December 4, 2015 at 18:16On this side of the barricades
Hello GT! It just so happened that service centers are quite a conflict zone in any store. The buyer believes that the servicemen are goats, and do not want to solve his problem, the service is amazed at the stubbornness of some sheep, who insist "it is by itself, I have nothing to do with it." The behavior of people differs little in official and authorized services, in guarantees, in “cellars”: the problems are almost always the same, and psychology has long shown in practice that the behavior of an individual human being as a whole is rarely out of the general canons. Everyone is upset when they are told "this repair cannot be carried out under warranty" or "we will not be able to accept your device, because there are signs of opening the case and violation of the integrity of the structure. " Frame from the movie " About the Ram and the Goat "
My good friend from Novosibirsk wrote an excellent article for you about the life of one of the service centers, I hope it helps you not to repeat the mistakes of others.
A lot has already been written about the work of service centers for repairing digital equipment on the Internet, and often even with specific examples. That's just the majority of these reviews come either from (not) satisfied customers who have visited the service, or are veiled (and sometimes not very) advertising of the organizations themselves. It just so happened that in my life I had occasion to be on both sides of the reception desk several times: I have been a client of various SCs many times, and at the moment I have formed my own service center - a small one that has been successfully functioning for more than two years. The title, of course, I will not give, because the article is not about that. In it, I would like to talk about what we have to face - and perhaps next time when you have to use the services of our colleagues in the workshop, you will remember that it is not so simple in our profession ... :)
Omitting a detailed description of standard repair procedures, I will focus on some categories of work that I have to deal with every day. Believe me - it’s not necessary to be bored already for a year. And not because it is so much fun - rather, once. Here with some moments of this "fun" I want to introduce you.
The theater begins with a hanger, and the service center - with the reception. It is here that the front line between the client and the organization begins, and the selection of a competent employee for the post of manager for working with clients is a much more difficult task than choosing, for example, a sales consultant. Here you have both knowledge of the material part, and the basics of psychology, and an understanding of the technical process of repair work for each case, including possible delays in the timing of diagnostics and testing, not to mention the standard set of “ills” that are associated with the main diagnosis.
Most of the conflicts that we had to deal with, arose to a greater extent due to mutual misunderstanding with the client, and not because of the cost or quality of work. In other words, on how adequately the equipment has been received, agreed for repair and issued, the customer’s feedback on the operation of the service in many cases depends to a greater extent than on the volume and cost of the technical procedures themselves.
There have been cases when clients who were initially nervous because of the queue, having observed the work of the acceptance manager, smiled knowingly and even asked how he manages to maintain emotional balance with such a contingent. What I would like to emphasize especially - the acceptance manager should have at least the knowledge of an average technical specialist, while even a very good technical specialist does not have to have the ability to work with people (I will say more - very many really good technicians do not like this at all do).
However, about the clarification of needs and all that is not up to date is only the most lazy, so we will not go into specifics. Let us better consider the main categories of breakdowns (and in combination - the owners of the affected devices). I am sure that many recognize themselves in at least one of them, which I urge, without hesitation, to admit in the comments.
These words in the practice of service centers have long become gold. Especially for customers - in every sense of the word. Any dialogue that begins with the words: “I knew a programmer here has cleaned something,” causes an uncontrolled smirk on the face of the reception employee and the heavy moan of the duty technician.
Lock the firmware of the Android gadget, load driver packs and optimizers without unchecking the checkboxes of the entire hotbed of the name of the well-known domestic mail service, clean the registry along with the .NET and VC ++ libraries, or find a version of the driver that does not turn on the backlight of the laptop when the OS starts - I really one gets the impression that this is what “tyzhprogrammers” have been teaching for five years; because by chance I could not reproduce most of these bugs for more than a decade of practice in software and hardware repair. But what can I hide, many novice keyboard and soldering iron workers sin with such experiments, so their more experienced colleagues, as a rule, treat this kind of diagnoses usually with understanding.
It is much worse when such a notorious subcategory as "DIY" smoothly flows from the above category. This is already a real headache for technical personnel: after reading (at best) instructions from these same Internet, the indicated citizens rush to the device with repair, like Sailors on embrasure. And still wherever it went, if they simply mount recovery sections, kill the disk layout, or tear off the cables and connectors: the trouble begins when it comes to the soldering iron.
It’s difficult, I dare to assure you, re-solder, for example, the micro USB connector on the tablet, if before you the unfortunate owner of this tablet burned not only the contact pad for this connector, but also a piece of PCB with a width that develops according to the universal formula: W = (sting thickness soldering iron * curvature of the hands) + N, where N is a figure not subject to the laws of logic, measured in millimeters. Well, deserving of special mention are soldered instead of original, for example, capacitors, “almost the same” domestic ones. With resistance twice as high. And what, with a margin, means that they should work better! (c) the client is “homemade”.
