The equivalent in the UK is PC World and their Knowhow staff (a classic oxymoron...Knownot, more like).
Their typical modus operandi (whatever the problem) appears to be first wipe the customers HDD, reinstall OS, charge a staggering amount - job done. I've had so many customers come to me after having had their machines "fixed" by these clowns.
My tale is of an panicking customer, who had an imminent deadline for producing a local parish magazine (where I happened to advertise).
That fateful morning her laptop presented her with "The User Profile Service failed the logon. User profile cannot be loaded."
Which is (usually) a pretty simple registry fix:
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/947215
She turned straight to PCW, where she had bought the laptop, who quoted her £60 to look at the problem, and £150 to fix it, as "it needs Windows re-installing", AND it would take a week or more.
Desperate not to lose all her files and to get the magazine printed that day, she called her co-editor for advice (who was also a customer of mine) - she called me and explained the problem.
As the new customer lived outside my normal catchment area, we arranged to meet halfway, to save travel time. I took the laptop away, applied the fix, did some additional clean-up (as it was also running slow), and she had it back in full working order in 2 hours.
Was she happy? You bet! I only charged her for 30 minutes work, and in return I got a glowing write-up in her editorial, about how I saved that issue of the magazine, due to my prompt service and "knowhow"!
If only all my jobs were that easy and fulfilling.
