One of the worst repairs Ive ever seen

[nonchalant]

Ok so I get a call from a new customer to say they have had their PC repaired recently but since they got it home they have been unable to get it on the internet, albeit temporarily, and they had a problem also retrieving email with 2 accounts set up in Outlook. Ok, so I say I'll come out and get them up & running. The customer asks how much - I add an extra 50% on to my quote on top of my normal price because its a Saturday and Im busy with other jobs...so far its your stock standard 'reset the modem, check the line filters, and set up the mail server details job' methinks..all done inside an hour..

Anyway I get there and immediately I am presented with an exception error sitting in the middle of the screen (dotnet has crashed) & picture gallery is half way through an install or something and is kinda frozen so I cant cancel it. The modem looks happy at least, all lights are green. So I decide at this point to check event viewer to get an indication of the state of Windows..and theres a number of errors & crashes relating to different apps..The customer then tells me they had a virus problem prior to taking it to the shop..uh oh..

Now apparently the PC was formatted & Windows was reinstalled. Further discussion reveals it wasnt. Amidst utterings of "Ive just paid almost the cost of a new PC to get this thing fixed", the customer tells me the exception error sitting in the middle of the screen was happening before it was 'fixed'..the customer cant find half of his data anymore, and he has no internet or email. To make matters worse, the shop has installed TWO antiviruses on the PC I mean, come on..

Now the facts are this - the PC had just been 'repaired' by the local PC shop. The customer has handed out a fistful of cash. The PC is unusable in its current state, and the customer is very ******. Just unbelievable. I have a policy of not commenting on the work of other PC repairers but on this occasion I broke my rule..

On the upside - Ive got the job of repair. He asked me to get his second PC on the 'net while I took his away, and after some 'strong-arm' tactics with the modem & network card I got it up & running. Another plus is this customer is obviously quite affluent & he's looking for a 'regular' repairer. His son has obtained a quote on a new $2,500 high-end Dell system and is ready to buy. He asked me to quote him before he goes ahead, as he was tossing up between that & a custom-build. All going well I'll get this job also..

Goddam cowboys..

 

[Methical]

Nice work! Gotta love it when other companies f**k it up and you end up gettin' there customers. And how long does it take to do a fresh install of Windows? And I bet your client paid a pretty dime for it too..

GOLDEN RULE #1 IN ANY BUSINESS!!!
Look after your customers; and your customers will look after you.

Who cares if the new guy down the roads' price is $20 cheaper than yours for a fresh install of Windows, if the client trusts you, he will keep coming back to you. You put the slightest bit of mistrust in the client, or do not do a job to the best of your ability, you will lose them forever.

They say that if you receive one new client; from that one new client, he on average will forward 4 more clients to you. But.. If one client ends up turning away from your business, you will lose another 7 potential clients
(Don't know how to word that right, its 1.20am here in NZ atm, but I'm sure you get the picture)

 

[nonchalant]

And I bet your client paid a pretty dime for it too..

Oh yea. I charged them $90 today for my time and I'll charge my standard $165 for the format & backup. If I get the new build for the son I'll make a few more $$ too..and of course theres the repeat business & referrals as you mention.

Its funny, I almost knocked this job back today. Normally I would, because it was an extra 30 mins drive, but its nice when a quick $60 job turns into a job worth 10 times that amount, and more with repeat business..

Oh, and scanning the customers HDD Ive found 4 viruses so far..

 

[Methical]

Sounds like your onto a winner. Gotta love referrals

Scan in safe mode; able to scan files not in use by the system that otherwise are in 'normal mode'. (but I'm sure you knew that already, as you say, 4 are better than 1)...

By the way, which 4 are they??

 

[nonchalant]

By the way, which 4 are they??

AVG, Norman, VBA32, and Dr Web.

I dont believe in pushing my barrow here but I swear by this AV which is why I resell it. Its thorough, sometimes maybe too thorough (with all advanced heuristics turned on) but I'd rather it remove something thats potentially a virus than leave it on the HDD. Its what I use to clean my customers PC's..

 

[Methical]

Cheers, thanks for the tip.

I don't like AVG, i had a bad experience with them a while back. I trusted it for years, then a few months back, updated my system, scanned, found viruses; so silly me trusting AVG deleted the files' not realising that a file tagged as a 'virus' was not a virus but got deleted anyway. CRASH! Time to reformat..

I use BitDefender.. Haven't had an issue yet, good real-time protection to; and not resource hungry either. Trying to get a portable version for my flash drive; then I'll be a happy techie.

 

[nonchalant]

TrustPort has the ability to create a portable version. Bitdefender, no - detection rate is somewhat lacking & havent read anything really good about it.

The only other AV I would trust besides TP is Avira..though I currently use Nod32 on my PC as I got it for free (beta) and not a lot of AV's support 64-bit Windows..

