slashdot Mirror
Sex with animals: zoophilia.
Sex with children: pedophilia.
Sex with corpses: necrophilia.
How would we call this new behavior?
Technophilia? that actually sounds cooler than depraving...
this is a whole new approach to datamining... maybe a misunderstanding between the CFO and the CEO? CFO: "Sir, we need to perform datamining to retrieve more information about the interests and needs of our customers..." CEO: "Ah, you always one step behind me... I already bought the mine, now we are moving the datacenter over there..." CFO: "That's not precisely what it means..." CEO: "Zip it!, Less excuses and more productivity! c'mon move your ass"
i am gonna order my anti tempest helmet now...
Ok people, now my question is, how do we guarantee the effective wipe of our data from this hard drives?
well, i didn't mean "ideologically" neutral but in the rudeness... And, as you said, yes, I value the real value of the money as it is, I don't have that social negative prejudgment of it. anyway...
Damn man, you have a real issue with business and "evil money" You must have suffered too much in that company, i see. Are you saying that technicians should charge less than the minimum wage and get a sandwich for their job? or at least a minimum wage for a full qualified guaranteed service? What kind of world are you living? It is not being greedy, man. Money is not evil if it is not squeezed by abuse. If the customer gives you money with a smile thanking you and calls you again is a way to demonstrate that the customer is satisfied with your service or your product. It is wrong if you overprice or change the contract after it's been agreed or you can't fulfill the contract and specially knowing before hand that you were incapable of providing a solution. If you force people by deceit that is fraud, that is scam, that is abusing. When customers comes to you by referrals, that is a sign that you are in the right path. That was three years ago, now I don't want to come to the repairing business it is too stressful sometimes. But you are still thinking of it as a hobby and you feel guilty for charging for something you think it should be free. You say that people are happy because you are fixing things for them for free. I would be happy too If I had to save 30 dollars from my pocket. But after that you mentioned another thing, that changed the "free repairs" thing completely, you were offering a "customer service". Your business is not based on fixing computers but offering other services. That is "customer care" and I am 100% with you with that. (but you must be thinking, damn you, you are always thinking in money, not in the "customer") The objective of successful business is not making money but making customers to come again. And that is accomplished not by only reducing prices, but by offering a DISTINGUISHED SERVICE, QUALITY, HONESTY and a EFFICIENT job. But mainly by creating TRUST. The smile is the outcome of this, and it has to come from the customer side, not from you. And that has a ADDED VALUE, and people appreciate that. You are too fixed on the money thing, you are almost obsessed with it. I can understand that you could had a very painful experience with greedy bossy bastards, but money is not evil itself. MONEY IS A SIGN OF RECOGNITION OF YOUR JOB. Period. Anything else is just air and financial gibberish. Unfortunately we are not living in a bartering system, we are under a capitalist system where we need money to literally survive. You mentioned something about graves to me my friend. I am in the funeral business now, yes. And I gotta tell you, unfortunately the average casket costs 3 thousand dollars. Plus the embalming, makeup, permits, death certificates, funeral service, priest, hearse, pallbearers, flower car (if many flowers come), burial (or cremation), graveyard (or crematory), headstone or plaque, vault, it rounds up something between 15 to 50 thousand dollars, depending on the services you select. Yes it sucks, you need money even to die decently. If you think that it is too expensive, you can choose a cardboard box that costs around 300 dollars (for cremation only). If you can't even afford that, the hospital sends your body (bypassing the funeral home) to the morgue so medical students can play with your body or they send it to a common grave with no plaque with other ten people in the same pit. So concluding, it even costs money to die. That is the reality where we live.
well, yup, but it seems that he really suffered in that company to react like that. But i thought it was pretty clear the neutral tone of my response after the "wrong..." line.
I knew this would happen sooner or later.
This had to happen when the clueless windows users begun using linux as a desktop system.
It is just the migration of administrator accounts to root accounts.
Linux has been doomed from the single moment that its user interface and user friendliness became a priority.
That was the main filter that kept clueless users away.
The stupid clueless mind is the main vulnerability of the systems.
And now windows users invading the linux realms are going to say, "meh, linux has viruses just like us". NO!, you just brought the plague with you!
By the way your aggressive tone is totally uncalled for. I am not overcharging, I am charging for my time. How hard is that to understand? If the problem is solved in the first five minutes, no charge. From five minutes to 3 hours, 60 dollars. Usually it doesn't take longer than that. If does, I charged every 30 minutes of work. Once the job was done, I offered a lifetime warranty, under very special conditions. If they didn't accept the conditions, then only a week of "probation" and free repairs in that week. Do you really think it is a ripoff? I think it is quite fair for me, and it keeps real trivial problems free for "the community". We technicians, we provide a service. We provide a knowledge they don't know. We solve their problems. And you feel guilty for charging the time you spent to help them? And having such options and services made me more valuable than any other technicians I have ever met. Businesses and customers don't really need a smiling face, they need reliability no matter the price. And that is not squeezing the pig, that is reality.
