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Last month we talked about checking in
equipment to a service center for repair and listed some
misconceptions people have about the process. You can view
that article in the Metro Music Mayhem Archives. This month
we will discuss what happens after you leave a unit for
repair at a service center
We are very careful when we check in equipment to advise
the customer that their unit may sit for a while before
it gets looked at. According to our workload at the time
we give them an estimate of how long it will sit before
it gets looked at much like when you go to a restaurant
and they tell you how long you will have to wait for a
table. Yet we get calls from customers who complain that
we haven't looked at it yet when we are still days away
from when we said we would look at it. People seem to hear
what they want to hear..
When your unit's turn comes to go on the bench, every effort
is made to test and fully evaluate it. At this point one
of the following will take place:
1- The problem can not be reproduced in the service center
More often than I would like to see we are unable to
duplicate the complaint the customer has. There are several
possibilities for this:
Operator Error
At the time the problem was experienced
maybe the customer was not using the equipment correctly.
Equipment is complex and under the pressure of a gig and
a dark stage it is easy to have a switch set the wrong
way or a cable plugged into the wrong place. Another thing
I see is that maybe there is a problem somewhere in a system
of connected equipment but the customer has made the incorrect
assumption that it is piece of equipment "A" when
it is really piece of equipment "B" (as in when
you don't hear sound coming out of a speaker it doesn't
means it's broken. If it is not receiving a signal it will
produce no sound) My advice is that before you assume something
is broken test it at a time when you can really spend time
with it and verify it actually is broken before you incur
diagnostic charges at the service center to tell you there
is nothing wrong with it.
.
Other times there actually is something
wrong but it just does not want to show itself.
We try to test equipment
in three ways 1- As close as we can come to real world
operating conditions 2- Evaluation with our shop's test
equipment 3- Internal inspection of the unit's circuitry.
But sometimes the problem will just not show itself. We
are then invariably asked "Can't you hook it up to
your test equipment and find out what is wrong"? If
you test and measure equipment that is functioning normally
it will test and measure normally- so NO. At this point
we invite the customer in to the shop and ask them to demo
the problem for us. This is a good solution all around.
If he can show us the problem we can proceed with how to
fix it. If he can't he leaves understanding that the problem
is truly intermittent instead of feeling we were not able
to fix it. Of course our diagnostic charge will apply for
our time spent working with it.
The problem is found and our diagnosis is that it is
not cost effective to fix the unit
Sometimes It's not worth fixing a piece of equipment.
Common sense dictates that it is not a good value to repair
something that for a few dollars more you can replace with
something brand new that includes a factory warranty. This
is especially true for older equipment that may have other
failures waiting in the wings. This is analogous to spending
a lot of money putting a transmission in an old car only
to have the engine fail shortly thereafter. When I make
a recommendation to a customer to not repair and buy new
they should understand that I am someone who only makes
money from repairing. If you buy new I don't make anything-
so understand I am acting in your best interest not mine.
The problem is found, parts are in stock
and it's fixed.
This is the easiest for everyone. Unit goes on bench,
problem is found and repair work is done. Unit is invoiced
and ready to go out the door.
The problem is found and parts need to
be ordered.
Any pro service center potentially
repairs thousands of different types of units. While
there are generic parts that can be used in many types
of units, there are times a specific part is needed only
available direct from the manufacturer. While every effort
is made to stock both a variety of generic parts and
unit specific parts that we often see fail, it is not
possible to stock everything for every unit. In the appliance
repair business you will often see service companies
that service only a specific brand or two. This gives
them the ability to stock a lot of parts specific to
that brand and there is more of a chance they will have
it in their parts inventory when needed. With musical
instrument repair it is not economically possible to
operate servicing only one or two brands. Frankly there
would never be enough business to keep the doors open.
So we stock as much as we can in order to service as
diverse an amount of equipment as possible and order
the rest on a unit by unit basis. If the part is in stock
at the vendor when we order it fine. By ground shipping
it will usually show up in 3-10 business days and we can
complete the repair. But if the part is on back order at
the manufacturer and there is no where else to obtain the
part and you will have to wait. As an example, if you have
a Line Six Spider with a main board that is not repairable
at the component level and Line Six currently does not
have the board in stock it is not like I can call Marshall
and get this part.
Nothing can be done until the part shows
up and we can install it. Yet we feel the wrath of customer
frustration all the time in these situations. I don't know
how many calls we have had over the years were we heard " My
equipment has been in your shop for two months now, this
is taking too long". I then have to explain that we
looked at your equipment, diagnosed it and ordered the
parts within the time frame we quoted you when you checked
the equipment in to our shop. We can only repair your unit
with a specific part that is not currently in stock. I
am not making money off a repair that is sitting on my
shelf. I know you want your equipment back fixed, but just
as much we want it fixed, paid for and not taking up space
in our shop that can be used for other things.
The problem is found and the repair estimate
exceeds the dollar cap that the customer authorized.
