[Michael Maurice]

Some years ago, I wrote an article for TV magazine called 'There's nowt as queer as folk'

Here are a couple of extracts from the article:

When I was working for a large service company, one of the job cards told me to attend to a Hitachi 25” TV with the complaint “Wont switch on”. On my arrival I asked the customer what was wrong with it, She took the remote control, pointed it at the set and said “look it won’t work.” I went over to the set, pushed in the on/off switch and the set came on! I didn’t feel guilty about charging the £15 Customer Education Fee. After all I did educate her, I showed her how to use the on/off switch!

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Another customer complained that her Amstrad DD8900 Video recorder went faulty but only on Tuesdays and Thursdays! It transpired that she used it mainly for recording Eastenders (When Eastenders was on twice a week!) There was nothing actually wrong with the machine, the customer didn’t understand how to set the timer!



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This is from around 1997

Another call from a customer who couldn’t sleep, When Tanya phoned at a quarter to one in the morning (yes at 00.45hrs) my wife couldn’t believe here ears. Tanya had booked the boxing with Sky box office and found that she couldn’t receive it. She had a Pace PRD800 receiver, but in order to receive these channels they needed the expander. She pleaded with me to come out and I quoted her the exhorbitant amount of £100 to supply and fit this expander and tune it in.

“Yes come quickly!” she said excitedly.

It took me 15 minutes to reach her house, 5 minutes to fit the expander and tune it in and ten minutes to drink the glass of champagne she had provided. She had a couple of make guests also watching the boxing, one of whom was a solicitor.

“Don’t you think £100 is a lot of money for what you’ve done?”

“What for coming out at one o’clock in the morning, anyway you’re a solicitor, what do you charge an hour?”

“One hundred and eighty pounds an hour” (presumably ex VAT)

“Well then, don’t begrudge me my £100.”

Tanya was pleased she could now watch the boxing she had paid for, she told me that she would have phoned every TV engineer in the yellow pages to find someone to come out.