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Getting Gouged by Geeks
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Thu Oct 04, 2007 06:21 PM
from the broken-trowlfaz-inhibitor dept.
from the broken-trowlfaz-inhibitor dept.
dottyslashdottydot writes "CBC Marketplace recently ran a sting operation and discovered that most home computer repair technicians failed miserably at diagnosing a simple RAM failure. Many techs tried to sell unneccessary software or upgrades. (or even a new computer!) However, the worst offender was one guy who claimed that the hard drive had failed, and that the only remedy was to pay $2,000 to have a special facility with a clean room recover the data."
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getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to take a little umbrage at the inflammatory headline, though I suppose the choice of words generates traffic. These people were not being gouged by geeks. They were being gouged by assholes. These are the same assholes who'd sell you a re-built carbeurator to fix a low-transmission fluid problem (it's true, I stopped this guy from doing just that to a good friend).
Most "geeks" I've ever known or met often may suffer social ineptitude, but across the broad spectrum, geeks, IMO, seem the least likely to be the type to pull these ripoffs. Quite the contrary, my experience has been geeks, true geeks who really know technology are the ones far more likely to shrug and take no money for helping someone with technology. That's not to say they're not willing to make a living at it... just that they're not ripoff artists.
Also the story is long on anecdotal "sting" evidence, and short on statistically significant information to substantiate the claim. My advice, ask around, ask a friend you trust, not necessarily to do the work but to give a "yea" or "nay" on any recommendations. Also, if it's a company like "geeks.com", stay away... any company pedalling technicians en-masse on the cheap is suspect... the market doesn't sustain that kind of business model... fixing technology is hard, and not cheap.
Anyway, back to my thesis, this is ripoff by assholes, not geeks.
I always provide a detailed bill (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone knows that Microsoft operating systems require this for stable operation.
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Re:I always provide a detailed bill (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I always provide a detailed bill (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the post-Dateline world, where every news agency now wants to set up stings to bust the bad guy. I'd like to set up a sting to expose shitty journalists. I think modern journalism is the one area that seriously needs to be looked in to.
We can start with science journalism, which is now at nearly tabloid levels of accuracy.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's useful. Canadian Tire finished last one year and they improved a LOT after that. Not that I'd take a car to Canadian Tire anyway, but still.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't just mechanics who do it... I've seen electricians, plumbers, computer geeks, home improvement store employees, etc try to swindle people. It seems like almost anyone who works on commission (or something similar like staying employed based on how many extended warranties they sell) will try to BS you into something you don't need. Now, I don't think all commissioned people do it. I know that I didn't when I used to work in a home improvement store - I'd sell the product that would best suit the customer's needs rather than what might line my (or the store I worked at) pockets a little more. Building honesty and trust are important to me and I believe they are vital to the long term health of your business/work. Much like CEOs though, a lot of people just care about what puts money in their pocket today and I don't think you can tie those type of people to (or from) any given profession.
PS - that alignment? Six or seven months later, I had to get it redone since the inside edges of my tires were wearing unevenly. Needless to say, I took it to a different place and that one didn't get pushy about what I wanted done. At least I know where I won't be taking my vehicle in the future if I need similar work.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
My brother and I, or my father usualy do the maintenance work on here car so when she got back, she told us she couldn't believe how much stuff was wrong with her car. The got here for a rear end fluid change (in a front wheel drive car), told her the air cleaner was bad/dirty (it had less then 1000 miles on it), and flushed the automatic transmission fluid for here because it looked burnt (in a standard). There was a few other things like a coolant flush and fill (with the green ethyl glycol antifreeze instead of the 150,000 mile organic acid tech sealed system stuff that came with it).
All in all, her $20 oil change and lube coupon trip turned into a $250 excursion. They kept saying "this is bad, do you want it fixed" and she kept saying "I don't want to break down somewhere so you better fix it". And when we went back to question them about it, they claimed our invoice must have gotten mixed up with someone else's. They assured us that nothing was done that didn't need to be done but couldn't find the invoice detailing a $250 expense for her car. They eventually refunded the differenced to a $20 fee plus tax. Lol.. Yep, there are people like that.
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Who cares about haircuts? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Informative)
We also have a semi-funny-semi-serious show called MediaWatch which is a 15 minute show that goes over all of the illegal, stupid, dangerous, and bad things the media did that week. You can also find copies of it at abc.net.au/mediawatch.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you propose? The Department of Auto Mechanics and the Computer Repair Agency? We'll need the Senate Hairdressers Oversight Committee and the Federal Landscaping Commission, too. Don't forget the government watchdogs to keep track of wayward newspaper boys who can't land it on the porch.
