Dealing with Tough Clients

tbgree00

I'm sure many of us are consultants either in our "off hours", as a full time job, or even just to friends and family. I try to drum up some work when I want to buy a new gadget and have had some interesting and demanding clients. I wanted to create a thread to allow us a space to vent and share FML stories.

One of my current clients is driving me a bit up the wall. I had a call from a coworker about malware on her computer. I agreed to take the computer in to look at it. I ran a malwarebytes scan, unchecked the proxy settings in IE, cleared out some entries in the hosts file and things were working great. I had her check it out and showed clean logs. I made a fatal mistake by saying I'd fix it free if I hadn't solved the problem.

Monday comes and she brings it back complaining about the malware hijacking the computer. Sure enough the same stuff is happening. She finally admitted to letting her grandchild get games on there (by googling free games). Now there are redirects and a whole new slew of malware. She says "I'm glad you said you'd fix it for free since you didn't do your job the first time".

Now I'm 6 hours into a job where I've been paid for less than one at my normal rate and she just called me saying I should pay her back the 40 dollars because it's taking so long and she should have to pay me not to do any work on the machine. The computer itself has me stumped since I can't find any malware at all in MWB or Hijackthis, the AVG Rescue disk comes up clean but google searches still redirect in IE and Firefox.

I'm tempted to get 40 dollars in quarters and tape them to the tower to refund her money.

jmritenour

Your post is exactly why I don't do side work anymore. Other than for family and friends, and a few "friends" that are really pushy and insistent.

If I need extra money that bad, I'll just sell a kidney. It's not worth the aggravation of people who continuously get malware from Limewire or some other file sharing site and expect you fix it.

rogue2shadow

tbgree00 wrote: »

I'm tempted to get 40 dollars in quarters and tape them to the tower to refund her money.

Do it!

This is a PC technician's greatest tool (IMO):
Hiren's BootCD 11.1

I fell in love with it from day 1 and it gets the job done.

I definitely feel your pain though. One of the hardest thing about customer service is in most cases the customer "has" to be right. What I don't get is why she's asking you for money back when this is a second, and actually separate, infraction. She should be paying you really.

it_consultant

That'll teach you! If you are going to offer money back guarantees you need to have them sign the receipt that says the issue as presented to you is fixed and anything in the future is a new issue. People will take advantage when they can.

RobertKaucher

tbgree00 wrote: »

I'm sure many of us are consultants either in our "off hours", as a full time job, or even just to friends and family. I try to drum up some work when I want to buy a new gadget and have had some interesting and demanding clients. I wanted to create a thread to allow us a space to vent and share FML stories.

One of my current clients is driving me a bit up the wall. I had a call from a coworker about malware on her computer. I agreed to take the computer in to look at it. I ran a malwarebytes scan, unchecked the proxy settings in IE, cleared out some entries in the hosts file and things were working great. I had her check it out and showed clean logs. I made a fatal mistake by saying I'd fix it free if I hadn't solved the problem.

Monday comes and she brings it back complaining about the malware hijacking the computer. Sure enough the same stuff is happening. She finally admitted to letting her grandchild get games on there (by googling free games). Now there are redirects and a whole new slew of malware. She says "I'm glad you said you'd fix it for free since you didn't do your job the first time".

Now I'm 6 hours into a job where I've been paid for less than one at my normal rate and she just called me saying I should pay her back the 40 dollars because it's taking so long and she should have to pay me not to do any work on the machine. The computer itself has me stumped since I can't find any malware at all in MWB or Hijackthis, the AVG Rescue disk comes up clean but google searches still redirect in IE and Firefox.

I'm tempted to get 40 dollars in quarters and tape them to the tower to refund her money.

*groan* I've been there my friend. There are a couple suggestion that I have for you:

1. Inform your clients of certain scenarios before you take the computer: Do they need a backup? Explain in terrible detail what can happen to their data if they do not have a backup. Always do a full visual inspection of the guts checking for loose cables and popped caps on the mobo. Always run MemTest and Hitachi DFT before you do any real work. If the HDD is bad, why get rid of any viruses?
2. Communicate with the client at least daily.
3.Figure out what the limit is for your time and call the client to offer a free backup because you are going to restore the OS. I don't always do this free. It deppends. Especially not if they said they did not need one before I took the PC.

veritas_libertas

jmritenour wrote: »

Your post is exactly why I don't do side work anymore. Other than for family and friends, and a few "friends" that are really pushy and insistent.

