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Getting Gouged by Geeks
dottyslashdottydot writes "CBC Marketplace recently ran a sting operation and discovered that most home computer repair technicians failed miserably at diagnosing a simple RAM failure. Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades. (or even a new computer!) However, the worst offender was one guy who claimed that the hard drive had failed, and that the only remedy was to pay $2,000 to have a special facility with a clean room recover the data."
I have to take a little umbrage at the inflammatory headline, though I suppose the choice of words generates traffic. These people were not being gouged by geeks. They were being gouged by assholes. These are the same assholes who'd sell you a re-built carbeurator to fix a low-transmission fluid problem (it's true, I stopped this guy from doing just that to a good friend).
Most "geeks" I've ever known or met often may suffer social ineptitude, but across the broad spectrum, geeks, IMO, seem the least likely to be the type to pull these ripoffs. Quite the contrary, my experience has been geeks, true geeks who really know technology are the ones far more likely to shrug and take no money for helping someone with technology. That's not to say they're not willing to make a living at it... just that they're not ripoff artists.
Also the story is long on anecdotal "sting" evidence, and short on statistically significant information to substantiate the claim. My advice, ask around, ask a friend you trust, not necessarily to do the work but to give a "yea" or "nay" on any recommendations. Also, if it's a company like "geeks.com", stay away... any company pedalling technicians en-masse on the cheap is suspect... the market doesn't sustain that kind of business model... fixing technology is hard, and not cheap.
Anyway, back to my thesis, this is ripoff by assholes, not geeks.
Sounds like a good porn movie title.
Everyone knows that Microsoft operating systems require this for stable operation.
I will create a sig when innovation restarts in the U.S.
Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades.
Look, maintaining a proper level of Hard Disk fluid is extremely important in order to keep the tachyon flux of the read/write heads within normal operating parameters.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
They are some know nothing people who think there smart because there in the 'Computer' industry.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I fail to see how detecting a RAM failure can be "simple". Memtest86 isn't 100% foolproof.
It's just as hard to find a good, read competent and honest, IT tech as it is to find a good car mechanic.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
In other news, some business people are shady and try to rip off consumers! See the groundbreaking report tonight, at 7!
I have to ask the question, is this type of behavior exhibited by ripoff artists, or inexperienced "technical" people trying to be entrepreneurial?
The end result may manifest itself in the same form, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's malicious. Incompetent? Yes. Scam? Maybe not.
True. Unless the hard drive has been through a fire or has otherwise suffered significant physical damage, clean-room recovery shouldn't cost more than $1000 or so.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
If however it was a matter of having a RAM stick with a subtle fault that kicked off only during extremely heavy RAM usage, then you may have had a point there.
Here's the trick, though... most of the 'expose' type stories like this usually involve something incredibly stupid, like loosening a cable or card (Hell, I used to drive students crazy when they were forced to troubleshoot a system I induced failure on with clear cellophane tape on the NIC card contacts).
Much like tweaking the distributor timing a bit on an other3wise perfectly running old car can out the fakes and the incompetents in the auto industry, there are some damned drop-simple ways of outing the scammers and dumbasses in the IT field.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Well, he WASN'T saying that the problem is memory. A better analogy would be him saying that you have a broken rib without a stethoscope.
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
I'm mean really, who would think this is new or unique to a field or industry? If you do think this is unique, I have some very small packages of dehydrated water that I can let you have for a special price.
Person x has limited knowledge in an area of expertise, so goes to person y. Person y attempts to up sell at best, and a ripoff at worse.
Seems rather dumb to be surprised by such behavior in really any field of service oriented work.
I read the title as "Getting Cougars by Geeks." I thought it was a book review written by Geeks...
bah.. I was seriously impressed at first
If they were really smart, they'd have been spending the last few years creating collaterized mortgage obligations (a not very difficult matrix algebra equation), and recomputing risks for sub-prime mortgages, again easy to do if you don't mind fudging some assumptions and outright lying about some others (hi, AGW fans!). Then they would have made billions, and once the scam was revealed, they'd be bailed out by Ben Bernanke, the Fed, and every European central bank. Manipulation of financial assets beats manipulation of physical assets every time.
What was once true, is no longer so
Memory affects pretty much everything, so it's hard to isolate it from everything else. Bad RAM can result in disk corruption, making it hard to determine it's the memory and not the disk that's broken.
For example, take Nero, burn a CD, then verify it. If the RAM is bad it may well happen that a few bits you read from the CD got flipped, and now the verification fails. Obvious conclusion: The CD-R was bad. After a few of those, obvious conclusion: the drive is bad. That the computer crashes ocasionally can be attributed to spyware or viruses. A tech working for cheap isn't going to spend hours to test every possible case.
RAM is also one of the most annoying things to try to diagnose. Disks at least have SMART, so if it got to the point where it's really broken, SMART will tell you about that quickly. And once it breaks it tends to do so very obviously. Now memory can pass tests and still be bad, and be marginal enough to work most of the time.
I had several problems with RAM that firmly convinced me to always buy ECC.
First one was when my Linux firewall, which ran for months without a hitch suddenly had a kernel panic. I thought it was strange, but oh well, nothing is perfect. Rebooted it, expecting that the new kernel installed weeks ago probably has a fix for that. A couple days later it crashed again. Rebooted it again making a note to investigate later. A day later it crashed yet again, but didn't boot this time due to disk corruption. Turns out the RAM was loose in the slot, and somehow stopped making proper contact. The module itself was good and passed memtest86 just fine when I set up the box.
Second one was when I was buying a new shiny box, and started having strange crashes. This took me quite a while to diagnose, because memtest86 passed perfectly fine. Yet "memtester", an userspace tool did catch it finally, after running for 8 hours straight, and even then with about 50% accuracy. On repeated 8 hour runs sometimes it'd catch it, and sometimes not, while testing the whole memory several times during that period.
Something like that probably won't be diagnosed correctly by tech support. Even if they do test the memory they're almost certainly not going to bother running it for a day straight, just to make really sure it's not a marginal case.
Good thing this news is coming out on a site frequented almost exclusively by people that already know better than to call up a repairman.
- Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
I'm pretty sure that's Geek Squad's whole business model. A family friend once told me (after the fact) that they charged her $90 to back up all of her data to a CD, which consisted of a couple dozen family photos and a few papers. (This was a few years ago, so the prices might not be quite so crazy now). A buddy of mine who worked at Best Buy (but not for the Geek Squad) used to explain to inquiring customers that their problem was most likely due to a faulty flux-capacitor. Kind of mean, I know, but still funny as hell.
In one of the tests they corrupt some files on windows and suggest a simple reinstall will fix it. With windows updates reinstalling windows on top of a pre existing installation can often make it unbootable and/or leave the user with other problems. So, simple in hindsight but before the problem is solved there's more than one possibility as to what will leave the system in a usable state.
A RAM failure, depending on severity, is a right PITA to diagnose. Unless the PC suddenly has less RAM than it's supposed to the errors resulting from a RAM problem look a lot like a whole bunch of other problems. The people likely to find a RAM problem are the ones that start with something like a boot-from-CD hardware diagnostics run, which can take hours. In which case if it isn't a hardware fault they just "gouged" you for a couple of hours of useless diagnostics.
you just don't know the cause. Few years back at a friends LAN party some non techy guy brought his computer and everytime it booted it BSOD'ed (Win2k). I was like "heh anyone got a Win2k CD" and a few ppl tossed me them. I then proceeded to reformat his box. Everything went fine during the install. On first boot we hit the windows splash screen and BSOD.
Now I am thinking WTH this does not make alot of sense. So we canabalized a different computer starting with a different HDD. Same problem. Then the Power supply. Then the RAM. And wallah it started working right. We stuck back in his old components with different RAM and everythign was fine. This took several "geeks" a couple of hours to fix and it was not a by the book type fix. We litterally had to use a process of elimination and had to have extra hardware available.
Alot of people will take the easy road. Especially with older crappy hardware. If somone is running an old Win 98 box and it appears it is a hardware issue.. They are just plainly better off buying a new computer then looking for antiquated parts. Or if it is going to take "days" to fix it may be cost effective to not pay a "tech" to fix it.
Some of the "Geeks" in the parent article may have been ripoff artists.. others may have in the long run been providing the correct response to the situation.
Could you give some indication in the teaser that the content is actually inside of a video? Ideally, I could filter out the video content. Can't watch it at work due to IT constraints and videos usually take much longer than text to consume.
