WHAT

A

SHOCK!

um.. the post beep sequence should have told anyone who cared to look it up that the ram was bad.. but why would you actually use the tools provided to diagnose an issue?

I'm sure no one who regularly reads Consumerist will be surprised.

I watched this with my wife, and she said to me, "I'm so glad you understand this stuff, so we don't get ripped off."

Geek Squad: Helping wives of nerds appreciate them since 1994.

...and if you do go with a tech repair outfit, get referrals from friends and get multiple quotes from different vendors.

Referrals... like to that guy that was supposed to be fired, but wasn't because he got alot of referrals (Scummy move by that company IMHO)? Looks like in that instance you can refer the guy that scammed you and no one would be the wiser.

The college techs who "broke" the machine for the sting operation looked to be the most reliable and trustworthy. Perhaps finding a college student in a similar class at your local college would be better. I'm sure they can use the textbook money.

@MercuryPDX: You misspelled "beer"

If it was just a defective RAM stick then wouldn't the computer still turn on? I've never dealt with a defective ram stick before but shouldn't you get some kind of on screen BIOS level error message?

I don't really know if I could have solved this problem though. Generally no start up at all (as described in the video) = Dead PSU, motherboard, or case power button.

@JayMo: POST isn't always the most obvious solution as not every computer has a speaker hooked up for it. At the very least however the fans should power up which should tell any tech the mother board is working at least on basic level.

I watched the whole thing and got really pissed off about how CBC handled the issue. They should have blurred his face to keep him from being identified. Aside from the fact that they're plainly libeling the guy (remember libel doesn't have to be untrue - in the US anyway, I guess I don't know Canadian libel law), the approach they used allows the company to just fire the guy and claim that they've taken appropriate action. It doesn't matter that they didn't fire the guy - as long as they can point to a specific person, then they don't have to address the systemic problem.

Consumerist did a much better job with the Geek Squad porn-stealing issue.

Humber College? Man, Seneca ftw! But yeah, if Humber guys can fool the techs, then boy do we have major f**king problems...

This article just screams "half ass" (and no not necessarily about the computer repair industry).

First off, you cannot judge an entire industry off 10 sources. Secondly, was there any pattern of which companies were better? This article just sucks in so many ways.

I see ALL KINDS of companies fix ALL KINDS of electronics incorrectly.

Interesting news piece. Like most television news these days, it seemed to be about 30% accurate and 70% sensationalism (about as high a success rate as the repair people they condemned.)

I'm curious as to what people think a computer repair house call should cost? I've never had a plummer over my house for the simplest of jobs for less than $100 (the amount they seemed astonished over for a house call and a half to an hour's worth of diag work by the computer techs.)

The college techs also weren't entirely accurate either. Even if RAM is $65 on-line, it's not unreasonable for a repairer to sell it, delivered and installed for $120. Likewise, if your Windows install has gone corrupt, you can't just 'reinstall Windows to fix it'. You'll also have to reinstall all of your applications. What's more, without knowing that someone intentionally sabotaged the machine, you'd be wise to extensively test the hard drive to insure that failing/marginal media didn't cause the corruption, or that a virus/trojan didn't compromise the system. At any rate, it's a much better practice to back up the data, scan it for threats, reformat the drive, and perform a clean install of the OS and apps. And, yeah, that's going to take at couple of hours at least (especially on an old, slow machine), which even at a plumber's labor rate, will be a couple of hundred dollars.

I wonder how often those news people do what they do for a living "at no charge", or how often they sell their "merchandise" without marking it up for a healthy profit. (And, yeah, to you people who call up your friends or a student for "free" tech support, I hope you do what you do for a living for them for free in return.)

That said, obviously some of those techs could diagnose their way out of a paper bag -- and the guy who talked about data recovery services yet also was reading the hard drive with an IDE/USB adapter seem an outright fraud (although, since I only have TV selective editing and sensationalism, I can't say for sure.)

@Leiterfluid: ROFL!!

my teenaged cousin is leaps and bounds above these guys. anyone else watch the upcoming stories and kind of wish they had canadian tv? it may not have been the most subjective approach but it was rather entertaining. marketplace AND degrassi? not fair

Marketplace is like those US consumer-protection segments on news shows, only without the "computer geeks can install viruses that can download your porn and rape your children, for al-queda" spin that you tend to see with every US one...