Exactly. If I do any work at all it's $50 an hour. That usually keeps people from asking. If they want my help bad enough than I prefer to benefit.

msteinhilber

The best advise for any kind of side job type work IMHO is to never at all be afraid to be very straightforward even borderline blunt with people when setting expectations for what you'll do, how you'll do it, what you will bill, and any other policies you desire to adhere to. It's not in your or the customers best interest to be super flexible and bend over backwards with promises to their demands or wishes simply to get the business. Anything less than this and to me it's simply not worth taking on the business unless you are desperate for the cash.

I really don't mess around and deal with any drama from people in these situations anymore. I am very straight forward with my fee's, time frame to completion, contingencies, what precisely I will be doing and so on. If such a side job is malware related, I firmly tell them I will only be able to effectively guarantee the malware is gone if I wipe and reinstall with or without a backup and I charge accordingly. If they decide they want to risk repairing short of wiping and reloading, they are taking a risk - no guarantee whatsoever, and no exceptions. If they take it home after insisting I try to just remove the malware short of reloading and it comes back days, weeks, months later... they get billed again. If they go the wiser route of a format and reload and it comes back a short while later, they hosed it up on their own and they get billed again. Basically, I'm so thorough up front that they really should have no valid reason to get on my case about something because I was very clear about how I work up front. If of course I botch something up I'm going to hold myself accountable but that's to be expected.

I dealt with the whiny people enough and was at the brunt of my share of people being down right livid and rude blaming me for problems ultimately caused by their teenagers looking for the latest pirated music or the husband of the yelling wife looking for the latest **** fix so I simply won't put up with it on the side if it goes down like that. I'd rather step on somebodies toes with my straightforwardness or lack of willingness to bend and bow to a clients demands and not get the business, than go down that route and stress myself out. If they try to get on my case about a re-infection after the fact, or think I'm being greedy because they re-infected their machine after a reload or neglected to take my advice and insisted I just try to remove the malware and complain about me charging them again, oh well - isn't going to ruin my day if they don't suggest me to their friends or family or think I'm a jerk.

ehnde

Not all people are like this. In fact, I find *most* people to be really grateful when I've worked on their PCs. If you still want to continue doing these side jobs, it may be worth it to drum up a limited liability release form stating that you are not liable for any damages to the operating system after you have repaired it. Have them either take a look at it and sign off verifying that the problem is resolved, or give them X number of hours to bring it back if and only if it's the same exact problem still unresolved.

Does that sound like a bit of work? Well maybe...but it might save you some frustration.

-Foxer-

Have you tried combofix? It works pretty good on malware.

Also, as others have said, this is the reason I don't do side jobs anymore.

JBrown

That sounds like a job for tdsskiller from Kaspersky. But be aware of killing that PC in case if something goes wrong.

TDSSKiller Killed My Computer

blargoe

Fatal mistake is when you are doing side jobs for a pittance, in your precious spare time, to make any guarantees. I would, at this point, just give her her money back and tell her to find someone else. She told you who it got back on there, you are not obligated to keep working on it, don't let her take advantage of you like that.

jamesleecoleman

I dont have clients but just helping people I don't know can be tough. I usually stick with friends and family. I used to help at a small library where parents, during the summer time, parents would drop off their kids for "free babysitting services". The librarian told me she would pay me or give me something and I told her its okay and that I didn't need anything. The first time she gave me a gift certificate. The second time, she told me I lost $20 just because she didn't know what was going on and I was talking to someone. I just didn't understand why she thought she had to pay me and felt she had the power to feel like I'm working for her. I don't think I'm going to help her anymore. I think she wanted me to work there and I know she's going to low ball me and then ask me to work on computers. I could always work for her and "loose" the computer skills.

Zartanasaurus

I occasionally do side work for people. I don't charge a lot and generally don't mind the work. Most of my clients come from people who work with Mrs. Zartanasaurus. I've fixed up quite a few PCs/sold laptops/etc and have a pretty good reputation with them as far as I can tell.

Some people I will blow off at the beginning if I know they have a reputation for being high maintenance. The $40 isn't worth it.

Pash

blargoe wrote: »

Fatal mistake is when you are doing side jobs for a pittance, in your precious spare time, to make any guarantees. I would, at this point, just give her her money back and tell her to find someone else. She told you who it got back on there, you are not obligated to keep working on it, don't let her take advantage of you like that.

This.

Just bail on this one dude, its a no win situation.

jmritenour

veritas_libertas wrote: »

Exactly. If I do any work at all it's $50 an hour. That usually keeps people from asking. If they want my help bad enough than I prefer to benefit.

I start at $75, generally. That prices me above the local computer repair shops, which is what they're usually trying to avoid. If I'm above that price point, they usually just suck it up and take it there.

