Any business owner sooner or later is faced with a customer who makes an issue of something. Often, no matter how expressly the issue is defined for the customer before the fact, if the customer wants to make a stink or strong case or whatever you will call it, the customer will force the responsibility onto the business owner. In smaller dollar amount cases it comes down to the willingness to spend the money to defend yourself, of just to pay off the problem and make it go away. In larger dollar cost cases it comes to whether defending yourself is going to cost less than just paying off the case. That's one of the risks in business. If you don't like it you shouldn't own a business. I've been a business owner for over 14 years and have faced this dilemma a couple of times. In both cases it was far less expensive and time consuming to bite the proverbial bullet. Extremely unfair to me, but I'd rather spend my time helping my customers than defending myself against someone who has no interest in the "truth" but only sticking it to someone. As a consequence of my earlier experiences, I require all customers to sign a 2 page contract before I'll touch their equipment. I decided that a) there IS a need for a preemptive contract and b) if the customer is not willing to accept this, I'm not willing to work on their equipment. I've never regretted this decision, and since requiring my customers to sign a contract, have never had an issue arise out of the work I've done for them.

...tracy