Seriously, that's what consumer reports and the Internet are for.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, that is the best idea I've heard in a very long time.
It'd be a lot harder to find a good journalist.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, come on!
At least link to their site [chaser.com.au]. It's even got wobbly menus, for god's sake! What more could a geek want?
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Funny)
Podcast, n. A downloadable file tarted up to sound like new-media.
TWW
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Here, Here! (Score:5, Insightful)
As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks" in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost $400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the computer, I'd be paying someone to make my Slashdot posts for me!
In short, everyone should befriend a geek. If you know a nice geek, you're set. If you don't, then ask around for someone who does. Rarely does hardware need to be replaced, but when it does, you needn't pay sky-high prices to have it done.
A kiss, a chesty hug, a 6-pack, or a warm meal is usually enough.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:4, Interesting)
I also don't know what you mean about companies peddling geeks on the cheap. Geek Squad, for example, are not cheap. If you want cheap, in my area, you go to the Mom & Pop store (we actually are lucky enough to have a genuine independently run computer sales & service store, run by a genuine mom and pop) and they fix stuff on the cheap. They solder and go way, way down into the physical layer...when was the last time geeks.com checked your power supply with a multimeter? They also do great training, which you'd think would torpedo their business, but no.
Oddly enough, they don't consider themselves "geeks." They are retirees and grandparents who like to tinker. Weird, but true.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad that Mom and Pop are out there doing a good job at a good price for people in your area, though. More power to them!
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
I've had to personally clean up messes that were made by a company that rhymes with "Geek Squad" and quite a few others as well, and can tell you that they push everything that makes them money and that a fair amount of them don't know what the hell they are doing (my buddy who worked there got fired for not selling enough product and not charging a few people for really simple problems). I have seen them and others totally miss easy problems on systems (a cpu cooling fan that is so caked up with so much dust that it doesn't spin), screw up perfectly functioning systems (install a floppy cable backwards, install ram backwards(!), forget to connect little things back up like the hard drive's data cable), and setup networks so badly it's a wonder they even work (Then again the ones I visit are because they don't work and I think it's terrible that they already gave up an arm, leg, and first born to a company which screwed everything up). The specific BSOD's that the bait system should have been putting up (if it is like the one they showed in a little blip in one of the segments) should have been a dead giveaway to anybody with the power of google that the ram, or at the very least some piece of hardware was at fault (not sure how that one fellow suggested the video card, or that other dude the cpu!), although I will say that I would have been a little confused had the customer said it 'just happened' that day, as ram is usually bad from the factory, I would have probably gone into questioning about if the comp had done anything like that previously before I run a memtest)
I personally always find out if a system is under warranty before even breathing upon any hardware inside the machine, never charge anything if I don't or cannot fix it (which although rare does happen ), and I always charge simple cheap fees for things like spyware and viruses, (ei $15-$20) on easily removed stuff (like an hour or so actually spent on it onsite), and involve the customer in any purchasing of parts directly if I can.
My motivation as a tech has always been to teach customers that there is no "magic box", that it is decently easy to maintain, they are not going to break it by looking at it, the internals are nothing to be afraid of (no they won't get shocked adding ram), they can live a happy online computer life by staying away from bad sites, not using IE or Outlook in most cases is the best, updating AV and spyware defs is a good thing running windows, using something called "google" to find answers to questions can prevent hair loss, and I also go the extra step and teach them methods of searching forums for answers to any given computer problem(also how NOT to use the caps lock key if they do post).
so I generally tell them anything they want to learn. Companies, and freelancers who are thieves, or don't know how to fix things give our trade a terrible name, and as long as there is money to be made, they will be with us making everyones lifes slightly worse off. Computer repair is tedious, and you have to really love or enjoy it to make your customers happy. I know nothing feels better to me than rescuing someone's vacation pictures from a hard drive that is on it's last legs with the dreaded "click of death" in fornt of their eyes, take em to the store to get another hdd, load everything back and be done and have them running in less than an hour and less than $100.)
I should probably say more about the actual video now, because I derailed my train and went into a rant.
Nothing on that tape surprised me sadly, there have always been bad techs around, and there have always been good techs who are told to 'add' something to the bottom line by their bosses at risk of loosing their jobs. I never have thought that the so called "formal training" or certs give you the ability to troubleshoot any given machine. If someone is gonna slack off and not pay attention, they will, and retain enough of it that they can pass a multiple choice test. I guess I didn't get my rant completed.. oh well, take it easy everyone.