In every situation I have ever worked and with every person I have ever lived, I have been the go-to geek. I tell it like it is because I personally care about solving problems and making other peoples' lives easier. As the parent post said, most true geeks will shrug their shoulders and charge nothing. Personally, when fixing friends' computers (or their parents', or their friends') I refuse monetary compensation, but in college required the person to barter a home-cooked meal (hey, that meant a lot in undergrad!).
As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks" in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost $400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the computer, I'd be paying someone to make my Slashdot posts for me!
In short, everyone should befriend a geek. If you know a nice geek, you're set. If you don't, then ask around for someone who does. Rarely does hardware need to be replaced, but when it does, you needn't pay sky-high prices to have it done.
A kiss, a chesty hug, a 6-pack, or a warm meal is usually enough.
It depends on how critical that data was to the client. If the drive failed, and the customer made no backups, then hiring a firm to extract data using a clean room or STM electron microscope might not be a bad idea.
Which doesn't excuse the incompetent who overcharge.
I had a workgroup sized laser printer, a few years ago, that had some RAM soldered on to the motherboard - not replaceable (at least, not for less than the board cost). It even provided a cryptic error message on the front display panel. So I called the only factory authorized service center in the county. They sent a technician out. He ignored the error code, changes the serial cable to the PC, printed a test page from the control panel on the printer, and left. (And sent us a bill, including trip charge, of something like $200.)
We deal with another shop now.
If there's a RAM error that's manifesting itself as a disk error, I'm very likely going to go with the KISS principle and declare it a disk error rather than do an exhaustive diagnostics. Unless, of course, I was charging enough to cover the cost of such a diagnostics.
How would a RAM error manifest itself as a disk error?
If the disk-test programs I use deterministically hit the bad spot in RAM in such a way that they consistently reported "sector x is bad," that's how.
A "trick test" is configuring a system with one error that the "customer" knows good and well will look like something else AND that this particular "fool the expert" situation is rare enough that most technicians won't specifically test for the real cause.
A realistic test is one that is more representative of the real world. Take 4 machines, a pile of bad RAM sticks, and a pile of hard drives with bad spots. Put 2 random bad RAM sticks in two random machines. Put 1 bad hard drive in 1 of the bad-ram machines and 1 in one of the good-ram machines. Tell the tech "my friend is getting ready to donate these to charity and he wants to make sure there is nothing wrong with them. Here's $your_usual_fee to test all 4."
Sure, the tech may get unlucky and get a fake-out "trick test" situation like I described above, but at least it will be a fluke and not by design.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Right - new hard drive $200, then restore your backup. Oh, no backup - well then you didn't really give a darn about your data anyway, right? Shoot - honestly, who trusts their data to a single spinning hard drive with no backup?
Every time I have random strange errors, the very next step after doing a standard malware/AV scan is popping in memtest86. I've had three sticks of RAM go bad in the last three or four years. A monkey could do it and it should be one of the first steps in the Idiot's Guide to Hardware Failure Diagnosis. Is it a lack of training?
I have about 2/3 of potential clients balk at my rates, but of those over half usually end up calling me after making a costly mistake. I charge around the same as Geek Squad but there are tons of little "computer guys" charging nearly half around here. My newest client figured out you get what you pay for when troublshooting a network file server problem, one of the local guys spend 12 hours working on the problem and half-ass worked around the issue after being unable to find the real problem. I showed up monday morning, found the problem in 15 minutes and had things working properly in about an hour and a half total. What matters most isnt the rate they charge upfront but what your going to be charged when the work is done, an incompetent tech is going to cost more nearly every time regarless of their rate.
Assuming the drive contains data with a value that exceeds $2000*
*Although family photographs, home videos etc.. are probably easily worth that
Also on the price I have seen a hardware failure render a RAID'ed SCSI disk array *very* broken, leading to some rather bad writes, cost to recover? $64k at the current exchange rate, at least they implemented a backup system fairly rapidly thereafter.
RAM failures are some of the hardest things to diagnose, because they do not present consistent symptoms, its not unexpected that people can/would get confused by it.
"Technology is too complex today."
... They didn't catch them stealing porn and filming their customers in the shower.
This is my opinion. To make sure you don't steal it, it's covered by the DMCA.
$25 to change out the RAM? First: You have to buy RAM, which they probably bought with them (which means it's fair for them to jack the price, unless you want to buy it yourself, without any knowledge). Second, you have to pay for their time , on-site service, and expertise. $25 is unrealistic. $60 to re-install Windows? Easy to fix? Clearly the host doesn't know a whole lot about Computers in general. $60/hour for most shops isn't unheard of, plus re-installing drivers and software, which customers are sure to bitch about later.
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
a system that is not making it past POST it not that easy to fix and bad ram can make it look like a bad MB, cpu, bad pci / pci-e card, or some other part I one worked on a system with a bad HD that was stopping the system from booting / powering on And without a lot of spare parts it is hard to test in some ones house and with ram will need a lot of different types of ram to
Also the big box store over charge on ram and other parts and some times it is good idea to pay for more ram when you old ram is bad.
Also a system with messed up system file can be from a Virus / spyware and just doing a windows repair install is not a 100% fix in the case that you will need run a scan and If am working on system with bad system files I will run a scan As I have fixed a system that had so much virus and spyware on it that windows blue screen at boot.
for a lady. Laptop #1 is a Compaq. She bangs it around over and over and keep breaking the power jack from the motherboard. The power plug acts like a crowbar and prys it loose.
Laptop #2 is a Dell. The hard drive started acting up. I diagnosed it as a bad HDD.
She purchased a new hdd through Dell and had it shipped to her. She brought me the laptop and the drive.
The new drive refused to install, the mobo insisted the drive was password locked.
I spent about 4 hours on the phone with dell (someone reading a que card in India) and after much agony it was determined that the mobo was bad.
I called the lady and asked her what she wanted to do. She said that was it, end of the line, trash the PC she wasn't going to spend another penny on it and was buying a new desktop. She asked me how much she owed me for what work I had done.
I told her "No charge. I didn't repair it so there's no charge. You pay for what you get and nothing more."
She was flabbergasted and insisted on paying me for my time and trouble. I told her no, don't worry about it.
She insisted though and after almost getting into an argument with her I told her that if she felt she had to pay me then she could pay me a gratuity in whatever amount made her happy. Her husband suggested $25. She asked me if that was enough. I told her it was more than enough so she wrote me a check for $25.
I treat people fairly and honestly. I'm not out to get rich and you will never get anywhere by screwing people over. I have a small circle of loyal customers that like me because I treat them well, I treat them with respect and I always deliver on my promises. I LIKE my customers. And I think they like me. I assume they do because they keep calling me back over and over.
Treat people the way you would want to be treated.
http://www.memtest.org/#downiso Bootable from USB Drive, CD, or Floppy... ...A standard troubleshooting tool in my TS kit. Sure, it takes some time, but it eliminates instability/random software/OS issues and verifies the RAM is 100% IN SITU.
Shows/videos/articles like this are made to help anyone - other than the producers?
They exist to sensationalize and already existing fear. capitalize on it and sell air time.
If "the market" was really pissed about poor service, believe me, the market would make things change.
Senior NCO in the fight against entropy. I've seen things, man. Things no one should have to see.....
it is relatively easy if you have extra parts but it can take a lot of time. for example, I recently fixed a friends computer that had a heatsink not properly seated. with the worthless pushpins it's hard to tell if it's making proper contact and it wouldn't post until it was. some of the capacitors looked in bad shape and could be a problem in the future and I had that in my mind as well after eliminating memory/power supply. no way to magically know until I spent a lot of time making sure the heatsink was properly seated.
They set out to do a story on how much techs suck no matter the facts. Memory failure causing the system not to boot is very uncommon. Motherboards and power supplies dying happens far more so it's no surprise that this was misdiagnosed by the noob techs. Then they delete a bunch of system files and are OUTRAGED that people tell them they have a virus. If I saw missing system files I'd probably assume a virus too. Then they claim that a reformat was unnecessary, all that was needed was a Windows reinstall? If there were system files missing I'd just assume virus and do a reformat.
What pisses me off most about this video is the crap they give the guy who diagnosed the memory problem correctly, yet "gouged" them on replacement memory. This guy installed a 1GB DIMM for $120 and they say they were GOUGED because they went on Newegg and found the same memory for $65. Never mind that $65 doesn't include shipping. Never mind that $65 doesn't include tax. Never mind there is NO B&M STORE IN THE WORLD where you can get goods cheaper than you can get them online. If this lady went to Circuit City I bet the same memory would be at least $120. Yet this guy gets called a crook for doing his job well and charging a reasonable price (not even close to gouging).
