Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx | Hacker News Reader

Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx

fedex.com

64 pointsjosephwegner26 comments

There was a "Modern Marvels" episode that took a look at UPS. One of the things they covered was a huge electronics repair facility that UPS operates near their hub.

UPS has contracts with several electronics manufacturers to handle repairs. For example, they handle Toshiba laptop repairs [1].

This happens transparently to the end user. The electronics company has the customer ship the broken item via UPS, addressed to an address that UPS knows is reserved for items that UPS is supposed to repair, and they get diverted from the hub to the repair facility and fixed. The technicians at the facility are UPS employees, but have received training from the companies whose equipment they work on.

[1] http://www.forbes.com/2004/04/27/cx_ah_0427ups.html

Old news, UPS and FedEx have been doing this for years, even decades. Yes, now it looks like that the offering is targeted directly to consumer out of warranties, but the service is similar.

http://www.notebookreview.com/news/fedex-techconnect-handles...

"One of the best kept secrets in Memphis, Tennessee isn’t B.B. King’s Restaurant and Blues Club or the exclusive “Itta Bena” restaurant hidden upstairs; the big secret is a division of FedEx that has quietly been servicing PCs for more than 30 years"

I can see how it makes sense if there's a delivery component but I'm not sure what fedex brings to the table otherwise.

The fact they have well trained staff who have been doing nothing but this for decades, maybe?

Edit: Oh and for repair parts to have on stock/delivered on request, there is always a delivery component involved.

Yeeup. Perhaps this ensures business in case they lose out on contracts with the existing computer-makers.

Hmm, that kind of blows a hole in my speculation that after we have a few big players in computer service, a few law suits with unhappy results, we finally get government regulation in computer repair, similar to regulation in other service/repair industries, such as automobile repair.

I run a service business in addition to the database apps I write, and I expected one of the flags for me to close that part down was the introduction of that type of regulatory stance...

Caveat: Guesswork ahead:

I think this is smart. It's heading off Amazon and their 'Local' initiative (marketplace + angies list) and Amazon's end-goal of Local, which I believe is cutting UPS/Fedex/et al out of the loop. I could see a scenario where contractors requested through Amazon would deliver your packages for that day in exchange for no Local fees, or something to that effect. Amazon saves on shipping, and more deeply embed their customer in to their own ecosystem.

Fedex, by doing this, embeds themselves more deeply in to the businesses they work with, so that switching from Fedex to UPS or to AmazonShipping is not just a matter of changing the carrier, but also changing your IT team/some other logistics team.

Little known fact, Geek Squad actually used to have locations in certain FedEx Kinko's stores (when they were still together).

They decided not to expand the program, figured this was the natural result.

Source: Used to work for Geek Squad.

I worked for FedEx early in my career but I don't know what they are trying to do here. Maybe leverage the FedEx Services workforce to squeeze some more revenue?

To me, it looks like some hotshot business-type decided that their internal IT didn't have enough work or wasn't close to fully "utilized" in their view so they decided to basically contract their internal IT dept. out to consumers....

"Our technicians keep a vast global network of technology running smoothly. Let us do the same for you. Call us when you have a problem with your computer or system."

That's how Amazon Web Services got started; Amazon made something for internal use, figured they could market it to external clients and now AWS is massive.

This is a different situation in the way it scales, but still the same core idea.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what they are doing. They recognized that their techs are not 100% utilized so they are going to "farm them out" so to speak. Based on other commentors UPS and FedEx have already been doing this for years. I was in the software side of FedEx Services (Ground and Smartpost) and I did no know this.

They can probably also make a decent margin on those repairs. FedEx and UPS basically take a loss on some major shipping accounts just to get the volume. When I was at FedEx the strategy seemed to be swaying to not fight for non-revenue accounts and let UPS take them. UPS is so much bigger that they can play that game better than FedEx. The big retailers would just switch back and forth to however offered the lowest rate.

I believe the strategy of FedEx (and indeed other major shipping companies) is to ‘get inside’ the companies they serve and help with various sorts of logistics and processes. They don’t just want to be on the outside carrying your packages to-and-fro. IT services would be a natural extension of such a strategy.

They've been fixing computers for other companies for a while now, it sounds like they're expanding that business. It seems like a good idea, a lot of the time and expense involved in that process is moving around the parts and machine to be repaired. They're able to optimize that better than most other companies.

I’m wary of third-party repair facilities like this, especially for hardware. Having worked for a first-party repair shop, there are often times so many obvious fixes that require little to no effort that we would only know simply from the experience of seeing the issues repeatedly and knowing what works and what doesn’t, and our ability to get specific parts so quickly, and have repairs done in a few days or less would set us apart from shady third-parties who would otherwise take weeks to fix our equipment.

Thorough documentation on repair strategies and troubleshooting for all computer models is paramount to a good and fast repair.

Sounds like hubris This is how professional repair center looks in eastern Europe: https://www.youtube.com/user/1servicecore/videos?sort=dd&vie...

I also worked for first party RMA house in central Europe. It was mostly out of school noobs on quick rotation cycle. Teach them to diagnose and follow solutions book, after that its high speed, low drag to burnout by crazy hours and shitty pay. Dont even get me started on quality.

There is a sweet middle ground between mega pay by the fix first party grindhouse and obscure one man we do it all operations.

IMO They need to offer security hardening services. Remotely install A/V and malware tools (AFTER they run a through analysis). Maybe setup VPN's and train people how to maintain a password vault and setup a completely recoverable backup system.

So many people lose so much due to malware and virus attacks. If someone would go on the offensive to help people maintain basic security, that would be a great offering. Heck, the internet world NEEDS this kind of thing to minimize the presence of botnets.

How about a thumbdrive computer that can be attached as needed?

Of the people that need this service how many are willing to pay money for it?

All these companies provide bad service 3x the cost of local mom and pop shops. Whether its office max, geek squad, ups, fed ex, they provide inferior service and quality of repair for an inflated price. Shame on OEM's like Toshiba for not servicing their own equipment.

> with the speed and reliability of fedex

Ha.

That was my first thought too. They're way better than USPS but the error rate is still substantial.

I used to run a facility that got ~200 packages a day split between the carriers. At least a couple of times a month we'd get mis-deliveries, or packages claimed to be delivered when they weren't, etc. If you figure 60 a day were FedEx that's 1200 a month or less than 1% error rate. But if I didn't have a couple of FedEx reps I could call when things went sideways it would have been a nightmare.

Even with all the technology mistakes still get made.

Or just buy a Mac.

I worked as an IT Pro for over 15 years, and ever since the release of OSX, I've been recommending people switch to a Mac, especially family. The only people who call me with computer problems now are those with Windows machines.

The next step is to start saying "Oh, gee. I got rid of all my Windows manuals, so I can't really help you."

Actually, I just say "sorry, I don't do Windows anymore"

Don't forget correlation/causality. If someone recently switched to a mac then their computer is newer, less dusty, guaranteed a few more security updates compared to their old one, regardless of OS.

Did you troubleshoot their computer problems when all the GUI moved from where they expected it? Little things like ⌘-C instead of ^C to copy? When they had no OOTB write compatibility to their old NTFS volumes? First google result for that is to enter random terminal commands as sudo, what a great habit to get into.

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