So my aunt and uncle have a computer, a dell, it’s older, maybe two years, the warranty expired… well my aunt is the type of person who is honestly not that bright, and if she gets an email saying she got an ecard from someone she opens it of course and gets a virus.. she visits all kinds of stupid websites and anytime one of them says to download something she does it…

needless to say I got a phone call asking me for help, that their computer was running slow, their son, who they think is god’s gift to the world and knows everything, yeah he has a computer that he bought, pre-built, but according to their way of thinking, and their view of him, he’s an expert on computers and knows more than I do… yeah, I don’t think so, but that’s another story..

anyway, their computer of course was virus ridden to the point that they couldn’t do anything with it, it was overwhelmed, using 100% cpu usage all of the time wiht all this garbage running.. their son’s advice was to re-install windows, which of course even I agreed with after seeing everything there, I would have spent many hours trying to get rid of this junk and most likely would have missed something hidden..

anyway, I’ve spent at leat 5 hours pissing with it, re-installing everything for them, and coming back down to take care of other things as well that they screwed up afterward…

so for all of my time, he paid me $100, hell of a deal for all of the work I did, I looked at BestBiuy and what they would charge for the same services, it came to $1069, and that’s only for one hour of time, at the time I didn’t care about the payment, he’s family so whatever…

when I installed everything for them, I told them to give me everything they have so I can re-install everything while I’m there because I’ve got  full time job and family and well I can’t just run down every time they’ve got a problem…

but now though he’s throwing it in my face that I owe him because he paid me that $100, and he’s saying that I had better get down to his house and help him with his computer, because well that $100 apparently paid for my services and for me to be on call 24/7 for him only and for me to jump when he says so… he’s left me nasty voicemail messages pointing this fact out time and time again, and it’s to the point that I don’t answer my phone when I see it’s his number on the caller id..

I mean some people might argue that he’s family and I should have done it for free, well I’ve got a job, I take my time off, not paid to help him, and I think I should get some compensation for it.. he got like 95+% off of the going rate for what I did for him.. and I can guarantee that I’ve got more knowledge than the geek squad at best buy does… and he thinks and stated that I screwed him…

I don’t understand why family think that just because you have knowledge about things like this that you’re their personal PC tech to run when they have a problem…

a friend, or ex-friend of mine did something similar to me, we don’t talk anymore because of it, but I took care of all of his PC work, cheaply because I had the time then to do it.. a few months ago he got a new laptop at the pawn shop, he asked me to wipe it out, install windows, and all of his programs on the laptop, took me about 6 hours total.. he gave me $20, I just looked at him and said what’s this for? he said that’s for taking care of his laptop, I said I don’t think so, but he said that’s all I was getting for the work I did.. so I don’t talk to him anymore and I’ll never touch another of his computers again no mater what he offers me.. I don’t understand, I could see if maybe he didn’t have that much money, but he makes a good 70 grand a year so he could more than afford it…

I don’t get it… I really don’t