This isn't journalism, it's a hit piece.
You can't have seen the show - they inserted RAM that had been "blown" (I think they'd dropped a blob of solder on some crucial area) so the machine wouldn't even POST. It's not hard to diagnose why a machine won't even get to post - RAM or motherboard or CPU or an external card. (Indeed all four of those reasons were given by various different techs).
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
Yup. Especially common in "road warrior" laptops that see a LOT of plugging/unplugging, food service venues that get that "food gunk" built up everywhere, and offices that allow drinks in the cube, or have bare wire stretched/scotch-taped to the floor...
...and do you mean RJ-11 or RJ-25?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
The "worst offender" (from Nerds on Site) mentioned in the TFA also copied the contents of the hard drive onto his own system. He even had the temerity to joke about going through the woman's holiday photos later.
When the boss of Nerds on Site saw the video he said "that guy is not an employee, as of right now". The voiceover at the end of the segment said the arsehole was still actually with NoS, but not in a customer-facing role. So that's all right then.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
I don't know what world /you're/ living in, but memtest tools will sometimes pass RAM that's bad, and you'll have to swap the RAM before the problem goes away.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
My mom saw this report and said she was glad to have me around because her internet went down and she didn't know how to fix it (All it was, was her ethernet cable became unplugged). She would have been suckered by one of these type of people because she has no clue when it comes to computers
I'm sorry sir, but your quantum decoupler is causing a space time rift near your flux capacitor. I'm going to have to go back in time to replace your cybernetics core in the 7th dimension or the resulting solar flares will destroy your forge. $11,000 please.
No different from, say, getting your car repaired. The best way is to ask around, find somebody competent, and stick with him (or her.) It also helps to learn a little about the subject as well ... makes it harder to have the wool pulled over your eyes.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
... and just to rub it into American folk ... that's with $1 CAD ~= $1 USD.
That's right, we have "real" money now. You can finally put those caribou and beaver coins you've accumulated to good use.
$1000 per "point" of processor speed?
$350 document transfer fee?
$650 document research fee?
$350 document copying fee?
$75 long distance phone calls?
If the customers were lawyers and mortgage bankers, I think they did not charge enough. I suggest investigative reporting spend more effort investigating lawyers and financial service companies first.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
The guy that suggested the $2000 hard drive recovery can't really be called the worst offender unless he would have gotten some kickback or compensation for refering customers. Of course, he sucked as a tech, but saying "Your hard drive is broken - if there's anything important on it, the recovery might cost $2000" is hardly offensive or underhanded.
No wonder your sockuppet is down to posting at -1 twice a day.
I was out at a bar playing pool one night and ran into some guy w/ a geek squad shirt on. He said he and his friend worked for the co. He also said he loved the job cause he gets to use the car and he gets half of the $50/hr repair fee. Sooooo... they just sit on their asses prolonging trouble calls. It's a win (company)/win (geek)/lose (customer) situation. Everyone's happy!
...is that Flash video won't play in Firefox on Linux. All us Linux knobs who have had nightmares diagnosing bad RAM (it's the most common cause of a flaky Linux machine in my experience, and a giant PITA to find) are thus screaming about the nature of the test and talking about disk corruption. :D
What has *science* done?!? -- Dr. Weird (ATHF)
"when was the last time geeks.com checked your power supply with a multimeter"
... and to say to diagnose memory and replace it for $25 is off by about $100. Unless they think people should work for free and then sell the memory at wholesale.
If you're experienced, you'd know that in general, that's not the best way to check, although it's not horrible.
In general, if you're experienced, it's pretty clear when the PS goes bad. Easy way to check is to start disconnecting peripherals (CD... whatever), and look for the problem to disappear.
On the other hand, if I was going to people's houses to fix computers, I'd always make sure I had one of those cards you plug in to do a diagnostic, a boot disk, 2 sticks of common memory, a couple hard drives, an ATX power supply, and a fresh copy of Windows XP in case I needed to install windows and the person didn't have a legit way to prove they owned Windows.
Speaking of extra parts, someone please give the GP a few periods, commas, and other punctuation. For G*d sakes...
... and just to rub it into American folk ... that's with $1 CAD ~= $1 USD.
according to the evening news, it's now $1 CAD = $1.026 USD.
Anybody that does it and wants to make money pretty much has to gouge. There is usually no valuable (monetarily) data on the machine, and the machine itself is usually worth less than 300 bucks, so you can't realistically charge more than 100 bucks including parts. Anything that takes longer than 30 minutes is just not gonna work.
It's grossly wasteful, but I just tell people to replace the thing. I'll do data recovery if they want to pay, but that's about it.
Yeah, it looked like some guys tried to take the easy way out (sell a new computer instead of fix, etc..) But I also saw the "expert" from some college saying the ram part should be only $25... What about shipping, installing, time, I remember the days when I worked Temp jobs... I was billed out at $80/hr even though I only saw $12 of it. There is overhead to have a person come over to your house and fix something. "Fix it yourself?" Umm... Don't think so. Too many folks don't know. How many times do you change your own breaks? or do something on a car? You don't you take it to the mechanic. Some mechanics are crooks & As&holes.. Same in the computer biz. But the rest of us are not.
Also for getting parts online... I've always been asked when I tell someone they need ram/hd/etc to go buy online... but they want it NOW.... So off to the BigBox store we go to purchase it NOW... Tsk...Tsk... Rather one sided.
As for the "nerd" with the "clean room" idea... I tell people that all the time when I'm explaining what could go wrong and it happens to include HD's... A Person HAS to put a $$$ Figure on their data... Is it worth $XXX to get it back, or just drop a new drive in and go. It actually looked like he just diagnosed it wrong as a Drive instead of ram. If it was a Drive and he copied the files over and restored them onto the new drive after setup, my "customers" would see me as a GOD and not think twice. IF that was the problem but we know he missed it. I don't think it was ill intention, just choppy edits, and a bad personality that seemed to want to go for the glitz of the problem instead of simple ram fix.
Oh well...
BTW, I didn't see a single "geek" with a wrist strap... And the complaints about some standards or lack of screening would be fixed if people hired were at least A+ or etc... SOME type of certification is better than none. At least with A+ they (used to) stress static shock damage with hardware, etc...
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Several years later, a client calls, saying "my computer plays music". So, the tech sent there thought there was a virus, which was quite unlikely because the box was a Novell 3.xx server... Nevertheless, he bgrings the box in the shop, and it was only then that some old(er) hand remembered about the musical CPU fans... Sure enough, it was some caked-in dust that prevented the fan for turning, but for safety, we changed the CPU fan nonetheless...
Here's a bunch of points and the text from the show:
The presenter says that blown ram is a "simple problem" ?? WTF ... Also the price they quote for the 512MB DDR ram at $25 really lowballing it. 512MB of DDR-184 may be $29 to $35 at the "in store" for good cheap parts in Toronto, but where any average person would shop at Staples.ca it's $79.92... And of course there is installation, and more importantly diagnosing which can be nasty, so stating $25 gives the viewer the impression that A) it's easy, and B) total cost _should_ be $25... (see end for URLs)
They show three of the in-home techs at work, again just snippits.
"Grade A Students": he supposedly, remember the video is heavily edited, tells them they need a new motherboard. Well with an older computer, the chances are just about even that its the ram or the motherboard. The guy may not be the best repair tech in the world, but it's not over the top to suggest that. The one fault I find with him is telling the customer to "go buy a motherboard" as there's no way an average user could do that. The show points out A) he charged $80 which seems fair for in-home visit to diagnose something, and B) reiterating it's a motherboard "don't need" thus making the diagnosis seem rediculous.
"Nerds On Site": this is the fellow they make to look the worst, but from the few edits they do have of him, he seems to ask some good questions off the bat, "Is the hard drive making different sort of sounds?" That is the best question to ask a user since the CLICK CLICK CLICK of a bad drive most people do hear and they know "it didn't sound like that before". So this guy guesses it's the HD before he opens the case, which is actually a bad diagnosis since we can only assume the box didn't even POST with the bad ram (if it did POST with flakey RAM well it could be anything right?). Their expert tells the viewers, "you can't make any kind of diagnosis that quickly", when in fact yes you can with a bad HD or even bad ram/mb...