Well, I see both sides of this. Now, the "trained professionals" should have been able to see the problem if they looked at the ram. The only problem I see in the report is that they don't show you what error she is having. It could be possible that the motherboard COULD be dead in that situation depending on the error. Most motherboards nowadays beep if something is wrong with the ram though on system startup. Plus, tech is like a car. Some symptoms can be the result of multiple things. But it doesn't excuse them from not checking the RAM. The other part is, yeah they screwed up on that issue but what haven't they screwed up on? I'm sure they help SOME people. Sorry, I just try to be objective with tech stuff but I agree they should have seen the memory issue.

Ok nevermind.. After watching the video again.. WTF???? I stopped doing tech work years ago and I could still figure that out.

Personally, I think computers should be machinery that requires a license to operate. Like cars.

But hey, as long as companies keep mucking this up, at least hot girls will keep asking normal geeks for computer help. giggity.

As a systems administrator, I've found that the majority of computer repair shops are worthless, and to make ends meet will charge you up the ass once you demonstrate the smallest bit of ignorance (just like auto mechanics - I may be in charge of a corporate network, but as soon as someone tells me my car needs a new flamshooter because my johnson rod is misaligned, I take my check and make it out to cash). Do yourself a favor and find a local geek who works in computers as a real job and does side jobs for a little extra cash - odds are you'll get better service at a lower price by a more qualified professional.

I find the whole new computer part of it sad. It is not like I have not suggested that in the past since some computers were pretty old and others used RDRAM (still too expensive). But every time it was in their best interest and I would assist them in finding something they wanted that I wasn't trying to sell.

25 bucks for ram? is it from 2001?

the RAM issue should have been a no brainier. However, all the techs making the "motherboard" diagnoses probably heard the POST beep code and thought "video" since both RAM and video give the same post error. because the desktop used integrated video, "motherboard" would have been a correct diagnoses. But they were idiots for not testing the RAM since it is a much more common problem.

The software issue where many said "virus" is interesting. I want to know if they said "virus" because it is an easily recognizable word for the customer and didn't want to waste time explaining what a "system file" was. Rude yes, but still possible.

Over all I'm not surprised. I have been a tech for years and see these people ripping people off all the time. It makes good techs look bad. And that sucks.

Oh and as far as recommending a new computer. I don't understand that logic. As far as profit margin is concerned, repairing the item is much better. Like the guy in the video said, tech money is straight to the bottom line. The tech is already paid so any thing he does is profit. The average desktop only has about 9-12% margin. so unless they buy a high end computer, that tech visit is better for the bottom line. The only way the store is better off with the customer buy a new computer is if the customer also picks up their warranty (counted as about 65% margin although in reality is about 90%) and a few accessories...so the salesmen better be good.

Feel a little bad for the founder of Nerds on Site having to find out about that schlub while on camera. CBC is willing to play hardball.

@Iron_Dragon_2.0: the sort of message that hardward issue causes were probably interpretted by the crappy techs as "won't turn on." i know people who see a DOS prompt and don't think of the computer as "On."

and some systems simply make a beep when there's a faulty ram chip.

Wow, I can't believe that they had issues diagnosing the memory. Even if the machine didn't give beep codes, the RAM is the first thing to suspect. I guess if they didn't have a good replacement stick to test with they could assume its the motherboard, but thats just irresponsible. I did see some fault in the customer saying it suddenly stopped working though. Memory is almost always bad from the first time put in the machine, and if not it would cause unbearable crashes long before the system stopped POSTing. The system file issue was a bit more vauge. There is a decent chance that there could have been a piece of software on the machine that could trigger a false positive for a trojan horse with the av software they were using. However, any experienced tech would know what a trojan horse can accomplish, and hopefully recognize that whatever was listed wasn't anything particularly malicious, or even real. The proposed solution of simply reinstalling windows is not the perferred option. Unless the customer needs the machine quickly and doesn't care about data loss or having to reinstall apps, its better to attempt to repair any malfunction in the OS. I would consider an os reinstall a last possibility. If they would have listed the system file deleted, I could give a possible solution to fix it, but chances are it could be very easily fixed without even resorting to advanced techinques.

Oh, heh, I worked for the Geek Squad for a bit. That video listed some of the reasons I no longer work there. When you feel crappy about being the best tech (read- most or only competent one), you know that something is wrong.

@SwatLax: I felt a little bad for him too except for the fact he said he was going to fire the guy and didn't. So I guess if the head of the company (or whatever he was) is a liar you can't expect much else from the subordinates.

Ugh. I hate Dateline style exposes like this. Pharmacies got hit with a slew of these a couple months back, and it's a pain in the ass. These things are specially designed to produce results, and make their targets look like bad guys. You think that there isn't some degree of calculation that goes into producing these stings? They're not going to waste all that money setting up a sting operation just to show the public that, "Hey guys, guess what! Your techs are doing a great job!"

