Customer brings in drive - quotation acceptance.
You do the work and restore the drive to working
condition then customer changes his mind
and wants the drive back.

What do you do ??

If you have spent some hours to repair drive to working condition
it seems stupid to return drive to customer so he can just plug
it in as a slave and pull off the files for zero cost.

The drive and data always remains the property of the owner and
any deliberate damage may result in problems for repairmen.

GET THE MONEY UPFRONT

I fax a letter of acceptance to them (or email) they fill it out and drop it off, fax it, or mail it back to me. On this letter it talks about the price, how they will pay (i.e. credit card. debit card, cash NO CHECKS) The letter is received before any work is preformed. This will fix any problems. IF the come back they want the drive back, they have paid already and they can take it. You may want to make sure that the transfer from your merchant account makes it to your bank account in a timely manner or you will have to deal with reverse charges.


Hope that helps you.

Hello,

I would probably make some errors to the FW in this case and let him go.
Not very nice, but I just won't let him get the data for zero price.
I rather hate situations like this, but that's life on Earth

pepe

Good question fujimax

I agree with pepe.

Personally I think that this is a general business for all kinds of services.

For example:

If you send a car to a mechanic store, and after they fix the car you decide that you do not want it back and you will sell it damaged as is, it would be correct to return the car fixed ??

Offcourse not, because you would have invested time, and parts in it.

If a customer decline my quote, he will receive the equipment / data as it have arrived in my lab. That is why I always try to quote before doing the actual recovery.

Advancind in this subject, do you guys quote the price for the difficulty and parts needed for the job, for the amount of money that the client is ready to pay, for the importance of the lost files or a mix of this all ???

-BR-

Very gooood question. I'm happy to hear and share about it.

Let me say my opinion. In some country laws are with you very strongly, so you can use ARMRESL system. I talked with some guys from one of the most important USA company, and they use this system. But in some country (Italy is a good example) if you have a signature under that paper it means that probably you will have your money.... but after a judgment, and it can take years and a lot of money for lawyers

So I agree fully with BR and Pepe. It is not so good to do but it is the only way you can defende your interests.

Regarding quotation, here mostly use look into customer pocket, and make quotation high if he is "rich". I prefer to use difficult, skill, part and time cost.