pubjoe
Active Member
The other day a mate of mine phoned me up to ask if I could have a look at why his computer crashed. I said I could in a few days, but in the meantime he took it to a local, small computer shop (who had 4 months previously, carried out a motherboard "repair" on his PC).
Now, get this, the PC shop told him that the motherboard is faulty, then after 2 days, told him that "actually, it's the hard drive". They told him that they couldn't access it at all, and that his western digital (caviar) drive was prone to errors. Then they told him that they could install a 80GB seagate harddrive for the princely sum of.... £599!!!! or even a 120GB model for £699!!!!
When he told me this, I thought he must be mistaken, maybe they were quoting him a price for a complete new system. But I told him to get the computer back (which cost him £75 for their "engineers" testing work) and let me look. I told him to pay the £75 (as he has a lot of 3D work etc he NEEDS to keep) but not to tell them that anyone else would look at it incase they destroy the hard drive themselves so as not to be found out.
I saw him this morning and he had a receipt for £75 and an invoice for, sure enough, £699 for the seagate drive. I really could not believe this whatsoever, these drives go for around £50-£60!!!! £100 would be a reasonable-ish price for a shop to install it at, making a good £40 profit for 10 minutes work. £200 would be a rip off. But, £699!!! :blink: The receipt also said they'd done a virus scan, but how they did this when they couldn't access the drive I can only imagine.
Now, I've just tested the drive on my PC and it booted (after running checkdisk) first time. I did a 15 minute virus scan and it found one virus (I guess the engineers missed it somehow!!!). I removed a few spywares and defragged it. I'm just about to put it back in his machine and I have a funny feeling that everything is going to work fine. Everything looks in good order.
Either the guys at this shop are COMPLETELY stupid, or are COMPLETE bastards. They must be both, because if they wern't stupid, they would have wiped his hard drive so as to illiminate all evidence of bullshit.
I told him to either come to me, or go to PC world in future!!!
[edit]...Which is a shame, because I'd like to see the better small computer shops keep going despite of PC World, understandibly their prices are going to have to be slightly higher.
But at least in PC World, you can expect a fairly consistant standard, not the cheapest prices, but then, not a real con-trick.
Now, get this, the PC shop told him that the motherboard is faulty, then after 2 days, told him that "actually, it's the hard drive". They told him that they couldn't access it at all, and that his western digital (caviar) drive was prone to errors. Then they told him that they could install a 80GB seagate harddrive for the princely sum of.... £599!!!! or even a 120GB model for £699!!!!
When he told me this, I thought he must be mistaken, maybe they were quoting him a price for a complete new system. But I told him to get the computer back (which cost him £75 for their "engineers" testing work) and let me look. I told him to pay the £75 (as he has a lot of 3D work etc he NEEDS to keep) but not to tell them that anyone else would look at it incase they destroy the hard drive themselves so as not to be found out.
I saw him this morning and he had a receipt for £75 and an invoice for, sure enough, £699 for the seagate drive. I really could not believe this whatsoever, these drives go for around £50-£60!!!! £100 would be a reasonable-ish price for a shop to install it at, making a good £40 profit for 10 minutes work. £200 would be a rip off. But, £699!!! :blink: The receipt also said they'd done a virus scan, but how they did this when they couldn't access the drive I can only imagine.
Now, I've just tested the drive on my PC and it booted (after running checkdisk) first time. I did a 15 minute virus scan and it found one virus (I guess the engineers missed it somehow!!!). I removed a few spywares and defragged it. I'm just about to put it back in his machine and I have a funny feeling that everything is going to work fine. Everything looks in good order.
Either the guys at this shop are COMPLETELY stupid, or are COMPLETE bastards. They must be both, because if they wern't stupid, they would have wiped his hard drive so as to illiminate all evidence of bullshit.
I told him to either come to me, or go to PC world in future!!!
[edit]...Which is a shame, because I'd like to see the better small computer shops keep going despite of PC World, understandibly their prices are going to have to be slightly higher.
But at least in PC World, you can expect a fairly consistant standard, not the cheapest prices, but then, not a real con-trick.