The quote from the notorious diagnostician is relevant not only in medicine - most visitors to our (and, I suspect, not only ours) service center sometimes with the same manic persistence hide the causes of the breakdown, even in obviously non-warranty cases.
Of the most entertaining episodes, I immediately recall a laptop that "unexpectedly stopped working." At the acceptance stage, the fact that the customer brought the device carefully packed in two plastic bags, and was in a hurry; and when he said that the acceptance would still have to be made out according to the serial number of the device itself, it was noticeably depressed. Having struck not only in the nose, but also immediately in the brain and the surrounding ecology, the characteristic smell of cat urine made it possible to establish a diagnosis, without even fully deploying the second package. Naturally, the client had no “cats”; On the proposal to sniff at the device, it was suggested that, he said, the other day he was visiting, and perhaps he did not notice something. Yes, yes, of course, that's what we thought. :-D
Against the background of such cases, the devices filled with water, beer, cola and sweet coffee, which broke down “on their own and not from this, it worked normally for another N days” - it's just a routine. The fact that over the past few days all the cables (or even contact pads on the controller, for example, the hard disk) have not only become moldy, but have also rotted thoroughly, the patient, of course, is unaware of. At least for the first time.
The hero is a "submariner", the third day after the swim, a photo of the trains under a microscope.
Cola successfully dissolves not only rust, but also textolite. Three or four days.
Cockroaches crawling directly to the reception desk from the ventilation openings of the laptop in the presence of a client who was surprised to report that it wasn’t him, and we have insects throughout the service, you won’t be surprised either. And the amount of recoverable foreign objects from various openings of laptops and other gadgets can easily be argued with the medical industry.
The hero in the center of the photo survived even a two-hour trip in the fifteen-degree frost to the SC and died the death of the brave at the hands of crafty engineers.
One of the “favorite” categories of damage according to customers is, of course, children. Rather, CHILDREN! Because in most cases, the scale of the damage claimed in this category of affected devices suggests that these children are fed with genetically modified products of the brand Hulk Inc. No, of course, I understand that to admit that during a family quarrel a laptop from the counter went to the next room, not comme il faut - but to write off the blow that broke the matrix and tore off both hinges of the victim’s lid on a child who is not another reincarnation of the kung master -fu, in my opinion, bust.
Rugrats"...
A special category (and in combination - a headache) of customers are those who return to the warranty period of the repair, additionally breaking something else, in full confidence that the service MUST fix this for free.
Replaced the micro USB jack, and a week later the headphone jack failed? Let them fix it, they gave a guarantee! Changed the display of a six-month-old lying on the shelf of the phone, and now it is quickly discharged? This is for sure a technician mixed up something with wires, let him buy a new battery now! And of course, a tantrum must be built, waiting for the maximum concentration of people in the room, and threatened by all authorities, including Smolny. However, as a result, it came to my mind only four times before an independent examination, and in all cases in our favor; but the number of freebie lovers, alas, is not decreasing.
By the way, the client-koshatnik from the example above also returned a day later - he decided that the keyboard was not replaced for him, but simply, I quote, "they were soldered and thrown to the headstock".
Fortunately, they did not have time to take out the garbage - they handed over the old one, and when asked how he could be sure that it was him, they politely offered to smell it. For some reason I didn’t sniff, I took my word for it, but took it with me (later the keyboard was found in the garbage bin at the exit from the building).
Separately, it is worth highlighting software repair: after all, 95% of customers are sincerely sure that reinstalling Windows will automatically solve all problems with viruses, banners and other attractions of the World Wide Web for a long time. However, working with this contingent is a little easier: in most cases it’s enough to openly open the browser history yesterday, and the questions disappear by themselves. It looks all the more interesting when the “victim” comes with the demand for a free reinstall, not just one, but with the support of unsuspecting relatives or friends.
Such patients usually do not suffer from an excess of imagination, but some requests are pleasing in their detail:
Judging by the requests, this guy decided to support the domestic manufacturer ...
Over the past couple of years, a girl of a senior school age has firmly entered the top 10 of our visitors, who came to scandal about a captured cryptographer, her mother dragged her by the ear right from the service room, having looked at which resource visits led to the indicated malfunction. I will not say the addresses of resources, and do not ask. :)
Well, about such “commonplace” things as dust deposits that many archaeologists (and in some cases microbiologists) will be surprised at inside devices, about insidious Chinese viruses, whose self-protection is envied by the well-known domestic anti-virus package with a red letter in the logo, and about centimeter! layers of thermal paste of at least a well-known domestic brand on mobile processors and video chips instead of thermal pads can be told endlessly. But we do not complain - this is the job.
