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Confessions of a Computer Repairman
nk497 writes "What really happens to your PC when it's handed over to computer repair cowboys? We reveal the horror stories from computer repair shops — the dodgy technicians that install pirated software, steal personal photos, lie about hardware upgrades, upsell to the unsavvy, or simply steal your PC to sell on. Plus, we tell you how to avoid such dodgy fixers and find a trustworthy repairman."
Exactly. Don't break your legs and head in a car accident if you don't know how to repair them!
More like "Don't drive if you don't know how not to crash"
I read the article, some stuff might be hard for the beginner (cable got lose, that might take a while for a person to diagnose) but asking them to upgrade RAM and not knowing how to check how much RAM the system has is stupid.
If you're not a pulmonologist, stop breathing.
So, we typically pay the guys who handle our massively-complex-bundle-of-personal-information-and-spying-potential about as well as the guys who change our oil and then bad things often happen. The independent ones are subject to basically zero supervision and not infrequently include complete amateurs, some rather dodgy. The chain-store ones are subject to supervision aimed primarily at forcing them to upsell and bill as hard as possible, while working as quickly as possible. Quality results are assured. Wow. Allow me to collect my jaw from the floor.
The only surprise is that anybody is surprised. Even in professions with a very long history of handling personal, highly technical, or discrete matters for their clients, with well developed professional codes, cultural pressures, and often substantially better compensation(think doctors, lawyers, priests) there are innumerable cases of ethical dodginess, laziness, and other issues.
You're a fucking idiot.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
By most accounts, Geek Squad used to be a class outfit until Best Buy took 'em over; after that, they went downhill fast.
They quoted my father $200 to do a malware cleanup. Unbelievable! (Not sure why he even went there, I've warned him about them before. And yes, he declined the $200 Geek Squad cleanup -- at least he got that right!)
Computer repair is not an equitable business. Everyone loses.
Either the customer gets ripped off by paying high fees OR the company gets ripped off in labour costs. It just isn't worth it.
In business you need to charge out labour at x3 to cover overhead. If it takes 1.5 hours to fix a computer you need to charge 3 * 1.5h * $20/hr = $90.
And almost every task is going to take 1.5 hours.
Go ahead and spend 10 minutes slapping in that memory upgrade or video card and handing it back. When it comes back with the sound or internet not working you're going to get corn-holed. If you don't do any CYA when it comes in or goes out the general rules of thumb is: the last person who isn't retarded gets full responsibility for all current and future computer problems
At least all they did was pretend to put in more, I've seen Rent a Ripoff actually steal RAM out of the PC when they brought it in for cleaning. And all these "if you don't know X" are so damned full of shit! Do you know how to rebuild your engine? Then you shouldn't be driving! Can you operate on your legs if you break them? Then you shouldn't be walking!
Dumbasses nobody can know everything and that is why we have mechanics, plumbers, and yes repairguys like me. I am proud to say I have NEVER copied someone's files, stolen a damned thing, or not done any job I wasn't told to do. I don't use hot software (although I will admit I use Windows copies and not originals, I use the correct key for the machine) I don't go looking for pics of your GF, I just do my job.
The moral of the story is the same as with mechanics and plumbers ask around and you'll find out if they are honest or not. I'd be happy to give them the name of a couple of my business clients if they want to know about my work, or hell just walk into their place of business. See all those whiteboxes? Guess who built them. I design the machine for the job required, which is why the printer has middle of the road CPUs (AMD Triples) but 4Gb of RAM and 1Gb of RAM on the GPU, because it helps with those large banners they are always doing. The local engineer has only 2Gb of RAM but a fast CPU because the engineering program he runs doesn't use much RAM but slams the hell out of a processor.
So just ask around folks. You wouldn't take your car to "Crazy Joe's house of repair" just because he has a snazzy commercial would you? And please for the love of all that is good QUIT GOING TO WORST BUY! Because I swear I've had to fix more horribly broken shit from them than from any other shop! So just ask around, an honest fixit guy is more than happy to give you references of past customers.Hell I'll even take before and after pics and screenshots if that is what makes you happy, I'm damned proud of my work, thank you VERY much! I'm not the cheapest guy in town, but I'm honest, fair, and you get what you pay for.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Does it annoy anyone else that there are more and more articles here on /. that are submissions of an article/store by the author of the story ?
Not at all. I do get annoyed when the submitter is pointing to his content farm that just re-frames the original source. But it's not because I can't stand self-promotion, it's because the content farm rarely adds anything to the subject and I have to jump through another hoop to get to the real story.
It's not a crime to profit from providing information. As long as it really is something interesting (and not otherwise deceitful), I see no reason to get one's hackles up about it.
ugh, malware.
I would have no problem quoting someone $200 for a maleware cleanup. Best case its a fresh infection and whatever automated tool you run will clean it up or its a google search away. If that's the case, then you over estimated and only charge $60-$100. Worst case its years of infections that finally broke the computer on a 4 year old computer with too little ram that wont boot from USB.
This stuff is like cancer. Not to bad if you catch it early, but once it spreads you never know if you got it all.
If you're not a pulmonologist, stop breathing.
When anyone suggests that some personal responsibility is appropriate, it's very easy to demagogue them. It's particularly easy when they say it in an abrasive, absolute, "why doesn't everyone see it" sort of way. Then it's like an cheap slam-dunk one-line victory, isn't it?