No, they want results. They want the tech guys to take the fall so that they can get better ratings. If you think about it for half a second, you'll realize how much the odds are stacked against these guys. When a computer messes up, there are literally hundreds of things that could go wrong. And one presenting symptom could easily be indicative of a larger, more troubling problem. Even if you did somehow immediately identify the RAM as the problem, a prudent tech would ask themselves "Why would this RAM just randomly blow itself out?"

Would you be satisfied with your doctor if you came in with a bizarre numb feeling in the left side of your body and he gave you a couple of Advil and sent you on your way? Imagine if a third-rate news program sent in an "expose" task force of people complaining of fake numbness in their arms. Would you have the same aghast reaction when the doctors are accused gouging their patients because they run a expensive tests for heart problems?

That's not price gouging. That's being prudent.

Correction: In the third paragraph, I meant to say "because they run a series of expensive tests for heart problems?"

@JohnnyE: All good points. I was about to write out almost all of that, thanks for saving me the time!

That red-shirt rent-a-nerd *was* a mess though. The clean room thing can be legit in cases of a really bad crashed hard drive for data retrieval -- if that was the real problem with the computer. However, he then copied data from this alleged bad hard drive? Amazing.

For the unaware / uninitiated - Marketplace *only* does this kind of thing. It's ONLY consumer type information - rebates, recalls, consumer issues with the government, etc, and the show's been on the air for a long, long time - they did one with mike holmes, for example, on shoddy renovation jobs, and there have been a couple of spinoff type specials or shows, people fighting major companies over consumer issues (the name escapes me just at the moment)

Re: getting canadian tv? - a TON of canadian networks are putting episodes on tv - in this case, you can find whole episodes of marketplace at [www.cbc.ca]

I do helpdesk for a large law firm and also do some PC repair work on the side. I've charged as little as $10 for a quick fix; more if the job takes longer. For parts I charge my cost plus 10% if I have to go pick them up. Some jobs take hours to complete; I charge a flat rate for those.

I've found that most people don't want to pay the "local computer geek" for repairs, they figure that I'll work for free since I do computer stuff for a living. My free time is important and that's why I charge for my time when fixing YOUR computer problem.

Overall the techs on the tape were total incompetents and the one red shirt guy should have been fired.

Or used as a security guy from Star Trek...

Ha Ha. I had clients telling me that they need to get a second opinion, and then get shafter while me telling them that will only cost 50-100 bucks to fix. They go to best buy and get ripped off... funny thing after they get ripped off they come back, sometimes with the computer not even being fixed...

I only watched about half of the video before I turned it off. It was pretty clear that the news team had no clue what they were talking about. I took issue with the quoted memory prices as they were listing what they could be found online for. They should be quoting retail prices. IE best buy charges 80 bucks for a stick of memory they charge 60 for in store.

Also thetest issue with the OS is a joke. The "expert" says that they should not be recomending a backup and format/restore. They say you should run a repair install to fix the issue. This is a joke. Yes a repair install can work but with most consumer systems I've seen it is not worth the hassell. It is better to format and restore the system. That way you know it is fixed.

These people just piss me off. They are scaming people just as much as the bad techs they called.

The most annoying thing is that computers are so poorly designed that they crash and develop mysterious problems unsolvable by experts.

Last Winter my heater gave out. The tech came out and said it was the curcuit board. A real simple board too. He said the board cost $650 plus labor to install it of around $200. He recommended I buy a new heater for around $4,000 instead.

[www.horizonservicesinc.com]

I paid the "dispatch" fee of $89 and threw him out of the house. Found the board on the internet for $65 from a supply shop. Installed it in about 5 minutes (two screws and two edge connectors plus stripping one wire).

My wife's car clutch failed three years ago. Cost $800 to fix. She drove out to Montana from Delaware two weeks after that. It failed while there. They charged $600 to fix it there and warned that it was leaking fluids and would continue to because they didn't have the part and to keep an eye on it on the way back else it'd fail again. She did, got back, didn't leak fluid but two months later failed again anyway. Took it to yet another shop and they found something else was causing the failure. Fixed the cluth and that. Another $700 but this time it's been OK for past 30,000 miles.

Every industry has shysters -- and I think most of them are that. If you don't know what's wrong or understand the tech, you're going to get taken. It's pretty simple, fairly common, and it sucks.

