Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

Happy Hamster hires again! As we continue to grow (believe it or not we did 300 hours of repairs this month! A company record) and hire we see the economy change with the people who apply. This time around, we are seeing a sad trend – dramatically overqualified people hunting way below their pay grade. We have had many people apply for our job (easily the highest paying computer repair gig in the city) who previously made $100,000 and managed 50 or 100 people at large national and multi-national companies. It’s a bit of a sad state for Portland computer repair. The worst bit of it is that these people have proven universally unqualified. At first we wondered if we had a bonanza on our hands, who wouldn’t want somebody who has been repairing computers for 20 or 30 years? The interesting part is that, for all the money they make as a group, and all the impressive certificates they hold from Microsoft and Cisco, they all have antiquated computer repair knowledge. To a man they have impressive credentials, but fall apart under direct questioning of specific computer repair tasks.

I think its important to always keep a hand in the actual work that my employees are doing.  You can never get comfortable in a technology job, things change too fast. If you think, as these people have, that by rising in the hierarchy you can stop thinking about what the grunts are actually doing, you’ve already lost.

So we will go back to hiring the people who actually get their hands dirty and know how to fix the computers, and we’ll leave the overqualified and under skilled for lesser shops.

Best,

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

I had a strange phone call today. We had a customer two weeks ago who came in for a difficult operation. She wanted to upgrade the motherboard in her computer without reinstalling windows. We can do this, and we do it well. Her job went off without a hitch, we told her it would take about 3 hours, and it only took 2.5. She picked up the computer, happy as a clam, and then on her followup call a week later said everything went great.

Today she called and said, “I think you over billed me for my repair.”

This is a phone call I’ve only ever received once before, and that time we had in fact made a billing mistake (just a typo on an invoice, put 2 instead of 1). So I assumed it was a similar issue. I inquired about the nature of the overbilling and the customer told me,

“Well, I see on my bill you charged me for 2.5 hours, but I thought you worked at a flat rate of $75 for all jobs.”

I stood silent for a moment, not really sure how to respond to the charge. Obviously, if a customer had a good faith belief we only billed $75 for every job, then we should only charge them that much. I knew she paid her bill without complaint, and stood satisfied on her followup, but still, if somebody had told her it would only be $75 or some such, we would make that right with her. Unfortunately, her reason made no sense.

She claimed, “well, thats what it says on your website!”

At this point, I simply didn’t know how to respond. It does not say that on our website, it states, very clearly, that we bill $75/hr. I asked her to point out where on our website it says we only charge $75. She looked at the website with me over the phone, and saw the clearly laid out charge. She had no reply to my question, so she went for another line of attack -

“Well, I called two other computer repair companies, and they said you overcharged me.”

Here, again, I had a hard time responding to the accusation. I mean, first of all, the job we did for her isn’t one where you can easily say what the bill should be, motherboard replacement without operating system reload can take a variable amount of time between 2-4 hours depending on a number of factors. So how many other shop could know categorically that we overcharged her is beyond me. I asked who she called and she refused to provide the names. I made the logical argument, which is that any other shop wants her business, so it is, of course, in their best interest to say we overcharged. She ignored that and went on saying we had over billed her.

Beyond that, though, the most amazing bit of the thing for me was that she came back two weeks after the fact. She didn’t price shop before she came in, and she was totally happy with her bill and her service, but suddenly two weeks later she paid too much? I didn’t really understand that at all. You can’t go back to your plumber after he fixes the pipes and say you found another plumber who could have done the job for less money. You can’t go back to the store after your buy your groceries and say they would’ve cost less at another store, so you want your money back. No part of the universe works in the manner this customer seems to believe.

I tried to reason with her a little bit more, and she simply said,

“Well, it looks like you’ve lost a customer!” and then hung up the phone.

All I can imagine is that she thought she could strong arm me into giving her a bunch of her money back, and when I didn’t budge she freaked out and ran away. We support our customers and stand behind our work, but I’m not so much of a pushover that you can get your money back on a job that went smoothly, came in under estimate, and with which the customer is satisfied. I love most of our customers, but sometimes strange things happen.

Have a good night everybody!

-Zac

Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,

I had a bit of a shocking moment today looking through the job ads on craigslist. As a good small business owner, I like to keep track of how much similar jobs are going for in the Portland area. Today I saw one of our lower quality competitors advertising for a technician for $9/hr. Just slightly above minimum wage. For a position requiring years of detailed technical experience and training.

Now, a slightly tangential but related story about another company. Lakeshore Learning Materials, a company where my father worked for 40 or 50 years before retiring, taught me a lot about how to pay employees. Lakeshore believes that talent both costs and is worth money. The goal of a new hire isn’t to find the cheapest person you can con into doing the job, but rather to find the absolute best, most A+ candidate available and pay them enough to keep them happy.

In running my own company, I follow Lakeshore. I pay my technicians more than any other computer repair shop in Portland. More than double what my competitor pays for supposedly the same job.

The result?

1) We are Portland’s largest locally owned computer repair store, while many of our competitors have gone out of business.

2)Our reputation remains damn near flawless, with over 100 positive reviews at various online websites. None of our competitors can boast that many happy customers.

3) We do the repair better, and often repair computers other shops can’t. At least once a week somebody comes in with a computer they took to another shop who called it, “un-fixable” which we are able to fix. Often times quite easily.

Paying my technicians more than any shop in the city isn’t about altruism, its about getting the best possible people so we can provide the best service and best results. When we post our job application, we get between 200-300 highly qualified candidates…I wonder how many, and what quality, our competitors get advertising the job for the same wage most people get from McDonalds.

Best,

-Zac