"Geek Squad": So they show the guy saying "My professional advice is the motherboard. You have to have it taken in and you have to replace the motherboard", which is perfectly reasonable. On-site it's almost impossible to figure out if it's the mb or not, and if you don't carry spare ram, figuring out if its the ram is also best done in the shop. At this point the show states "Remember the problem's a broken ram part. So far we've heard it was the motherboard, the cpu, and the hard drive. All wrong." But those are their guesses and all are reasonable for being in the field guesses, so they're not wrong, save the HD guess, but that guy is not necessarily the most adept diagnostician... Continuing, "Out of 10 techs we call in, only these 3 can figure out what the problem is." So these three guys try pulling out the ram and try one at a time. Again, since it's an old system, guessing that's the the MB is not that off base, though not trying the ram is a shame but not over the top.
Taking Advantage of "most of us"
"we track down 3 techs who used to work for big name retailers, Rob, Macolm, and Shawn confess that taking advantage of most of us is easy"... um 'taking advantage' of most people who often don't know much more than 10 things about using the computer, when a seasoned pro may know and encounterd say 1,000 to even 10,000 things. Well how easy would be for a doctor to say to a patient, "look's like you've got a dwarf living in your belly" and that person believe them??
On the average customer
Presenter: "When people come in with a crashed computer, how much do they actually know about what was wrong
Are we talking about the same greedy geeks that created the free software foundation? Or maybe the geeks that invented the majority of the technology that the internet runs on? Oh, and then they gave away the source and specs for free? Maybe we're also talking about the geeks who stay up at night combing over code to fix a security hole in X software so users can sleep easy knowing their banking information isn't getting stolen? Are these the same geeks that go to bat for nothing against large corporations to ensure that the average user isn't being treated badly?
Oh, we're not talking about those geeks? Then I guess you're right, geeks are greedy.
Perhaps a "simple RAM failure" isn't so simple to diagnose?
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Step 1.
Air Compressor. Clean all that crap out of the fans and power supply.
2. Check for swollen (or leaky) caps (if bad replace MoBo). Check for proper cooling including CRACKED FAN HOUSINGS on the heatsink (VERY COMMON esp on P4s)
3. Pull off all IDE/SATA/SCSI ribbons cables etc. Put 'em on a cable tester. Replace if needed.
4. Hook the Power Supply up to a tester and . . . test it. Replace if needed (replace in eMachine regardless, it'll go out soon enough).
5. Remove HDD's, and hook them up externally to a PC that has had its AV/AM software updated withing the last 24hrs. I personally recommend Avast or Avira and Spybot, Ad-Aware, SuperAntiSpyware. This will get most bugs off, but not all. Also run a chkdsk. If its win2k or newer make sure its NTFS and not FAT (YOU'D BE AMAZED). Check to see if the drive is full or close (this causes TONS of issues in Windows). If its full, sell the customer a bigger one - - clone the old drive to the new one dynamically growing the partitions. Don't know a good free tool that does this, so a commercial solution is best - - - or the customer can lose data.
6. While step 5 is running, boot the HDDless PC with a diagnostic disk (such as Ultimate Boot CD) and run some stress tests to determine if the RAM/MoBo/CPU etc. has any failures. Replace as needed.
7. Once the HDD is back in the original PC, boot into safemode and log in as ADMIN. If the machine doesn't get that far - do a repair install. Run msconfig and make sure some idiot; er ah . . . the customer isn't running in selective startup (VERY COMMON).
8. Go to Add/Remove Programs and remove the hundreds of dollars in crapware the customer installed while trying to fix it him/herself... Super Reg FIxer Pro, etc. Then run a good cleaning tool (like CCleaner) to get rid of unneeded garbage files and simple registry errors (dupes, dead links etc.)
9. Install a good AntiSpyware tool like Spybot or SuperAntiSpyware or Ad-Aware. Update and run. If it doesn't update run LSPFIX then WINSOCK FIX (from a cd-r or usb key), then try again. Then run a real registry tool like the free RegSeeker or equivalent.
10. Run Hijack This. Select anything suspicious for deletion. If you are 110% sure about an entry - - GOOGLE IS YOUR FRIEND, that's all I gotta say.
11. Boot into regular mode. Install a good AV (ie NOT NORTON or MCAFEE) If crappy AV is already loaded; remove it. It wasn't done while in SAFE MODE because Norton/McAfee cannot be removed from SAFE MODE. If they refuse to uninstall (and they often do) do google search for "XXXXX REMOVAL TOOL" (XXXXX=Norton or McAfee). Avast AV or Avira are both free for personal use and much better products; AVG ain't too bad. Update 'em and run a scan. After that run another Spyware scan while the AV's real time protection is on.
12. Run HiJackThis again, and look for "nofiles" or any entries that mysteriously came back. Double check them and MAKE SURE they are malware entries. Since multiple scans didn't zap them, do a search for a SPECIFIC removal tool for the persistent virus. At this point it is probably Vundo or a variant as its often updated to get around virus scanners. While Vundofix is awesome, it may not get rid of it alltogether if the PC is infected with the latest version - - but it will give you its name and location (usually C:\Windows\System32\) and you can now shut the machine off and access it (again) by hooking it up to another box. Now that its not the BOOT drive you navigate to the file thru explorer and delete it without permission hassles.
If you can do this - you are better than 99% of all PC tech's I've ever worked with. I've worked at "big" stores and mom/pop shops fixing PC's since the 486 was cutting edge and most tech's don't know shit from shinola - - especially ones with an A+ cert.
That is why I will never let a so-called computer technician into my house to look at my computer which he knows jack all about.
...and do you meanBrain fart. RJ-11 for cat 3.
Who is John Galt?
Its a really bad exmple, sure its 1G RAM,..but is it DDR, DDR2, DDR3? PC133??
Got bored watching the show, so i dont know.
Interesting how the report and alike will pay $500 or more on some shoes or clothes, that you can get in China for $10.
The planet is sinking fast under the weight of semi barely broken or one year old now "obsolete" electronic junk. Millions of tons of toxic electronic ewaste, representing billions of tons of excess CO2 into the atmosphere and who knows what crap into the drinking water aquifers. It costs extra energy, massive pollution, and is just plain wrong, it's the electronic SUV syndrome. I say we need to go back to when stuff was repairable, as in designed and specced to be repairable, and lasted decades. I *commend* the techs who can take a soldering iron and fix a bad cap or troubleshoot the power supply and get that computer running again. I *condemn* your solution because you think it isn't cost effective. You think that from shallow thinking, you obviously didn't take into account all the parameters, just the most narrow focus ones, the most immediately apparent (example: chess-one move in advance, then stop thinking) and as such, are most likely educable on the subject. Consider yourself at least informed now.
Not a flame, just a reminder this is the 21st century, not the 20th when no one cared much about the environment or the ramifications of the throw away society. You can't throw away problems like that, you just shift the actual real and tangible costs to your neighbor or the next generation, both seriously bad mojo.
Computers on the desktop have been quite fast enough for some years now. Performance issues are better represented from the cost and environmental issues side at the software end now. It's just loads cheaper and cleaner to write better code so that older machines can get more useful life out of them before junking them. Yes, at some time they should be replaced, but frankly, the differences today are marginal at best and there is no way, even with running power standards, that it is environmentally cheaper to just keep upgrading every year or even two, the costs are not recoverable when you look at the entire manufacturing stack versus slight improvements in power consumption at the wall outlet. You need to sit on that machine for 5 to ten years to justify the power savings in the gestalt, and this could be done-if we held designers to engineer robust machinery that could be repaired easily, and to the software devs who didn't totally rely on faster processors and huge amounts of ram for every little tweak advantage. It is possible to make faster, less bloated and more featureful code, it's just *easier* for them to rely on people junking the planet for new machines in short time frames.
And don't get me started on stupid music playing gadgets and throw away cellphones, biggest waste going out there (and marginally better "gaming" video cards, what a joke, big time TV wrestling for the chair bound). IMO, they should slap 100% environmental tariffs on those things right now to discourage casual tossing and getting the new shiny model every six months when there is no actual need for it.
Some saner compromise is needed here, between new and improved buy it now!! and just chuck it out in one year or if one 5 buck part needs replacing but it isn't possible or no one knows how to do that anymore, etc.
