Geek House Call Services: Expensive, Wrong And Could Be Stealing Your Data
from the the-used-car-salesmen-of-the-computer-world dept
As less tech savvy folks start having computer problems, if they don't have in-house tech support (i.e., kids living at home) they tend to call or visit one of the growing number of computer fixit services -- many of which advertise the fact that they'll come to your home and fix your computer. The problem, though, is that they're pretty expensive, have little training and quite often completely screw up the diagnosis. On top of that, they may snoop around your computer or even download your hard drive. Many people probably suspected this, but when a Canadian TV station put ten such companies to the test with an easy-to-diagnose computer problem only three out of the ten accurately diagnosed the problem -- and then all three charged huge markups on the replacement part to fix it. Six out of the ten got the diagnosis completely wrong and one just gave up (but didn't charge anything either). Many suggested expensive other alternatives -- with a few suggesting that the customer just buy a new computer, even though all the computer really needed was a replacement RAM chip. Then there was the one guy who showed up late, completely misdiagnosed the problem (before he'd even opened the case), told the customer she had to send the computer to a special clean room that would cost $2,000 and then (without getting permission) downloaded the contents of her hard drive to his laptop (which he didn't delete before leaving). The broadcast also interviewed some former technicians who noted that they rarely received much in the way of training, and were often encouraged to charge as much as possible and always be selling other products. The final recommendation from the TV program? Go online, do some research and try to fix things yourself.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: computers
Companies: geek squad
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Would you like fries with that?
It's been my experience that the clerks SELLING the equipment barely knows how to spell PC, let alone explain anything about requirements or applications. They often can't read the answer to the question you just asked off the box faster than you can (because they are less trained or capable than McDonald's tellers with photos on the registers).
Is this news? I suppose. Is this unexpected? I only hope that those who need this tip-off are readers of Techdirt (unlikely) so they can know they are being calculatedly ripped off.
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Re: Would you like fries with that?
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Sigh...
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Re: Sigh...
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It's companies like that...
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It appears that the industry is worst that Auto Repair.
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Giving hard working techs a bad name
Anyways, to get to my point, I have been doing computer repair for 6 years now on my own and NEVER have I screwed someone over. I just cant believe that companies go out and do this kind of thing. It makes it hard for people to trust good honest techs like me and gives us a bad name... Boo to you companies i say, BOO!!
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Crooks are everywhere...
And it's not just crooks you have to look out for. Incompetent "techs" will mess you up just as badly as a dishonest ones.
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When we hire a new technician, he/she spends several months doing in-house repairs and building new systems, all under supervision. It does not matter how much previous experience or training he already has. He does not go on-site for repairs until he has demonstrated to the senior technicians that he is capable of doing good quality in a reasonable time. It is our companies reputation on the line, we will not risk that on someone who is not qualified.
This is the difference between your local computer stores and the big box retail stores. The big stores have a high turnover rate, little or no time to properly train new employees and are driven by sales. The local computer store makes it's profit through service and the employees generally have more years experience.
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Geek Squad Haters
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On the other hand, you can hire an out-of-garage guy at $25/hr, f**k around for 2 days, and $300 later will leave your PC all screwed up,making you wish you just paid the pro.
See it all the time.
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I fixed a lawyer's PC who had complained, since he had bought it three years ago that it was slow.
He said it had been this slow since he bought it and the warranty recently ran out. The company who sold it to him, had attempted 3 warranty repairs and never got it fixed.
I had the problem diagnosed in less than an hour.
Run scandisk - found tons and tons of errors. A New hard drive later, it ran just fine. I think it was a bad hard disk out of the box and the company that sold it to him, didn't notice it. Nevermind there were loads of errors in the event viewer about bad blocks on the disk, lol.
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Clean Room
BMR777
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Re: Clean Room
And I am sure that her questions couldn't of led to him saying that. He guessed the hd was dead, said the data might be lossed. She asks if there is anyways to recover it, he says it get expensive, she asks how expensive could it get, he says we might have to send it to "the room". He hooked the hd outside the laptop saw he could get the data off avoiding the room, since she was so concerned with the data. She in turn tries to get him fired.
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rates
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get someone from your IT dept. to help
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Then there's the price tag. I charge all of $20/hr. for my time (and maybe an extra $5-10 for gas if I have to drive a really long ways). And I do NOT charge for every last second I am on the job. If I sit there for 20 minutes or so waiting for spyware or antivirus scans to complete, and am chatting with the customer on various topics of conversation unrelated to the computer, I don't consider myself to be "working" so I do not charge for that. I keep a general running total in my head of how much actual hands-on time I have spent to come up with a fair price, and I also try to take into account the budget of the customer I am dealing with. Obviously I am not going to charge through the roof to somebody who is just trying to make ends meet and is unfortunate enough to have an old computer filled with malware. I may recommend upgrades or even a new computer or peripherals, but I will never try to forcibly sell something to somebody who doesn't want it.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think that puts me in a standard that's just a bit above your typical on-call geeks. Granted, it's not my main job, and I probably couldn't make a living off that type of mentality, nor would I want to. However, I do think there is a happy medium point somewhere where the customer can be treated properly while still turning a profit. Unfortunately, the vast majority of computer repair services are not at that point.