Either the ruins of an ancient civilization, or a new form of life
More - does not mean better!
Of course, the variety of unique cases that I had to face during my entire work in the format of the article will not work - there will be enough material, perhaps, for memoirs in a couple of volumes. But summing up the results of today's, I hope, in a somewhat informative lecture, I would like to give some advice to potential customers of the service center. From a professional point of view, by the way, our field of activity, if you think about it, is much closer to medical than it might seem. Judge for yourself:
That's all. Be honest and let your gadgets never break.
Not always purchased goods may be ideal in terms of consumer properties. There is a marriage, and a trite unsuccessful design, which could be fixed in the next revision. Our SCs are distinguished by a fairly loyal product return and exchange program, which helps you get the device that will please you, and we maintain a reputation as a simple and convenient store for people.
For example, the Hot Swap program is available to all buyers of computer components , which allows you to get a live piece of iron instead of a broken one in almost one day. Of course, if the conditions of the guarantee were not violated.
Warranty service can be performed according to two programs: manufacturer's warranty and warranty service in SC Yulmart. In the first case, the goods are handled by official service centers authorized by the manufacturer: often, such a guarantee extends to monitors, printers, laptops, televisions and cameras. In the second version, our specialists deal with warranty issues. Details of warranty conditions can be found here .
Since when buying on-line with home delivery, it is not always possible to check the device before receiving it, we have introduced a convenient Moneyback system that allows you to return goods that did not suit you. Refund conditions are indicated on our website, in the "Service and Support" section.
Well, tell your stories now :)
Have a nice weekend!
My good friend from Novosibirsk wrote an excellent article for you about the life of one of the service centers, I hope it helps you not to repeat the mistakes of others.
On this side of the barricades
A lot has already been written about the work of service centers for repairing digital equipment on the Internet, and often even with specific examples. That's just the majority of these reviews come either from (not) satisfied customers who have visited the service, or are veiled (and sometimes not very) advertising of the organizations themselves. It just so happened that in my life I had occasion to be on both sides of the reception desk several times: I have been a client of various SCs many times, and at the moment I have formed my own service center - a small one that has been successfully functioning for more than two years. The title, of course, I will not give, because the article is not about that. In it, I would like to talk about what we have to face - and perhaps next time when you have to use the services of our colleagues in the workshop, you will remember that it is not so simple in our profession ... :)
Omitting a detailed description of standard repair procedures, I will focus on some categories of work that I have to deal with every day. Believe me - it’s not necessary to be bored already for a year. And not because it is so much fun - rather, once. Here with some moments of this "fun" I want to introduce you.
The theater begins with a hanger ...
The theater begins with a hanger, and the service center - with the reception. It is here that the front line between the client and the organization begins, and the selection of a competent employee for the post of manager for working with clients is a much more difficult task than choosing, for example, a sales consultant. Here you have both knowledge of the material part, and the basics of psychology, and an understanding of the technical process of repair work for each case, including possible delays in the timing of diagnostics and testing, not to mention the standard set of “ills” that are associated with the main diagnosis.
Most of the conflicts that we had to deal with, arose to a greater extent due to mutual misunderstanding with the client, and not because of the cost or quality of work. In other words, on how adequately the equipment has been received, agreed for repair and issued, the customer’s feedback on the operation of the service in many cases depends to a greater extent than on the volume and cost of the technical procedures themselves.
There have been cases when clients who were initially nervous because of the queue, having observed the work of the acceptance manager, smiled knowingly and even asked how he manages to maintain emotional balance with such a contingent. What I would like to emphasize especially - the acceptance manager should have at least the knowledge of an average technical specialist, while even a very good technical specialist does not have to have the ability to work with people (I will say more - very many really good technicians do not like this at all do).
However, about the clarification of needs and all that is not up to date is only the most lazy, so we will not go into specifics. Let us better consider the main categories of breakdowns (and in combination - the owners of the affected devices). I am sure that many recognize themselves in at least one of them, which I urge, without hesitation, to admit in the comments.
Do not break - do not fix it!
These words in the practice of service centers have long become gold. Especially for customers - in every sense of the word. Any dialogue that begins with the words: “I knew a programmer here has cleaned something,” causes an uncontrolled smirk on the face of the reception employee and the heavy moan of the duty technician.
