I often fix peoples computers and sometimes let them watch. I feel I have nothing to hide, however, some would probably be a bit touchy about how I handle their machines. As I know computers, I know how easy it is to be led astray! For example, I know nothing about cars, and a mechanic could be cheeky to me, which I wouldn’t like.

I’ve been fixing computers for a number of years for a bit of extra money, but nowadays I don;t really bother anymore.

A computer packed with viruses and spyware could take anything up to 6 hours to fix by the time you pick it up, diagnosis it, repair and leave it back.

And I’d probably only ask for £25. Simply couldn’t be bothered with the hassle.

We occasionally repair clients computers for them. We have a rule that we only work on business computers, not anything used by the client’s children.

As Ally says, it can take 6 hours to give a machine a full service, although much of that is waiting time, which we don’t charge for.

Often, all the client needs is education on how to do a few basic procedures themselves. It saves them money; even though we cap our repair charges, after a few instances of virus infections our cost would outweigh the price of a new computer.

I have repaired computers for a number of years be fore that other electronic equipment. I love the work and it has paid me well for many years. I have always treated customers fairly and never over charged.

Think my favorite repair has to be my friends gpu, an old x850, he was trying to install a new extractor in his case and managed to damage the gpu, on inspection i found he had knocked a resistor off the board. being unemployed he begged me to try and repair it for free, after hours of searching through old bits we finally found an appropriate resistor but, lacking proper soldering equipment we had to resort to super glue, and suprisingly the machine carried on for another 9 months before the card finally burnt out.

I think the only real lie we tell our customers is “Don’t worry – it’s probably not your fault it went wrong” while we’re internally thinking “Although it would have been a good idea to keep backups, let the anti-virus update and not click on that spam email link. Again.” People don’t like being told they’re stupid or that they acted stupidly.

An exception to this was the chap who brought in his PC that he cleaned up himself. With a hoover. Wouldn’t have been so bad if he hadn’t also removed the CPU/Fan, washed them, stuck them back in at 90′, forcing the fan clip down to hold it in place. Astonishingly it survived after a bit of TLC, only for the client to be openly very doubtful about that amount of time we spent on it which necessitated us explaining precisely how dim he had been.

I recovered a guys 500 photos he had deleted from his iPod, plus another 300 that were not his. His original iPod was DOA and he thought it had been swapped for a new one. Obviously not!

I once put too long screws in a laptop cover. Oops. It did not break through but left two neat little bumps. They looked pretty good so I did not mention it.

Another gave me their old dead Samsung monitor as they were going to throw it out. I found I had two weeks of a 3 year warranty so got it replaced for free. I agonised over telling the guy but didn’t. The Samsung replacement was a bit scruffy, obviously not new.
A dim customer could not get her new PC from Comet to work. Comet were no use so she called me. Turned out Comet had sold her a secondhand machine, used to belong to a “Keith” who had even put on a Bios password. Comet just changed it. Six months later Comets neighbour Currys did something very similar to another of my customers. You can’t win!

Infected PC with McAfee on. Installed Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to remove ‘System tools’ scareware. Ran McAfee update and scanned. Got paid for 4 hours work which took 3 mins effort & 3 hours 57 mins waiting. Client wasn’t interested in learning how to maintain PC so repeat business is assured.

Hopefully while doing the article this research is obviously for, you’ll take a moment to look at the larger picture. people often know next to nothing about their computers and make assumptions about the way things work.

my favorite so far, was being accused of “stealing the CPU from my computer” because we had installed updates for the machine, one of which had changed the displayed name of the CPU in device manager.

another, was a customer who spent a Year telling people locally that we’d sold her a used machine as new, because the sound didn’t work. when we finally heard about it, we went out to her place and replaced her unpowered speakers with an amplified set, which worked flawlessly.

or the number of times we’ve had people accuse us of stealing their M$ office, or their photoshop, because they had no license to reinstall it, and “it had come with the computer”

Humans are amazing creatures.

I repair machines for friends and family only. No money in it otherwise. I charge a box of beer for a basic repair/recovery job (save the baby/wedding/pet photos and rebuild) and two boxes of beer if I deem they have done something stupid. It usually comes with saftey tips and gentle reminder not to blindly click on everything and to read the error dialogue boxes because they often have clues I can use.