And it is up to every individual to do their part, because you WILL pay for it, now or later, but you won't be dodging the costs associated with the throw away society. Not you, not me, not anyone, we all are and will be paying a higher and higher cost for that throw away mentality. The sooner we start paying what stuff really costs, the sooner we can get this sorted out better and get back to evolving as a sane species that recognizes the value of not shitting in the nest you occupy.
Isn't that /.? I could've sworn half of the summaries are examples of just that. And that half of the articles linked are just as bad as their summaries. My god, does that make Zonk our own Chris Hansen?
This one is starting to bug me almost as much as "loose" vs. "lose". From Wikipedia:
When you hear "Trojan is like the oldest virus" at 9:30 in the video, you know it's ignorance.
There are good ones, but by and large the majority of them are idiots.
Why? because even an idiot has far more of a clue than the average user, who, when faced with a yes/no windows dialog, miraculously forgets how to read, freezes and has to call IT support.
Nothing against the clueless computer users out there, it's just unfortunate that the barrier to entry as a "guy good with computers" is so fucking appallingly low... that the incompetent ones out there get believed...
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Beg to differ: Sure, you should carry one with you. But, are you really going to be able to justify the time needed to run one? If the problem's intermittent, a quick test probably won't catch it (and, if you're relying those results, well, that's foolish, too)... and if you suspect a memory error despite the results of a quick test, I doubt the customer would be willing to pay for the onsite time to run extensive tests. Better to bring the computer back to the shop and do it right.
Ideally, you have a real memory tester in-house: That's the best way to test memory - in isolation.
Men pay a *lot* more for insurance. Fix that before worrying about petty little things.
Usually when doing tech work, the way in which you become aware of a problem is not the actual problem, but rather a consequence of the real problem. Also, the RAM problem is *CRAP*! The RAM is usually one of the hardest problems to troubleshoot if it hasn't fully failed. If you're 'working your way back from the wall', starting with the power and working up towards the OS or application (depending on the highest possible layer of the problem), you find that the RAM and motherboard are essentially the same layer, since RAM/CPU/mobo are all so closely integrated and the CPU and RAM are both on the same layer with respect to the motherboard! Without knowing, with a good amount certainty, that the motherboard is good, you can't ascend to the next layer and assume RAM or CPU without first isolating 1 of these 3 components! Add to this a slightly raised cap. or 2 and all bets are off - is it the board, is the power supply over volting this thing, or are these aged components in working order with a bad RAM stick? Or is it a CPU so fried it won't POST? I got a call from a friend about 2 weeks ago with a bad RAM stick and the thing POST'ed every time, and locked loading the OS; memtestx86 showed EVERY byte of the RAM as bad. OK, I'm getting too angry to post coherently (well, that happened a few sentences ago).
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
If a user turned on their computer and launched their email client and it crashed repeatedly the problem description would be "I can't check my Email". Especially at service centers where a service writer accepts the computers from the customers then tags it with a problem description for a technician, this can be very irritating. It's extremely important for the service writer to probe the customer and get an accurate description. Otherwise it could lead to a long game of telephone tag.
When work was slow we'd often mess with each other's sandbox computers in the office to keep on our toes. Sadly, I'd only trust one or two people in my old service center with my computers.
You want fun, go home and buy a monkey!
That happens only in Canada. Computer technicians in US are honest.
I always thought it was an easy problem to fix. You just take all the parts out and keep adding them back in until you get the one that causes a failure to post. Then bam, youve found your problem. Very easy to use process of elimination here. You dont need any spare parts at all, you are just trying to see what is stopping the MB from posting. You can turn a computer on without any pci cards, memory, hard drive, etc. plugged in. I guess you might have a point if the difficulty was in distinguishing between a MB failure and a cpu failure since you do need to have both of those. But all the other parts are unnecessary.
The problem is that the economics of computer repairs don't make sense. It costs money to diagnose the problem. It costs money for the labour. It costs money for the parts. Those costs add up really fast. If your computer dies and you don't know how to diagnose or fix it yourself why take it in for repair if it's out of warranty? Why spend nearly the cost of a new computer to fix something that's probably three years old anyway. Buy a new one and get the store techie to see if he can add your old hard drive as a secondary. Same price, better result. So where's the incentive for stores to keep a well trained repair team? It's the same with everything. When was the last time you brought a t.v. to a t.v. repairman? Either the warranty covers taking it back or you put it at the curb. People just don't get things fixed anymore.
Not Avast - that stuff is annoying as hell. It has that wonderful notification flag that fills up 20% of the screen and won't go away on its own. And it's always there to bug you even when kept up to date. And the animated GIF in the system tray? No thanks.
I switched to AVG a couple years ago and never looked back. It keeps itself up to date very well and never bugs you unless it's found something that's actually suspicious.
Might want to look into some of the digital PBXes... NEC has a nice series; as it's digital, you can use 1 run of cat5 for 4 RJ11 jacks...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
To the producers and reporters:
BIASED BIASED BIASED over hyped sensasionalist investigation.
It is the first one I see and it will be the last one for sure.
If you want cheap food, cook it by yourself. But don't blame the restaurant for charging ten times it cost, they have the chef, the assistant cooks, the produces, the rent, and the service provided by the waiter.
If you want cheap produces, have your own farm. But if you want to buy it, don't cry when you buy it with its added value at the grocery store. You have to pay the farmer, the logistics, transportation, the distributor, the wholesale supplier and the owner of the grocery store.
Then why on earth are you guys whining for a RAM that not only comes to your door, but it even gets installed in your machine for free. Are you pretending to have a in-house service at the cost price? Yeah, you know what? I can get it even cheaper in bulk and from a wholesale.
By the way, do you guys know, no probably not, that a hardware problem is a very tricky one and a fast diagnosis is: "Hardware problem", which one? unknown, but probably hard drive, why? because it is the most common one. And the customer doesn't need actually deeper knowledge, it just make them confused. They want things fixed, not a computer lesson. So the simplest answer for the simple mind: a virus.
But in this case, it was clear that the hard drive wasn't the problem, in a quick overview you can tell that there is "something related" with the motherboard. Which means, cable connection problems, power supply, memory ram problems, video card. Even Sound cards and modems in very odd cases, as I HAD before personally. A deeper analisys (something very rare in-house service since it would require much more time) would eventually reveal a ram failure.
And actually, hard drive surface scan, backuping, repartitioning and reformatting is a very standard measure, cost effective, and solves even hidden problems not detected but potentially prone to fail in a future.
This is a very professional standard procedure.
That "professor" recommending a simple "reinstall" is just saying crap. Yes, she would do that because she knows exactly what happened, but a system failure is not something that happens everyday, and its potential causes can be from corrupted partition table, bad sectors (which means a dying hard drive), virus, corruption by spywares, etc...
Repartitioning and Formatting is a huge umbrella that covers all those potential causes (which we don't really need to know). And by practical reasons that is what every self-respected experimented technician who values his time would do as a standard procedure.
Reporters, practicality and charging for added value is not unethical as far as I know.
i so far have experienced 2 ram failures, neither where what i would call simple...
:p). and then suddenly it started getting very unstable. soon after windows xp only wanted to boot in 4bit colors, and things kept getting worse (booting into safe mode was an achievement).
the first one was when assembling a new pc. everything was assembled, i powered on the pc and......... nothing. absolutely nothing. no screen, no warning beeps, only the cd drive that sometimes spun a bit, that was it. took me quite a while before i realised it was faulty ram. i'd expect with failty ram that my motherboard would at least signal a ram failure or so, but apparantly not!
the second one was with an older pc, where the ram had begun failing. at first it was just the pc getting unstable at random moments, wasn't getting worried yet (it's still windows
here, when things really got bad i knew that ram was very likely to be the problem.
but so far i have yet to see a "simple" ram failure. when ram starts acting odd, the symptoms can point you to a lot of other things (at least in the cases i have seen so far. maybe others do have experience with simple ram failures)
I posted a while ago because my free/low-cost repair sideline was getting out of hand. In particular, one family who were endemically clueless had turned into complete time sinks. This was affecting the time I had available to meet family commitments, and was severely affecting my social life.
/.ers) will expand to fit all available time, as the parent quite rightly points out. While I never got to the stage of taking time off my day job to fulfil my home-based work, nights in with 5-6 machines being concurrently diagnosed/repaired weren't uncommon for me. As a result, my other responsibilities got neglected.
The situations in the article may be extreme, but balancing those situations with the idea that "geeks often provide free / cheap resources" (quoted from several posts above, not parent's) also leads to problems. Performing work for low costs just ends up with your customers undervaluing your time/effort.
