Computer Repair Rip-offs
 

Grancey and I have been dealing with some poor representatives of the computer repair industry for a couple of months now.


And a follow-up video clip:

http://www.cbc.ca/marketplace/2007/10/03/geeks/

Shocking. I'm glad I have several computers and I know how to use google and my head.
That, and I don't live in Canada. :D

Wow. Just wow.

I mean I work in a desktop support environment and deal with some pretty thick users, but how stoopid do they think people are? I mean that was Canada...a developed country. Imagine the fast one they'd be able to pull down here?

:no:

Makes me wanna go into the business.

basically because I know what I'm doing. I don't halfass guesses left and right.

honestly I didn't see what the big deal with their prices were though (for the ones who were correct)

the one guy didn't have anything smaller in memory size on him, and yeah, he was selling the larger size with almost double the price of what it cost online, but they dont mention the shipping cost, and the overhead for paying that employee, and the gas it took to come to thier house to fix it for them.

120$ for a 65$ or whatever stick of ram is acceptable at the retail level as far as I'm concerned.

Now if it was a drop off shop, I wouldn't expect more than a 30$ markup on it, but you gotta do what you gotta do to stay in business. Keep in mind, the people who "know" what they are doing probably spent either a large portion of thier lives learning this stuff, or paid thousands in tuition to learn it, nothing in life is free.


still, 3 out of 10, thats amazingly bad....

A pretty shifty biz.

Best Buy stuck it to me once and I'll never buy from them again!

Woah, That guy from Nerds on Site made me speechless...what a douche!

This is a problem with any industry that contrasts specialized knowledge with public ignorance; it's not specific to IT and computers. Being knowledgeable in the field, I'm able to sidestep the issue as well as protect my family. Even though I'm technically out of the contracting business I still also get regular calls from friends and former clients both, who'd rather pay my fees than deal with the possibility of getting ripped off.

A blown stick of RAM is diagnostically simple. There is absolutely no excuse for misdiagnosing.

depending on how old the computer is i'd think. I'm not entirely familiar with all the tools but in most cases the beep codes should be able to tell you something.

however many people stated that in the video, they heard no beep codes or whatever.

the only things that would keep a computer from booting to POST would be the ram, the motherboard, and the processor.

again, I don't have any kind of special diagnostic tools other than extra parts to swap in and out. Not sure what you'd do to diagnose it otherwise.


what struck me as particularly dumb were the people who said it was the hard drive, or said "this AND that" (picking 2 of the 3 POST failing parts)

oh yeah, and the people who said "video card"

:rolleyes:

Which makes me think they disabled the beep codes so that they could get more skewed – and thus, more newsworthy – results. :orly:

You know what industry is more underhanded than computer techs, car mechanics, plumbers, et. all? The TV media industry. :grumpy:

I bet you some of those techs who answered the call were thinking (at least, on a subconsious level), "Hmm... Is this due to a bad memory stick? But there are no beep codes. So, maybe it's something else... ?" And once you get off on a wrong path, as a computer tech diagnosing a problem with a PC, it could take you a lot of time and effort before you realize it and go back, looking for the correct path.

Oh, and the way the TV reporter went on and on about "it's a simple repair, with just a $25 part!": Replacing a $2 fuse is a simple repair, with a cheap part. But if you call an electrician out to your house, he's going to charge you a great deal more than $2 to diagnose and fix the problem.

But was that stick of RAM completely blown? After all, there appeared to be no beep codes. I've dealt with faulty sticks of RAM that allowed you to boot all the way into Windows, and even let you launch and run applications, but then all of a sudden an application would crash with a read memory error. (And a read memory error in Windows doesn't necessarily mean you have a bad memory stick.) The only way to find the cause of this problem was to boot off a floppy or CD, to a command prompt, and then run an exhaustive memory-checking program.

Close to home
 

After seeing a few of these type of exposé type programs on TV, I often wonder if one of my customers will end up being a setup. However, I know that I provide excellent service, customer's best interest is always in the forefront. Only wish they'd give kudo's to the people that did it right, instead of slamming this particular company in the vid. After all, they are trying to provide the public with more information as to how not to get ripped off right ?