The shocking (and fairly obvious) truth about computer repairs

By Paul Smith

We’re not sure if this is a case of stating the bleeding obvious or something to be truly horrified at, but does anybody really trust that the people repairing their computer a) won’t try and overcharge them, and b) won’t have a nosy through their files?

And keep watching until the end – it’s not just beat-up independent computer shop that’ll try and overcharge you for basic repairs.

[Sky News]

Tags: computer repairs, computers, overcharging
Posted in News, tech July 29th, 2009 | 17 Comments

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 1:30 pm and is filed under News, tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

17 Responses to “The shocking (and fairly obvious) truth about computer repairs”

Posted by ben | July 29th, 2009 at 1:42 pm

its not everyone that is like that, i repair pc’s and laptops for clients by myself and have never gone through the files or copied anything off the computer. but theres always someone that will give the rest of the industry a bad name…
Posted by Craig | July 29th, 2009 at 2:34 pm

LOL This is how they got Gary Glitter!
Posted by TV's Dave Benson-Phillips | July 29th, 2009 at 2:49 pm

Paul…. I’m being nice now, but this story is like.. days old. Even for BW

That said, it really is a shocking story – especially the one that looked through her bikini pics lolz.

I end up fixing loads of computers for free, just because I feel sorry for the people going to PC World and the like.

I had a dead laptop hard disk last week, and felt bad asking for £30 for a replcement – however, the bloke couldn’t believe his luck – pc world wanted £100 to look at it!
Posted by Jamie | July 29th, 2009 at 2:50 pm

In other news, when fixing friends’ comupters I often just google the problem/error code to find the solution…
Posted by Gus | July 29th, 2009 at 3:04 pm

Jamie wants those people out of business. LOL
Posted by Simon | July 29th, 2009 at 3:05 pm

No surprises PCWorld fucked it up, bet you they tried their best to fix it though.
Posted by Craig | July 29th, 2009 at 3:12 pm

I read the whole story on Yahoo news, one of the guys copied some pictures off the PC, of one of the reporters in her Bikini, and copied it into a folder called “Mamma Jammas” which I though was quite amusing!
Posted by Pure-Klenz | July 29th, 2009 at 3:18 pm

They did what any warm blooded man would…
Posted by Duaine Dangerous | July 29th, 2009 at 4:16 pm

I repair computers and would only copy pictures of men in tight shorts
Posted by HappyCustomer | July 29th, 2009 at 5:19 pm

I can’t see what PC World have done wrong here? They have a fixed price laptop repair which is £230 where they book your laptop in for repair and send it away to i assume the the tech guys to get it repaired, the customer obviously understands the procudure before it is sent away..maybe thats why the news did not show any of the pc world footage?
Posted by anonymous | July 29th, 2009 at 5:20 pm

To the lying knob who posted the notice about replacing someone’s hard drive for £30 earlier…where exactly did you get the hard drive from for £30…don’t get me wrong…you can just about buy them from that online so perhaps the parts ran you to that amount…

was the labour free? is this how you live your life? do everything for free? do you work for free? how do you pay your mortgage?

that’s right – you just thought you’d seen an opportunity for pc world bashing…

if you did if for £30 then more fool you…
Posted by ssme | July 29th, 2009 at 6:31 pm

i’d feel guilty about even charging to replace a hard drive on a modern laptop. it takes all of 10 minutes. £30 for parts seems perfectly reasonable.

the point isn’t that the repair shops should have done it for free, but they should have done it at a reasonable rate.
Posted by matt bee | July 29th, 2009 at 7:06 pm

Knowing how to do something – even something simple like replacing a hard drive – places you in a reasonably special category of people. It’s not just doing the work, but recognising the fault, knowing what kind of variations you might run into along the way, knowing what might go wrong, and what to do if it does… that’s the value of experience,

Just because it’s easy for you, doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone. it’s quite reasonable to charge a high hourly fee if you are a genuinely knowledgeable technician. It’s unreasonably to charge a high hourly fee if you’re a cowboy who can’t tell his arse from his elbow. That should go without saying.

But the problem for customers is telling the difference. Seriously… think about getting a mechanic or a plumber in… if you don’t know squat about your car/pipes, how do you know you’ve got somebody good working on them?
Posted by Geoff Jones | July 30th, 2009 at 8:41 am

@ annonymous

Some people are kind and giving people unlike you, not everyone is selfish. It’s obviously his friends and family that he helps.
Posted by Shooter McGavin | July 30th, 2009 at 8:59 am

Nice to see that the PR department of PC World still likes to read this website and leave comments.
Posted by Dealspwn | July 30th, 2009 at 11:20 pm

Can’t see the video any more?
Posted by Andy Dawson | July 31st, 2009 at 8:27 am

Thanks Dealspwn, sorted.