 

[purple_minion]

Wow, sounds like a few shops around here. If the shop said they nukes and paved but didn't maybe the guy needs to go back there and demand his money back or sue. If you took your car in and they said they replaced your brakes or whatever but they didn't they'd be in trouble wouldn't they?

Sometimes I have self doubt about repairing them professionally because often you just don't know what the issue is until it's fixed. Sometimes I wonder if doctors are the same way, saying oh it's a cold, while in their head they don't have a clue. lol.

Reminds me of Jerry Seinfelds "I'm telling you for the last time" where he asks why doctors have offices. Then he says it's because they don't want you to see them flipping through their books going "What the hell was that! I've never seen anything like that before!"

 

[Methical]

Now theres a thought!
But my doctor has never misdiagnosed me in the 18 years that I have been going to him; and I've had all sorts of problems. Takes one look at me and 5 seconds later its "I think you've contracted blah blah blah blah (some stupid word that is a million miles long that I couldn't hope to pronounce). And hes never been wrong.

But there are some shotty PC Techs out there, that obviously don't give a f**k about there workmanship, no pride @ all. Spose that can be said for all trades now a days; hard to find a good mechanic even these days. Fixes the problem, but makes another.

@ least I know the bus will be there when it says it will be..

 

[bmetman]

I just had a pc in today that was taken to another local shop for repair. The customer wanted a second opinion since he took it to their shop w/ an intermittent reboot issue and it was returned to him "unrepairable". I also do not talk bad about other techs but I will not turn down the chance to gain a new customer and earn some cash. Upon powering up the pc the case fan would spin but that was it. There was no hard drive light, no bios screen, no video. This sucker was dead. I checked the power supply outputs, motherboard caps all was ok. I then turned my attention to the cpu. Upon cpu removal I noticed 10-20 of the pins on the cpu bent and smashed together. Some were even missing!! I installed a new cpu, corrected the original problem and all is ok. The moral of the story is if the processor requires zero insertion force and it takes force to put it in you probably messed up. Sorry everyone it has been a rough week and I'm finding myself venting every time I type a reply.

 

[purple_minion]

Now theres a thought!
But my doctor has never misdiagnosed me in the 18 years that I have been going to him; and I've had all sorts of problems. Takes one look at me and 5 seconds later its "I think you've contracted blah blah blah blah (some stupid word that is a million miles long that I couldn't hope to pronounce). And hes never been wrong.

But there are some shotty PC Techs out there, that obviously don't give a f**k about there workmanship, no pride @ all. Spose that can be said for all trades now a days; hard to find a good mechanic even these days. Fixes the problem, but makes another.

@ least I know the bus will be there when it says it will be..

True, but look at people with chronic pain or whatever, there are a lot of things out there that doctors don't know, it's an evolving art/science really.

As for car mechanics, maybe it's like when you remove a virus only to have the hard drive die, it was already going out just happened to be when you were there. However, I agree it's all about money, the root of all evil.

 

[nonchalant]

Upon cpu removal I noticed 10-20 of the pins on the cpu bent and smashed together. Some were even missing!!

Worst case I saw was a new PC that was constantly freezing. Closer inspection revealed a sticking CPU fan. Turns out the person that built it had routed the CPU fan power lead under the fan and between the heatsink so the fan was catching on the wire

 

[Methical]

ROFLMAO!
Funniest thing I've heard all day. Cheers nonchalant

 

[purple_minion]

Worst case I saw was a new PC that was constantly freezing. Closer inspection revealed a sticking CPU fan. Turns out the person that built it had routed the CPU fan power lead under the fan and between the heatsink so the fan was catching on the wire

Gotta keep it tidy! I heard a story about people that buy the wrong memory, and since the notches don't line up they grind away to make it slightly bigger to fit!!!

 

[Fireddog]

Here is my story just happened last night and its a continuation of a totally different client's story!

So My partner and I . We do a two man team setup. Head out to this guy out in the boonies. Walk in and he is your typical redneck but a really nice guy.
He had bought a dell laptop at a pawnshop. payed 300 bucks for it.
Was complaining that he couldn't burn cds/dvds with it. The software said that he didn't have a dvd-burner at all in his machine. the laptop was running vista 32 home premium A dual core Turion 64. 1gig ddr2. And we could immediately see that it was chugging fierce. It was already fired up when we arrived.
So I open device manager and notice that one of the ide controllers was disabled. I re-enable it but in doing so I get the message that the current account is not the administrator and Instead I get the logon screen for another user and luckily it didn't have a password so it allows me to re-enable it.
I swiftly login to the other account and turn that clients account to an administrator. then Explain that I will wipe out that other account. He explains the laptop is a gift for his 13year old daughter. My partner he has kids and he says hey that's a scary thing that this machine is running so slow like this if it was supposedly wiped before they gave it to him.
So I decide to go to the root of C drive and I see the default user directory.
I open it up and voila I find 2 other accounts from the previous owner!
I open up one and realize its fully intact! open up the documents folder and we find the guys original 2007 tax return with all his info and his social on it!
Plus we find out the guys myspace page and his email address and proceed to our everloving horror find out the previous owner is gay and had tons of.. nude pics on the pc.