GP is going about this the wrong way. I don't precisely agree with his absolute stance. Yet my point is similar in nature to his, but you will find it more difficult to deny. Simply put, if you spend hundreds of dollars on a machine and then refuse to learn the very most basic things about it, you are placing yourself completely at the mercy of others. To know what a stick of RAM looks like, to read a little sticker and see that it says "2GB" and not "4GB" is hardly a strain of one's technical prowess. It merely requires that you bother to spend a few minutes reading some very basic, entry-level literature written specifically for beginners.
I'm not sure if it's due to functional illiteracy or an inability to handle a contrary position without getting overly emotional, or what, but a lot of people would read the paragraph above and swear on all that is sacred that I am saying it's somehow okay for these shops to prey on people and rip them off. I didn't say that. What I am saying is that placing yourself completely at the mercy of total strangers, strangers who stand to profit from your ignorance, when it's so easy not to, is a great way to get a result you won't like. Those who choose not to do this generally don't end up getting ripped off.
The way this works is simple: there are bad people in the world. They do bad things; for example they overcharge and they rip people off. There's nothing you can do about that. There have always been people like this, since ancient times, and in the foreseeable future there always will be. What you can decide is whether you will be the low-hanging fruit that they target. If it took long years of training to acquire extreme expertise, then I would have fully agreed with your one-liner. To avoid almost every scam listed in that article, all it takes is a natural curiosity and a willingness to spend a few minutes here and there learning about that machine you purchased.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Honestly, that's your own fault for trying to save a bad drive image. ANY bad sectors on a drive instantly gets a "NO" with using Vista to using any kind of drive imager from me. Drives that fail SMART? Maaaaybe...sectors? Not ever...It's not that you are being attentive to the customer, and trying to be nice, it's that you are taking TOO LONG to go down a route wraught with trouble. That's one of those paths you avoid since they will be without their PC for quite a bit longer with possibly a reinstalled OS anyways. Reinstall the OS (real techs have the right install media), use the key on the laptop's sticker (if none, I make them buy a new OEM key), dump their files over into a new profile, run updates, and hand them back their machine with the hard drive in case something was missed.
It sucks, but not reinstalling in that instance from scratch is a rookie mistake. I was say you got a bad shake with the Vista system since XP, and 7 can run a Windows repair and usually recover from those corrupted files. For whatever reason MS thought it was wise to pull it from Vista unless you can get into Visa *rages*
Are they full of shit because they infuriate you? Because of the smugness and certainty with which most of them say it? Because there's actually a small kernel of truth to it and that just pisses you off even more? I'm starting to wonder if the habitual urge to cherry-pick extremes is the root of all misunderstanding.
This wasn't a story about the ability to build computers or other electronics. This car analogy is not a comparison of two similar themes. You're making an analogy between users who don't notice RAM that's suddenly missing (requires basic technical knowledge) and the mechanical skill it takes to rebuild a modern car engine (requires advanced mechanical and technical knowledge). That isn't instructive or edifying; it's misleading though it's an easy mistake to make.
I'd answer it by saying I wouldn't know how to rebuild my car's engine, but if a repair shop removed it and replaced it with a significantly inferior engine without telling me, I would notice. I think that's a fair analogy to removing a stick of RAM.
I wouldn't know how to properly set a broken bone. But I would know that the leg is broken. If I ask the doctor to do something about my broken leg I do not expect him to also put a cast on my uninjured arm.
In this entire discussion, I haven't seen a single person dispute that. If you assume there is no balance, no sense of what is reasonable behind what they believe, then I suppose some have displayed a perspective that could go in that direction -- if taken to an absurd extreme that few or none would actually believe and advocate.
It's a matter of having integrity. There's a non-technical skill which would have been handy for those targeted by this kind of fraud: the ability to recognize sincerity, to distinguish it from the perfunctory, from the approval-seeking and the phony making-nice which is so much more common.
A person with real integrity is not simply making a choice not to copy someone's files, steal, pad the bill, etc. It's more like they don't even find that tempting. Those who think it's about adherence to a list of rules don't really get it. It's more like what Aristotle said: "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law."
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I admire your tenaciousness, but you really need to learn when to ask what the customer considers a good trade-off. My guess is that you're very far from that point already.
Some comments on your general approach: When a computer has "random" slow-downs, the hard disk is always a suspect. Check SMART data first. This gives you instant information about a very common problem domain. If the disk has bad sectors, power down, then ask the customer about his or her priorities: Is there a recent backup? If not, are there files of particular importance on the system or is "everything" important? Important enough to pay for clean room data recovery? Depending on the responses, you try to copy the important files first, make a sector-wise image of the whole drive or hand it back to the customer. If there's even a small chance that important system files have been damaged, you do a reinstall and only copy data. This is always justifiable because even when the customer just scraps the old hardware, they'll still need their data moved over to a new laptop. Regarding the Windows Update odyssey: There are offline tools for bringing Windows installations up-to-date.
I have customers who tell me that they've done something and their important data is gone, can I get it back for them. Usually there are things I could try, but the first question I ask is always how important this data is and how much it would cost to get it back some other way (or simply live with the loss). It often turns out that hours of uncertain data recovery work are not justified.
The one bit of upselling that is always acceptable is for a backup solution that decimates the recovery work the next time. There will be a next time.
"Standing up for a minor issue "
Bait and Switch is HARDLY a minor issue.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.