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."

Comments

getting gouged by whom?

[yagu]

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.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[MightyMartian]

Also the story is long on anecdotal "sting" evidence, and short on statistically significant information to substantiate the claim.

Welcome to the post-Dateline world, where every news agency now wants to set up stings to bust the bad guy. I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists. I think modern journalism is the one area that seriously needs to be looked in to.

We can start with science journalism, which is now at nearly tabloid levels of accuracy.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[maxume]

That's not a very nice thing to say about tabloids.

Zing!

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[nuzak]

Oh for gods sake. They were getting gouged by the Geek Squad. It's an alliterative headline, a grand tradition of hundreds of years. This is just righteous touchiness, and no one is going to say "gosh, anyone who says they're a geek can't be trusted, some guy on the news said they'll rip me off". Honestly, pick your battles.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[adminstring]

I have found that power supplies that look good to a multimeter may not look so good to a computer and may still cause problems. It might be putting out 5 volts, but how clean is that 5 volts? An oscilloscope could give you a better picture of how the power supply is working, or there's always my favorite method... swapping in a different power supply and seeing if the problem goes away.

I'm glad that Mom and Pop are out there doing a good job at a good price for people in your area, though. More power to them!

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[ConceptJunkie]

I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists.

Now, that is the best idea I've heard in a very long time.

It'd be a lot harder to find a good journalist.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[sg_oneill]

An australian comedy show, "The Chaser" (The guys who dressed like Osama bin laden and snuck past the guards at the APEC meeting in sydney ) have done numerous kick-the-door-in type "Raids" on Current-affairs show hosts houses at strange times of the morning , usually causing all sorts of hilarious anger bursts from the victims. Its bloody hilarious, considering the usual victims of the current affairs shows tends to be "UNEMPLOYED PEOPLE NOT WORKING: WE SHOW THE PROOF" type beat ups.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Cprossu]

A big well said to the parent thread.

I've had to personally clean up messes that were made by a company that rhymes with "Geek Squad" and quite a few others as well, and can tell you that they push everything that makes them money and that a fair amount of them don't know what the hell they are doing (my buddy who worked there got fired for not selling enough product and not charging a few people for really simple problems). I have seen them and others totally miss easy problems on systems (a cpu cooling fan that is so caked up with so much dust that it doesn't spin), screw up perfectly functioning systems (install a floppy cable backwards, install ram backwards(!), forget to connect little things back up like the hard drive's data cable), and setup networks so badly it's a wonder they even work (Then again the ones I visit are because they don't work and I think it's terrible that they already gave up an arm, leg, and first born to a company which screwed everything up). The specific BSOD's that the bait system should have been putting up (if it is like the one they showed in a little blip in one of the segments) should have been a dead giveaway to anybody with the power of google that the ram, or at the very least some piece of hardware was at fault (not sure how that one fellow suggested the video card, or that other dude the cpu!), although I will say that I would have been a little confused had the customer said it 'just happened' that day, as ram is usually bad from the factory, I would have probably gone into questioning about if the comp had done anything like that previously before I run a memtest)

I personally always find out if a system is under warranty before even breathing upon any hardware inside the machine, never charge anything if I don't or cannot fix it (which although rare does happen ), and I always charge simple cheap fees for things like spyware and viruses, (ei $15-$20) on easily removed stuff (like an hour or so actually spent on it onsite), and involve the customer in any purchasing of parts directly if I can.

My motivation as a tech has always been to teach customers that there is no "magic box", that it is decently easy to maintain, they are not going to break it by looking at it, the internals are nothing to be afraid of (no they won't get shocked adding ram), they can live a happy online computer life by staying away from bad sites, not using IE or Outlook in most cases is the best, updating AV and spyware defs is a good thing running windows, using something called "google" to find answers to questions can prevent hair loss, and I also go the extra step and teach them methods of searching forums for answers to any given computer problem(also how NOT to use the caps lock key if they do post).

so I generally tell them anything they want to learn. Companies, and freelancers who are thieves, or don't know how to fix things give our trade a terrible name, and as long as there is money to be made, they will be with us making everyones lifes slightly worse off. Computer repair is tedious, and you have to really love or enjoy it to make your customers happy. I know nothing feels better to me than rescuing someone's vacation pictures from a hard drive that is on it's last legs with the dreaded "click of death" in fornt of their eyes, take em to the store to get another hdd, load everything back and be done and have them running in less than an hour and less than $100.)

I should probably say more about the actual video now, because I derailed my train and went into a rant.

Nothing on that tape surprised me sadly, there have always been bad techs around, and there have always been good techs who are told to 'add' something to the bottom line by their bosses at risk of loosing their jobs. I never have thought that the so called "formal training" or certs give you the ability to troubleshoot any given machine. If someone is gonna slack off and not pay attention, they will, and retain enough of it that they can pass a multiple choice test. I guess I didn't get my rant completed.. oh well, take it easy everyone.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[timeOday]

Welcome to the post-Dateline world, where every news agency now wants to set up stings to bust the bad guy. I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists.

Is this story somehow an example of bad journalism? I think it's good journalism. Computer repair (just like car repair and health care) are problems that free markets just don't solve very well. There's no way for consumers to make informed decisions since diagnosing the problem is the job. Most people not only can't diagnose these problems themselves, but don't make this type of purchase very often, and have little or no objective data to go by. It's a tough problem.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[DamnStupidElf]

Is this story somehow an example of bad journalism? I think it's good journalism. Computer repair (just like car repair and health care) are problems that free markets just don't solve very well. There's no way for consumers to make informed decisions since diagnosing the problem is the job. Most people not only can't diagnose these problems themselves, but don't make this type of purchase very often, and have little or no objective data to go by. It's a tough problem.