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Re:getting gouged by whom? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back in the day it really was not a common problem, and the cases of it I remember were easy to diagnose because the comp would not even post. My personal first diagnoses I made of bad ram (that posts fine and 'looks' fine) back in '95 or so really had me pulling my hair out. I eventually tore the whole computer apart, set it up on a bench, and tested each part individually to figure it out, when I found it was the ram I was shocked. (it also didn't help having a 28.8kb dial up connection to the web, no affordable cd burner even on the horizon, and a lack of good low kb free tools)
Anyway, I beg to differ that bad ram is rare, I've had loads of bad ram since they released sticks with 512MB and over.
It's been so bad for me, I don't let a rig go to someone 'till it passes 2 times with memtest.
I've bought 3 laptops for me and my family in the last year from retail stores, and 2 came to me with at least 1 bad ddr2 module, and I see it very often on customer computers. Ususally I am the last resort before it gets the dumpster or sent back, when it ends up being a simple ram issue.
now you might say, wait a min, that's if you only use crappy ram, but I've gotten bad ram from everybody from corsair, kingston, crucial, PQI, patriot, micron oem, and a slew of others using any kind of chip, as well as straight from a big computer factory, where they are supposed to test it before it leaves. I've seen it in servers, workstations, desktops, notebooks, you name it, I probably have a bad stick of it somewhere in my room. Most everyone I've dealt with has great return programs which took care of me very well, but it's still a fact that I shouldn't have gotten the bad ram in the first place-
I have a feeling that if the test was 'more fair' as you call it and had something...easier(?) to diagnose, perhaps a bad power supply (the most often failure I see over here in Arizona), or perhaps dust clogged cpu fan, then most of the so called techs they hired still wouldn't have figured it out.
my only gripe is that crying over getting charged $35 for a $25 part is a bit extreme, I mean come on, a $10 markup ain't too bad considering that you didn't count shipping in "what you got it on the net" for.
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"Getting Gouged by Geeks" (Score:5, Funny)
it's not unnecessary. (Score:5, Funny)
Look, maintaining a proper level of Hard Disk fluid is extremely important in order to keep the tachyon flux of the read/write heads within normal operating parameters.
Re:it's not unnecessary. (Score:4, Funny)
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Just goes to show... (Score:5, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:4, Insightful)
Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance? (Score:5, Insightful)
The end result may manifest itself in the same form, but it doesn't necessarily mean it's malicious. Incompetent? Yes. Scam? Maybe not.
Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Is it Planned, or is it Ignorance? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those who don't know what they don't know aren't rip off artists. A rip off artist knows what they are doing.
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damn it.... (Score:4, Funny)
bah.. I was seriously impressed at first
Re:damn it.... (Score:4, Funny)
Not sure why.
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See? Geeks are stupid... (Score:5, Insightful)
Diagnosing memory failures is hard (Score:5, Informative)
For example, take Nero, burn a CD, then verify it. If the RAM is bad it may well happen that a few bits you read from the CD got flipped, and now the verification fails. Obvious conclusion: The CD-R was bad. After a few of those, obvious conclusion: the drive is bad. That the computer crashes ocasionally can be attributed to spyware or viruses. A tech working for cheap isn't going to spend hours to test every possible case.
RAM is also one of the most annoying things to try to diagnose. Disks at least have SMART, so if it got to the point where it's really broken, SMART will tell you about that quickly. And once it breaks it tends to do so very obviously. Now memory can pass tests and still be bad, and be marginal enough to work most of the time.
I had several problems with RAM that firmly convinced me to always buy ECC.
First one was when my Linux firewall, which ran for months without a hitch suddenly had a kernel panic. I thought it was strange, but oh well, nothing is perfect. Rebooted it, expecting that the new kernel installed weeks ago probably has a fix for that. A couple days later it crashed again. Rebooted it again making a note to investigate later. A day later it crashed yet again, but didn't boot this time due to disk corruption. Turns out the RAM was loose in the slot, and somehow stopped making proper contact. The module itself was good and passed memtest86 just fine when I set up the box.
Second one was when I was buying a new shiny box, and started having strange crashes. This took me quite a while to diagnose, because memtest86 passed perfectly fine. Yet "memtester", an userspace tool did catch it finally, after running for 8 hours straight, and even then with about 50% accuracy. On repeated 8 hour runs sometimes it'd catch it, and sometimes not, while testing the whole memory several times during that period.
