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I just had a nice transaction that I thought some of you might like to hear about. An ex schoolteacher of mine found out I was selling computers...turns out he was in the market for one. He and his wife had been using an old W95 laptop, I think it was 100Mhz and 16M Ram. It was there only computer and it took like 6 minutes to fully boot etc...and when they tried to print it did all kinds of weird stuff.
So anyway they were thinking about a Dell...so he calles me and I tell him he is in luck because I have a Dell Dimension 2300 P4 that would be perfect for him. So he tells me to come over the next day to talk about it. So I took my little flyers over there...one was a flyer with the Dell system. When I got there he said they wanted a laptop. So I told him i didnt have any laptops but I would be glad to help them find one as cheaply as possible. I also told him laptops were somewhat more expensive and harder to upgrade etc. I was a little dissappointed but I didnt show it. So I told him to give me a week or two to let me look through my sources (docs deals! lol, and other forums etc) and I told him that deals come around every few weeks.
So I found a Dell deal and I told him about it...at that point they were beginning to think about a tower instead. Turns out they had visited a guy in town. The store is mainly a cash register store but they evidently just started selling Dells also. (I just recently started seeing their ads in local papers). So as I listened on the phone I thought he was gonna say he had already bought it from the guy, hehe...but he just went there and got a quote. dude quoted him $1050 plus tax for a Dimension 2350,P4 1.8ghz with 15" flat panel, 3 year warranty etc. He said he would just as soon buy from me since he wanted someone to set it up and someone he could call if he had problems...and more or less cuz he knew my character and knew he could trust me.
So at first I told him to give me a couple days to find out if I could get the warranty upgraded on the comp I had and let me find out what it would cost me to get the monitor etc. Then I realized the 2350 was DDR and the 2300 which I already had was sdram. So turns out that I just ordered it from Dell with no modem, no speakers. I ordered the exact harmon kardon speakers and the Dell optical mouse from Directron and saved about $25 right there.
Anyway, I told him I couldnt beat the guys price by much after all and that I could do the exact same system installed for 1050 of course my $1050 is without tax and dudes $1050 would have about $50 tax. Anyway he was happy with that so I went ahead and ordered the stuff.
It came less than a week later and I took it to him and set it all up and they are quite happy with it. I had also turned off all the junk background programs they will never need and took all the crap like real player out of their startup folder so the comp is not a pig like it would have been if they got it stock from the other guy. I also added some extras like adobe acrobat, Bible software, etc. I hooked up his printer for him. I called earthlink for him to see if he could get the 6 months for free. I figured out how to get his old address book off of his ancient laptop even though it had no floppy drive. I walked him thru the import process of the address book and he was quite happy to not have to re-enter those 110 or so addresses.
I also spent about an hour and a half setting up and showing them how to use the comp. And no doubt he will call with more questions but that is ok too.
So basically I think this is what people are looking for and that is what we solo guys can give that the bigger guys cant. Service after the sale. TLC.
Ends up he paid me $1100, so that was an unexpected $50 tip. I think I paid $834 altogether for the comp, speakers, modem, etc. So thats like $266 for maybe 8 or 10 hours work at the most. And most of that was spending time looking for the original laptop deal. Plus the guy will want a digital camera eventually and he wants to buy norton from me after the gay mcaffey 90 day thing on the dell runs out. And best of all...this dude, being a teacher forever now...he knows LOTS of people like himself who need a little handholding to get into the world of computers...and now he knows a decent trustworthy straight shooting guy to send them to.
The guy in town selling the Dells did me a favor with the quote....so one thing to remember is that in fact you are probably going to be giving BETTER service in a lot of cases than the big guys...so dont sell yourself too cheaply. When I used to work for my crook ex-boss we were always sort of rushing to do 4 things at once so there was really no time to take WITH the customers.
Now, tell me again why I should go work for $8.00/hr loading and cleaning old monitors and getting cussed out by peeps the boss promised the world to. Plus I dont have to back up all his little lies just to pressure/fool someone into a sale. (lies such as "these are special modems we had made to our specifications just for this town to give the best performance possible".....yeah right boss, you mean those motorolas that everyone uses)
Peace, JP
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"Even a fool is thought to be wise if he is silent"
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