No man, I excuse you as well. And you and I are not really that far as it seems. First point: You hated me for being treated as trash by people who are completely clueless. Do you think I really like that? What kind of masochist do I have to be to enjoy being treated like shit? Especially by all kind of arrogant customers who think that they know everything about technology just because they read pcworld, cnet, find cracks in astalavista and download torrents from pirate bay. Second point: Your source of revenue is not pc repairing, it is service. That is a whole different story, you are offering customer support. In my case I offered only computer repairings. It would be completely brainless to offer a free repairing if it wasn't in my warranty period that I offered. But as you know I can't fix for free for problems that can happen for user negligence. And if you are so experienced you must know how does it feel that after a clean installation, a full update, application installing (for "free"), and security measures, they call you the next morning saying that the whole system is down. I went to see what was wrong, and what I missed (I was worried about the rpc dcom that was very wild those days) but I took all the safety measures available. They had the windows in Catalan. THE WHOLE WINDOWS IN CATALAN. And they were "oh, I never touched the computer". Yeah, sure, the whole windows in another language by itself and in a single night, right? So, under your principles, should I have made the new maintenance for "free"? When the customer obviously did something wrong but "doesn't remember". I offered warranty and thanks god I never received complains. My time has a price, but my job is guaranteed. If I missed something in negligence, it was my fault and I do it again at no charge. In your case, you don't care, you don't do it for a living. It is a complimentary job to keep your customers satisfied as an extra free service. you said: "If I can walk in and out in under 15 minutes I tell the lady "No charge." How's that grab ya? Can't handle the fact that someone actually treats their customers with respect because I LIKE my customers and I care that they are happy with my service?" No charge, of course no charge, that is not your business. You are comparing a quiet grandpa farmer with a nice apple tree in his land giving them away happily to their neighbors with a farmer who has to live selling apples. There is no comparison at all.
It is not about simplicity, but about practicality. And it is impractical as hell. Damn, I am already having cramps just for thinking about hardware problems. Who said that brute forcing is complicated? it is the simplest and dumbest method in the world. Trial-and-error, is simple as hell, but practical? hell no!
I am wondering how much do you charge for leaving a whole night running, coming twice, discard the possibility of a ram problem the next morning and keep diagnosing.
To the producers and reporters:
BIASED BIASED BIASED over hyped sensasionalist investigation.
It is the first one I see and it will be the last one for sure.
If you want cheap food, cook it by yourself. But don't blame the restaurant for charging ten times it cost, they have the chef, the assistant cooks, the produces, the rent, and the service provided by the waiter.
If you want cheap produces, have your own farm. But if you want to buy it, don't cry when you buy it with its added value at the grocery store. You have to pay the farmer, the logistics, transportation, the distributor, the wholesale supplier and the owner of the grocery store.
Then why on earth are you guys whining for a RAM that not only comes to your door, but it even gets installed in your machine for free. Are you pretending to have a in-house service at the cost price? Yeah, you know what? I can get it even cheaper in bulk and from a wholesale.
By the way, do you guys know, no probably not, that a hardware problem is a very tricky one and a fast diagnosis is: "Hardware problem", which one? unknown, but probably hard drive, why? because it is the most common one. And the customer doesn't need actually deeper knowledge, it just make them confused. They want things fixed, not a computer lesson. So the simplest answer for the simple mind: a virus.
But in this case, it was clear that the hard drive wasn't the problem, in a quick overview you can tell that there is "something related" with the motherboard. Which means, cable connection problems, power supply, memory ram problems, video card. Even Sound cards and modems in very odd cases, as I HAD before personally. A deeper analisys (something very rare in-house service since it would require much more time) would eventually reveal a ram failure.
And actually, hard drive surface scan, backuping, repartitioning and reformatting is a very standard measure, cost effective, and solves even hidden problems not detected but potentially prone to fail in a future.
This is a very professional standard procedure.
That "professor" recommending a simple "reinstall" is just saying crap. Yes, she would do that because she knows exactly what happened, but a system failure is not something that happens everyday, and its potential causes can be from corrupted partition table, bad sectors (which means a dying hard drive), virus, corruption by spywares, etc...
Repartitioning and Formatting is a huge umbrella that covers all those potential causes (which we don't really need to know). And by practical reasons that is what every self-respected experimented technician who values his time would do as a standard procedure.
Reporters, practicality and charging for added value is not unethical as far as I know.
Probably the guy who does all that is really worthy enough to not be called a clueless tech-wannabie assh0le.
BUT, experimented techicians would:
If there is an instability:
1) Check hardware problem: Check Mother, ram, pins contacts and twisted pins (everywhere), power supply, temperature, hard drive bad sectors, partition table...
2) Software problem: Format! (backup files and reinstall, and backuping again the whole disk image once finished)
If there is a spyware problem:
1) Format! (backup files and reinstall, and backuping again the whole disk image once finished. I never saw anybody doing a imaging but that would be a great service.)
If there is a Virus problem,
Idem Spyware solution
You made a terrible choice recommending ad-aware, it is not as efficient it was when it came to the market in the beginning, replacing grc's antispyware.
Nowadays Ad-Aware sucks greatly, and I haven't found any reliable antispyware in the market yet.
