Appliance Repair Business & the iPad.

[AJ]

The other day I bought a iPad 2 wi-fi + 3g Verizon tablet computer.

I will be using it for many things, but in the short time I have had it I'm starting to see many possible uses for it in the appliance repair industry.

Here are some ways others are using the iPad in there business.
http://www.apple.com/ipad/business/profiles/

With being able to sync to my laptop, get online via Wi-Fi or 3g and cloud computing the possibilities maybe endless.

I would be interested in talking with other appliance technicians that also have a iPad.

Together we can share ways we use the iPad in the appliance repair industry.

[TechnicianBrian]

Hey John,  I have two iPads and do all kinds of things with them.  The one problem I find in our industry is being able to look up parts.  Most distributers are using part lookup databases that where designed before anyone even thought of tablet computing.  Other than that, we can do most everything on the iPad from communicating to doing our paperwork.

[krazytech]

I too use an ipad . and agree with Brian I wish that the parts look up data base where designed for tablets..

[AJ]

Hi Brian,

How have you been?

What type of paper work are you doing on the iPad?

What programs/apps are you guys using for your business?

I just checked and I'm able to look up parts, prices and diagram with both my parts distributers on my iPad.

http://www.deydistributing.com/
http://online.appliance-parts.com/

I believe both of them have updated there parts lookup online in the last year.

Do you guys print out invoice in the field from your iPads?

[TechnicianBrian]

Hey John.  Been doing well and very busy.  We use myscheduleronline for our paperwork, Yammering.com for instant messaging, Dropbox.com for cloud computing and we email all receipts to our customers.  Our local parts houses haven't embraced most of this new technology, but the links you provided seem to work well.  We use net books now but would really like to make the iPad our primary device.  As the technology continues to improve, we will keep getting new stuff.

[AJ]

I can't come up with anything for Yammering.com

[TechnicianBrian]

It's actually yammer.com.  I am using my iPad and the auto spelling changed it to yammering.com

[AJ]

Are you processing credit cards with your iPad?

I see this company has a app for the iPad too.

https://squareup.com/

[TechnicianBrian]

We use intuit for our processing using their go payment application.

[jumptrout51]

I have had a 4g phone for about 3 weeks.
I had not thought of using it for parts or manuals until I read this.
It will not do parts or appliance digest.com manuals.
It says Topic Locked.

[AJ]

My last smart phone was a blackberry.

I found it hard to do much real work on it. Other then using it for email I mostly used the internet on the blackberry to read things.

Hard to even read something on a small screen.

My last cell phone upgrade I skipped getting a smart phone and got a basic phone that will still let me do emails.

This iPad seems like a extension of my laptop and with 3g built in I can get online anyplace there is a cell signal.

Also with cloud computing (mobile me, iDisk and Dropbox) I can keep the iPad synced with my laptop and store service manuals online just like I would store them on a hard drive.

[AJ]

We use intuit for our processing using their go payment application.

The go payment looks interesting.

http://gopayment.com/

How often do you use it?
Do you swipe the cards most of the time or do people call in with there CC # to pay on there accounts?

[TechnicianBrian]

About 50% of our calls are paid for by cards and the techs run them while at the customers home. This way we help prevent fraud since we never capture or write down a customers card number, and all transactions are secure.

[PARTech]

Hmmmm... I'll be glad when we get some more cell towers in our area then.  I use a droid phone and tether my laptop when I am in range, and for CC I call the office and read the CC info to be punched into our machine.  Think I'll be checking a few of these out. What is 'cloud' computing?

[AJ]

This explains it better then I can.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_computing