I was quoted £34 to have a spring cut down, ridiculous. What i'm saying is reasonable prices.
This bugs me... But not for the reason you think... It's a reasonable price... Kind of...
Call it an hours labour to strip your rifle down, get your gearbox out, open it, take your spring out, put it back in, close it, put the mech box in the gun, and put your rifle together. That's all the admin taken care of... Which leaves the spring itself.
There's 4 ways to do that job...
What you should actually do.
The Proper way
The "proper" way
And the way your tech would do it...
The way your tech would most likely do it is just lop off some coils. Done. This creates inconsistencies in the spring due to lack of finishing. Plus how many do you remove? That's mainly guesswork... It's a full bodge.
The "proper" way is to remove coils, heat your spring, flatten the bottom coil, and sand it flat.
The Proper way would be to do the above, but then you would need to heat treat the spring again... Because without that, all you've done is weaken the spring and increased the onset of fatigue damage.
All of the above are irreversible... Which brings you to "what you should do" which is explain that cutting the spring is a bodge, and what you should do is just put in a new spring. Which realistically... Would cost very little more, and give you your spare spring to reverse the operation. Plus the work is much easier to track, more durable, better and just simpler... You can then, as an optional extra, have that spring shimmed to tune it, should you really want that magic number... But you shouldn't unless there's a technical reason.
I'd say some sort of warranty although it's a bit unrealistic. If I got someone to fix my gun and it broke within the next couple of games I'd be a bit pissed off. At the same time though a tech could just say it's not his problem anymore.
Warrenty is a funny one... The issue is, you can't guarantee previous work or damage... You also can't stop someone taking a newly fixed gun, then running it on a 11.1 for a 5 minute burst, then denying all knowledge. Any reasonable person would offer to fix a caused issue, but trying to explain how your piston stripping has nothing to do with your hop breaking (or whatever) gets tricky... But your right... People need assurances.
The other way is to offer insurance policies... A small fee to guarantee any work for a set period... Worth it for your £800 gun...
It's well worth proper thought, to make sure people are happy... I think just backing yourself up is all you need... Yeah, one in 100 customers might cause you an issue, but good will in some cases is worth more than gold... What's 3 hours of your life to help someone salvage a good game day... Or keep a recommendation.
Not everyone has the tools/ability/confidence to do the work themselves.
Granted very little is actually all that complex but some of it is very easy to screw up if you're a bit hamfisted!
This is exactly it... Not everyone can, or wants to fix their own car either.
Consistency with pricing is probably the main point I'd want, also actual timescales of when something will be done by rather than be fobbed off with the old "I've got a lot of other orders" excuse. Be nice to have a rough estimate rather than waiting for weeks on end with no change.
Yeah, this is a given really. I think the key is to be realistic and not make promises you can't keep... And remember that your paying for a service that includes ACTUAL service, and not just work done.
