The day I spent 6 hours fixing a computer that just needed a new power cord

Last Tuesday I got a call from a small law office about a desktop that wouldn't turn on. Took me forever to diagnose the thing. I checked the motherboard, the power supply, the ram, even reseated the CPU. After four hours of swapping parts and testing voltages I decided to plug in a different power cord from my box. Fired right up. Turns out their cord had a tiny break inside the molding. Charged them $150 for the service call plus labor. Felt a little bad but also kinda justified since they got a full diagnostic anyway. Anyone else ever chase ghosts on a simple power issue?

2 comments

2 Comments

dakota78719d ago

Wait, $150 plus labor? You said it was a service call plus labor, so do you mean you charged them for the cord replacement too? lol That seems a bit much if you didn't actually fix anything besides swapping the power cord. But I get it, you still did the full diagnostic work and spent hours on it. Honestly I would have just charged for the service call and maybe a smaller fee for the diagnostic time, not the full labor rate since the fix itself took like 30 seconds once you found the issue. Still, I bet they were just happy to have their computers working again.

jessel3519d ago

Honestly, I think people are overthinking this whole thing. @dakota787, you're making it sound like they ripped the client off or something. It's $150 and labor, not a mortgage payment. The guy spent hours diagnosing the problem, that's the real work. Swapping the cord was just the last step. If they were happy to get their computers back, then who cares? Not every job has to be a charity case where you break down every penny. Seems like a fair deal to me.