I had my TV business decades ago and when I was going on service calls I learned a lot about people. In general some people were never happy and they despised having to pay for a service call. Other people were happy to see me come to the door and repair their TV sets. Wealthy people's homes were cleaned by other people and were never as clean as poor people's homes. I assume that was because the poor cleaned their own homes. I remember one retired admiral's home on Coronado, California. It was a magnificent place right on the Pacific ocean beach. The couple were both surley and when I pushed their console TV out there were dried chicken bones behind it. I think they were there because they fed their little dog the bones from the table and the dog dragged them back there to gnaw on them at its leisure.
At a home in Missouri at the Lake of the Ozarks had a TV problem. I don't remember the what the problem was, but someone had put an antenna on the roof of an "A" frame home with a cedar shake roof. I had to climb up on the roof to check the antenna and cable first. The roof had an extremely steep pitch and I worried the whole time I was up there that I would slide right off it. The cable was not run properly. Whomever installed the antenna and the cable down to the house did not leave a drip loop on the outside of the house. There was not enough cable to put a loop outside to let rain water drip outside the home. The cable inside the house had a water drip from the excess loop behind the TV and the people living there just put a bowl behind there to catch the water.
There were times when the only problem was a simple adjustment of the vertical or the horizontal screen settings that people just didn't know how to do because they didn't know the adjustment control was behind the TV set. I was a terrible business man because I would just make the proper adjustment and leave. I didn't have the heart to charge them for a service call even though it cost me time and gas money to get there. I know that was not what I should have done business wise, but I just didn't do it.
One home I went to on the lake had an horrific odor that I could smell when the old woman opened her front door. I walked into the living room and was shocked at what I saw. Two of the four walls had cages with dogs, rabbits and cats stacked three high. There was no way for them to get out to do their business, so it all went to the living room carpeting below. The old woman was nasty. She complained non-stop. I repaired the TV and it was looking great and I was anxious to get out of that reeking smell. I handed her the bill and asked what she thought. She replied, "I don't think you know what you are doing." I was happy to never have to go back there.
Once my buddy and I were on the other side of the lake working on a set. The repair was a simple power supply rectifier diode. I had it done in short order and we drove back to the shop. By the time we got there the phone was ringing. The TV had went out again. We went back over there and my buddy measured the AC electric outlet and it was 145 volts instead of the 115 it should have been. It wasn't our fault, but we repaired the set again and told them to call the electric company to get the over voltage fixed.
Once again on the lake we had a call to repair a TV set. We got there and it turned out my buddy Ronnie had gone to grade and high school with the woman. Despite the fact that she was married, she still had a thing for him. I was behind the set trying to do the repair while six feet away there were scenes from a soft-core porn movie going on. I don't remember what I had to do to fix on the set, but I remember the movie scenes.
Because I was not born and raised in the lake area all of my business came from people from Saint Louis or Kansas city to spend summers at the lake. My business slowed dramatically when they left the area, so I worked by the hour in other shops around the area. That suited me just fine because I didn't care for service calls in homes and driving around all day. I got to work on the really difficult problems that others had set aside or just sold the customer a new TV and took the old set in on trade. I liked working in the shop and liked the challenge of repairing something someone else couldn't find. That always intrigued me.
One January new Year's day I had a call from a guy who needed his TV repaired. I told him it was a holiday and I had family coming over that afternoon, but I would get there tomorrow. He panicked right there on the phone. He was down there from Kansas City and there was going to be a Kansas City Chiefs playoff game on that afternoon. His boss was coming to his house on the lake to watch the game because the game was blacked out in Kansas City and his boss couldn't get a ticket to the game. He said he would double whatever my regular charges were. As I wrote earlier in this post, money was hard to come by in the winter, so I got into my old van and headed out. The problem was simple, the TV signal wire was broken. I had it repaired in short order and was home in a jiffy. He was ecstatic and I was happy to start the new year out right. I was home before our guests arrived.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
At a home in Missouri at the Lake of the Ozarks had a TV problem. I don't remember the what the problem was, but someone had put an antenna on the roof of an "A" frame home with a cedar shake roof. I had to climb up on the roof to check the antenna and cable first. The roof had an extremely steep pitch and I worried the whole time I was up there that I would slide right off it. The cable was not run properly. Whomever installed the antenna and the cable down to the house did not leave a drip loop on the outside of the house. There was not enough cable to put a loop outside to let rain water drip outside the home. The cable inside the house had a water drip from the excess loop behind the TV and the people living there just put a bowl behind there to catch the water.
There were times when the only problem was a simple adjustment of the vertical or the horizontal screen settings that people just didn't know how to do because they didn't know the adjustment control was behind the TV set. I was a terrible business man because I would just make the proper adjustment and leave. I didn't have the heart to charge them for a service call even though it cost me time and gas money to get there. I know that was not what I should have done business wise, but I just didn't do it.
One home I went to on the lake had an horrific odor that I could smell when the old woman opened her front door. I walked into the living room and was shocked at what I saw. Two of the four walls had cages with dogs, rabbits and cats stacked three high. There was no way for them to get out to do their business, so it all went to the living room carpeting below. The old woman was nasty. She complained non-stop. I repaired the TV and it was looking great and I was anxious to get out of that reeking smell. I handed her the bill and asked what she thought. She replied, "I don't think you know what you are doing." I was happy to never have to go back there.
Once my buddy and I were on the other side of the lake working on a set. The repair was a simple power supply rectifier diode. I had it done in short order and we drove back to the shop. By the time we got there the phone was ringing. The TV had went out again. We went back over there and my buddy measured the AC electric outlet and it was 145 volts instead of the 115 it should have been. It wasn't our fault, but we repaired the set again and told them to call the electric company to get the over voltage fixed.
Once again on the lake we had a call to repair a TV set. We got there and it turned out my buddy Ronnie had gone to grade and high school with the woman. Despite the fact that she was married, she still had a thing for him. I was behind the set trying to do the repair while six feet away there were scenes from a soft-core porn movie going on. I don't remember what I had to do to fix on the set, but I remember the movie scenes.
Because I was not born and raised in the lake area all of my business came from people from Saint Louis or Kansas city to spend summers at the lake. My business slowed dramatically when they left the area, so I worked by the hour in other shops around the area. That suited me just fine because I didn't care for service calls in homes and driving around all day. I got to work on the really difficult problems that others had set aside or just sold the customer a new TV and took the old set in on trade. I liked working in the shop and liked the challenge of repairing something someone else couldn't find. That always intrigued me.
One January new Year's day I had a call from a guy who needed his TV repaired. I told him it was a holiday and I had family coming over that afternoon, but I would get there tomorrow. He panicked right there on the phone. He was down there from Kansas City and there was going to be a Kansas City Chiefs playoff game on that afternoon. His boss was coming to his house on the lake to watch the game because the game was blacked out in Kansas City and his boss couldn't get a ticket to the game. He said he would double whatever my regular charges were. As I wrote earlier in this post, money was hard to come by in the winter, so I got into my old van and headed out. The problem was simple, the TV signal wire was broken. I had it repaired in short order and was home in a jiffy. He was ecstatic and I was happy to start the new year out right. I was home before our guests arrived.
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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