Should I sue him before he sues me? Or should I be more open and try to help this guy?
This is the dilemma; it all started when I was working out at the fitness center I work at. I was doing my nightly stretches and a guy (if need be, we will call him Mr. D) asks me if the type of stretch I was doing worked out my abs. I told him that it didn’t but instead it stretches your back. So we started talking (just for the record I am a heterosexual). We ended up talking about where we worked and what not. Well he used to work at a local community college, which happens to be the same one I attend. I was actually taking a class that he used to teach when he was at the community college. After an hour or so of talking he offered to help me understand that class through free tutoring. Well that was my first mistake. So I ended up taking the tutor session for what it was worth and applied it in my class; all was well and then he asked me to work on his computer because when we first talked I told him that I helped people first their computer problems. So we eventually scheduled a time for him to drop it off. I checked it out and the problem was that he couldn’t connect to AOL using dial up. So I offered to replace the modem for free ( the modem was toast) but he needed an operating system update from Windows ME to windows XP (there were no supported drivers and he agreed to use the modem I offered. I had an extra license of Windows XP, so we agreed that he would pay $80 for me for my time to work on the computer. I printed up an invoice and handed it to him when he came to get the computer. Now the computer was fixed on 1/3/06 and I am explaining the real problem now.
He called me on last Saturday 7/22/06 and asked for me to help him fix it again because he put in the Windows ME recovery disk. Now for those of you that know what a file system is (it’s the way Windows organizes data on the hard drive, Windows ME is a FAT32 file system and Windows XP can be either FAT32 or NTFS (in this case I used NTFS) if you downgrade to FAT32 from NTFS you will lose all data on the hard drive. At that point I told him that is was not my responsibility to fix it because he put the recovery disk (the disk that came with the computer) in and didn’t call me to make sure it was alright. He claims that I didn’t tell him the he couldn’t use the recovery disk and that if I don’t fix it he will sue me in small claims court. I told him that I would consider coming over to look at it that week (Wednesday). He then called me at least 27 times since then using either a private or unknown number (that’s how is showed up on my phone). I tried his cell phone to reach out to him again about setting up a time and it turns out his cell isn’t in service. Of the 27 calls he might have left 4 or 5 messages all saying that he was going to take me to court and have a sheriff deliver the notice blah blah blah.
How should I be taking this? I have been able to talk to him and put him off for a week, should I take him to court for not paying in full the 80 dollars his owes me?( I forgot to mention that he didn’t pay me completely in full from when I worked on the computer).
Please ask me more questions if you need more understanding
Thanks,
Dan
Originally Posted by Sagewing
Bookmarks