Wish my experience had been the same. Let's see.... $150 diag fee... then 2 hours @ $110... to change a $12 resistor. Okay all fine but typically when you have a diag fee that is in the event the customer DOESN'T move forward with the repair. I get it. Spend and hour here and there diagnosising stuff that people don't move forward on, you need to get paid for that. Sadly in my case, I wasn't given the oppty to hear the diagnosis since he just moved forward and repaired it. So why charge both?? My shop doesn't charge both if the customer moves forward on the repair and neither do any of my contemporaries who run shops.
C'mon man. Even if you were a younger guy with a full family at home and paying rent on shop space, id' still call you out on that. retired? Working from home? Oh I'm definitely calling it out.
Then I asked if he could demo it for me, (mind you I've never done work with Cornell and it is a 45 minute drive for me AND I had even sent him an email asking to have it demo'd when i got there.) and it was as if I had shit in his soup. Really? First time customer? Don't know you from Adam? Simple request and you lose your shit? C'mon man. Trust is built. Not given. At your age you should know that.
When he begrudgingly put it on the bench and hooked it up I asked what a certain meter reading meant, he literally leaned in close to my face and screeched "It means it works". Great. thanks for the info. Sorry to have disturbed you, and yeah, here's your payment for your money-grab invoice. C'mon man. This is how you deal with people? SORRRRRRY I asked you to verify operation on a McIntosh amp that maybe you don't really give two shits about, but it has value to me and so does the money I bust my ass to earn.
So after inquiring about his billing policy, and then asking, twice mind you, once in an email prior to my arrival, then when I get there, to simply demo the unit he just repaired, can you guess what I was told on the way out the door? "Yeah well, I don't need your business." Classy, Cornell. Classy.
So to all you readers out there, choose wisely. There are people out there that deserve all they ask and more,and then there are people who don't. After this experience with Cornell, he falls into the latter for me. read more