You call yourself a computer repair shop??

[MaggieTheCat]

This story happened quite a while ago, probably 6-7 years or so.

I had a very average PC back then. I'd had it for a couple of years, when it started acting up. It would randomly lock up, restart itself, or just shut down all together. I got BSOD'ed a lot. It would always start back up just fine whenever it did restart, but obviously having it restart randomly was an inconvenience. I decided to take it in to a local computer repair shop to have them take a look at it.

I left it with them for a day and they returned it to me, saying one of the fans on the motherboard had been dying, and they replaced it for me. They charged me for the fan itself, and some kind of service fee for the actual installation. Nothing too expensive. I was happy and went on my merry way.

The machine worked fine for about two days. Then I got another BSOD, and the machine would not boot, at all. I had an old backup machine that I would use when I had problems with my current one, so I took the hard drive of my current machine out and stuck it in the old machine, which I'd done numerous times before. Only to discover my hard drive was fried. I couldn't recover anything on it myself.

I looked at the new fan that the shop had put on the mother board of my current machine. Turns out the fan wasn't designed for the kind of motherboard I had. I don't remember the specifics, but basically the fan wasn't powerful enough to keep up with my motherboard. The result was that my machine overheated even worse than it was before, since the old fan was still working intermittently.

I took my machine back to the shop and demanded an explanation. They scratched their heads, shrugged, offered a feeble apology, and gave me my $30 for the cost of the fan itself (not the service fee for installing it.) I asked about my hard drive. They took a look at it and said it was a complete goner, due to overheating. I would need a new one (which they could sell me for a considerable markup from what I could get it for online) and they could also recover all my data for me...for several hundred dollars.

I also found out that the employee who had worked on my machine the first time and installed the new fan, was a high school trainee. According to the other employees, he was their "best employee" and "the best at what he does." Seriously? I know some high schoolers who are pretty good at what they do, but if a 15 year old trainee is your best employee, your company has problems.

I was just out of high school myself at the time, so I didn't have the presence of mind to do anything except leave in disgust.

[wraiths_crono]

There was a shop I used to work at where they would install what they THOUGHT was the best solution, even if I knew it was not but hey apparently because the owner had A+ that instantly meant that anyone else was stupid (And because he always installed replacement parts with the highest price associated.) He also stole hardware from machines and illegally installed windows, but that's a whole other topic there.

[BuggedMei]

I used to think little, off the beaten path computer repair places would be better than GeekSquad or MicroCenter, who have both ripped me off to no end before. Oh how wrong I was.

I'm learning how to fix my computers myself. I just got a $400 run around from, what I was told was a "respected" repair shop, my laptop was destroyed, and I only got a fraction of my money back.

I guess they can pull this kind of things on people who don't know any better.

[MaggieTheCat]

I'm fortunate that I'm now married to a guy who does computer programming/software engineering for a living and paid his way through college doing networking and computer repair, so I'm pretty much set if I ever have problems (which, incidentally, ever since I started going to him for advice on buying computers/laptops/parts, I haven't really had any serious problems.) But, after the above incident happened, I too started learning more about computers so I could attempt my own repairs first before having to go to anyone I didn't know.

[emax4]

Perhaps the best route is to get multiple opinions; not just for peace of mind, but to test for one's self, once the issue has been resolved, which places provide the right solution in addition to appropriate cost. I'm great (but not the best) at fixing Mac issues and getting better (but need a lot of leaning still) when it comes to PCs. I wouldn't hesitate to tell someone "check with XYZ store and ABC store to see what they recommend", just in case.

I always recommend Googling the problem at hand in addition to Googling the different repair vendors to see what others have to say.