Legal Question in Business Law in Florida

It is likely that he will sue you in small claims court, which is generally designed for people to resovle their own disputes. That being said, the filing fee may be more than $50 or $100 so it may not ultimately be worth it for him to go through with the suit.

In any case, for the future, you should have a signed agreement with your customers relative to warranties and risks to protect yourself from situations like this.

He says he's going to sue you. After he pays the filing fees, the summons fee, and the service of process fee, he may be out more than $125.00. A lot of people are all talk and no action. But let's assume he does sue you.

If the court found you liable, you'd have a judgment for $125.00 plus the court costs and maybe a couple of bucks interest entered against you. You don't want that, of course. What will very likely happen is, assuming you are unable to resolve the matter before the small claims pre-trial conference, is that you and he and a neutral mediator will try to resolve the matter at the pre-trial conference. Many times the mediator can talk sense into people whom otherwise appear to have heads made out of stone.

So the question for you is what is it worth to you to avoid this hassle? It sounds like you did all the right things and he's just unhappy because he doesn't know the first thing about computers. So I understand that you don't want to give him a full or partial refund. That's the emotional argument. This is business, and time you spend screwing around with theis guy is time you can't spend on something that makes you money. Decide what it's worth to you to make this guy go away and make him the offer.

As Ms Sledziewski suggested, you should have some sort of a signed agreement about warranties. Perhaps a statement on the service ticket would do the trick. See what other businessmen do - guys like dry cleaners, pawn shops, other computer fixit shops, small engine repair guys, etc. Good luck.