Lock the firmware of the Android gadget, load driver packs and optimizers without unchecking the checkboxes of the entire hotbed of the name of the well-known domestic mail service, clean the registry along with the .NET and VC ++ libraries, or find a version of the driver that does not turn on the backlight of the laptop when the OS starts - I really one gets the impression that this is what “tyzhprogrammers” have been teaching for five years; because by chance I could not reproduce most of these bugs for more than a decade of practice in software and hardware repair. But what can I hide, many novice keyboard and soldering iron workers sin with such experiments, so their more experienced colleagues, as a rule, treat this kind of diagnoses usually with understanding.
It is much worse when such a notorious subcategory as "DIY" smoothly flows from the above category. This is already a real headache for technical personnel: after reading (at best) instructions from these same Internet, the indicated citizens rush to the device with repair, like Sailors on embrasure. And still wherever it went, if they simply mount recovery sections, kill the disk layout, or tear off the cables and connectors: the trouble begins when it comes to the soldering iron.
It’s difficult, I dare to assure you, re-solder, for example, the micro USB connector on the tablet, if before you the unfortunate owner of this tablet burned not only the contact pad for this connector, but also a piece of PCB with a width that develops according to the universal formula: W = (sting thickness soldering iron * curvature of the hands) + N, where N is a figure not subject to the laws of logic, measured in millimeters. Well, deserving of special mention are soldered instead of original, for example, capacitors, “almost the same” domestic ones. With resistance twice as high. And what, with a margin, means that they should work better! (c) the client is “homemade”.
Everybody lies
The quote from the notorious diagnostician is relevant not only in medicine - most visitors to our (and, I suspect, not only ours) service center sometimes with the same manic persistence hide the causes of the breakdown, even in obviously non-warranty cases.
Of the most entertaining episodes, I immediately recall a laptop that "unexpectedly stopped working." At the acceptance stage, the fact that the customer brought the device carefully packed in two plastic bags, and was in a hurry; and when he said that the acceptance would still have to be made out according to the serial number of the device itself, it was noticeably depressed. Having struck not only in the nose, but also immediately in the brain and the surrounding ecology, the characteristic smell of cat urine made it possible to establish a diagnosis, without even fully deploying the second package. Naturally, the client had no “cats”; On the proposal to sniff at the device, it was suggested that, he said, the other day he was visiting, and perhaps he did not notice something. Yes, yes, of course, that's what we thought. :-DAgainst the background of such cases, the devices filled with water, beer, cola and sweet coffee, which broke down “on their own and not from this, it worked normally for another N days” - it's just a routine. The fact that over the past few days all the cables (or even contact pads on the controller, for example, the hard disk) have not only become moldy, but have also rotted thoroughly, the patient, of course, is unaware of. At least for the first time.
The hero is a "submariner", the third day after the swim, a photo of the trains under a microscope.
Cola successfully dissolves not only rust, but also textolite. Three or four days.
Cockroaches crawling directly to the reception desk from the ventilation openings of the laptop in the presence of a client who was surprised to report that it wasn’t him, and we have insects throughout the service, you won’t be surprised either. And the amount of recoverable foreign objects from various openings of laptops and other gadgets can easily be argued with the medical industry.
The hero in the center of the photo survived even a two-hour trip in the fifteen-degree frost to the SC and died the death of the brave at the hands of crafty engineers.
One of the “favorite” categories of damage according to customers is, of course, children. Rather, CHILDREN! Because in most cases, the scale of the damage claimed in this category of affected devices suggests that these children are fed with genetically modified products of the brand Hulk Inc. No, of course, I understand that to admit that during a family quarrel a laptop from the counter went to the next room, not comme il faut - but to write off the blow that broke the matrix and tore off both hinges of the victim’s lid on a child who is not another reincarnation of the kung master -fu, in my opinion, bust.
Rugrats"...
Sometimes they come back
A special category (and in combination - a headache) of customers are those who return to the warranty period of the repair, additionally breaking something else, in full confidence that the service MUST fix this for free.
Replaced the micro USB jack, and a week later the headphone jack failed? Let them fix it, they gave a guarantee! Changed the display of a six-month-old lying on the shelf of the phone, and now it is quickly discharged? This is for sure a technician mixed up something with wires, let him buy a new battery now! And of course, a tantrum must be built, waiting for the maximum concentration of people in the room, and threatened by all authorities, including Smolny. However, as a result, it came to my mind only four times before an independent examination, and in all cases in our favor; but the number of freebie lovers, alas, is not decreasing.
By the way, the client-koshatnik from the example above also returned a day later - he decided that the keyboard was not replaced for him, but simply, I quote, "they were soldered and thrown to the headstock".