It's the same dissociation from technology that leads to a user being gouged, that also leads to the same user undervaluing their local geek's time/effort/skillset - it's that the user has a complete disconnect from the technology and neither understands nor cares about the situation. It's also unfortunate that the only way the user is going to be able to assess the amount of work that is necessary is if they start to understand their machines.
Any home-based stuff that is charged at a reasonable rate (reasonable to us as informed
For the record, I talked to the bloke that elicited the earlier post, explained the situation, and asked that he find someone else to sort out his problems. It didn't work, and six months later I was still receiving calls from the guy asking for tech support help. In the end I had to break out the cluebat +4 of derision before he finally got the message. I'm still doing sideline work, but it's been a whole lot more on my own terms recently.
most common causes of faults on Wintel home boxes: 1) software: spyware, malware, viruses, build up of shovelware
2) hardware: cheap power supplies and bad ram are the FIRST thing a competent PC tech should be checking for if they come across general stability issues. Memory can be checked easily with memcheck or similar, and a PSU is a $20 generic part that can be swapped out in minutes.
Most people doing "home computer repairs" are cowboys.
It's boring, dull, repetitive work for 99% of problems, and for the other 1% you can almost guarantee the customer won't be willing to pay for the actual work involved in fixing it. It's a mugs game, and it doesn't surprise me that the majority of people doing it are rubbish because if they could be doing something better they would.
..and I'll form the head!!
Who cares?
...next time you see random BSODs, that persist with a fresh install, you're going to check the RAM first, right? Repeat this experience for a year or two, and you're experienced enough to know how to diagnose and fix based on probability as well as specific hardware knowledge. First thing I'd do is swap out the RAM for some of my spare stuff - if it fixes it, they're billed for the hardware as well as my time. If not, it's another datapoint to help with the diagnosis.
hell yes. Add to this list the joy of having to cannibalise your own rig for parts for testing purposes at 2.30am, and having the customer's machine burn out your $300 video card - which you obviously can't charge them for...
my definition of a "simple" ram fix would be that if in doubt, you swap out the RAM for a spare stick and see if it cures it. Takes 30 seconds to do plus some burn testing. If it doesn't, you swap it back. You don't charge the customer for the new RAM unless it's actually needed - pretty simple.
During the day I work at a small computer shop in Salt Lake City doing electronics and computer repair... mostly computer repair. Since I've come on board we now do network administration services.
I'm 19, and a male. I'm also autistic. I've been in computer security for 11 years, and have a broad backround ranging from growing up using DOS(I actually took the time to learn it) to doing redundant HPCC with gentoo and IPVS.
Being young, I'm also broke as fuck. I can't afford college, and starting out life in debt is NOT the answer when you've had shady academic history due to other problems.
So, I'm stuck working for $10 an hour, fixing spyware and viruses mostly. Because of the time this takes up on our bench in the small shop, we generally charge $120.
Every once and awhile someone comes in with a hardware problem. We quote them parts from our supplier, plus a $35 bench fee.
And the customer gos wild. "40 dollars for a harddrive?!" "Mam, the clicking noise it is making is how you can tell it is bad." "BUT IT'S BEEN DOING THAT FOR AWHILE!!!"... you see where this is going. Anyways, even though we don't gouge on parts, people still flip shit, even when we show them the workorders.
If it wasn't for the fact that I'm generally overwelmed with computers to work on, all expected to be done NOW, I wouldn't mind this. But I'm stuck in a small shop, I'm overworked, underpaid, and I live with chronic migraines, but I've gotta listen to you yell at me for this shit.
So, I can understand how some people can be assholes to people. Be glad there are those of us that have the character to take it in stride. I have work in 4 hours. Goodnight, slashdot.
www.isoHunt.com
This reminds me of the time way back when I first got into communications. I used to tell people the reason they weren't getting good reception was due to calium build up on the copper in the cable line. Then I'd refer the job to techs that did a bit of everything so when they came and found out they'd do the job I was to lazy/aggrivated/late to do on my own lol!
This is Slashdot! Give me the latest gadget, bug, or OS project! This ain't english class so don't confuse the two!
And wallah it started working right.
Praise to Wallah
it was not a by the book type fix. We litterally had to use a process of elimination and had to have extra hardware available.
Then please change your book!
I read the article and i knew this kind of stuff was happing. I can honestly say "i am not surprised".
I make my wife pretty mad when i go to an on-site call and come home with 30, 60, or 90$ after i have been there 4 hours. I'm more than happy to fix for cheap. I do it for the love of keeping up to what people are running into. i have fixed a lot of machines and RAM errors are the hardest to trouble shoot since all devices in your system have RAM. You have Video RAM you have RAM on the processor (chache) you have BIOS (flashed ram) your hard drive has RAM (chache). So if your getting a blue screen saying its "RAM" you just have to start pulling everything one at a time and testing.
I do not believe in over charging, even though i know i could because im "good" or at least my customers think i am (they tell me). I do believe in telling people the honest truth about what i find good or bad. I also try my best to teach people not to be afraid of the machines. That being said i then tell them that if they do mess anything up i will be able to help them get it back to the way it was.
I just like helping people and making sure they get the right information and they get it without breaking the bank. You get return business that way.
As I understand it "Geek Squad" and the like are ran by major computer retail chains. Do those chains encourage the techs to recommend hardware upgrades that are not really needed.
What we do have is 1) the knowledge that it looks exactly like something produced today in Microsoft Word, and 2) typewriter experts who say that the only way this document could have been produced at the time was with an extremely expensive and rare typewriter with several custom modifications. It's entirely possible that such a typewriter did not exist, let alone happen to be in a Texas Air National Guard office.
Having to "prove" that it's a forgery is a pretty tall and unreasonable order. Dan Rather is supposed to be a journalist -- it's his job to prove his allegations are either true, or that it's highly likely they are true -- not the critic's job to prove it is absolutely false. Instead he presented it as fact when it's 99.999% certain that it's fake.
Diagnosing bad ram is one of the most time consuming and troublesome things you can do as a pc tech. I'm not talking about dead sticks, I'm talking about intermittent failures which cause HD corruption, blue screens, sudden lock ups, reboots, and software errors.
Those are the two words I am a wee bit troubled with in this message.
First of all, "gouging" would be to charge 300 bucks an hour. Anything below that for in house on site support is perfectly fine. I charge 120 an hour (and yes, you pay for my travels to and from you), still people are happy. Unfortunately tax and cost pretty much requires me to if I want my hour to be worth more than 10 bucks.
Second, it's perfectly fine to assume (at least as a first point of diagnosis) that the HD is to blame. It is one of the few parts in a computer that does degenerate with time. It is one of the few moving parts. RAM usually works or it doesn't. It's either DOA or good 'til the end of the world, with very, very few cases of mid-life faults, unless there's heavy overclocking or heat problems involved. The same applies to CPUs. Mainboards are (due to capacitors that age) another aging component.
So it is very fine and quite understandable to make the HD the primary source of analysis, followed by the mainboard. Actually, 3 out of 10 repair crews (who "solved" that problem) are morons for checking the RAM first of all.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have had machines that ran memtest86 for hours, but still crashed with regular use due to bad RAM. (I know this because finally swapping out the RAM solved the problem).
Computers that suddenly seize up are not easy to diagnose.
I've had it fail RAM that passed on another system, only to find out the motherboard was actually bad.
And then there's the run time problem, I don't trust any no-problems results for runs less than at least 12 hours.
sadly no entity on earth other than geeksquad (and to a lesser extent, firedog) have a systematic, patented, corporate backed mass scale ability to rip off consumers. I'm glad they focused their attack on the small businesses (many of which are legit, but that would make for boring footage I'm sure) ....in turn driving customers to the ever so honest corporate alternatives. (hah)
-mza
Why should mechanics, contractors, and appliance repairmen be the only ones allowed to rip-off customers?
Geeks need money too!
Did the $120 include diagnosing the problem, as well? If so, $120 is ultracheap for the home service call, diagnosis, and repair of a really weird problem including parts and labor.
What are these "journalists" going to say when they find out that when they call the appliance repairman because their pilot light won't stay lit, he's installing a $3.50 thermometer coupler and charging them $75?
Note to journalists: Experts' time is expensive. Deal with it. You don't like it? Become an expert in everything.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
viola [vee-oh-luh]
-noun
1. a four-stringed musical instrument of the violin family, slightly larger than the violin; a tenor or alto violin.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
And maybe someone who just experienced a RAM failure doesn't want to replace his RAM with the cheapest junk parts he can find?
