Costs of Repairing a PC

[SpeedCrazy]

I went to best buy with a hard drive problem, told the geek squad what the problem was, all the error codes, etc.. (trying to load up a win 7 upgrade on a fresh hard drive) and the guy plugged it in and sat there pressing the RESET button, and then said it would cost $75 to LOOK AT WHY IT WASN'T STARTING UP!!!!!

Needless to say, I'm never going there again

Take a look at this. That second bestbuy in the video i think is more widely representative than the first.

Story, my friend, who is largely computer tech literate bought a top of the line dell desktop in 2007. It had XP SP1 on it, and a norton free trial. Neither was upgraded. This spring she finally took it in to bestbuy where she had bought it and asked them to take a look at it. Despite the fact that it was (i believe) a core2 quad with 4gbs of ram, the geeksquad told her she needed a new cpu and ram, but they never touched the hdd. They wanted $9xx to upgrade to a core2 duo "high preformance cpu"! and 2gbs of "cutting edge" RAM! Thankfuly she knew that quad to duo and 4 to 2 wasn't much of an upgrade and told them to forget it. But they managed to talk her into a 1.5k laptop........ all she uses it for is facebook and ms word.

[Boinker]

First off, I know that people repair computers for a living, and that it's only fair that they have to charge prices, but isn't this example a bit ridiculous?

 

My brother has a laptop, and he dropped it, right where the power connector is. The casing broke off and the wire was exposed. It worked fine, of course, but after a few months, all the tugging on the wire ripped it. I didn't want to be responsible for repairing the laptop, in case anything went wrong, so I went with him to a computer repair shop, thinking it'd be $30 max to solder the wire back together or replace it. The guy working there told me it would be $60 to open the laptop and examine the problem (this price doesn't include fixing it)... after I told him what the problem was. I walked out of the store, took the laptop home, took it apart in 20 minutes, checked out the part number of the wire, bought a replacement on E-bay for $15, and when it came in, I superglued the connector to the edge of the laptop so it wouldn't be tugged at again.

 

It took me 20 minutes and $15 (plus 1 dollar and something cents for superglue).

 

Do you think it's ridiculous that someone would charge $60 to unscrew the back of the laptop and look at a wire, especially after being informed what the problem was?

 

Time is money and laptops are a pain. There is noting truly unreasonable about what he wants though.

 

Heck they are such a pain that I have already notified my Family that I do not do anything to laptops for free...

[zackhaf]

Take a look at this. That second bestbuy in the video i think is more widely representative than the first.

Story, my friend, who is largely computer tech literate bought a top of the line dell desktop in 2007. It had XP SP1 on it, and a norton free trial. Neither was upgraded. This spring she finally took it in to bestbuy where she had bought it and asked them to take a look at it. Despite the fact that it was (i believe) a core2 quad with 4gbs of ram, the geeksquad told her she needed a new cpu and ram, but they never touched the hdd. They wanted $9xx to upgrade to a core2 duo "high preformance cpu"! and 2gbs of "cutting edge" RAM! Thankfuly she knew that quad to duo and 4 to 2 wasn't much of an upgrade and told them to forget it. But they managed to talk her into a 1.5k laptop........ all she uses it for is facebook and ms word.

 

I cant believe they would charge that much for a "broken" HDD.

I just got a new laptop, and went to best buy to see what they had, and the guy told me that, being a college student meant i needed a core i7 cpu...wtf??? how does typing and browsing the internet need a core i7? so, i sent across the street and got the laptop from another store (for $120 less too)

[Locutus]

Take it to Geek Squad and they'll tell you the mobo is shot and you should just buy a new laptop.