Cheapest customer ever ?

[rapidocument]

Well I serviced this little Kyocera KM1820 for a C6000 Fuser error,
The repair cost includes maintenance -if required- and since this machine
was full of dust I did a good job of cleaning, vacumming, washing plastics, etc.
The machine was neat and ready so I ask the owner for paper to test the machine
and this man (wrinkled shirt, kakhy shorts, sandals with socks and a cigarrette, yes ponytail too, you know
the type of guy) hands me 2 (yes, two) sheets of USED paper to test his machine...

Jeez...

[ldharnden]

Have/had a copy center that has multiple ancient production B&W machines. None are under contract. Every time I have gone out to fix an issue, if it involves parts, the owner insists that I give him the part numbers so he "can buy them online for cheaper."

[tech28]

Have had people haggle with me over 2 dollars for a toner they said they could get on-line for ...yes 2 bucks cheaper. Or they guy that says, he will give 20 dollars less than the bill because that's what he thinks you should get for what was done, after you are done with the job! After 33 years, the stories, priceless.

[gneebore]

The cheapest customer I can remember was a woman that bought a new electronic portable typewriter from a home shopping channel. She paid a whole 19.95 plus 1.95 for onsite warranty. Of course such a cheap machine would break if you actually tried to type more than a letter or two a month. She bought it to replace an IBM selectric. The fun part since we were a dealer and warranty repair center for the maodel of machine she bought she insisted we drive over 125 miles one way to repair her typewriter because she paid the 1.95 for "ONSITE WARRANTY" Caps are deliberate she complained to the manufacturer when we refused to service her machine for free when she paid for the service when she bought the machine.

[theengel]

People should go to jail for selling those "onsite warranties." No matter where people buy them, they think every technician in the world is now somehow obligated to honor them.

The cheapest I can remember was not my customer... There was a guy here who insisted he would re-use his waste toner. Actually, if I remember right, he wanted to use the color waste toner that had collected in a transfer unit. Not sure how he thought he'd be able to separate the colors.

[kingarthur]

I've got a customer who stresses out when I print off the management list on his bizhub about how much the 20 pages of mono has just cost him....

[theengel]

I like it when you tell customers you need paper because you have to test the printer and they give you a stack of 10 - 20 sheets. I always tell them that this is fine, but if the printer stops working right after I leave, they'll have to pay for another service call, since they didn't allow me to properly test. I've actually had one customer who was fine with that. They took the chance on spending another $95, just to save about fifty cents.

[gneebore]

People should go to jail for selling those "onsite warranties." No matter where people buy them, they think every technician in the world is now somehow obligated to honor them.

The cheapest I can remember was not my customer... There was a guy here who insisted he would re-use his waste toner. Actually, if I remember right, he wanted to use the color waste toner that had collected in a transfer unit. Not sure how he thought he'd be able to separate the colors.

Oh boy yes the onsite warranty customers were a pain. Had quite a few for the Canon Pc line copiers where they insisted that since we were the warranty service center we had to come out and fix it. Finally my boss had a written script to use when talking to them explaining they had to call the 800 number on their paperwork. Of course we then would get a call back because they called the 800 number and were informed a service tech would be dispatched in two to five days. Quite a few times when we refused they would then call Canon to complain about us and they were informed there were "no onsite warranties sold by Canon for that model and there were none that Canon honored period."

The other fun ones were when a customer would actually bring one of the small Canon pc copiers in. First thing I would do if it actually passed paper and made a copy was go grab an OEM toner cartridge and make a copy using that. Then when it passed a good copy I would take their toner put it back In and try to explain we do not warranty any refilled ( unless we sold them, I used to refill rebuild toners) or aftermarket non Canon branded toners. Then the real good stuff started because they couldn't afford the cost of the expensive toner so they bought a reasonable priced one. I would hand them the marked samples and tell them to take or send the toner back to wherever they bought it with the samples and get them to replace it. And then carry the copier back out to their car. had a few that actually change back to OEM.

[Phil B.]

Have/had a copy center that has multiple ancient production B&W machines. None are under contract. Every time I have gone out to fix an issue, if it involves parts, the owner insists that I give him the part numbers so he "can buy them online for cheaper."

yup had one like that.. asked him if he was going to install them too.. because I couldn't warranty the parts only labor

[gneebore]

Got to thinking about how cheap customers could be and then remembered the bi-yearly office supply sales held in a local hotel conference room. Had a guy that used to go buy the "defective runs" of office supplies. Usually typewriter ribbons and carbon paper and occasionally toner cartridges. These would be the massed produced runs where the quality control people would reject a batch of supplies when they detected some problems during random tests of the production run. Then instead of throwing away the run they would store them and sell them for pennies on the dollar. These were then part of the special sale in the hotel. You could actually go in and buy carbon paper for 50 cents a pack when it normally cost 4.50 a pack. Typewriter ribbons where even aftermarket cost ran 3.00 each could be bought for 25 cents. And the wonderful toners could be bought for 15.00 each when the normal OEM price was 85.00 dollars. We could always tell when the joker had been in town because within five days we would start getting "my typewriter doesn't print the whole letter" Or the printer is tearing the carbon paper again.. Yeah used in the early dot matrix printers with 286 and 386 pc's. And of course the "fax or the copier is making lousy copies again"
I finally did ask one customer why they insisted on repeatedly buying the stuff since it obviously wasn't any good and caused so many problems. Their response was "Why pay for the fancy box when you can buy the same thing for a tenth of the cost. And most of the time the stuff does work okay" They really hit the ceiling when I charged for a second call for the same problem with the same ribbon. I check marked a small scratch of my initials on the bottom of the ribbon cartridge in case they put the brand new ribbon back in the typewriter.