Hikvision Technician Invoice

[joshmc123]

Hi Everyone,

I would appreciate some advice on an invoice I've received from a technician that recently came to my house earlier this week.

I recently moved into a house which came with 6-8 Hikvision cameras. The technician spent two hours at my house and sent me an invoice for $200.00.

My issue is, I dont feel he actually did anything or solved two issues I was having:
1. Not able to decouple the NVR from the previous owner
2. Getting the Hikvision doorbell/intercom system to work

The technician cut a hole in my wall and determined that there wasnt a network cable running from the doorbell to the tablet (this took close to an hour)

In terms of the NVR, the technician spent an hour on this.. He claimed that he updated the NVR from 2018 to 2020. The options he gave me from there were to 1. Contact the old owner to unbind ; 2. Take the NVR to a service branch to upgrade. The actual steps to get to this point was to suggest I connect the system to the internet, move the 4G modem to the comms cabinet. This took just over an hour to get to this point.

Would an experienced technician take an hour to upgrade the firmware? Because at that point, it should have been clear that there was nothing more he could do and that I would need to contact the previous owner to unbind the NVR.

 

[Mike A.]

Hard to judge from afar somebody on-site but $200 to have someone roll out to your house and try to fix such things doesn't seem particularly excessive to me. I could probably nit-pick that he might have determined that a tablet wasn't hard-wired to a network without making a hole in the wall and might know how the registration worked on the NVR if familiar with it but again that's not being there and not knowing what he was looking at. He may have tried the NVR firmware upgrade thinking that it would give you a fresh start to register or may have done it to fix some well known potential exploits.

 

[David L]

Hi Everyone,

I would appreciate some advice on an invoice I've received from a technician that recently came to my house earlier this week.

I recently moved into a house which came with 6-8 Hikvision cameras. The technician spent two hours at my house and sent me an invoice for $200.00.

My issue is, I dont feel he actually did anything or solved two issues I was having:
1. Not able to decouple the NVR from the previous owner
2. Getting the Hikvision doorbell/intercom system to work

The technician cut a hole in my wall and determined that there wasnt a network cable running from the doorbell to the tablet (this took close to an hour)

In terms of the NVR, the technician spent an hour on this.. He claimed that he updated the NVR from 2018 to 2020. The options he gave me from there were to 1. Contact the old owner to unbind ; 2. Take the NVR to a service branch to upgrade. The actual steps to get to this point was to suggest I connect the system to the internet, move the 4G modem to the comms cabinet. This took just over an hour to get to this point.

Would an experienced technician take an hour to upgrade the firmware? Because at that point, it should have been clear that there was nothing more he could do and that I would need to contact the previous owner to unbind the NVR.

For $200 or a little more you probably could of bought you a new(er) NVR.

 

[Teken]

Given every region has their own pricing for service one would need to see the entire invoice. A call to the plumber ranges from $65 - $85.00 an hour before taxes which doesn’t take into any bull shit add ons like fuel charge, eco fee, etc.

Some places have one flat tax vs others have more like where I live. PST / GST is applied which doesn’t address the make belief fuel charge, recovery charge, recycling blah blah.

The reality is if you already tried to fix the system before you called this person out. You paid him because you simply couldn’t resolve the issue yourself.

Whether this person fixed the problem at hand really comes down to his experience and knowledge with the specific brand of hardware.

Anyone who has ever tried to update firmware on anything knows that depending upon the maker it’s either going to work or not. One only needs to see the endless threads from Dahua / Hikvision hardware that have been bricked.

To be fair the vast majority are results of people using the wrong firmware for a unsupported device or one that was intended for another region. But then again the quality of firmware from Dahua these days spans from pure shit to just works.

As one member noted the cost of the service call could have gotten you a cheap NVR. Than again one of my questions would have been why you or anyone else wouldn’t have asked for a firm quote for service?!?

Why would anyone get into a business dealings without having the basic prices hammered out?

You don’t pay me for my time. You pay me for the knowledge and what I can accomplish with that time.

 

[mat200]

Hi Everyone,

I would appreciate some advice on an invoice I've received from a technician that recently came to my house earlier this week.

I recently moved into a house which came with 6-8 Hikvision cameras. The technician spent two hours at my house and sent me an invoice for $200.00.

My issue is, I dont feel he actually did anything or solved two issues I was having:
1. Not able to decouple the NVR from the previous owner
2. Getting the Hikvision doorbell/intercom system to work

The technician cut a hole in my wall and determined that there wasnt a network cable running from the doorbell to the tablet (this took close to an hour)

In terms of the NVR, the technician spent an hour on this.. He claimed that he updated the NVR from 2018 to 2020. The options he gave me from there were to 1. Contact the old owner to unbind ; 2. Take the NVR to a service branch to upgrade. The actual steps to get to this point was to suggest I connect the system to the internet, move the 4G modem to the comms cabinet. This took just over an hour to get to this point.

Would an experienced technician take an hour to upgrade the firmware? Because at that point, it should have been clear that there was nothing more he could do and that I would need to contact the previous owner to unbind the NVR.

Welcome @joshmc123

Service professionals have to pay various taxes, and thus will charge appropriately. Does not seem unreasonable for 2 hrs + driving time charges.

This is why I prefer to do the work myself.