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
If you just had a RAM failure, would you want to replace it with the cheapest junk you could find from disreputable online sources? Riiiight.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
I had a business called Geek On Call. It was me and another techno-buddy, doing on call home or office geekwork. Oddly, the Wayback Machine only shows a short period of it's placeholder after the domain expired. It was 1998-2004 that I ran the business. It was very popular in the area, and we found our demand exceeded our man-hours. At $50 an hour residential and $75 and hour commercial, we wanted all we can get. Things fell apart when we hired some more. We added a third buddy for easier stuff. He was good at home systems, but no good for a business systems. A different mentality for each, and he could not grasp the "move with caution" when dealing with business data. Then we hired an applicant. He sucked badly. He was pretty good technically, but his solution to any hard problem was throw parts at it rather than troubleshoot it. This, needless to say, caused customers to get upset. We fired him, but the damage was done, word spread, and business dropped off sharply. Eventually, we closed down and went back to contracting for companies. Ironically, once I folded up, Geek Squad moved in, did all the things we were accused of, but since they were flashy about it no one seemed to care. /shrug
I'll never understand people.
As a technology service professional and an alumnus of Nerds On Site, I have to say that the scene featuring their technician was positively dreadful. While watching David Redekop watch the entire scenario unfold, my heart broke too.
In the defense of my former colleagues, I have to say that what you see here is entirely contrary to the culture of this great organization.
I am in the unique position of having serviced clients as an EntrepreNERD, done work for Nerds On Site corporate under David Redekop''s personal direction, and maintained a company-wide vendor relationship offering services to individual Nerds, with both my current and previous employers.
My experience in these capacities has given me a large sampling of the kind of people who make up Nerds On Site. By and large, they are professionals who are a pleasure to deal with, have the utmost of integrity, and the best interests of their clients at heart. I know for a fact that there are far more positive customer survey results than negative ones. Please do not paint the entire organization with the same brush as you would the ""Headline Nerd"" from this story. "Not A Geek" and others make good points about the fairness of this test, so I shall not repeat them.
That said, David Redekop put it best: "This is a wakeup call for all of us!""
This piece demonstrates that there are opportunities for improvement and lessons to be learned by all computer service professionals and organizations. For the good of the public and the sake of our profession, I hope we learn them well.
"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty and the pig likes it."
Men can be drafted into military service. Women can't. I agree the insurance thing sucks, but the draft has the potential to suck a whole lot more.
Please help metamoderate.
At first glance I thought it would be a good story - I see corrupt self-taught incompetent "geeks for hire" all the time charging insane rates and screwing up people's PCs. It is a real problem, but when people don't know to look for certification, or even agree one one cert, that's what happens. I say this as someone who is yet uncertified, but we need some kind of standard! (I'm just lucky enough to have had my abilities and 20 years experience recognized and been hired into an IT department...)
Then I watched the video. From the very first seconds they're indiscriminately villainizing any geeks and poking fun at procedures they don't understand "omg! They LISTEN to a PC? What could that accomplish?" It sounds like they're just frustrated and want to lash out. Thanks guys, sting the whole profession why don't you?
Some of the techs they tested (Nerds on Site) were flat wrong - if the hard drive were dead, the PC would still boot, post, then inform you. Bad RAM is seriously hard to test though - I wouldn't say the bad motherboard diagnoses were far off as ram, CPU and mobo problems often manifest the same. If you can't run a RAM test program or happen to have every speed and variety of RAM in your pocket for testing, then there's not a lot you can do... of course if you're not certain you shouldn't state it definitively or charge for the PARTS - but time and work are fair game.
This whole thing stinks because it's half sensationalist hype and half sad truth, but overall I'd say it hurts the industry they way they pitched it.
To really diagnose the RAM problem would you really need every speed of ram ever made? Carry a stick of PC100 which would take care of PC100 and PC133. Granted the FSB wouldn't be running at full speed, but it would probably still boot. Same goes for the various flavors of DDR. Carry a stick of 2100 and again you can PROBABLY use it for almost 4 type of DDR. Again the machine may not run at full speed but if the machine boot's and doesn't BSOD off the bat then you have somewhere to start your hunt. Stick of DDR2.. Same situation.
Anyway... Just wanted to throw that out there.
Adios
Bryan
It seems obvious to me that $120 RAM is only the part cost the tech charge, on top of the hourly fee for fixing it. The odd one out, the infonec guy that did not try to charge anything, seems a bit nervous. May be he noticed the hidden camera and reacted accordingly.
I've been gouged by a certain geek for over 11 years straight now. Every year or so he recommends that I buy an entirely new computer, because the previous one isn't fast enough, or the RAM that I got for my computer last year won't work in the new computer that I *clearly* need this year. I have accepted that I'll never get all my money back. I'd like to fire him, but I'm married to him. I'll pay for this comment sooner or later, since we're both /.-ers.
Reloading windows is indeed a much over used and rather damaging hammer that people who don't know what they are doing employ before considering other options.
I have never reloaded windows to fix a bluescreen or software error. I take a sadistic joy in tracking down exactly what within windows has broken, and forcing it to do my bidding.
In any case that whole news story was bogus. The reporter exploited peoples distrust of computers and the notorious difficulty in troubleshooting some of their components, and turned it into a special report on geeks get rich quick schemes.
Except for hard drive guy (who was a complete moron pulling a diag out of his ass), the others guessed motherboard, which given the symptoms was not that much of a stretch.
Yeah they "just disabled the ram", but small cheap things can have drastic consequences and sometimes cost a lot of time and effort to find and fix. Ever got water build up in your gas tank? Had a bad wheel bearing that only caused problems at exactly 45mph?
Something doesn't have to be catostrophic to be a pain in the but to troubleshoot.
I mean using their logic they could have just marked the disk partition as inactive, or deleted the boot sector and gotten the same results.
These reporters aren't trying to protect the public, they are trying to get viewers with wonderful gotchas like "What you don't know about peanuts COULD KILL YOU, story at 11" etc. They scare their viewers into watching.
Now mis-diagnosment is a common problem in PC support and to be honest if you expect PC techs to be as highly trained as auto mechanics then you should expect them to charge more for their services as well. Do you really want to spend as much on your PC as you do on your car for yearly repairs?
Most of those techs were not trying to make a buck or rip anybody off, they made their best guess and lacked some skills in troubleshooting, but that is a far cry from purposeful deceit. Not everybody knows that if the system has no beep codes you can guess
no speaker
bad cpu
bad motherboard
shorted ram
and test by
is speaker connected? - yes
is CPU fully seated? - yes
does pulling all ram out result in beep code? - Yes
does putting ram back in remove beep code? - yes
bad ram.
The first thing a good troubleshooter does with a system is starts pulling everything off of it and then adds it back one by one until it breaks, whatever broke it can then be replaced.
These guys are working in RETAIL-- Hel-lo! Anyone with any real tech creds wouldn't be caught dead in retail...
I suppose the question remains-- where *does* one go to get their computer fixed? I can't help much with the answer to that though, as I've always fixed my own. But then, I hand soldered every last darn solder joint on the first "home computer" I ever owned (IMSAI) which dates me as a geezer...
I watched the show, and was disgusted... with the journalist. I should know better than to watch "news" on TV. They seemed to have a pretty tough time filling a half hour with sensationalism. I've never watched CBC Marketplace before, and probably won't again.
A corrupt system file? How on earth can that be easy to diagnose? The show didn't explain why. And of course I would assume it was corrupted by a virus.
100% markup on the RAM? Well, of course. 100% markup is not unusual in retail. The show didn't give me the impression that they really researched the retail prices of the RAM, or even that they were comparing similar units. RAM prices certainly vary by manufacturer and clock speed.
IMO, if you call in 10 techs in *any* industry, you will get three jerks, five who don't know what they are doing, and two from companies that charge very high prices. The show didn't give any indication of particularly good research. In terms of computer services, the show didn't offer much in the way of statistics or numbers, or leave me with a good idea of which companies to rely on.
RESCUECOM IS A SCAM:
http://techrepublic.com.com/5208-6230-0.html?forumID=3&threadID=188328&messageID=2317153
Read that, end-to-end, & you decide - especially regarding their owner Dave Milman.
