Who's Worse: Computer Repair Shops or Used Car Dealers? - O'Reilly Windows DevCenter Blog

I read the article below at http://www.oreillynet.com/windows/blog/2006/06/whos_worse_computer_repair_sho_1.html If you would come to L&A Computer Services. We would replace your hard drive for the cost of a hard drive plus a mark up fee plus labor. A new hard drive is about $100 and the labor is $65. The cost to reinstall windows would be another $130, so we are looking at a total of $295. Is that worth it for you? That is your choice. But that is not dishonesty. What do you think? Who's Worse: Computer Repair Shops or Used Car Dealers? - O'Reilly Windows DevCenter Blog Preston Gralla Who's Worse: Computer Repair Shops or Used Car Dealers? Monday June 19, 2006 2:26PM by Preston Gralla in Opinion It?s the enternal question: Who?s less trustworthy ? computer repair shops or used car dealers? If my experience in the last week with a local repair shop is any indication, computer repair shops lose, hands down. Here?s the story. My daughter had a problem with her laptop. It would refuse to start, or would start and then crash after an hour or two?and then sometimes would work for five or more hours at a time before crashing. Then, after a while, it began flashing a message that the hard disk was about to crash. My 16-year-old son said that he?d repair it for me. But I, Big Daddy, said no, I?d instead bring it to a repair shop. Big mistake. I brought it to a place here in Cambridge. I won?t give the name, but for anyone who lives in the city, it?s the place out near Fresh Pond Parkway, near the natural foods store. I explained the problem to someone behind the desk. He said it sounded as if it were a problem with the hard disk. Considering that?s the error message that would flash, I told him that?s a good guess. But I wanted the whole laptop checked out, just in case it was something else. Did I want the data backed up from the hard disk? he asked. Sure, I told him?until he told me the price ? $300! That is not a misprint. He wanted to charge $300 to backup up 20 GB of data from a functioning hard disk. Right then, I should have left the shop, but I didn?t. Of course, though, I told him not to back up the data; I?d do it myself. ?Was the PC running slowly?? he asked. Well, does the sun rise in the East? Don?t all PCs run slowly ? isn?t that the nature of the beast? Ah, he said. For $225 (or it might have been $250, I can?t recall), he?d give the PC some kind of virtual ?bath? which would clean out any spyware or other unnecessary software. Obviously, I declined, considering that anyone could do the same thing using free or low-cost anti-spyware. So if I had listened to him, he would have charged me from $525 to $550 to perform all of about a half hour of work. For whatever odd reason, I didn?t run out of the store. Instead, I had them look at the PC, which they said would cost $65. That cost would be deducted from any work they did for me. A few days later they called back. The laptop needed a new hard disk. (What a surprise!). They could buy one for $200, and would then charge from about $300 to $400 in addition to that to install it and Windows. So that means they would charge between $500 and $600 for replacing a hard disk! Obviously, I told them no. My son backed up the data, got a hard disk for about $80, popped out the old disk, popped in the new one, installed Windows, drivers, and everything else my daughter needed, and put the data onto the new disk. If I had taken the advice of the repair shop, the tab would have been up to between $1100 to $1200 to back up data, check for spyware, and install a hard disk. For $200 to $300 less than that, I just bought a whole new Core Duo laptop with 1 GB of RAM, separate graphics processor with 256 MB of RAM, and 15-inch screen. So based on that, you tell me ? who would you trust more, a used car dealer or a PC repair shop?