In
order to save having to call every customer for the price
of every repair it speeds up the process if we can agree
upon a price cap for repairing a unit at check in. This
means the customer gives us permission to repair the unit
as long as the charges do not exceed the agreed upon price
cap. This saves a lot of time trying to track people down,
leaving messages etc. If the unit is diagnosed that the
charges to repair it will exceed the agreed upon price
cap (inclusive of applying his advance estimate deposit
towards the repair), then we call the customer to get approval
of the charges before any work is done. If the customer
decides that the cost of the repair is more than he wants
to spend, we close the unit back up and charge a diagnostic
fee for our time spent evaluating the unit.
According to which of the aforementioned
circumstances apply we then proceed and try to finalize
the repair. A couple of situations come up on occasion
that can be frustrating during this part of the process.
Sometimes when we quote an estimate to a customer and
they say they need to think about it and call back with
a decision. When this happens we will put their unit on
the shelf without putting it back together. Many units
have over a hundred screws holding it together and if we
are waiting for parts or a decision on an estimate we are
not going to screw something back together, only to take
it apart again to fix it. Invariably the customer will
not call us and then show up in person at our shop to tell
us they don't want to fix it and want to pick it up. This
means we have to stop what we are doing clear off a bench
and reassemble it. This also applies to people who call
us while we are waiting for parts to come in and want to
pick up their unit partially working for a gig and then
bring it back to have the repair completed. For us this
is like doing the repair twice. On many units the bulk
of the labor is to disassemble and reassemble it. They
usually pass on the idea when we tell them there will be
an extra charge.
when the repair was finished
Another phone call we get all the
time is the " you
guys told me you would call me when the repair was finished
and nobody has called me." Could that possibly be
because it is not finished yet? Incredible how often we
get that call.
After completion of a repair, we invoice it, put it on
the shelf and call the customer to come pick it up. Some
people show up in a timely fashion repair receipt in hand,pay
their balance due and take their equipment. But their are
other scenarios we commonly deal with.
It may be the first time we are trying
to call the customer and now either we are calling the
wrong number because the customer did not write clearly
on the service order or the number has been disconnected,
voice mailbox full etc. We make more than a reasonable
attempt to find people researching through customer sales
history, Google etc, but sometimes we just have to wait
until they contact us.
I would say more people show up to pick up their repaired
equipment without their service order receipt than those
who do. You are leaving a valuable piece of equipment with
someone you don't personally know.If you need to,how are
you going to prove you left it if you don't have a receipt?
We will accept your drivers license as proof to release
the repair if it is the same name as on our copy of the
service order, but very often people send someone else
to pick up their repair without a copy of the service order.
I will try to call the actual customer at the number they
gave us, but if I can't reach him this becomes a problem.
I am not going to release a three thousand dollar keyboard
to someone without a ticket even if it is a wife or girlfriend.
I don't know what is going on in your life and the status
of your relationships. This leaves me open to getting a
call that you never gave permission to release it to your
now ex-girlfriend and I am responsible. If the person has
the ticket that is a different story. That ticket is like
cash, it has value and if you don't hold on to it it is
the equivalent of losing cash.
show up without their ticket
The other thing that occurs often
is people show up without their ticket to pick up their
repair and we have pretty much the following conversation. "I'm here
to pick up my amp." Do you have your receipt"? "No" What
brand of amp is it"? " I don't know". "What
was wrong with it"? "I don't know" "What
color is it"? "Black" "Is it a combo
or a head or a power amp"? "I don't know" Well
at least we established it is black, that narrows the field
down to maybe 50. This is usually followed by a twenty
minute search through the computer of names, phone numbers
and addresses that turn up nothing. Finally you will hear " OH,
I think I may have left it under the church name" or " Try
my seven year old son's name."
the amount of time it takes
Another universal law of a service center
is that the amount of time it takes someone to pick up
their repair after we call them that it is ready, is inversely
proportional to how much of a rush they were in to get
it fixed. It never fails, the people who call us every
day to see if their unit is repaired yet end up leaving
it for months after we call them. Repairs that are left
in the shop for a lengthy period of time may be subject
to storage charges and if left long enough will be sold
as permitted by state law to recoup our parts and labor
expense.
Is it fixed?
Here is a question I am asked all
the time when people pick up their equipment and it makes
my blood boil. "Is
it fixed? I can not understand the mentality of asking
this. If we call you that is repaired and hand you a bill
,just what do you think the bill is for. I have started
responding to that question by saying "OHHH you wanted
this fixed. Why didn't you tell us that? Usually gets the
message across.
Sometimes when people pick up their
equipment they will tell us we are giving them the wrong
unit, "This doesn't
look like mine it must be a different unit". We invoice
all repairs by serial number so there is no confusion.
I can't ever remember this actually happening.
We have had customer's try to blame
us for damaging their equipment also. We had one guy
with a small DOD pedal. He was yelling at me "Look at that hole, this wasn't
there when I gave it to you" I proceeded to show him
that the hole provided access to the pin that opened the
battery door cover and most certainly was there from the
day the unit was manufactured.
Next month we will explore the final frontier of the service
center - The manufacturer warranty and also extended service
plans.
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