Fortunately, they did not have time to take out the garbage - they handed over the old one, and when asked how he could be sure that it was him, they politely offered to smell it. For some reason I didn’t sniff, I took my word for it, but took it with me (later the keyboard was found in the garbage bin at the exit from the building).
Separately, it is worth highlighting software repair: after all, 95% of customers are sincerely sure that reinstalling Windows will automatically solve all problems with viruses, banners and other attractions of the World Wide Web for a long time. However, working with this contingent is a little easier: in most cases it’s enough to openly open the browser history yesterday, and the questions disappear by themselves. It looks all the more interesting when the “victim” comes with the demand for a free reinstall, not just one, but with the support of unsuspecting relatives or friends.
Such patients usually do not suffer from an excess of imagination, but some requests are pleasing in their detail:
Judging by the requests, this guy decided to support the domestic manufacturer ...
Over the past couple of years, a girl of a senior school age has firmly entered the top 10 of our visitors, who came to scandal about a captured cryptographer, her mother dragged her by the ear right from the service room, having looked at which resource visits led to the indicated malfunction. I will not say the addresses of resources, and do not ask. :)
Well, about such “commonplace” things as dust deposits that many archaeologists (and in some cases microbiologists) will be surprised at inside devices, about insidious Chinese viruses, whose self-protection is envied by the well-known domestic anti-virus package with a red letter in the logo, and about centimeter! layers of thermal paste of at least a well-known domestic brand on mobile processors and video chips instead of thermal pads can be told endlessly. But we do not complain - this is the job.
Either the ruins of an ancient civilization, or a new form of life
More - does not mean better!
Of course, the variety of unique cases that I had to face during my entire work in the format of the article will not work - there will be enough material, perhaps, for memoirs in a couple of volumes. But summing up the results of today's, I hope, in a somewhat informative lecture, I would like to give some advice to potential customers of the service center. From a professional point of view, by the way, our field of activity, if you think about it, is much closer to medical than it might seem. Judge for yourself:
- The more honest you describe the cause of the problem, the greater the likelihood of timely diagnosis and treatment success. Anyway, in the end we find out what you have done with the device, but if you confess, we will not judge.
- Do not self-medicate if you are not qualified! But you yourself do not remove appendicitis on the kitchen table? And if you try to do it, then everything will end very sadly ... That's the same with technology.
- Do not delay the treatment, even if the symptoms are temporarily gone. Launched cases are harder to treat. and more expensive. When the process moves to the terminal stage, the warranty period may suddenly end. In addition, these events tend to coincide up to one day. Murphy's law on this account almost does not fail. :)
- In order to avoid possible relapses, follow the recommendations of the treating doctor ... that is, a practicing engineer. He knows what he is saying. He has such a job.
- And last but not least: if your device is still under warranty, and you are sure that your case is a guarantee (that is, you followed the three golden rules in the process of operation - do not disassemble, drop, and do not give children ), then do not come up with diagnoses and scary forecasts yourself, but simply, without delay, contact the warranty center or the place of purchase. ( Note:type of warranty may vary by product). It is possible that your seemingly unique case is a long-known and easily solved routine for technicians. Moreover, I’ll tell you one little secret (shh, just don’t tell anyone) - the service centers also receive money for warranty repairs on authorization, so no one will come up with any extra work for themselves and a headache for you. Let your equipment serve you for a long time and without failures; but if that - contact. ;)
That's all. Be honest and let your gadgets never break.
Yulmart Service Center
Not always purchased goods may be ideal in terms of consumer properties. There is a marriage, and a trite unsuccessful design, which could be fixed in the next revision. Our SCs are distinguished by a fairly loyal product return and exchange program, which helps you get the device that will please you, and we maintain a reputation as a simple and convenient store for people.
For example, the Hot Swap program is available to all buyers of computer components , which allows you to get a live piece of iron instead of a broken one in almost one day. Of course, if the conditions of the guarantee were not violated.
Warranty service can be performed according to two programs: manufacturer's warranty and warranty service in SC Yulmart. In the first case, the goods are handled by official service centers authorized by the manufacturer: often, such a guarantee extends to monitors, printers, laptops, televisions and cameras. In the second version, our specialists deal with warranty issues. Details of warranty conditions can be found here .
Since when buying on-line with home delivery, it is not always possible to check the device before receiving it, we have introduced a convenient Moneyback system that allows you to return goods that did not suit you. Refund conditions are indicated on our website, in the "Service and Support" section.
Well, tell your stories now :)
Have a nice weekend!