SlammedNiss
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OK, recently sold a HDD on eBay. HDD was ran through both DBAN and WD Diagnostics, and tested 100% prior to listing. Item sold, and buyer received last week. I get a message last night saying that he installed the HDD and installed XP using his pc's recovery disks. He is telling me that the pc will boot to the XP splash screen, and then the screen goes blank. No blue screen, no error message. Just a blank screen.
I reply by asking that to make sure his video card is seated properly, and also inquire as to why he replaced the HDD in the first place. He goes on to inform me that his "computer friend" came to the conclusion that his old HDD was fried "after a power loss happened twice in 30 sec. and the comp. is on a surge protector..." So, I told him that pc hardware is very susceptible to electrical surges even when behind a surge protector, and that whatever fried his HDD also possibly fried some other component.
He keeps messaging me back asking what he should do. I know he's fishing for a refund, but I don't normally offer returns for this very reason. I've tried explaining that if it were a HDD problem (or most any other piece of bad hardware), there would either be a blue screen or an error message. He obviously has no idea what he's doing when it comes to a pc. I should have figured that out when he didn't know the difference between SATA and IDE.
This is the 2nd time this has happened in the past month. Last month, buyer received an error message during OS installation. I asked for the error message, and error# indicated the buyer had bad RAM. I explained that to the buyer, but I got dinged with a negative feedback anyway. (my first since becoming a member 12 years ago). I didn't have the energy to argue with the buyer, so I just let it go. However, I really can't afford another negative feedback from this one.
What do I do?
I reply by asking that to make sure his video card is seated properly, and also inquire as to why he replaced the HDD in the first place. He goes on to inform me that his "computer friend" came to the conclusion that his old HDD was fried "after a power loss happened twice in 30 sec. and the comp. is on a surge protector..." So, I told him that pc hardware is very susceptible to electrical surges even when behind a surge protector, and that whatever fried his HDD also possibly fried some other component.
He keeps messaging me back asking what he should do. I know he's fishing for a refund, but I don't normally offer returns for this very reason. I've tried explaining that if it were a HDD problem (or most any other piece of bad hardware), there would either be a blue screen or an error message. He obviously has no idea what he's doing when it comes to a pc. I should have figured that out when he didn't know the difference between SATA and IDE.
This is the 2nd time this has happened in the past month. Last month, buyer received an error message during OS installation. I asked for the error message, and error# indicated the buyer had bad RAM. I explained that to the buyer, but I got dinged with a negative feedback anyway. (my first since becoming a member 12 years ago). I didn't have the energy to argue with the buyer, so I just let it go. However, I really can't afford another negative feedback from this one.
What do I do?
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