I’ve been fixing computers for decades. I’d say your request does seem a bit off, and largely because of a few bad people who’ve done wrong things. Here’s the simple societal fact: in EVERY industry, there are a few bad apples. This story (and the followup you have planned) doesn’t do anything more than make it look like it’s a decent portion of technicians who do such. Whether for ratings/money for this site or yourself, that is a disservice to the computer repair industry because of the way you word things.

On this note, we are very open and honest with our customers. We return EVERY part we replace. We take numerous pictures of any serious repair work, so we can show them, each step of the way, what we found and why things needed to be replaced. We’re considering videotaping as well – mostly for the heck of it.

And, do you know what doing the job right has earned us? (1) We have OTHER computer shops sending us repairs they cannot do (like laptop jack repairs), (2) we have repeat customers who refer us to friends in such a positive light, that we’ve had new referrals drop off machines with “So and so said I had to take this to you… it’s doing this. (hands machine over) Bye” – no waiting for a receipt, and a couple times, us even having to stop them and point out that they haven’t even given us their name or phone number, (3) we have many repeat customers (not because we do anything wrong, but because many of our customers have 3, 4, 5, or 7 machines in their household… and on any problem, they bring them to us) and (4) our business is growing via mostly due to word of mouth (other than our website being indexed in Google, we really don’t advertise).

Oh, and by the way… much of what I outlined above (the way we treat our customers and their machines) also applies to both the CompUSA I worked at and the CompUSA I worked as the Tech Manager at.

So… have fun with your story… but honestly, in my 2.5 decades of experience in the industry, the bad tech that does bad things to customers’ computers is the exception to the rule, and not the norm – and fits well within the range one would expect when they stop and realize that there simply are a few bad people in EVERY industry.

@Stuart Mitchell.

Please be very careful what angle you take with this story. Leave the investigative journalism to “Cowboy Traders” who can investigate suspicions, and confirm via controlled filming. We’ve probably all seen the episode with the Mercedes driving PC repair man, who overcharged to replace a working top-of-the-range with a 2nd hand inferior model, and removed half the PCs RAM.

Why don’t you instead look at how much “local repair” shops charge and the service they provide, vs the charges offered by the “big boys”, and the service offered…

headline grabbing “we expose the repair scam” will simply drive the casual uninformed reader into the likes of PC World, whom in my opinion really dont know what they are doing.

That said, some anecdotes
Watching a PC World tech try to fit a SIMM into a PCI slot. And succeed :O

Confusing the local PC World ‘experts’ with questions about SCSI, then asking them to fix a SCSI chain… (ok, sorta unfair that one).

I think the general rule with computer repairs (and indeed any repairs) is wherever possible to go with recommendations from friends and family.

A friend of mine took there 14 month old laptop to PC World (2 months out of warranty and bought there orginally) and was quoted £200 to fix a software issue.

PC World did not actually physically look at the laptop before offering this quote and it turned out in the end that the problem was a virus infection (£50 max at any other repair shop).

Do yourself a favour and ask around friends and family to see if they can recommend a good company (even a friend of a friend).

Never mind the computer engineer, I find that the customer lies a lot. They never admit to corrupting their computer or uninstalling software themselves (by directly deleting files as opposed to using the control panel).

As a computer engineer I never worry about the computer problems. A computer can be fixed 99% of the time. What I worry about is the mentality of the customer and more precisely their lies.

Even with porn; I had one customer where she called me out for a repair because “a dancing lady popup” was bothering her. When I found the porn she blamed it on her student son. The only problem was the porn history showed the porn had been watched when the student son was at college and she was the only one in the house at that time.

today I had a customer who said she only started having computer problems yesterday, but as I was diagnosing the problem and talking to her she then admitted problems from a couple of weeks ago.

I use to like the mission critical jobs in computer repair. If you could not fix the problem there was money being lost it was fun learning all weird and wonderful packages i have to admit my favourite was the one with the music producer i siad when i walked in its a mint setup but i took it home it took me hours to get it to run but got there in the end.

I often fix people’s PCs with numerous problems but what I have come to realize that their are Technicians who are not qualified do not solve problems in a good way, thus clients come to our workshop to repair the machine without informing us that the machine has been with other technicians. If this person had changed one of the peripherals the owner cant know. I therefore, recommend that those people seeking service should go to people whom they know or let them not leave machines with those strangers.