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Old 29th Jun 2022, 6:54 pm   #1
G6Tanuki
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Default Dodgy practices in the trade...

Mods - close this if you think it's inappropriate - but I'm sure that in your time we all came across distinctly-dodgy practices amongs techies.

Examples: we took-over a failing small specialist IT-repair business in the early-1980s; I got to do some analysis of their customer-callouts and discovered that there was one particular customer who regularly placed service-calls on Friday mornings. Turned out that the tech who was normally-assigned to cover that area was having-it-away with one of the computer-operators... who was placing the calls... so a mid-Friday-morning service-call from the site meant he got to spend the weekend with his squeeze and then drive home on Sunday night.

We assigned a different default tech to do service-calls from that site and the callout-rate dropped rather impressively!

A similar bit of 'spreadsheet-forensics' of fuel-consumption on company vehicles revealed an extensive fuel-syphonage scam amongst the service-techs [12MPG average, from a Chevanne?].

Rather than firing these fraudsters we implented a 'mileage marathon' scheme; anyone managing more than 40MPG in a company-vehicle got rewarded. And as if by magic the fraud disappeared.

Any other scams you came across?
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Old 29th Jun 2022, 7:12 pm   #2
TonyDuell
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Default Re: Dodgy practices in the trade...

My late father was a research chemist. One of his colleagues ordered (and got) a particular instrument, I think it was a regulated power supply. The reason he chose that model? The series pass components were KT66s, meaning he had way of getting replacements for his pair of Quad IIs.
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Old 29th Jun 2022, 7:13 pm   #3
Lloyd 1985
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Default Re: Dodgy practices in the trade...

One I can think of was when I was working at a mobile phone repair centre, whenever a new model phone was released the bosses would always have to have it, so when these phones came in for repair, generally with nothing seriously wrong, the boss that wanted it would come over and insist the phone was marked as BER, so they could get their grubby mits on it! Their excuse was ‘well the customer will get a new one..’ I remember them getting all excited over the Nokia 1100, don’t know why, I thought it was the crappiest phone out at the time! A bit like an old 8210 in a case that made it look like a dogs chew toy…

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Old 29th Jun 2022, 7:20 pm   #4
SiriusHardware
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Default Re: Dodgy practices in the trade...

I don't know about scams, but I recall a situation where we were called to a very large TV at a house - I was only there in case the thing needed to be lifted back to base.

We couldn't see a thing wrong with it but it was obvious that the customer was the potentially 'difficult' sort so my companion took the back off, fired up his soldering iron and made some nice flux smoke signals, then put the back back on.

The customer was asked what she thought of the picture now. "Lovely" she beamed. She was going to be charged the callout charge anyway, and nobody likes to pay something for nothing so we gave the appearance of at least having done something, although in reality nothing needed to be done.

The other thing we would never do, in the days when chips started to come to the fore, was to show the customer the guilty part because they simply could not believe that something so small (along with the time to diagnose, obtain and replace) could cost so much. So we would, on occasion, if asked what the fault had been, show them something else like an old LOPT from the same type of set. If it looked sufficiently large and arcane and complicated, then that was something that had understandably cost money.

From the above examples and no doubt more to follow, it strikes me that a certain amount of psychology was sometimes needed in order to manage or assuage the expectations of the customer.
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Old 29th Jun 2022, 7:47 pm   #5
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Default Re: Dodgy practices in the trade...

Quote:
Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post
Mods - close this if you think it's inappropriate -
The mods have deemed this inappropriate for the forums.

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