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A comment on Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx. Parent comment

Re:Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx by crazypyro on Thursday December 11, 2014 @04:46PM (#8737226)
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."

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Re:Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx by johnward on Friday December 12, 2014 @09:11AM (#8740036)
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.

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Re:Computer repair with the speed and reliability of FedEx by DrStalker on Thursday December 11, 2014 @08:10PM (#8738057)
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.

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