Something like that probably won't be diagnosed correctly by tech support. Even if they do test the memory they're almost certainly not going to bother running it for a day straight, just to make really sure it's not a marginal case.
It wasn't hard in this case (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Diagnosing memory failures is hard (Score:4, Informative)
For example, take Nero, burn a CD, then verify it. If the RAM is bad it may well happen that a few bits you read from the CD got flipped, and now the verification fails. Obvious conclusion: The CD-R was bad. After a few of those, obvious conclusion: the drive is bad. That the computer crashes ocasionally can be attributed to spyware or viruses. A tech working for cheap isn't going to spend hours to test every possible case.
RAM is also one of the most annoying things to try to diagnose. Disks at least have SMART, so if it got to the point where it's really broken, SMART will tell you about that quickly. And once it breaks it tends to do so very obviously. Now memory can pass tests and still be bad, and be marginal enough to work most of the time.
I had several problems with RAM that firmly convinced me to always buy ECC.
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"Simple"? (Score:5, Insightful)
And sometimes (Score:4, Insightful)
Now I am thinking WTH this does not make alot of sense. So we canabalized a different computer starting with a different HDD. Same problem. Then the Power supply. Then the RAM. And wallah it started working right. We stuck back in his old components with different RAM and everythign was fine. This took several "geeks" a couple of hours to fix and it was not a by the book type fix. We litterally had to use a process of elimination and had to have extra hardware available.
Alot of people will take the easy road. Especially with older crappy hardware. If somone is running an old Win 98 box and it appears it is a hardware issue.. They are just plainly better off buying a new computer then looking for antiquated parts. Or if it is going to take "days" to fix it may be cost effective to not pay a "tech" to fix it.
Some of the "Geeks" in the parent article may have been ripoff artists.. others may have in the long run been providing the correct response to the situation.
Good techs get business from these guys (Score:5, Insightful)
I just did a job on a few laptops (Score:5, Interesting)
Laptop #2 is a Dell. The hard drive started acting up. I diagnosed it as a bad HDD.
She purchased a new hdd through Dell and had it shipped to her. She brought me the laptop and the drive.
The new drive refused to install, the mobo insisted the drive was password locked.
I spent about 4 hours on the phone with dell (someone reading a que card in India) and after much agony it was determined that the mobo was bad.
I called the lady and asked her what she wanted to do. She said that was it, end of the line, trash the PC she wasn't going to spend another penny on it and was buying a new desktop. She asked me how much she owed me for what work I had done.
I told her "No charge. I didn't repair it so there's no charge. You pay for what you get and nothing more."
She was flabbergasted and insisted on paying me for my time and trouble. I told her no, don't worry about it.
She insisted though and after almost getting into an argument with her I told her that if she felt she had to pay me then she could pay me a gratuity in whatever amount made her happy. Her husband suggested $25. She asked me if that was enough. I told her it was more than enough so she wrote me a check for $25.
I treat people fairly and honestly. I'm not out to get rich and you will never get anywhere by screwing people over. I have a small circle of loyal customers that like me because I treat them well, I treat them with respect and I always deliver on my promises. I LIKE my customers. And I think they like me. I assume they do because they keep calling me back over and over.
Treat people the way you would want to be treated.
Re:I just did a job on a few laptops (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a golden rule in business: time is money.
It is nothing unethical to charge for the time that took you to diagnose the problem.
Not charging the diagnose is actually a "free service" provided by technicians to attract customers, but not clearly it is not the normal thing.
Charging ridiculous amounts is unethical, but charging for the time it consumed YOU (whatever it was) is perfectly ok.
In the service business (private teacher, schools, colleges, sky diving lessons, transportation, whatever), whatever service that requires scheduling most of the times they charge you a time slot, if you don't come or come late, they don't refund you the money.
In the Industrial/Goods Business, the product is money.
In the Service Business, Time is money. Much more critically than the goods industry, since it is your only limited and not renewable "raw material" from which you can generate revenues.
Charge for your time.
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Does anyone really think (Score:4, Insightful)
They exist to sensationalize and already existing fear. capitalize on it and sell air time.
If "the market" was really pissed about poor service, believe me, the market would make things change.
