Hacker News Reader

Comment by aharrison | Hacker News Reader

One thing I don't see people talk about enough in the context of home or car repair is liability. Not only do I not want to mess with a broken toilet, but if I screw up and flood my bathroom, it is my fault. If the plumber does it (less likely because they know what they are doing) then they are on the hook. For some things the cost of failure is low, but for many, especially when being paid a programmers salary, the marginal savings (e.g. 15 bucks for an oil change) isn't worth the time and liability.

YMMV (literally :D).

View on HN

The hinted solution then is for webshops to provide some form of liability protection for the client.

If the website is buggy (like a leaking pipe), its the webshops fault and reponsibility to fix. If personal information was leaked thanks to bugs in the website (ie, the leaky pipe caused a flooding), then again the webshop is responsible.

If a customer know that they are not responsible to maintain the website security and protection of data records from customers, then I suspect many would be willing to pay quite nicely for not being "on the hook" if something goes wrong.

To make that economical possible for the webshop, we might need to utilize regulations. With plumbers, they are forced to be liable, so everyone is competing with that assumption. It is always part of the price, and they don't have to compete with non-liable plumbers that can undercut the price.

Well, it really depends on the "fix". Most toilette problems can be fixed by a simple $5 part from the store. Hell, the last time a pilot light was out at my place, the plumber literally just scrubbed it with a wire brush. Just calling him out was $130. And no, I did not feel ripped off.

So, yes, there can be liability concerns. But there is also the line of thinking where "everyone should know how to cut the water to their house." Or "Everyone should know where the circuit box is to their house." etc.

Then there is the current reality. Getting stranded in a car accident is something that I would imagine is a lot lower in occurrence nowdays. I know how to change a tire, but I have to confess with cell phones being what they are, I am less concerned about my kids having this skill. I think they'll be ok.

Ha. Scrubbing with a wire brush is worth a dollar - knowing what to scrub with a wire brush was definitely worth $130, right?

I know your joking, but I feel like this is an important thing that's often lost on people. The other day I got in a bit of an argument on oDesk because I turned around a job too quickly. The guy didn't think it was worth the price we agreed upon. I had to explain that that wasn't a 15 minute fix, that was years of studying in university, and years of trial and error, and hard won experience to know how to solve his problem in 15 minutes.

He stiffed me in the end...

I'm not joking at all. I had a consulting customer once that had a problem; I asked him a couple of things on the phone that he insisted he'd checked, and he pleaded that I come to Chicago in person and take a look, when I lived in Southern Indiana at the time. I said I'd bill him a day (which was generous; the whole thing cost me 13 hours).

Turns out that yes, one of the (trivial) things I had asked him about, that he'd said he'd checked, hadn't been checked. He was up and running in half an hour.

Then he didn't want to pay for a whole day because it had been so easy. But he did, in the end, pay for a whole day.

The problem with these sorts of sites is in the reputation system, in that reputation is far more important to sellers than to buyers.

If you had left bad feedback on this guy's profile , it would be easy enough for him to create a new account and still get bids for his projects.

OTOH for a seller even neutral feedback is viewed as black mark and starting from scratch is difficult.

Yeah... I am dead serious that I did not feel ripped off. Learning a lesson is worth every penny, in itself. Having someone else risk a spark near a gas source is a special kind of cost. :)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com