I received an email last week from a business customer and the first sentence was “Do I really benefit from this maintenance contract?”

Right then I figured something was going on. Maybe with the economy he was feeling a pinch or whatever. So then I replied to him that yes I thought it was beneficial or I would not of offered it to his business but if he really wanted to stop it that would not be a problem.

Little history on this customer is he is active duty Navy (ship commander) and also has this business spread over 3 towns. But, he likes to think of himself as a do-it-yourself type if you get what I mean.  I also told him in my reply that it’s just like on his ship when he tells the boatsman mate that they “really’ don’t have to do that “preventive maintenance” because what’s the chances of something going wrong….

Now low and behold yesterday get the call “we have a problem”. I am then told nobody can access this “special” program they run from the server and they can’t open any of the shared drives files. I get a tech on-site and then the call explaining they are not positive what is wrong. I show up on-site and first think I as the owner is “what did you do to the network last week?”. His answer was nothing……Wrong answer….Asked him again and now it comes back to him. He “tried” installing a network printer, he “tried” installing 2 more computers on the network, he “tried” installing an external tape backup, he “tried” installing Yosemite Backup software, and lastly he “tried”  installing Filekeeper….

Well that is a bit different then “I didn’t do anything”….End result was Yosemite did not install properly nor did the other software programs because when you get the screen that says “wait until complete” there is a good chance it will complete.  So basically 4 hours later the network is back up and running.

Got another email around midnight from the person saying “I do need the maintenance contract,  and I won’t touch anything else”….

So not only will he continue with the maintenance contract but now he will be billed for the 4 hour mistake that he made from trying to be the “IT” person for the business. And on top of that he is in the “dog house” with all the females that work there to include his wife….