Electronics Repairs During Coronavirus: The Challenges

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Tad Vaas21 May 2020

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Tad here. Let me tell you a quick story about something that happened to us recently…

A few days ago, I’m sitting in reception and the intercom rings. There’s a big dude standing there and he wants to come inside.

“I’m here to pick up my drone,” he demands, “Let me in and I’ll pay you the money. I need my stuff now. Let me in.”

Right now we’re not allowed to let anyone in because of the coronavirus situation and social distancing. So I tell him that I’m sorry and that we’re just following the rules.

He’s adamant that he’s going to get in. He’s so rude.

“I know who you are,” he threatens, “I know everything. I don’t care who you are. You’ve repaired my drone, now I wanna come in and get it from you!

I’m like, “No matter what you say, it’s still going to be the same. Rules are rules for everyone. You’re going to have to go back, go on your phone, pay for shipping if we’re going to ship it to you and you’ll receive it tomorrow

But he continues to be rude, “NO!” he shouts.

I realise that talking to this guy is pointless so I hang up the intercom and presume he’s understood the situation.

Two minutes later, I see him on a CCTV camera. He’s gained access to the building illegally. He’s either come in with someone or lied about who he is and somehow managed to get in.

I track him on the screen as he walks through the building and eventually knocks directly on the door. I can see he’s agitated and I decide that there’s no way I’m letting him in. I don’t want to get into a confrontation with this guy. I’m not getting into a fight with him.

Even though I’m not opening up for him, he sits outside our unit door. He’s there for a long time. Clearly, he’s not going anywhere.

So I decide that for the sake of preventing my staff getting beaten up, it’s better just to get it sorted. So I compromise and let him in.

He’s very abusive when he bursts through the door, giving me a proper mouthful and demanding to have his stuff. So we let him pay, we give him the drone back and breathe a huge sigh of relief when he eventually leaves the building.

Getting bad reviews that we don’t deserve

But this isn’t where the story ends.

Because, after we go out of our way and bend the rules for this guy, he goes home and leaves the biggest, nastiest review online. This then impacts our Google Reviews score and could affect our business significantly.

Funnily enough, just two years ago he left a very positive review for us. The only reason he left a bad review this time was because he didn’t like the coronavirus rules and policies.

You might be thinking that it’s easy enough to brush off one negative review and forget the whole situation. But that’s not how it works with online reviews.

As we’ve mentioned before in our How to Select the Best Repair Company podcast episode, online reviews is one important factor to review.

That’s why we always ask our happy customers to leave good reviews. [Go ahead and leave your review here if you haven’t done so already].

We’ve had longer turnaround times

A few customers have also complained that our turnaround times are longer than they used to be. However, this isn’t because we’ve decided to get lazy and sit around watching Netflix all day! It’s because, like other businesses across the UK and the world, we’ve been faced with several challenges.

In our case this includes the following:

1. We’re short staffed due to the coronavirus pandemic. We’re still responding to emails but we only have a short window of time to do it because we’re working hard on repairs. This means we can’t reply as quickly as we’d like to, but we are doing our best.

2. There’s an increase in demand. Because manufacturers aren’t making new consoles, people can’t buy new. Instead they’re repairing what they have which means we’re busier than ever.

3. Supplies are taking longer to reach us. It’s taking longer than usual to get our repair supplies because of the increase in postal traffic and fewer planes. We’ve even had a few things go missing and not turn up, unfortunately.

4. People are still sending their devices in poor packaging. Unfortunately, many people don’t package their devices properly so they end up crushed or damaged before they get here. Couriers and postal services won’t be as careful with your item as we would be, so please, wrap it up carefully. [Read ‘How to Package Electronic Devices for Shipping’ for packaging tips to keep your devices safe]

How we’re handing it all

Despite how this might sound, we do have everything worked out.

We’re effectively managing our workload and we have some solid systems running to ensure that you get your electronic equipment repaired and back to you as soon as possible. We’re also making sure that we keep you informed every step of the way. This includes sending you updates every few days as well as including an expected service time on our quotes.

We hope this helps you to understand what the current coronavirus social distancing rules mean, how they will affect your repairs and when you can expect your item back.

Summary

As you can see, we’ve been faced with several challenges over these last few weeks. This has included one or two customers not respecting social distancing rules, an increased workload, fewer staff, and trouble getting hold of supplies.

Although we do have everything under control, we’d like to ask you two things.

The first is to respect social distancing rules. They exist for a reason. The second is to read everything carefully to ensure that you understand what to expect from our service and contact us directly if you have any questions. Deal?

If you’d like to watch the YouTube version, click the here.