Computer Repair Fraud

March 28, 2008

Computer repair fraud, yeah its out there. Although I think a lot of it is just incompetence.

A loose ide cable should be an easy fix that is for a honest tech that knows what he is doing. At 1:33 in the video there is a shot of the screen with a voice saying keyboard failure. The keyboard failure had nothing to do with the ide cable, but if does show the primary hard disk not found which would point to the problem. For the ‘broken’ computers they are using Dell OptiPlex 110’s, computers we have at work although we use towers and theirs were desktop models.

In the news report there seemed to be this tone that $59.99 was too much to pay for such a simple fix. I don’t agree with that. How much does a plumber or electrician cost for 5 minutes of work. It can easily be $75 if not more since it is usually an hourly charge.

The problem is that there is really no accreditation, trade school or apprenticeship for computer repair. Sure you could get a CIS degree and A+ certification, but those really don’t train someone how to do computer repair. And with technology constantly changing people have to constantly renew their skills.

Now this problem is a little big harder to fix, especially for someone who doesn’t have the experience

A $25 cost? How big is that memory module? hmmm… Gig sticks down around $25 I did not know that.

The one problem with troubleshooting memory is if you don’t have other known good memory to test with you really don’t know if the memory is bad or not. I suspect a tech could have one of those hardware memory tester devices that is if those are still made. A tech can run software to test the memory, but if the memory is ‘blown’ as the guy said and if the computer wouldn’t boot then I could see the techs thinking it was the motherboard or cpu.

Nerds on Site? One of the problems with these corporate businesses that use computer techs is what they pay. Google tells me that Geek Squad pays around $12 an hour. $24-25k isnt bad money as a PC tech that is if you are first starting out. A good, seasoned, qualified, knowledgeable, tech would cost at least another $15k. Using one of these corporate computer tech company I would say only 10% of the customer cost goes toward paying for the knowledge work and thats the problem.

I charge $50 just to look at a computer. If it can be fixed in an hour thats usually the total charge. A re-do runs about $100, more if it takes longer then 2 hours. Nerds on Site or Geek Squad couldn’t afford me. Although they could if they paid the knowledge worker more. If they did that they would have better qualified techs, better customer satisfaction, but lower profits.

The last video they disable the hard drive in the laptop. Could be tricky indeed, tricky enough for an entry level tech that these corporate company to miss. Especially a laptop, the bios on laptops can be a little bit more confusing. I do wonder how the guy knew the second 2 techs got into the bios. Not something one would really know unless he was watching them work on it.

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