[Michael Messmore]

I’m not a professional luthier, but I helped run a computer shop from 2005-2011 near Memphis and had a similar problem. Not apples to apples, but figured I’d share my experience in case it’s useful.

We’d build up a pile of abandoned computers and purge them every 6 months or so. Reclaim anything useful and pitch the rest. We had 1 irate customer come back about 2-3 years into this more than a year after the work.

We changed the form we used for drop off to say “disposed of 30 days after completion.” We had them initial that and sign the quote. It wasn’t as much about the legality as the realization that we weren’t being completely transparent before. We were never as aggressive as 30 days, just when they built up we’d purge back to 60 or 90 days.

We had a few more come back after that, and pulled out their agreement. Usually offered to apply their initial labor charge to a new computer or something. Some took us up on a computer, where we basically sold at cost. Some shrugged. I think 1 left an insane rant review on google.

No one ever sued us or called a lawyer.

With new hardware, we kept all packaging when we could. When abandoned, we’d be able rebox it and sell as new or “like new”, or use it in a future repair. We’d offer the packaging to the customer when they picked it up. They’d rarely take it, but it oddly made them happy. I think it made things seem less mysterious or shady.

I had to stop focusing on losing labor like it was an asset and just track it in aggregate against costs. That was both for business and mental health. We bumped up the initial fee twice over my tenure to compensate. The majority of complaints we had about that were from people who were reselling our work 😂