During my tenure as the full time technician assigned to our headquarters in Waitsfield, VT, I’ve seen our repair diagnostics fee rise from $50 to $65. It’s safe to say that whenever any price goes up, whether for taxes, or rent, or products and services, nobody is jumping for joy.
I’d like to use my article this week, however, to explain what that $65 does for you and defend it as a reasonable fee for what we, at Small Dog Electronics, provide.
Our service technicians are Apple Certified. This may not mean a whole lot to some, but for us, it means many hours of personal time and dedication reading manuals, articles, and studying procedures. It also means that Apple officially provides, endorses, and underwrites our training and allows us to perform warranty and out-of-warranty work on their products at our company so you don’t have to send your computer to Apple directly and be without it for weeks. It’s not possible to have someone log every moment we spend studying and training for our job outside of work, so in order to quantify this knowledge and expertise, there needs to be a baseline. That’s where your $65 starts.
At the check-in counter, our staff is trained to determine whether an issue is best resolved on the spot, with a consultant, during an in-store 1-on-1 lesson (not to be confused with Apple’s 1-to-1 service!), or whether a device needs to be checked in to be diagnosed and worked on by a technician. We have had customers mention that they didn’t understand the $65 charge for what may seem like a “quick/5-minute” diagnosis, but I should clarify that, should a device come through the service department, it is never merely tested for five minutes.
Instead, here is what happens…
We start by attempting to replicate the issue. In some cases, when there is a clicking sound indicating hard drive failure or a flashing question mark folder, we may bypass an attempt to boot the system and immediately run diagnostics externally. Once we’ve found the root cause, we make a judgment about how most efficiently to move forward. Often, this means finding an applicable diagnostic part to test with. If this does not resolve the issue, we then see that something else is wrong or that we’ve tackled the problem from the wrong angle. Eventually, we will discover what needs to be replaced or reinstalled and, if it is not covered under warranty, we call the client to discuss costs and what is involved.
Over the past year, we have made significant efforts to raise the bar with regard to customer-technician communication. We are always open to questions, concerns, and feedback about the service and are happy to explain why a certain part is needed or why something is not covered under warranty, etc. Careful documentation and internal communication is part of the $65 that you pay for diagnostics — it allows us to take care of you, quickly and properly answer your questions, and keeps everybody on the same page. So many times, because of humanity’s busy schedules, we need to leave voicemails and play phone tag with customers.
For example, if you call in to check the status of a repair in South Burlington and I, in Waitsfield, answer the phone, I can tell you what you need to know or find out immediately. Your money goes toward that efficiency and customer service, even if the employee you’re talking to is in a different location than where you left your device off. Often I will counsel customers who brought their devices elsewhere in purchasing a new computer or in choosing one of several options the technician has laid out for them.
Finally, when we are diagnosing a computer we ??will?? test the integrity of the whole system and make sure that when you receive back the device it is functioning within established parameters. This means testing everything beyond the initial issue and symptom set. Of course, we like to give systems back to users in better condition than they arrived. As you can imagine, by the way, none of this takes a mere 5 or 10 minutes but is really stretched across multiple people, multiple hours, and quite honestly multiple days. It is a team effort to get your product back in your hands so that you can go back to enjoying it. And when you do get it back, you have access to technician notes summarizing what was done, any important communication you may have made, and of course a breakdown of price by part and labor.
Whenever you own something that doesn’t work and needs to be worked on by a professional, you can get a little crazy. I’m no different than anybody else who has ever brought in a device and wanted, nay ??needed??, it back as soon as possible. Your perception of time becomes distorted as anxiety pervades.
My hope with this article is to put into perspective that we all do unequivocally appreciate your plight and, though things may sometimes seem expensive or delayed, we do the very best we can for every single customer and we do care that you are more than satisfied with our work. If there is an unexpected delay or issue, we’ll set it right. We stand by service excellence here at Small Dog and are always prepared to raise the bar.