What do you propose? The Department of Auto Mechanics and the Computer Repair Agency? We'll need the Senate Hairdressers Oversight Committee and the Federal Landscaping Commission, too. Don't forget the government watchdogs to keep track of wayward newspaper boys who can't land it on the porch.

Seriously, that's what consumer reports and the Internet are for.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Minwee]

Please, it's bad enough that 'podcast' is trying to become a noun. Don't let it move in on verb territory too.

Re:getting gouged by whom?

[Cprossu]

quote:"That report was a hatchet job. Bad ram is very rare"

Back in the day it really was not a common problem, and the cases of it I remember were easy to diagnose because the comp would not even post. My personal first diagnoses I made of bad ram (that posts fine and 'looks' fine) back in '95 or so really had me pulling my hair out. I eventually tore the whole computer apart, set it up on a bench, and tested each part individually to figure it out, when I found it was the ram I was shocked. (it also didn't help having a 28.8kb dial up connection to the web, no affordable cd burner even on the horizon, and a lack of good low kb free tools)

Anyway, I beg to differ that bad ram is rare, I've had loads of bad ram since they released sticks with 512MB and over.
It's been so bad for me, I don't let a rig go to someone 'till it passes 2 times with memtest.
I've bought 3 laptops for me and my family in the last year from retail stores, and 2 came to me with at least 1 bad ddr2 module, and I see it very often on customer computers. Ususally I am the last resort before it gets the dumpster or sent back, when it ends up being a simple ram issue.

now you might say, wait a min, that's if you only use crappy ram, but I've gotten bad ram from everybody from corsair, kingston, crucial, PQI, patriot, micron oem, and a slew of others using any kind of chip, as well as straight from a big computer factory, where they are supposed to test it before it leaves. I've seen it in servers, workstations, desktops, notebooks, you name it, I probably have a bad stick of it somewhere in my room. Most everyone I've dealt with has great return programs which took care of me very well, but it's still a fact that I shouldn't have gotten the bad ram in the first place-

I have a feeling that if the test was 'more fair' as you call it and had something...easier(?) to diagnose, perhaps a bad power supply (the most often failure I see over here in Arizona), or perhaps dust clogged cpu fan, then most of the so called techs they hired still wouldn't have figured it out.

my only gripe is that crying over getting charged $35 for a $25 part is a bit extreme, I mean come on, a $10 markup ain't too bad considering that you didn't count shipping in "what you got it on the net" for.

Just goes to show...

[Starteck81]

It's just as hard to find a good, read competent and honest, IT tech as it is to find a good car mechanic.

In other news...

[Sloppyjoes7]

In other news, some business people are shady and try to rip off consumers! See the groundbreaking report tonight, at 7!

Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[Irish_Samurai]

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.

Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[ceoyoyo]

If you're incompetent and selling your services then you are a ripoff artist.

Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance?

[Irish_Samurai]

That statement assumes you know you are incompetent. Which, if you are incompetent, you don't have the skills to accurately judge your incompetence.

Those who don't know what they don't know aren't rip off artists. A rip off artist knows what they are doing.

Re:I blame windows

[Mr. Sketch]

If you don't have a memtest tool on you, you just have to make your best guess. Of course, if you don't have a memtest tool on you, you shouldn't really be calling yourself a diagnostic tech. A memtest tool is a staple of any computer tech, and at the very least, you shouldn't be saying the problem is memory without using the correct tool to diagnose it. That would be like a doctor saying you have a heart murmur without using a stethoscope to listen to your heart.

Depends...

[Penguinisto]

If it was a simple matter of semi-unseating a DIMM, then yeah, I agree with TFA - a simple check of cards, sticks, etc. would've revealed it to be busted, and a quickie re-seat would've been enough. If it were a simple POST-test failure, again, the beeps help t-shoot it if the guy is at least A+ certified (or knows enough to have one)

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.

/P

See? Geeks are stupid...

[Brickwall]

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.

"Simple"?

[Kris_J]

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.

And sometimes

[Kazrath]

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.

Here, Here!

[eepok]

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.

Good techs get business from these guys

[grapeape]

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.

Does anyone really think

[Wapiti-eater]

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.

Video was a HIT PIECE

[Dr Kool, PhD]

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.

Re:I just did a job on a few laptops

[garompeta]

Wrong!, very wrong. You are clearly thinking like a technician, not a businessman.
There is a golden rule in business: time is money.

It is nothing unethical to charge for the time that took you to diagnose the problem.
Not charging the diagnose is actually a "free service" provided by technicians to attract customers, but not clearly it is not the normal thing.

Charging ridiculous amounts is unethical, but charging for the time it consumed YOU (whatever it was) is perfectly ok.

In the service business (private teacher, schools, colleges, sky diving lessons, transportation, whatever), whatever service that requires scheduling most of the times they charge you a time slot, if you don't come or come late, they don't refund you the money.
In the Industrial/Goods Business, the product is money.
In the Service Business, Time is money. Much more critically than the goods industry, since it is your only limited and not renewable "raw material" from which you can generate revenues.

Charge for your time.

Did the geeks charge.....

[GaryOlson]

$150 for a courier fee?
$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.

Who cares about haircuts?

[Rix]

Men pay a *lot* more for insurance. Fix that before worrying about petty little things.