Fix The Computer Or Buy Gas & Food - What Are Your Clients Doing?
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I had an interesting situation happen last week that I thought I would share and to see if anyone else is experiencing a similar problem. One of my clients called with a computer problem that I determined to be a hard disk failure. I gave them a price for a new hard disk plus my labor and waited for their decision. I got a call stating that they would have to wait for the repair, since the price of gas and food was cutting into their budget.
Wow. I knew things were getting rough, but this just goes to show how rough things are. This is a middle class family with both parents working who have three kids ages 10 and under. They own two fairly new cars, with the wife commuting about 60 miles a day round trip. The kids are involved in quite a few after school activities as well. Overall, they are just typical working folks.
But this made me wonder. Is anyone else seeing a slow down in repair calls because of the economy? Let us know.
Comments welcome.
[tags] computer, repairs, gas, food, budget, fix, family, [/tags]
One Comment
Doug
May 5th, 2008
at 8:01am
I haven’t had this happen because the majority of my clients are employees for a university. I do however think that the problems lies in how much “good” parents are trying to do for their children. I know that it is important to children involved in activities as they are growing up (FYI, my bachelors degree is in education and my masters degree is in technology) but there has to be a time when monetarily parents have to know when to stop.
I have a friend that is also a co-worker at the university I work for. In November, one of this daughters started to play on a girls traveling volleyball team. At first this sounded like a great idea. Get his daughter involved in a sport, meet new friends, and do some weekend parent/daughter bonding/traveling at the same time. However, every weekend, either he or his wife goes to where-ever the tournament is being played. This has been going on now since the end of February and will finish at the end of June. By the end of the season, joining this team will cost the family over $6,000 in transportation and hotel fees.
I am a happy bachelor living in a small apartment so my expenses are relatively low. If I all of a sudden had an expense that was costing a large amount of money, I would think about dropping it so I can take care of important things going on at home.
The worst thing about the whole state of the economy in our country is that we are in the final stages of a current administration’s reign in the White House. This administration is not going to be doing anything positive to fix the problem. Nothing positive for the economy will happen until at least second quarter of 2009.
Hang on tight. It’s gonna be a bad ride!
P.S. Sorry if I babbled. I’m a teacher and a story teller at heart.