While looking for external terabyte harddrive on Sunday I came across your blog and post about Tell us your PC repair shop horror stories | PC Pro blog. I could not believe the amount of quality material that exists on this site. The site is extremely…

I am neither a non-tech or a tech. I know bits and bows, have been taught with with DOS and quick basic – no hardware though. And I do go online to check what it is, but I tried to change my keyboard and that did not go very well.

I had no c or it was constanly as if being pressed down.

But this morning it would not load XP, it was beeping and with a black screen. The computer is my life, my profession. I cannot live without it. I work from home and I cannot afford a new one.

So I went to a repair shop.
They showed me. The keyoard was yelowish below. They said something about a short cut or something. Did not believe the explanation.

They dusted it (their own iniciative) and added a new keyboard – with no bs or fs and an UK one, just while I wait for a good one. I go to the doctor with one limp, come out with two

but the beeping and black screen disappeared. Either the keyboard or the dust was causing the noise. And I will have to go back for the good keyboard.

Did not find it even very expensive – if the keyboard is really installed, will pay 70 pounds for everything and would pay 55 (keyoard I found online was 40).

but I smelled a scham there, like exchanging good parts of brought-in computers for less good parts. Is it possible? How can I detect whether they changed eg my memory for a worse one (toshiba diagnosis tool detects nothing wrong)

I came here to check i there was something on those types o schams…. Shops to avoid…

Thanks
Rita

Another scam that is ALL to common, at least it is here in the states, is when someone brings in a laptop, especially if it’s a woman, they are told that the motherboard is bad and will cost 3 or 4 hundred dollars to fix, OH but if you purchase a laptop from us we will give you a $ 50.00 credit. They will then fix the simple problem and resell the laptop, sometimes after removing the C.O.A.
I recently had a young woman in college bring me a laptop that she had taken to a local computer shop and, you got it, was told it was a bad motherboard and quoted $ 400.00 for repair. For the next two years of her education she did not have a laptop, as she could not afford one, after finally getting a new one and bringing it to me to properly setup for her, I asked her to bring the old one, just to have a look. Her power cord was in bad shape so I used my universal power cord and, YUP it worked perfectly, nothing wrong but a faulty power cord.
I personally would love to be part of some nationwide sting that puts these criminals behind bars. Having overhead, bills and needing to make ends meet is one thing, but lieing, cheating and scamming people out of hundreds of dollars just because you think they are stupid and made of money is just plain wrong. As time goes by I find that more and more people get into computer repair JUST FOR THE MONEY because it really is so easy to scam people. I do not feel that more regulations are needed, just a few stings to bust some of these jerks and let the others know, the public is smarter than you think and the next time you scam someone, just might get you busted.

I am currently living out of a backpack and wandering the country helping truck drivers and the poorest of poor folks with their computer problems, as they can not afford to get scammed by the local shop and as always my number one passion in life is simply to help people…

I’ve been digging around for blogs on credit repair kit cd so i’m thrilled i came across yours. The How to Do Body Detox | LifetoSuccess.com post on Sunday is some good feedback….

When one of them went wrong we called the organisation that supported our hardware (a big well known IT company) who dispatched an engineer urgently, as I said they were critical to us for legal reasons. The guy turned up and I left him to it. He immediately and without asking anyone took himself off to our companies free resturant and started his lunch. He was most upset when I interrupted his lunch to reset his priorities from his jacket potato to our printers! He challenged my ethics for not allowing him to have a proper break!!!

When I passed the room a bit later I was alerted to the lack of noise from the room; remember only one of the printers had failed, I expected the other to be in use constantly. It was at this point that he explained how he had become confused about the workings of the printer which he hadn’t worked on previously and to discover how it was suppposed to work had started to dismantle the working printer!

I gave him 30 mins to get the working printer back on-line and to leave the building.

I doubt you will be able to use it for your article but I couldn’t beleive it.

1.

UE: [accosted on entry by sales assistant] Do you sell cartridges for Xerox printers?
Pimply Youth: No, not Xerox. You’ll have to look on the internet.
UE: [spying ink in middle-distance] Are you sure? I thought I got some here once before.
PY: No, definitely not, we definitely don’t stock Xerox
UE: [taking a few steps forward] Isn’t this some Xerox ink on this shelf?
PY: [digging] Erm, it might say Xerox but how can you know it’ll work in your particular printer?
UE: They print the compatible models on the outside, that’s my one there.
PY: Oh, that must be a new thing.

2.

UE: Do you have a PCI wireless card?
PY: No, they’re all AGP now. Try the internet for an old PCI one.