A customer told me my diagnostic fee was a scam yesterday

Guy brings in a laptop that won't power on. I tell him it'll be $45 to look at it and give him an estimate. He says that's ridiculous because he can just watch a YouTube video to fix it. I handed him his laptop back, said good luck, and he was back 2 hours later asking if the offer still stood. The video didn't cover his specific model's fried charging port. Has anyone else had customers argue about diagnostics then come crawling back?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_hayden2d ago

My buddy runs a small repair shop and had the exact same thing happen with a dead Xbox. Guy stormed out calling him a crook, then came back three days later after trying to fix it with a soldering iron and a YouTube guide, lol. His repair bill ended up being triple the original diagnostic fee.

william_henderson2d ago

Did the guy at least bring the YouTube guide with him when he came back? I had a neighbor try the same thing on a microwave once, watched a video on how to replace the magnetron, ended up shorting out the whole kitchen. @the_hayden I bet that soldering job looked real pretty before he admitted defeat. It's always the ones who swear they can fix it themselves that end up paying extra for the lesson. Guess some folks need to learn the hard way that watching a two minute clip doesn't make you a technician.

riley_schmidt2d ago

Read a blog post a while back about how repair shops deal with this stuff, and it basically said the diagnostic fee isn't for the diagnosis itself, it's for the years of knowing what to look for. That guy learned the hard way that a fried charging port on one model looks totally different than on another, lol. It's funny how people think watching a 10 minute video is the same as someone who's seen a hundred fried ports. Props to you for handing it back and not budging on the fee, that's the only way they learn.