While you're here
These are the words we dread.
We make our living by selling our expertise. For want of a better way of measuring it, we sell it by the hour. If you set us a task that takes us an hour, then you have purchased that time, and in the normal course of events we'd expect to be paid for it. The problem is though, it seems that people who wouldn't dream of quibbling when buying a physical item, find it acceptable to assume they don't have to pay for consuming our primary product. And they also seem to think that the phrase "while you're here" is some magic incantation that will somehow bypass the whole unfortunate business of money.
They'd never dream of buying their bottle of milk from the corner shop, uttering the phrase "while I'm here" and helping themselves to a handful of chocolate bars.
It becomes a little trickier when the customer is buying a computer. Our quotes & invoices clearly state that setup is not included: our quotes also offer an optional set-up, at a ridiculously low fee. But, having declined the optional setup, some customers still ask for us to set it up for them. "While you're here, could you just...". Trouble is, when you've spent 1/2/3 hours setting it all up for them, they then get offended when you hand them a bill. "But we've just bought a £xxx computer off you!" seems to be a common cry.
Now, I have some sympathy with that, especially from our older customers. Back when an IBM PC cost nearly £5000, the re-seller would make upwards of £500 on the sale. Under these circumstances, you wouldn't mind spending an hour or two helping the customer out. These days a PC costs £500, and you're very lucky to make £50 on it: which barely covers the time spent on supplier hassles, doing the paperwork and all the other myriad tasks that emerge.
There's one particularly insulting twist to this sorry saga. People who buy their PC & decline the option of the setup. Then phone us up and try to get us to talk them through the setup process. As if a) our time is less valuable if we're not physically with them and b) we're too dim to notice what's going on. And then we work out that they actually bought the PC from somewhere else!
I've mentioned before the effects of the British obsession with doing things "on the cheap", so I won't bore you further...
But there's a much more damaging impact of the "while you're here" scenario. I'll be covering that in another posting.
We make our living by selling our expertise. For want of a better way of measuring it, we sell it by the hour. If you set us a task that takes us an hour, then you have purchased that time, and in the normal course of events we'd expect to be paid for it. The problem is though, it seems that people who wouldn't dream of quibbling when buying a physical item, find it acceptable to assume they don't have to pay for consuming our primary product. And they also seem to think that the phrase "while you're here" is some magic incantation that will somehow bypass the whole unfortunate business of money.They'd never dream of buying their bottle of milk from the corner shop, uttering the phrase "while I'm here" and helping themselves to a handful of chocolate bars.
It becomes a little trickier when the customer is buying a computer. Our quotes & invoices clearly state that setup is not included: our quotes also offer an optional set-up, at a ridiculously low fee. But, having declined the optional setup, some customers still ask for us to set it up for them. "While you're here, could you just...". Trouble is, when you've spent 1/2/3 hours setting it all up for them, they then get offended when you hand them a bill. "But we've just bought a £xxx computer off you!" seems to be a common cry.
Now, I have some sympathy with that, especially from our older customers. Back when an IBM PC cost nearly £5000, the re-seller would make upwards of £500 on the sale. Under these circumstances, you wouldn't mind spending an hour or two helping the customer out. These days a PC costs £500, and you're very lucky to make £50 on it: which barely covers the time spent on supplier hassles, doing the paperwork and all the other myriad tasks that emerge.
There's one particularly insulting twist to this sorry saga. People who buy their PC & decline the option of the setup. Then phone us up and try to get us to talk them through the setup process. As if a) our time is less valuable if we're not physically with them and b) we're too dim to notice what's going on. And then we work out that they actually bought the PC from somewhere else!
I've mentioned before the effects of the British obsession with doing things "on the cheap", so I won't bore you further...
But there's a much more damaging impact of the "while you're here" scenario. I'll be covering that in another posting.
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