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A guy at the flea market tried to tell me his busted laptop just needed a 'quick solder'
He brought over this old Dell with a cracked hinge and a totally dead screen, saying he saw a video where someone fixed it in 'two minutes'. I opened it up right there on my folding table (in the rain, no less) and showed him the torn ribbon cable and broken plastic posts. He just kept pointing at a random capacitor saying 'that's the spot, right?' and offered me $20 to 'just heat it up'. Has anyone else dealt with customers who think every repair is a five-second YouTube fix?
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stone.sarah4d ago
Oh yeah the YouTube zealots are something else, I had a guy once insist I could fix a shattered tablet screen with "just a hair dryer and some glue" he saw in a video. He got kinda mad when I pulled out a magnifying glass to show him the spiderwebbed LCD underneath, like I was the one being unreasonable. The best part is they always think their 20 bucks is gonna buy them a miracle while you're standing there in the rain trying to explain basic physics.
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lane.kim1mo ago
Honestly that video tutorial mindset is the worst part of the job now. They see a sped up clip with upbeat music and think reality works the same way. Like sure, let me just magically weld plastic back together with a soldering iron, what could go wrong. The confidence while being completely wrong is almost impressive. You did the right thing showing him the actual broken parts, even if he was determined to ignore them. Some people just want the cheap fantasy fix, not the real repair.
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brianfox1mo ago
Yeah, the "cheap fantasy fix" part is spot on. They don't want to hear about the actual work or the cost of new parts. They just want that quick video magic to be real, so they can save twenty bucks and wonder why it breaks again in a week.
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