Psoasman

I do a lot of side work for people at my job. Almost all of them are younger and complain that they have malware on their computers. I ask them what sites they go to and inevitably, its sites like Limewire or torrents.
I had one person ask me to set up her limewire and torrent or music and flatly refused.
Interestingly enough, almost all the laptops I've worked on have that stupid "security center" or "security tool" trojans on there. Usually have to boot into safe mode and do a system restore.
The other thing I've learned to only take on jobs I know I can handle in a reasonable amount of time and I make them bring their computer to me - no house calls.

earweed

It's those "free" PC protection trojans psoaman mentioned that I see a lot. I've gotten good at removing them. When the customer says something about how quick I fixed it I just ask them if they'd like me to put it back on and they could just do it themselves. It usually quiets them down. Hate it when customers think I should charge less for them just because it's a repeat problem they caused or because they think the problem was so easy to fix for me.

tbgree00

8 hours later and the problem is fixed. For some reason the Kaspersky scan didn't pick up the rootkit the first 3 times but after doing some changes in HijackThis I was able to get through. The computer is running better now and I've been paid $4/hour for this mess. I'll give it back to her telling her what I found. It seems to be safe but you can never really be sure with a rootkit. I don't want to deal with it again because I don't want to have to restore the pc. Our office sold the computer to her for 50 dollars without any disks and I don't have the Compaq drivers and don't want to deal with finding them.

You have a lot of good advice that I use most of the time. My friend a lawyer and drafted a contract for me that absolves me of any responsibility but this client didn't sign it before I got started. I just used it as a work order essentially. Not a big deal 90% of the time but now I'm in this at 4/hr.

I have spent an hour with another client getting their computer cleaned up because he's addicted to warez. He asked what he owed me, I told him, and he offered football tickets instead. Bank of America won't accept that for my mortgage and Kroger won't accept it to pay for my food so I don't know why he insists it's a good deal. I don't even like football!

Out of my 53 clients over the past two years 48 of them are awesome. The signed the contract, paid without question, and sometimes tipped. The rest are horrible and are the ones I hear from the most and have made the least money off of overall. One owes me 300 on outstanding payments for phonecalls after my stated business hours. It's all a matter of me feeling responsibility for these people and getting in deeper than I expected. Sorry for all the complaining but I'm happy to see I'm not alone.

Do any of you have forms that you make the people fill out? Workorders and contracts? I have both on one sheet front and back but have been looking into carbon transfer work orders.

arwes

You could probably sell the tickets on Stub Hub. Look on there and see what the going rate is...if it's less than what you're looking for, bust his kneecaps!

veritas_libertas

If you going to do computer repairs on the side than I recommend:

Resource for Computer Repair Technicians to Start or Improve their Computer Business - Technibble

Matt27[lt]

RobertKaucher wrote: »

Inform your clients of certain scenarios before you take the computer: Do they need a backup? Explain in terrible detail what can happen to their data if they do not have a backup. Always do a full visual inspection of the guts checking for loose cables and popped caps on the mobo.

This! Took one laptop to re-install windows. It had a split HDD to two volumes. One system and one full of pictures. After c disk format I wasn't able to find a hdd at all. Took me 2 days to recover the data. After this I always start with this - "I bear no responsibility over your photos, video or emails. I have no ideas what I am about to do or what may happen. I may even make things worse." Of course clients think over about this, make sure they got their precious data double backuped. By clients I mean close friends and I do it usually for free. They ask how much do they have to pay, I say nothing, they started to give me bottles of hard drinks (traditions , I refuse. They get confused and I simply tell them - I have knowledge of something and share with you, you on the other hand have your own knowledge I may want to get hands on. It works great esspecially then my friends are SWAT members or firemen
Always do a full visual inspection - always check for dust in the case. Had the cases then PC were running slow and restarting. Couldn't find the cause until I checked the chips temperature - it was overheating. Cleaned the dust and the temperature back to normal. It's always the small reasons
Tough clients I don't want to work - I sell them to other specialists who are willing to take beating on their backs in free time

Paul Boz

Half of my friends think I’m a pest inspector because I wear my social engineering stuff regularly. The other half doesn’t really know WHAT I do – I just regularly say “oh I don’t even own a desktop” when confronted with a request to fix someone’s system. There is a very small, select few group of people I’ll do computer work for. My wife, my mother, and my brothers. That’s it. Uncle whoever? Piss off. My wife pimped out my computer skillz to a friend once and that never happened again. I hate working on computers.

earweed

veritas_libertas wrote: »

If you going to do computer repairs on the side than I recommend:

Resource for Computer Repair Technicians to Start or Improve their Computer Business - Technibble

^^^This^^^^
When I started my own business I created all these docs myself. For my "good" repeat customers I could actually do without the paperwork and often do but for others I "never leave home without it".
For my good repeat customers I have logged me in on their comps and usually neither one of us has to leave home and if I charge them they just send me a check.