Video was a HIT PIECE (Score:5, Insightful)
What pisses me off most about this video is the crap they give the guy who diagnosed the memory problem correctly, yet "gouged" them on replacement memory. This guy installed a 1GB DIMM for $120 and they say they were GOUGED because they went on Newegg and found the same memory for $65. Never mind that $65 doesn't include shipping. Never mind that $65 doesn't include tax. Never mind there is NO B&M STORE IN THE WORLD where you can get goods cheaper than you can get them online. If this lady went to Circuit City I bet the same memory would be at least $120. Yet this guy gets called a crook for doing his job well and charging a reasonable price (not even close to gouging).
This isn't journalism, it's a hit piece.
Did the geeks charge..... (Score:4, Insightful)
$1000 per "point" of processor speed?
$350 document transfer fee?
$650 document research fee?
$350 document copying fee?
$75 long distance phone calls?
If the customers were lawyers and mortgage bankers, I think they did not charge enough. I suggest investigative reporting spend more effort investigating lawyers and financial service companies first.
Lies, Damn Lies and Editing Video... From Toronto (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a bunch of points and the text from the show:
The presenter says that blown ram is a "simple problem" ?? WTF ... Also the price they quote for the 512MB DDR ram at $25 really lowballing it. 512MB of DDR-184 may be $29 to $35 at the "in store" for good cheap parts in Toronto, but where any average person would shop at Staples.ca it's $79.92... And of course there is installation, and more importantly diagnosing which can be nasty, so stating $25 gives the viewer the impression that A) it's easy, and B) total cost _should_ be $25... (see end for URLs)
They show three of the in-home techs at work, again just snippits.
"Grade A Students": he supposedly, remember the video is heavily edited, tells them they need a new motherboard. Well with an older computer, the chances are just about even that its the ram or the motherboard. The guy may not be the best repair tech in the world, but it's not over the top to suggest that. The one fault I find with him is telling the customer to "go buy a motherboard" as there's no way an average user could do that. The show points out A) he charged $80 which seems fair for in-home visit to diagnose something, and B) reiterating it's a motherboard "don't need" thus making the diagnosis seem rediculous.
"Nerds On Site": this is the fellow they make to look the worst, but from the few edits they do have of him, he seems to ask some good questions off the bat, "Is the hard drive making different sort of sounds?" That is the best question to ask a user since the CLICK CLICK CLICK of a bad drive most people do hear and they know "it didn't sound like that before". So this guy guesses it's the HD before he opens the case, which is actually a bad diagnosis since we can only assume the box didn't even POST with the bad ram (if it did POST with flakey RAM well it could be anything right?). Their expert tells the viewers, "you can't make any kind of diagnosis that quickly", when in fact yes you can with a bad HD or even bad ram/mb...
"Geek Squad": So they show the guy saying "My professional advice is the motherboard. You have to have it taken in and you have to replace the motherboard", which is perfectly reasonable. On-site it's almost impossible to figure out if it's the mb or not, and if you don't carry spare ram, figuring out if its the ram is also best done in the shop. At this point the show states "Remember the problem's a broken ram part. So far we've heard it was the motherboard, the cpu, and the hard drive. All wrong." But those are their guesses and all are reasonable for being in the field guesses, so they're not wrong, save the HD guess, but that guy is not necessarily the most adept diagnostician... Continuing, "Out of 10 techs we call in, only these 3 can figure out what the problem is." So these three guys try pulling out the ram and try one at a time. Again, since it's an old system, guessing that's the the MB is not that off base, though not trying the ram is a shame but not over the top.
Taking Advantage of "most of us"
"we track down 3 techs who used to work for big name retailers, Rob, Macolm, and Shawn confess that taking advantage of most of us is easy"... um 'taking advantage' of most people who often don't know much more than 10 things about using the computer, when a seasoned pro may know and encounterd say 1,000 to even 10,000 things. Well how easy would be for a doctor to say to a patient, "look's like you've got a dwarf living in your belly" and that person believe them??
On the average customer
Presenter: "When people come in with a crashed computer, how much do they actually know about what was wrong
Re:They're not geeks (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I blame windows (Score:5, Insightful)
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Depends... (Score:4, Insightful)
If however it was a matter of having a RAM stick with a subtle fault that kicked off only during extremely heavy RAM usage, then you may have had a point there.
Here's the trick, though... most of the 'expose' type stories like this usually involve something incredibly stupid, like loosening a cable or card (Hell, I used to drive students crazy when they were forced to troubleshoot a system I induced failure on with clear cellophane tape on the NIC card contacts).
Much like tweaking the distributor timing a bit on an other3wise perfectly running old car can out the fakes and the incompetents in the auto industry, there are some damned drop-simple ways of outing the scammers and dumbasses in the IT field.
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