Only Webroot's is just decent, not good, decent.
And for Antivirus the *ONLY* reliable two are *NOD32* and *Kaspersky*.
Then we need a very basic communist educational system: divide them.
Make the gifted ones to be the most productive in the area that they are more confortable with.
And make the laziest ones to be the most productive in the area they find interested.
Both at their highest level of effective productivity.
If still there are unproductive ones in the education system, then send them to farms or to the army. No excuses.
The teachers don't waste time, and the students don't waste time either.
Lets see, what is the basic study program of a highschool? Maths, Natural Sciences, Physics, History, Art, Geography, Chemistry, Biology, Accounting, English, foreign language. So, for you all those are "factory job" subjects, what would you replace then, programming and system architectures?
I think that being geek narrowed too much your vision of the world, to understand that this world still needs doctors, nurses, businessmen, lawyers, carpenters, butchers, farmers, cooks, artists, and yes, engineers and qualified workers working in a factory and logistics to provide yours produces all the way to your fridge. You know what? if there is a huge electromagnetic blast from the sun, penetrating the ionosphere and destroying every single electronic and electrical equipment on Earth, your IT skills will become quite useless.
You know what? The knowledge that the education system is trying to provide is not flawed. What it is not working is the didactics to keep them amused with learning.
And even in that case many idiots still don't get it.
...it was again about us crossing the frontier to California...
I was like, holy madre de Dios, wtf?
By they way who said that the service is not fully rendered? Obviously that would be unethical. I am not charging you for the time I failed repairing the computer, I charging you for diagnosing the problem and telling you if it will be hard or easy to fix it or inform you of its condition.
Diagnosing is a hell of a work my dear. Usually computer technicians for sake of practicality in repairs of home computers they claim that the PC has a terrible virus and a full reformatting and reinstalling is mandatory. Since you are knowledgeable of "repairing my own computer", have you ever tried to repair a computer infested with spyware? It took me 10 hours in the house of the customer to remove a single unknown undetected Korean hijacking spyware. Yes, a Korean spyware.
So What is more unethical? To wish a perfect and clean restoration saying that it is impossible a "cleaning" of it (advising a clean and cheaper reformatting), or saying the truth that nothing is impossible in the computer world by removing them by hand? Of course, nothing is impossible if you sweep the hole registry for awkward entries, but does your time and the final result worth it? Probably it will still be crippled for obscure corruptions in the operating system ('esoteric', I call them). And what if the customer chooses the "no, don't erase and redo everything just remove the virus" and a exaggerated prices comes because of the customer's naive choice? ("the customer is always right", doesn't quite apply here). You have no idea what a nightmare a clueless customer is for the technician. "I never touched that", we are used to hear thousands and millions of times.
Miss, our time is valuable and we have to make them sure to know that it is. And the only way they will value it is by establishing a price for it.
Diagnose, $x. Repairing, $xx.
Actually having a penalty fee for making repetitive dumb errors wouldn't be that bad at all...
No, miss, the reason that you will be going with the other guy is because he is cost-effective (cheaper), even in the case you know he is a little (it has to be just a little, not too much) less knowledgeable than someone who charges fully his time.
All I can say is that my past experience with a big cooperation within IT, you are bullshitting. But that is all I can really say about it.
Wrong!, very wrong. You are clearly thinking like a technician, not a businessman.
There is a golden rule in business: time is money.
It is nothing unethical to charge for the time that took you to diagnose the problem.
Not charging the diagnose is actually a "free service" provided by technicians to attract customers, but not clearly it is not the normal thing.
Charging ridiculous amounts is unethical, but charging for the time it consumed YOU (whatever it was) is perfectly ok.
In the service business (private teacher, schools, colleges, sky diving lessons, transportation, whatever), whatever service that requires scheduling most of the times they charge you a time slot, if you don't come or come late, they don't refund you the money.
In the Industrial/Goods Business, the product is money.
In the Service Business, Time is money. Much more critically than the goods industry, since it is your only limited and not renewable "raw material" from which you can generate revenues.
Charge for your time.
lol! ..the replacement costs 500 dollars"
Customer: "er... sir, I wonder if you can help me, I have some problems starting up the computer..."
BestBuyGuy: "Uh, oh, yeah, that is typically because the flux-capacitor is getting to the end of its lifetime. Bring your computer so we can fix it, unfortunately it will be quite pricey, you know, there aren't many flux-capacitors available.
Customer: "flux-capacitor? what is that?"
BestBuyGuy: "It diverts the time/space continuum fabric in the harddrive delorian sector, you know. It usually goes in the back of the machine."
Customer(trying to be funny): "damn!, that sounds like quantum 'continuum' physics, huh?, heh, heh...
BestBuyGuy: "..."
Customer (scratching his head embarrased): "...*ahem*, as you can see i am completely clueless... so how much was it?"
BestBuyGuy: "700 dollars."
...the government?
Now having the priorities at hand, I see everything much more clearly. :)
...and outsourcing the priority 10 to the 'geek squad'...
The 90% of the agents must be taking up the Priority 4