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This is why I learned car repair
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With all due respect to techs
Is this the old saying of "you get what what you pay for"? The article doesn't say anything about what these people paid for their tech calls, but like some posters pointed out, would the "big box" stores really want to repair your PC? Or do they train their techs to upsell the more expensive service contracts and brand-new parts?
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Ya, TV show good but slightly overhyped.
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More often we get someone who's computer is no longer under and manufacturer's warranty (which we can do work under) but still want free service because they bought it at the retail store we reside within.
Now, I'll definitely grant that many Geek Squad agents wrongly diagnose things (happens all the time in the IT world) because there's about 8,000,000 things that can go wrong with a computer. If they refuse to admit they were wrong and fix it, that's a different story.
As for being expensive, all technicians on the consumer level cost about the same. Anywhere from $50-200 depending on the services. That's way undercharging, most business-level technicians will charge $300-800 for the same service. Anyone who does it for less than consumer-level is selling their skills short.
Stealing a client's data is completely unacceptable. This is going to depend on the technician you get. If it's in-home, get a referral from a previous client of theirs, or watch them do everything. If it's at a repair shop like ours and it's a quick deal, ask to watch. If it will take a few days and you can't research the company or aren't sure, then DON'T take your chances. For instance, we recently had a few scattered cases of internal data theft. The next week every single Geek Squad computer was audited and every store had a visit from the district managers to check them out. Look for businesses that check into internal affairs rather than bury them or shy away from the issue.
Now we've just talked about the bad of personal IT guys. Why not the good? You get someone who had mounds more knowledge than you about something and in a good majority of the time can quickly and accurately assess the problem and fix it for a price that is reasonable considering all of the work you'd have to do learning about it and fixing it yourself. Find you an honest guy who knows what he's talking about and can put things in plain English and you've got yourself pure gold. Why not pay a technician to work on your computer? You'd do the same for your car.
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Lack BIOS improvement
The flappage about memory being hard to diag, is a direct result of the crappy bios, but it's also a cop-out. Since memory test equipment is available, so I while I have some sympathy for memory issues, if you're a professional you should have all appropriate memory testers, if not on the truck, at least carry tested spares and bring the customer's into the office to test.
As far as harddrive copying goes, please give me a break spring for a 2nd harddrive and dump your data there, or even better by a USB HD/kit. Harddrives are dirt cheap so there's really no need to have the tech copy your harddrive. Especially since you can get a 250 gig for about the same cost as a repair call.
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Learning how to use computers ...
Sure, there are times that we don't always know what to do. But we could always ask others we could trust.
Then again, some people have the mentality that if a service is expensive, it must be good and so they resort to calling those who are said to be experts.
Companies like that should be more responsible for the people that they hire to fix stuff. But more importantly, we should all be responsible enough as computer owners. That's why we still have to be the ones to do our maintenance work or oversee it when someone does come to fix it.
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Geek House Call Services: Expensive, Wrong
Some years ago, I was using Windows 98 and started having problems, so I went to a nearby computer repair shop.
They advised me that If I upgrade to Windows XP, all my computer problems would disappear.
So, I did.
But it did not take long for new problems to crop up with Explorer.
Suddenly, I could not use Explorer anymore.
So, out of frustration, I called Microsoft.
After the usual, If you want dept A, press 1, dept B, press 2, Dept C, press 3 rigmarole, I reached a nasty sounding staff.
I narrated my problems to him. His response shocked me.
He said that since I did not buy my Windows XP from a store and my computer repair shop installed it for me that Microsoft would have to charge me in order to give me any help to figure out what is the problem.
The reason he gave for this is that their warranty don't cover the installation by the repair store!
I was mad and since there was nothing I could do, I hang up.
Then I decided to re-install Explorer, but I could not.
It said that I must buy another copy of XP to be able to re-install Explorer.
That was when I decided it was time to give up on this bumbling, aging and wacky 500Ib gorilla.
I installed Forexfox and since then, I have had a very pleasurable surfing experience and peace of mind.
I felt tempted to take legal action against this gorilla for all the hassles its inferior softwares have caused me for 7 yrs, but decided against it because I knew that only a worldwide class action lawsuit can wake up this sleeping gorilla.
And some day, there would be a class action lawsuit to compensate billions of people who have suffered for 30 yrs in the hands of this goofy gorilla.
How do you have the balls to create inferior softwares and when a client goes to repair it in a repair store, you use that against him and also try to charge him before you can help him fix the problem you created in the first place due to your incompetence? What a nerve.
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Help Please!!!!
I guess I'm just venting but how do I stop this?
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