Rights of a repair technician

advent1122

scullster wrote: »

Her word against yours

Word of mouth is VERY damaging to a small business.
You remember bad service for ages and tell everyone about the guy who scratched the monitor and will not put it right.
Personally, whether she is trying it on or not, I would suck it up and replace it.
Then put it down to experience.
After all, you did cause damage that wasn't there when the customer brought the item in.

Imagine the responses you would be getting if this was PCWorld who had scratched a customers monitor?
The words trading standards would have benn mentioned by post 4.

ihatecaptcha

simplemind wrote: »

After about 20 minutes she called me on the phone and said that the monitor was totally broken now and you would have replace it or she would get it repaired somewhere and I’d have to pay for it. I know that the monitor had the same fault when she took it back because I tested it and only thing different was it had a few scratch marks.

Make her a reasonable offer of compensation for the value of the monitor as it was when she brought it to you for repair (which presumably would not be much)
Put it in writing and send it by recorded delivery.

If she refuses the offer, and actually does take you to court, you will be on strong ground for defending the case, since you will have acted reasonably. And if it comes to a court you will have the right to know, for example, if she had tried previously to get the monitor repaired.

As for word of mouth, if she's genuinely aggrieved, your reasonable offers should appease her. If she's just trying it on (as it sounds), there's nothing you can do to prevent her badmouthing you.

Get t&c in place.

Kilty_2

If she hasn't even pointed out the scratch marks I'd say apologising for them would just make her try and fight you even harder by saying "not only does it not work but you've scratched it too!"

ihatecaptcha

Kilty wrote: »

If she hasn't even pointed out the scratch marks I'd say apologising for them would just make her try and fight you even harder by saying "not only does it not work but you've scratched it too!"

True. Thanks for pointing that out.

gnaril

Thought I would give my views as some others have.

Tell her to take a run and a jump. You have in my eyes done everything that you can in regards to the circumstances. Oh what there is a few scratches in which you have tried to repair her broken item, what docs a scratch cost in terms of cosmetic value on an item that is broken.........

I appreciate word of mouth and bad comments is not good for small businesses however I would now bow down to this woman, You have covered yourself in the respect that you have told her to bring it back in to show the same faulty as before. And really for the niggly screws etc you would expect a tiny bit scoring where it is getting taken apart,

I hope this works out ok for you.

pinkshoes

She brought in a monitor that wouldn't stay on (so no use), with a case that couldn't be opened.

Now that you've "broken" her item, it's only fair that you compensate her.

A broken screen that can't be opened to be fixed... now, what's that worth? 50p? £2?

I think she's pushing her luck.

At best you would be expected to replace it with a like for like item i.e. a monitor that doesn't stay on and you can't open to fix!

Freddie_Snowbits

Question. 1 Are you authorised, by raising an ivoice to carry out the repair, without the correct manuals in place.

If not, you should had refused the job, like say NO, and advised the customer that it would be easier to buy a new item.

Just remember, the customer is not always right.

simplemind_2

Thank you all guys for your valuable comments.

dmg24 wrote: »

Terms and conditions are not a legal requirement, however in their absence, a small claims judge would be likely to give more benefit to the claimant than yourself as a business.

You should have advised the customer of the possibility of scratching before you attempted to open the case. Whilst it may not affect the working of the item, you did cause cosmetic damage to the item.

I agree, should've advised her.

ihatecaptcha wrote: »

Make her a reasonable offer of compensation for the value of the monitor as it was when she brought it to you for repair (which presumably would not be much)
Put it in writing and send it by recorded delivery.

If she refuses the offer, and actually does take you to court, you will be on strong ground for defending the case, since you will have acted reasonably. And if it comes to a court you will have the right to know, for example, if she had tried previously to get the monitor repaired.

As for word of mouth, if she's genuinely aggrieved, your reasonable offers should appease her. If she's just trying it on (as it sounds), there's nothing you can do to prevent her badmouthing you.

Get t&c in place.

I was thinking along the same line, replace her monitor with a 2nd-hand monitor and try to fix her broken one for myself and if the casing breaks then it won't matter and I will have learnt something.
Any pointer for a t&c for repair work?

advent1122 wrote: »

Word of mouth is VERY damaging to a small business.
You remember bad service for ages and tell everyone about the guy who scratched the monitor and will not put it right.
Personally, whether she is trying it on or not, I would suck it up and replace it.
Then put it down to experience.
After all, you did cause damage that wasn't there when the customer brought the item in.

Imagine the responses you would be getting if this was PCWorld who had scratched a customers monitor?
The words trading standards would have benn mentioned by post 4.

I fully agree. You have to work so hard to build up a reputaion and it takes only a few disgruntled customers bad mouth your service to give you a bad name, specially if you are a small town small business.

makapo

simplemind wrote: »

I was thinking along the same line, replace her monitor with a 2nd-hand monitor and try to fix her broken one for myself and if the casing breaks then it won't matter and I will have learnt something.

I wouldn't offer her a monitor of any kind. That might be seen as accepting liability and then she might start insisting on a new one. I suspect that she is not as honest as you evidently are. Even if she is acting in good faith, she's being unreasonable. You didn't break her monitor, it's not your responsibility to replace it.

There's a site at http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/home?domain=www.businesslink.gov.uk&target=http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/ which offers free advice to small businesses. You could ring their helpline and see if they can advise you about this and also about t&c.

There's a Small Business board on this forum. You could post there for advice.

Good luck.

RadoJo

I agree with the other posters who say that she's pushing her luck - the monitor was efectively unusable when she brought it in, and it remains so. Apart from anything, you have no way of knowing whether she dropped it/immersed it in water/any number of other things once you had given it back to her.
What she has asked for is unreasonable - she didn't have a working monitor before she came to you, so she can't expect one now. If she has the monitor repaired elsewhere and produces a report detailing a fault which can be directly attributed to you, that's another matter, but I doubt that would happen. Maybe that can be your recourse - tell her you'll be happy to reimburse her for a repair, provided she can produce evidence that demonstrates the new fault was caused by your attempts to repair it. I'm guessing she won't actually get it repaired if she has to fork out for it up front as she will realise that the chances of being able to show a fault caused by you (rather than just another fault on a monitor which was already useless!) are minimal. Good luck - it's a horrid situation to be in as you don't want to damage your reputation, but there's no reason why someone trying to pull a fast one should get away with it!