RetiredGuy1000
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 90
- Location
- St. Petersburg, FL
This has been good education for me. I wonder what he is going to do. He is prob too embarrassed or something.
Windows USB for HP all-in-one?
- Thread starter RetiredGuy1000
- Start date
Markverhyden
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 11,159
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
On the Fegon Group thing. Those of us that've been doing this for sometime I'll remind you of a name, and an ugly one at that, from the past. iYogi. I know this happened in the US and seem to remember seeing comments they also seemed to have had victims in other English speaking countries like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, etc.
Back in the day, some 10+ years ago, the major OEM's like Dell and HP switched tactics for consumer non-warranty work. They used to just tell customers that non-warranty related calls were not eligible for telephone support. Apparently iYogi had been pitching to them about taking care of non-warranty things for them. So if a customer called up for non-warranty support they'd be passed off to iYogi without really knowing it was a 3rd party. iYogi even advertised for OEM support on web searches and would answer the call implying they were the OEM. They were famous for all sorts of bait and switch tactics just like was mentioned in the OP.
I know it's alive and well today elsewhere. Just had a recent episode with Apple. I have 15" 2013 MBP Retina I bought new. Top of the line, cost some $3700. Recently it just rebooted with no video when it came back up. Knowing Apple will do paid, out of warranty, repairs I called them up. Due to the age it was deemed as classic or whatever stupid name they used, meaning tough luck getting anything done through them. So the rep tells me she's going to recommend some 3rd parties. Of course my interest is piqued since I know how it all works. After some back and forth and hearing her suggestions I found out that they just google "Apple repair" and give you three hits. I was dumb founded. One the places was a smart phone repair kiosk in a local mall.
Back in the day, some 10+ years ago, the major OEM's like Dell and HP switched tactics for consumer non-warranty work. They used to just tell customers that non-warranty related calls were not eligible for telephone support. Apparently iYogi had been pitching to them about taking care of non-warranty things for them. So if a customer called up for non-warranty support they'd be passed off to iYogi without really knowing it was a 3rd party. iYogi even advertised for OEM support on web searches and would answer the call implying they were the OEM. They were famous for all sorts of bait and switch tactics just like was mentioned in the OP.
I know it's alive and well today elsewhere. Just had a recent episode with Apple. I have 15" 2013 MBP Retina I bought new. Top of the line, cost some $3700. Recently it just rebooted with no video when it came back up. Knowing Apple will do paid, out of warranty, repairs I called them up. Due to the age it was deemed as classic or whatever stupid name they used, meaning tough luck getting anything done through them. So the rep tells me she's going to recommend some 3rd parties. Of course my interest is piqued since I know how it all works. After some back and forth and hearing her suggestions I found out that they just google "Apple repair" and give you three hits. I was dumb founded. One the places was a smart phone repair kiosk in a local mall.
RetiredGuy1000
Active Member
- Reaction score
- 90
- Location
- St. Petersburg, FL
Great story.
frase
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,615
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
Had a client a few years back, got scammed 3 times, via iYogi took $400 out of account. Purporting to be a tech support. They even had a direct debit setup - I put a stop to that.
GreyWolf
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 398
- Location
- Montreal, Quebec (Canada)
@Markverhyden What would of been hilarious on a call like that is if the lady on the phone would of referred your business but ya I myself used to work night shifts for Bell Tech support commercial until the department was shipped to India and no way in hell was I gonna recommend a google search to theses people as I was the only technician on the night shift.. wasn't gonna cause myself more issues with callbacks. I'm shocked that quality control didn't catch on in regards to referrals that would cause more harm than good but I guess it's always a question of the bottom line.
Markverhyden
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 11,159
- Location
- Raleigh, NC
brandonkick
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 871
I just did a laptop for a family friend I hadn't seen in a number of years.
HP Pavilion, 2016 model IIRC... core i5 6500 with 8GB of ram... spinning hard drive but did have Windows 10 on it.
I see a post from her on facebook about how she paid like $160 for norton, the computer "crashed" and when she
called norton back they just wanted more money. She then called best buy but they told her it could cost her hundreds.
