ABC4 investigates Computer Fraud

Another report on computer fraud. View video here http://www.abc4.com/mediacenter/?videoID=60092 Investigations across the country have found that when your computer goes on the fritz, repair techs may be taking advantage of unsuspecting customers. But is that happening right here in Utah? We put several computer repair companies to the test to find out when you computer crashes, will your wallet get burned? From email, browsing the web, to downloading your favorite song, many of us depend on a computer. But when something goes wrong, our information highway can come crashing down. That's when most turn to the big ads in the yellow pages, hoping to find a geek or doctor to save the day. They all sound qualified, and let's face it, most of us don't know our ram from our hard drive, so how do we know what's a fair price for the fix? ABC 4 decided to put home computer techs to the test. First with the help of a computer expert at PC Laptops, we created a simple problem. "We're just going to take this hard drive cable. This is the hard drive right here. Unplug the power cable. That's it," says computer expert Trogdor Nest. Next, we rigged a home office with hidden cameras and put six local companies to test: 1) Geek Box Computers, 2) Affordable Computers 3) On-site Computers 4) Rescue Com 5) Friendly Computers 6) Data Doctors "I would hope that people are honest. There is a potential for those companies to be dishonest and be out there," says Nest. It should be an easy fix. Remember we just unplugged the hard drive. "It's probably going to be the motherboard." Says the tech with Friendly Computers. "It could be a bad memory stick, a bad motherboard, a corrupted windows system file," says the tech with Affordable Computers. At first it appears only tech on the right path is On-Site Computers. "It's not going to the hard drive, at least it doesn't seem to want to," says the tech from On-Site. Others techs had lots of advice. "When there is a memory problem it beeps a lot...when there is a video problem it beeps a lot. It doesn't come on either way," says one tech. Another tech adds, "If it ever says something about booting or can't find the boot device that means your hard drive is failing." Two days...six companies later....all our computer techs were honest and found and fixed the problem. Four techs took five minutes or less to find our unplugged hard drive, but some were quicker than others. Rescue Com took thirteen minutes, while the tech with Friendly Computers spent nearly 24 minutes and didn't even realize how he'd fixed the problem. "There we go...finally got it," says the tech from Friendly Computers. "So it's fixed?" asks our undercover producer. "Yes and no. It's still acting kind of funny but we can get into Windows," says the Friendly Computers tech. And we paid for every one of those 24 minutes. The final bill from Friendly Computers is 83 dollars and 15 cents. Definitely not the cheapest of the bunch. On-Site and Affordable computer repair were just that, affordable. Both rang up at just around 50 bucks. As for Data Doctors, they didn't charge a hefty doctor's bill. In fact, they didn't charge us at all. "I'll make you a deal...if you call us next time.....then I won't charge you anything," says the tech from Data Doctors. From there the prices soar. Rescue Com sure didn't try saving our pocketbook, charging nearly 105 dollars. Last but not least, those geeks at Geek Box aren't cheap. V "We kind of averaged it out and looked at what people were charging," says the tech at Geek Box. And apparently Geek Box decided to charge more. The final bill from Geek Box was the most expensive of our six tested, just over 106 bucks. As a side note, we tried to make an appointment with the popular repair company "Geek Squad", but they told us we'd be offline for two weeks, since that was their next open appointment. When our sister news station in Phoenix put the Geek Squad to the test, they were the most expensive, charging 249 dollars for nearly 6 minutes of work. Bottom line is all our computer companies here in Utah were honest. Still, it may pay to shop around. That way if your computer crashes, your wallet won't get burned. ----------------------------------------------------- By the way, here at L&A Computer Services such a repair would cost $65.00