Archive for August, 2009
Saturday, August 29th, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I have exciting news! As we continue to grow a a company,we are able to offer you more and better features. Our upcoming feature will be the ability to accept debit cards for payment. Debit cards can be accepted at nearly a zero fee, so we will not need to raise our rates (which would be required to accept credit cards) but you will no longer need to bring cash or a check to pay for your purchase.
We will let you know as soon as the system is in place, it should just take a week or two to get the equipment set up and ready to go.
Thanks everybody,
-Zac
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Happy Hamster Computer Repair suffered from a break in last night. Nothing was lost due to our excellent security systems. Those are the two more pertinent details, but read on for more information.
On the Morning of Saturday, August 22nd around 3 AM two crackheads went to Fremont street to buy drugs. They did not have enough money, so they began walking down Martin Luther King looking for something to steal. They walked past our window, looked in and saw our company owned diagnostic computers. They walked around back of the shop, found a large rock, and came back around front.
At that point, two witnesses standing across the street from our shop called the police. The criminals threw the rock through our window, and immediately set off the glass break sensor in our shop. Many things then happened at once.
First, our alarm company alerted the police, who were already en route.
Second, residents living in apartments upstairs woke up and came downstairs to check on the shop.
Third, the two criminals ran in, grabbed a computer, and ran.
Portland Police arrived on scene in less than 3 minutes, got a description of the suspects from multiple witnesses, and called in almost the entire on duty police force to flood the area and find them. The two suspects were caught almost instantly, about two blocks down the street.
The two suspects never got close to any sensitive customer data or customer money. Our three-layered security system functioned as intended.
We will, in response to this incident, need to take the very unfortunate step of adding additional protection our shop, probably in the form of steel shutters or a steel grating we can lock over our windows at night. I know it’s somewhat unsightly, and I don’t like doing it to our neighbors, but if this happened after only a month in residence I know that we will just have the same situation repeated if we fail to take additional steps.
The security of your personality belongings is our highest priority, and the thieves never even got close to penetrating to the items of value in our shop. After applying additional security measures, hopefully we can also stop them from breaking our windows.
If you have any questions about the incident, or the safety of your computer here, please don’t hesitate to call and ask for me personally. I will be happy to answer any and all questions you have.
Best,
-Zac
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I saw something today that really bothered me. As I do once in awhile, I scanned through my competitors websites. I like to check their prices, services, etc, to see how I compare and to make sure everything stays fair.
Today I noticed something on the websites of many competing companies that really bothered me. The vast majority of them charge a special, higher rate for same day service. This fee ranged, depending on the site, from $29 to $79 extra just to get somebody to look at your computer the day you bring it in.
I honestly don’t understand that philosophy at all. Customers do not plan computer repair. It isn’t something you put in your schedule for next Tuesday like an oil change. Instead, computer repair is almost always immediate. “The computer worked yesterday, it doesn’t work today, and without my internet connection I’m cut off from the world. ” Seriously, can anybody today live without e-mail for more than a few hours?
Since we know every computer that comes in is a critical-rush-do-it-yesterday-please job, we treat them all like that. People often call asking how long it will take to get their computer looked at, and the answer is always the same – as soon as you walk in the door, we’re going to plug it in and get started. We don’t think that’s a service for which we should charge extra, we think a fast repair is part of what you’re paying for!
So come on down tomorrow, or Sunday, we will be in the shop, ready to get started as soon as your computer hits the shop.
Best,
-Zac
Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Boy, What a rush! After 32 straight days of work getting our new store up and running I took the last three days off. I turned off my phone, left the computer at home and went out of town. I think some people call it a “weekend” but I’m not very familiar with the term.
Anyways, it’s a new week and time to discuss our newest and most exciting offering. As some of you may know, we maintain a small fleet of laptops that we loan out to customers who have their computers in the shop for a long term repair. These computers came from customers who didn’t want to pay the cost of a repair, or from various Craigslist and Ebay sources. Unfortunately, demand outstripped supply and frequently we have not been able to provide a loaner laptop to a customer who might have wanted one. That will all be changing this week. The company has worked out a deal with one of our suppliers to get 10 very nice laptops for a very good price. This will increase our loaner laptop fleet from 4 to 14 and will we can offer a loaner computer to every customer who may need one.
As with our free pickup and delivery service, our loaner laptop offerings will remain entirely free for our customers. So don’t worry about a repair that needs parts ordered or may otherwise take a week to fix, you won’t miss a beat.
Best,
-Zac
Sunday, August 9th, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
Just wanted to drop you all a note to share news of a new company record! We took in the most computers in company history this week. This week we fixed 40 seperate machines. To give you some perspective, that is about how many computers we fixed in the entire month of October last year (our second month in operation).
We keep on rollin’ rollin’ rollin….
-Zac
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
Hey Everybody in Portland Computer Repair Land,
I want to talk about a truly terrifying situation that took place the last 48 hours. A small business client called, one with about 30 employees, because the computer on which they did their payrole wasn’t working right. We arrived on site, and determined they had a failing hard drive. They had to run payrole that day, so we inquired about backups. They had nothing, not a single backup for the 5 years of data currently on that hard drive.
We worked through the night (literally), and ultimately had to bill the customer almost $1,000 to save their quickbooks data (it was very badly damaged) so that they could pay their employees the next day. However, it was a very close run thing. The data only came off at the last second, and as soon as we got that data, the whole drive stopped responding and died completely.
Had we been unable to get that data for the client, it would’ve created an enormous problem for their accounting, as they would’ve had to rebuild all of their accounting data, how much people get paid, how often, etc, from scratch. They also would’ve missed payroll for their employees counting on their monthly checks. Worse than the $1,000 they paid us, they would probably have to do weeks of work before their accounting was up to date and functional once again.
All of that because they never thought to make a single backup, not one, on a 5 year old computer that housed their entire accounting database.
Something we ask all of our small business clients to do when we meet with them is to run a firedrill. A firedrill in computer consulting lingo means imagine a worst case, imagine if computer X went down, right now, how would your company function? The scary truth is that at most small businesses, they have never thought of it, and have no plans for what they would do. Most companies try to subsist on prayer and hope that the situation never arrises. Well, as we saw above, it does. So once again, allow me my standard beg of you, please backup your systems! You’re not saving any money by not doing it, because the cost if they go down is enormous.
Thanks everybody.
-Zac
