Hi Larry,
I also encountered this kind situation.
Most people are scared about paying for an expensive donor if the recovery fails.
One possibility is to apply a "no result - no fee" or a "no result - small administrative fee" policy and take more margins on you work in order to cover the risk of an unsuccessful recovery.
You can also examine the platters for possible scratches before ordering a donor and be transparent with your client about how you estimate the probability of a successful data recovery.
I believe the most important thing is to enter into a relationship of trust with your client.
In case a head swap is needed, I always explain to my customers that
a donor hard drive requires to match several parameters and it would not suffice going to the multimedia supermarket and purchase the same kind of hard drive.
Then, I tell to the client that there are
two options :
A) Purchasing a donor hard drive from a donor hard drives bank.
B) Searching a donor hard drive in standard marketplaces like ebay.
Then,
I explain to the client the pro and cons of both options :
A) Donor hard drive bank Pros- The donor hard drive can be found quicker.
- The required parameters for a matching donor are already available, so that we don't have hardly trying reading them from oblique views or blurry pictures.
- We know that the hard drive is unique.
- The hard drive can be purchased immediately.
- The hard drive will be quickly shipped worldwide.
- The hard drive will be carefully packaged and when necessary with the declaration for the customs.
- We deal with a professional company.
Cons- Because maintaining such an inventory requires storing hundreds/thousands of hard drives (--some of which will never be purchased--)
recording tons of parameters in a database, a hard drive coming from such a database will traditionnally cost more than one purchased on a marketplace.
B) Standard marketplaces Pros- We may find a hard drive at a cheaper price, but not necessarily.
Cons- Search results are polluted by listings for non unique hard drives.
- The required parameters for a matching donor are most of the time not available (unless the hard drive comes from a donor bank)
so that we have to try reading the parameters from the sticker of pictures that are often oblique views of the hard drive.
- We almost always have to check with the seller that the drive the is going to be shipped is the exact one pictured and not another one of the same model.
- We sometimes have to wait about one week until the auction ends.
- Some sellers have no idea about how to package hard drives, so that almost always we have to give instructions before they send it.
- Many auctions don't offer the possibility of abroad shipping, so that we often have to enter into negociation with the seller to ask if he would accept shipping abroad and at what cost.
- We often have to give instructions about how the hard drive should be packaged, and that the declaration for the customs must be correctly filled.
- We often purchase the hard drive from individuals, some of them being on holiday, a.s.o.
Then,
show to your client how hard drives are inventoried in a professional hard drive bank.
I would suggest browsing the web with your customer and visiting us at
http://drive-for-parts.com (or alias driveforparts.com).
Once you're on our site, do this:
1. Click on the [+] signs, expand the tree to : 2.5 SATA > Western Digital > Scorpio > Blue
2. Click the "See" button for the model "WD10JPVT".
3. You can hover or toggle the small squared buttons for each hard drive.
4. Click on the "See" button for one of the hard drives in the list.
5. Lastly, click the hard drive with Ref. "D503", which has lot of information on the miscellaneous tabs, including head maps, micro jogs, pcb and firmwares.
Following theses steps, your client will perceive that data recovery is not an easy thing.
By the way, this demo will value your skills in the mind of your client.Then, be friendly with your client and check for free if his hard drive model is available on our site. It only takes a few seconds:
1. Click on Drive For Part's logo at the top left so that you go back to the home page.
2. Enter the hard drive model name directly in the search field. (You can enter it lowercase if you want.)
3. Validate by hitting the Enter key or clicking the lens button.
If the hard drive you're looking for is available, you'll be redirected to it.
If the hard drive is available and parameters are compatible, look at how your client reacts when seeing the price of the donor.
Concerning the shipping costs that we apply at Drive for Parts, click on the "Shipping costs" widget at the bottom right of our home page.
We usually ship in priority, with tracking number and signature on arrival.
Depending on the destination country and buyer, we also may accept to send in economy without tracking/signature.We also accept grouped shipment of several hard drives together: one possibilty if your customer agrees to wait until you order more donors together.
So, if you need to spare on shipping costs, please contact us.
(There is a contact link in the left column and our phone is on the homepage.)
One benefit of this multi-steps approach is that it shows you if your customer is very price-oriented or not, and if his top priority is a fast recovery or a cheap recovery. It also gives you more time to better perceive what type of customer you are dealing with.
Tell your client that you can also search on other places, but don't forget to take into account the administrative work that it will require from you.
Then, I suggest giving an oral "all inclusive" price estimate for the data recovery, i.e. including the donor, your work, and a target external hard drive :
- with option "A", i.e. hard drive bank
- with option "B", i.e. marketplace
Your customer will understand that this overall costs is including the donor, your work and the output media.
One last thing: we speak French and German and provide administrative and shipping assistance if you want to acquire a hard drive listed on the
Swiss Ricardo marketplace (
https://www.ricardo.ch/fr/c/disques-durs-et-stockage-39209/), or an European eBay site like ebay.de, ebay.fr and ebay.ch.
Hope this helps.
Regards
Julien