Dodgy Computer Technician Reports – Real or Just Media Looking for Ratings?

There have been a handful of dodgy computer repair companies in the news these days. In these reports there are many shady or inexperienced computer technicians and they got what they deserved. However, keep in mind that these so called “news” reports are after ratings just like any fictional show .They will happily misreport or cut out critical parts of information to make the show more entertaining. In this article, I analyse the reports to determine whether the technician is dodgy, inexperienced or the media is just trying to make them look bad.

Story 1 – CBC Report
In this report, CBCNews called out 10 techies to fix a computer that had a damaged RAM stick in it. In this article we see Nerds On Site and Geeksquad being called out: (3 mins)

In this episode they said that a stick of RAM is blown. I’ve seen a longer version of this video in the past and what really happened was the RAM had the gold pin stripped off, but it wasn’t “blown”.

The reporter said that a replacement stick of RAM would be $25 and perhaps implies that may even be the cost of the entire repair. It may be possible to get $25 RAM as a clearance item on a website. However, no technician will do onsite work and replace a stick of ram for $25. Even if the technician had sold the same stick at his $25 cost price. He still needs to mark up the price so he doesn’t end up losing money from TAX.

What we see thanks to the editing of this report is that the technician suggests that the harddrive may be a problem and that you will need to pay $2000 to get it fixed.
This doesn’t sound right so what we are probably not seeing is that he suggests the harddrive may be a problem. The customer asks whether their data is gone and says that there is the potential of it being lost with the exception of special data recovery services which are done in special dust free rooms, which costs $2000. However, thanks to the editing he just outright says it costs $2000 to fix.

I don’t know what a stick of RAM with a stripped pin would do because it almost never happens onsite. It appears the motherboard detected that the RAM was working enough not to sound off a bad RAM beep, but based on some technicians saying that the CPU is bad, it could be preventing anything appearing on the screen. If there was nothing on the screen and the motherboard wasn’t beeping, it is quite likely the CPU or motherboard.

The other company we can see in this video is Geeksquad who are more interested in getting the customer to buy a new computer rather than fixing an old one. What do you expect from a computer repair business that is backed by a consumer electronics selling chain? These technicians are trained and pressured by the managers to push more sales.

Geeksquad Verdict: Inexperienced and Unethical
People called out a computer technician, not a salesman. Unfortunately many Geeksquad employees are just out of highschool and simply due to their age they don’t have as much onsite experience as you would expect from a professional computer technician.

Nerds On Site Verdict: Inexperienced but NOT Dodgy
This technician says the hard drive may be a problem which I don’t see how it could be. If a hard drive is bad either the BIOS detects that its not working correctly or the operating system doesn’t boot. I don’t see how he came to this conclusion thus I label him as inexperienced. However, I feel this guy is a victim of media editing the footage to say what they want it to say.
If a hard drive really was damaged and a client asked me whether their data was lost. I would say that “I cant say at this state without testing, sometimes its a really easy fix and all the data is fine. Sometimes the data is lost completely, but it is possible to take it to data recovery specialists and have them recover it for you. However, this service costs $2000.”
I can easily see the media editing that sentence saying that I think the hard drive is bad and its going to cost $2000 to fix.

Story 2 – House of Horrors: PC Repair Man
The British TV show “House of Horrors” did a report on a shady computer technician. They had the technical editor of “PC Format Magazine” build them a system and make sure it works properly Then, they sabotaged it by pulling the video card out of its slot a little bit.
They then called this computer technician who has been reported to be shady by a few of his past customers.

Heres the news story: (9:56 minutes)

He should have noticed the video card not being in its slot correctly. However, we don’t get to see exactly how far it has been slid out. In my own experience while building computers, I have had video cards not work because they were out by less than a millimetre, so I give him some credit there. From the animations in the clip they imply that it has come out almost to the point that its about to fall out, but we don’t know.
Something I found weird about this so called computer technician is that he hasn’t got any sort of a computer technician kit which would contain much of what we have mentioned in this article.

Verdict: Inexperienced and Dodgy
This guy is inexperienced because he couldn’t spot the problem quickly. If no video was coming up an experienced computer technician would first test the plugs to make sure everything is plugged in correctly, then test the screen by either plugging theirs into their own laptop or by using their own. Then they would pop open the case and make sure everything is plugged/pushed in correctly. Next they would test the video card by putting one of their own test models in its place. The replacement of the video card would have fixed the problem because he would pushed it in correctly.

However, this guy is also dodgy because I believe he would have started swapping out test parts until the computer started running. Once it started running he also charged for the parts he tested with such as the new power supply, inferior video card and RAM even though they weren’t the problem. If he kept these working parts, which he probably did then that would be stealing.

For those who are interested, part 2 can be found here where they chase him off.

Story 3 – KCAL Report
In this story the media disconnected the hard drive IDE cable on a handful of computers which would innevitably cause some sort of disk error message appearing. Upon visual inspection most technicians should have been able to spot it. These computers were then sent to a handful of computer techs with varying results: (4 mins)

Here were the results from each group:

Geeksquad:
Geeksquad said the power supply is bad. I have no idea how they came to that conclusion because in most cases where the power supply is bad, the computer doesn’t boot at all or it boots into the operating system but reboots at odd times. A unplugged IDE cable would have shown an obvious boot error in BIOS which most technicians would instantly know something was up with the hard drive. I put this down to inexperience by their young techs. We need to keep in mind that Geeksquad hire young boys, often with no experience or certifications. But in their defense, at least it was no fix no fee.

Circuit City:
Circuit City fixed the problem and charged $59.99. The media made out that they charged a huge price “to just plug the cable back in”. However, at many places there is a bench fee which is just to look at the computer. It would have taken them at least five minutes to figure out the hard drive cable was unplugged. Personally, I would setup the system on my bench, booted the system to get the message, go into BIOS and see if the hard drive is getting detected before I would open the case and notice the hard drive unplugged. I can only assume Circuit City did this as well. $59.99 isn’t that bad of a bench fee for bigname brand which needs to pay for its advertising which got the client there in the first place and to pay for their rent.

CompUSA:
CompUSA charged a $119.99 bench fee and fixed the problem. Although a little steep, it needs to be charged for the same reasons as above.

Fry’s:
Fry’s charged $69.99 and fixed the problem. Once again, these guys need to pay for their rent and marketing, even though it may have taken 5 minutes.

Torres Computer Repair:
Torres fixed the computer and didn’t charge anything. Most “Mom and Pop” computer repair stores wouldn’t charge for such a small problem so they can gain some goodwill. This is what you can expect from 90% of the technicians out there.

BMI Computers:
This business said that there was a motherboard failure and it would cost $275 to fix. Although I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion of a bad motherboard first, we can see in the last frame that the hard drive was only out by a couple of millimetres so I can see how they may have missed it. I have only ever seen a IDE cable fall out of a system once in my last 6 years of being a full computer technician.
A fee of $275 seems pretty pricey considering that it appears they haven’t even looked at it yet. Even if they had, it would still be very steep to fix such a problem. From what I can tell, these guys are shady.

What do you guys think? Do you think that the technicians I have mentioned in this article are shady or just inexperienced? Do you believe that the media are just whores making a story sound like whatever they want it to? As always, comments are open and you don’t need to signup to make a comment. You can even post anonymously if you like. Drop us a comment.