Yes, some of those guys were pretty bad techs. But this reporting was horrid. "This repair should cost 60 dollars" my ass. A skilled tech will run you 40/hr minimum often 60/hr, that's "friendly free lance" prices. When I would do house calls, the clock starts when I start heading that way with a minimum of 1 hr. So even at friendly prices your looking at 40 not counting parts. If you think these kind of hourly rates are too expensive, then please compare to any other skilled labor. Try calling your local mechanic and see what he wants for a house call. Still sure it should be cheaper so you go out and find someone for 1/2 the price....you get what you pay for.
I'd also note that I've often recommended customers just buy a new computer for anything over the most trivial repair. Why? Because they paid like $200 for it with rebates and discounts and the thing is several years old. In other words, it's worth is somewhere near zero Take the deleted file, that's not a problem...that's a symptom of a problem. Files don't just disappear. If someone came up to me and asked "what's wrong with my computer", I'd have to say I wasn't sure at this point. I need to run some diagnostics and then a virus scanner. All of that takes time and costs money, in fact it could cost more then a new pc would depending on what the problem is. Say you discover a bad hard disk...so after the initial cost of diagnosis, now you have a hard disk and installation costs on top of it. Simply replacing the file and sending the customer on their way would be equivalent to a mechanic simply replacing some burnt out wires he found without attempting to figure out *why* they burnt out. That might cut it for your local, salaried, work study employed university help desk "tech expert" job, but anywhere else it's just downright unprofessional.
What's more shady? Charging some poor old lady 100's of dollars to fix a piece of hardware that is worth nothing or informing her of her choices, the possibility of repair cost exceeding value, and that an e-machine that's 10x faster then the 3 year old one they need repaired for a small cost over what the repair would be.
And finally, anyone who comes in with a 4-5 yr/old computer that needs repair I recommend replacement before I even look at it. Why? Because anyone familiar with hardware MTTF trends knows that parts just start failing around then. Any honest mechanic would do the same thing if they saw a vehicle with a few hundred thousand miles on it...especially if the customer could get a new one for a marginal increase over the repair.
Then they would have made billions...Manipulation of financial assets beats manipulation of physical assets every time./b>
So true....At times, it feels like if you have $100mm of capital, you can find numerous ways to make seemingly easy money by financial re-structuring. Form over substance, and someone walks away with tons of cash.
I'll be the first to defend it all, and I'm sure there is ultimately a re-allocation and re-pricing of different risk components associated with the total transaction that makes sense. But then it would appear that there is a lot of latent value in these financial structures (aka businesses) that professional managers don't recognize.
Or maybe the only way these financial transactions make fundamental sense is with very cheap cost of money. Or, as we've seen, when purchasers don't get what they thought they were getting (AAA-rated paper), which means they overpaid for the assets. In other situations this is often known as fraud - it's easy to make the deal look good is one of the parties is getting screwed.
I'm not sure that is what happened. Now, it is true that the central banks:
1. Lowered the governed rate which they force large banks to charge each other for loans,
2. Lowered the rate that the Central Banks charge large banks for loans.
3. Provided additional amounts to banks by PURCHASING assets from banks with a round-trip provision to sell the assets back to the banks in the short-term future.
All of this had the effect of pumping liquidity into the system. From what I know, it wasn't a "bail out" in the sense that the Central Banks bought crappy securities from banks at 100 cents on the dollar and rescued banks from their bad loans.
The holders of all of this paper (CDOs, securitized debt, asset-backed commercial paper) have seen the value of their assets vanish before their eyes. Holders of such paper around the world (originated in the U.S. and lots of other countries) will probably write off $50+ billion of value. Merrill Lynch announced today that they wrote off $5.5bn of these assets in Q3. Citigroup & UBS - $3bn each. These are real losses which are absorbed by the private banks, not any Central Bank or government.
Purchasers of 2006-originated CDOs (quite crappy underlying assets, but rated and priced like the higher-quality 2003-2005 CDOs) began to realize these assets weren't worth what they thought. Upon this uncertainly of asset quality, these investors stopped buying. Investment banks that put these securitizations together had no purchasers, and so stopped putting deals together. With no investment banks to syndicate and securitize the new mortages, lending banks stopped writing mortgages for a lot of transactions.
At the same time, hedge funds and banks had levered up on all of these products, and needed to liquidate other assets to cover margin calls or returns funds to investors. This caused a run on other short-term commercial paper, prices fall, rates rise, liquidity slows, and pretty soon the market for other types of commercial paper drys up too.
The injections of liquidity are to reassure the market that there will be enough free cash around to get transactions done in the normal course, even if banks are taking a bath on the mortgage-backed assets. Increased liquidity make the markets breathe easier, calm down, money starts being loaned again (but everyone has tightened up standards a bit, for now), and pretty soon things are back to normal until the next conflux of events.
Global financial markets and monetary policy - a hugely complex and chaotic system, that we've gotten better at understanding and reacting to, but still can't manage perfectly to keep all blips from happening.
I think of it like a traffic jam due to a small accident (subprime CDOs). There is no real reason
Fair enough. I was thinking along the lines of PC100 (I really don't have ANY these days) or stranger types like Rambus DRAM.
I've never heard of a tech carrying a toolbox of RAM for testing, though maybe you should if you make housecalls... ultimately my issue was with this portrayal as a "common and simple" problem when it's really neither. A simple problem would be like... two hard drives jumpered as master; not a rare problem that can manifest as any of a few different parts failing.
But you're right, it wouldn't be that hard to stock a set of RAM for 95% of systems.
Many unscrupulous agents providing a service will do this sorta crap. Its where they make their cash. Think extended warranties on electronics....
There are some much more serious offenders using this pricing strategy to swindle our government as we speak. This journalist would rather toss a nurf ball around than deal with a real story like war profiteering.
No I didn't rtfa, I have better things to do....
Let's talk about rates. What do we charge for a not-so-fun home job vs a fun network setup for a small company?? I'd be more inclined to charge more for the home job.
I have to wonder how many memory issues are caused by bad contacts.
My 5-year old dual Athlon box with a Tyan Tiger MPX developed a flurry of weird issues right as I was trying to convert it into a dual-boot Win2k/Ubuntu box. For some reason, the on-board HD controller no longer likes more than one device on either primary or secondary, so I ended up adding in and then removing several HD's trying to figure that out.
As I was in and out of the machine swapping hardware, the weirdest crap started to happen. The win2k install, four years old, suddenly developed "Bad Pool Caller" issues (but Ubuntu still booted fine), then random crashes, then add-in cards started getting weird. Finally it wouldn't even POST.
I finally got it down to one (out of only two) bad stick of RAM -- or so I thought. But then it occurred to me to try using DeOxit to clean the contacts on the "bad" stick, and PRogold afterwards to guard against oxidation, and reinstall it. I did the same to all the PCI cards too. I had resurrected an Amiga a long time ago by doing something like this, so it was worth a try.
BAM -- everything was just peachy, and it still is. As it turns out, swapping in and then pulling out the extra HD kept pushing the power cables against the #2 RAM stick -- tap, tap, tap. It likely budged it around just enough for oxidation/dust to shift around, get in and degrade some contacts.
I had to rebuild the Win2k install; whatever that glitch was, it had insinuated itself into my ghost backups also -- but now that machine is back to its old reliable self, with all its RAM.
With the balls-to-the-wall timings and tolerances we use for RAM nowadays, I bet that a lot of otherwise good sticks of RAM simply need their contacts to be pristine. I plan to use Progold/Deoxit or equivalent on the next new machine I build, for that extra bit of stability insurance.
Thanx for the "partial" correction!
You seem very knowledgeable!
But you ignored the fact that Windows runs on computers with n386 processors using electricity, not on Diesels!
How could you have not spotted that obvious mistake? tsk-tsk!
.
- aqk
F U
> Charge for your time.
Couldn't agree more. My wife restores antiques, she _has_ to charge for quotes because otherwise she gets too many time wasters (she also gets a fair number of people who just want the quote for insurance and don't intend to get the work done, but that's another story).
Also, I'm prepared to pay for time myself. I had a collectable a little while ago that I thought was probably a fake, so I took it to a specialist. He took it apart and had a very careful look for about an hour before he ended up agreeing with me - it was a _very_ good fake. The only reason why I spotted it was I specialize in exactly that maker and only that maker, he is more general.
Although there was nothing to repair, and he really enjoyed working on it (if it had been real it would have been very rare and possibly the only one he'd ever seen); I still insisted on paying him. It was good to have the second opinion and well worth it.
how's the crusade going willy? pretty good?