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?

[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?

[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.

"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.

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.

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.