Catpaw - diary of an angry cat

Jackass, pain-in-the-ass customer from hell (CFH) (see previous rant before reading further).

Oh yes, the afternoon went very well, with smoking CFH. I was already annoyed with her because she expected me to drop everything and come up on Sunday to fix a problem that she had put up with for over a week before calling me – hardly an emergency. She could access her mail via online mail so she wasn’t crippled. She has a habit of doing this - insisting on immediate service, no matter how many other people have booked appointments ahead of her. Sorry, unless there is smoke coming out of your computer, I don’t work Sundays.

I figured out how to solve the send mail problem that drove me crazy yesterday. 0×800ccc0f errors are strange. I went through the list of possible fixes yesterday and none of them worked, so this morning I spent some time pondering the not so obvious reasons for the problem. 0x error means you can receive mail but cannot send mail – your computer gets all confused and thinks the firewall (or something similar is preventing it from sending mail) could be a variety of reasons for this. Well, this time the solution was not one that I could find documented. I went through the existing software in CFH’s computer and wondered if Windows Defender may be the culprit. It’s a Microsoft product that is supposed to protect your computer from security threats - I guess sending email counts as a threat. Why it suddenly started to cause a problem is still a mystery. I’ll look into that on the weekend.

I uninstalled it and voila – instant send mail connection. Consistent and stable.

Chock one up for the good guys.

I also fixed her wireless connection (stopped working months ago but she never go around to doing anything about it), cleaned up some things that were annoying her, replaced her antivirus program, set up her router etc and firewall, cleaned up the garbage in her system plus reminded her she should be backing up her files (been over a year). Even showed her what external hard drive she should purchase to make things simple for her.

Time to write up the invoice.

I’m itemising what I did and she has already finished writing the cheque. I look at it and look at her. The cheque was for one hour’s worth of work and I had just done over 4 hours worth of work for her. I handed her my invoice without picking up the cheque.

She looks at the amount and says “what’s this?”.

I answered “my invoice”. She said “no what’s this number, I don’t understand”. I actually looked at her over my glasses and repeated, “my invoice”. She’s not stupid – she’s a professional who, before she retired, charged over $300 an hour for her services so she understands about invoices.

She picks up the cheque she wrote and hands it to me.

What? Do I have stupid tattooed on my forehead?

I looked at her again and said “that covers one hour of my time. I’ve been here much longer than that. I spent 2 hours of my own time this morning going over possible solutions. I’m not taking that cheque.”

“I don’t understand this number.”

She knows how much I charge. I have been to her place before.

I shrugged and told her its my hourly rate and that’s how much it cost. She stared for a few moments and realised she wasn’t going to get away with this. She wrote a new cheque out and handed it to me.

While I folded it up she said “I’m sure other computer support is cheaper.”

I smiled and said “[competitor] charges $129 an hour to come to your place – that’s $50 an hour more than I do.” “Yes but how long do they take to solve the problems. They might be cheaper.” I shrugged and said “call them next time.” I smiled and left.

She gets charged the TSTL fee - too stupid too live extra fee.

I smiled because that stopped me from saying something truly awful to the annoying CFH. I think I snapped a tooth from gritting my teeth so hard as I got into the elevator.

The good news is my faithful readers won’t have to raise bail money for me tonight.

Stumble it!