We both reacted with disgust explained to our client the seriousness of this and he has us write up an invoice detailing it and we even setup a new separate account for his daughter that will prevent her from seeing the junk. I set him up with a shortcut so when he goes to the pawn shop he can just click it and show them the junk and let them know hey you guys screwed up.
Now the punchline to all this? this pawn shop is the same pawn shop we have gotten clients from in 2 days and they all had the same issues.
Infact one of our clients said the pawn shop has a contract with another local pc shop to "CLEAN OUT THE MACHINES." It appears that shop is taking their money and running. In fact the pawn shop is a chain with over 20 stores in the state. So We might just be getting a call to help them out.

Might be the big break we have been looking for.

 

[purple_minion]

Here is my story just happened last night and its a continuation of a totally different client's story!

So My partner and I . We do a two man team setup. Head out to this guy out in the boonies. Walk in and he is your typical redneck but a really nice guy.
He had bought a dell laptop at a pawnshop. payed 300 bucks for it.
Was complaining that he couldn't burn cds/dvds with it. The software said that he didn't have a dvd-burner at all in his machine. the laptop was running vista 32 home premium A dual core Turion 64. 1gig ddr2. And we could immediately see that it was chugging fierce. It was already fired up when we arrived.
So I open device manager and notice that one of the ide controllers was disabled. I re-enable it but in doing so I get the message that the current account is not the administrator and Instead I get the logon screen for another user and luckily it didn't have a password so it allows me to re-enable it.
I swiftly login to the other account and turn that clients account to an administrator. then Explain that I will wipe out that other account. He explains the laptop is a gift for his 13year old daughter. My partner he has kids and he says hey that's a scary thing that this machine is running so slow like this if it was supposedly wiped before they gave it to him.
So I decide to go to the root of C drive and I see the default user directory.
I open it up and voila I find 2 other accounts from the previous owner!
I open up one and realize its fully intact! open up the documents folder and we find the guys original 2007 tax return with all his info and his social on it!
Plus we find out the guys myspace page and his email address and proceed to our everloving horror find out the previous owner is gay and had tons of.. nude pics on the pc.

We both reacted with disgust explained to our client the seriousness of this and he has us write up an invoice detailing it and we even setup a new separate account for his daughter that will prevent her from seeing the junk. I set him up with a shortcut so when he goes to the pawn shop he can just click it and show them the junk and let them know hey you guys screwed up.
Now the punchline to all this? this pawn shop is the same pawn shop we have gotten clients from in 2 days and they all had the same issues.
Infact one of our clients said the pawn shop has a contract with another local pc shop to "CLEAN OUT THE MACHINES." It appears that shop is taking their money and running. In fact the pawn shop is a chain with over 20 stores in the state. So We might just be getting a call to help them out.

Might be the big break we have been looking for.

Wow... while the original owner can do what he wants, the fact that they didn't wipe their drive with nude pics and whatnot makes me wonder if it's stolen, or are they just that stupid. Also I think you may have a new business client. lol. Wow.

 

[Fireddog]

Yeah we are definitely hoping we get that business client.

 

[Bryce W]

Wow... while the original owner can do what he wants, the fact that they didn't wipe their drive with nude pics and whatnot makes me wonder if it's stolen, or are they just that stupid. Also I think you may have a new business client. lol. Wow.

A Dual Core Turion 64. with 1gig RAM, new enough to have Vista pre-installed for $300 with all of someones data still on it? AND it came from a Pawn shop. Definitely, without a doubt, it's stolen.

I recommend you tread carefully Fireddog when helping out that pawn shop. Seeing that its a chain, it only takes one news article about them accepting stolen hardware to bury you since your the tech thats doing it.

 

[purple_minion]

A Dual Core Turion 64. with 1gig RAM, new enough to have Vista pre-installed for $300 with all of someones data still on it? AND it came from a Pawn shop. Definitely, without a doubt, it's stolen.

I recommend you tread carefully Fireddog when helping out that pawn shop. Seeing that its a chain, it only takes one news article about them accepting stolen hardware to bury you since your the tech thats doing it.

Does it matter since you aren't the one that bought it, the pawn shop now owns it and it's up to them to weed out the shady ones. Maybe the guy needed money for drugs, who knows. They come to you and say we just bought this pc, make it better. I dunno, I could be wrong?!

 

[Fireddog]

I wondered about that myself. Well oddly enough the client who first informed me about this same pawn shop. His wife is a sheriff in our county.
I will be giving them a call to see if this place is on the up an up.