She posted on facebook asking what to do. I saw it just a few min after she posted and offered to take a look at it.
It was a "middle eastern kevin" who had gotten in and scammed them. The machine wasn't even booting... just a black
screen that hung and hung and hung. Slaving the drive via USB to SATA cable showed nothing on the drive, literally nothing
worth saving. No pics, no docs, no nothing... like the machine was almost in an unused state. The machine was also failing
memory checks via HP built in diagnostics. Reseated them and it started passing. Nuked and reloaded latest win 10 plus my
usual optimizations. $80 out the door.
Norton (or really "middle eastern kevin") wouldn't have done anything but charge more money to their credit card. Best Buy
might have run the diagnostic and said the machine needed replaced, or just guessed at a few things that needed replaced and quoted a bill for more than this machine is worth... and this is a decent machine!
Those AMD "A8" and "A9" units, in my experience, are slow as beans... even with an SSD. I really hope he didn't pay too much for it. But judging by the "flagship" listing in the description, he probably did. A8 or A9 and flagship is like saying ford focus and muscle car in the same sentence... just doesn't fit.
HP Pavilion, 2016 model IIRC... core i5 6500 with 8GB of ram... spinning hard drive but did have Windows 10 on it.
I see a post from her on facebook about how she paid like $160 for norton, the computer "crashed" and when she
called norton back they just wanted more money. She then called best buy but they told her it could cost her hundreds.
She posted on facebook asking what to do. I saw it just a few min after she posted and offered to take a look at it.
It was a "middle eastern kevin" who had gotten in and scammed them. The machine wasn't even booting... just a black
screen that hung and hung and hung. Slaving the drive via USB to SATA cable showed nothing on the drive, literally nothing
worth saving. No pics, no docs, no nothing... like the machine was almost in an unused state. The machine was also failing
memory checks via HP built in diagnostics. Reseated them and it started passing. Nuked and reloaded latest win 10 plus my
usual optimizations. $80 out the door.
Norton (or really "middle eastern kevin") wouldn't have done anything but charge more money to their credit card. Best Buy
might have run the diagnostic and said the machine needed replaced, or just guessed at a few things that needed replaced and quoted a bill for more than this machine is worth... and this is a decent machine!
Those AMD "A8" and "A9" units, in my experience, are slow as beans... even with an SSD. I really hope he didn't pay too much for it. But judging by the "flagship" listing in the description, he probably did. A8 or A9 and flagship is like saying ford focus and muscle car in the same sentence... just doesn't fit.
frase
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 4,615
- Location
- Melbourne, Australia
lmao Middle Eastern Kevin, related to Barry?
carmen617
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 789
- Location
- Boston, MA
I've seen more than one system where the scammers delete all the documents and pictures when they realize they aren't going to get paid. Fortunately the first time I saw it the computer was one I had worked on many times before, and I knew the guy had literally thousands of pictures. I found them all, still in their carefully organized folders, in the recycle bin, along with all his documents, and I was able to restore them prior to the backup and N&P. Just saying - don't be so quick to believe a system has no personal information on it - no telling what the scammers did and why. Call the client, and if they say there should be documents make an effort to get the thing running so you can look in the recycle bin.
As I said any credit card they have given to these scammers should be considered compromised and cancelled.
Can help save them a ton of headaches down the road. Not like you can exactly give Kevin a ring back and ask to speak to his supervisor about your charges
Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk
Can help save them a ton of headaches down the road. Not like you can exactly give Kevin a ring back and ask to speak to his supervisor about your charges
Sent from my SM-G870W using Tapatalk
cypress
Well-Known Member
- Reaction score
- 1,496
- Location
- South Florida
This has happened a couple times to clients of mine. Even though they have Emsisoft installed and I sent out newsletters often about these type of scams they just don't read them through. Once they remote in there is no reassurance you can offer them. I've had to do data back ups and nuke and paves. Charged them for the time and they learned their lesson just from paying for the time I spent on it lol. Yeah my phone went off a couple times around midnight or so. Didn't get back to it until the next day. Just isn't an emergency.
Similar threads