Of course it kicks ass, its the CBC. In Canada, journalists actually work for a living, and waste little time on promoting government agendas and Briteny Spears.

This was an interesting investigation but I have to agree with those commenters who say it was not totally on the level. When they show that red shirted guy before he's even opened the computer case, he kind of throws out a guess that the hard drive may have failed. They then ask him, "so the hard drive is bad?" In his reply he is clearly explaining that the hard drive is a bad thing to have fail, not claiming it was definitely the cause of their problem. But the show presents that exchange as evidence for misdiagnosis. Now the guy did seem incompetent, but little details like this make me lose some faith in the integrity of the journalism.

@ogremustcrush: "Memory is almost always bad from the first time put in the machine, and if not it would cause unbearable crashes long before the system stopped POSTing."

I have to disagree. I've seen lots of RAM go bad slowly and quietly, usually in machines 5+ years old. They start getting "quirky" one day - they boot up normally and are mostly fine, but start crashing or having odd problems. Sometimes, one sweep of a RAM test doesn't even reveal anything. I've had a couple where I had to let memtest run for an hour or more before it found a fault.

Ok so while I am a common reader of the consumerist, I am signing up for the first time just to call b/s on some of the stuff in the video.

While a lot of it is true, they pushed this a little too far. First, their prices that they were saying to fix the different problems were far too low. $25 to fix a bad stick of ram? Yea maybe you can find some cheap ram on newegg or something like that but if you are dealing with a retailer (like best buy) then you are going to pay retail prices! Not to mention they don't factor in the cost of paying for the actual memory install.

Secondly, the guy says that it's unheard of for a personal computer to be sent to a clean room. Again, completely false. Ok granted the repair man was dead wrong in saying the harddrive was bad, but if it WAS, then a data recovery could be required, and would have to be done in a clean room. So why would it be unheard of?

Well anyways, that's my two cents. But with all that said, yes. Most of these techs are complete idiots.

I'm a local independent computer tech in the Rhode Island area, and I'm not very impressed with the methods used in this report.

In this case the memory had resistors removed from it... THAT DOESN'T HAPPEN NORMALLY!!! If the motherboard identified the stick as good but failed to POST (i.e. did not give a beep error code for memory fault (Beeeeeeep, Beep Beep) and also did not display anything) it would be easy to misdiagnose it as the motherboard or video card on the spot. Once the techs brought it to their shop sand had time and parts for more accurate testing it could be found that the module was tampered with.

The hard drive replacement guy should be shot.

I have more people complain to me about techs or company's that replaced their hard drive for no reason...

The local college computer store replaces hard drives when there is a software problem because it's faster... never mind all that data on it... you weren't using it anyway.

In regards to the virus thing, I think it is a fair assumption that the computer could have had a virus (or more likely spyware/malware) that they didn't pick up on in the first place. No solution is perfect, and I dont think i've ever seen a windows PC that doesnt have some sort of nasty on it, even if it is just a tracking cookie (that a technition may describe as a virus/spyware - its certainly not correct, but if they are performing a windows install/recovery on the drive anyway, its unlikely they'll charge you much extra for the removal, so it doesnt quite matter in the long run, and describing cookies/spyware/malware to some users is just frustrating to no end).

I watched this episode. It started off pretty good, but CBC did a really good job of making up issues when there were no issues. For instance, they kept going on about how the techs were over changing for RAM. To prove this, they did a price comparison at one of the cheapest retailers in Canada (CanadaComputers-they are great). In some cases the difference was only $15-$25. What did they expect, that these techs were charity workers that would make house calls and not have any mark up on materials? Of course if they provide the materials, come to your house and install it, they are going to freaking make some profit on it...

Another point they kept going on about was the cost of the examinations. Again, these techs have come out your house. You, as a consumer, do have some responsibility to comparison shop. Some of the tech prices were outrageous, but the customer does have a choice.

Then they make a big deal that the test with the missing or corrupt system files should have been an easy fix. Unless you assume the user was manually deleting System files, then a supposition that it might have been caused by a virus is not unusual. The computers at Humber must have a lot virii and trojans if they don't pre-emptively consider virus to be a possible cause of missing system files.

In all, the episode was interesting, but CBC got way to excited over issues that were in now way issues. I was surprised they also didn't make a fuss about the techs that had red shirts...I mean shit, they were wearing red shirts. CBC usually does good consumer reports, but tis time they took the low road and got all about trying to sensationalize non-issues.

@faust1200:
I went to UW with Dave, the founder of Nerd. Really, the nicest of guys and very ethical. It was shit of CBC to dump on him for the actions of an employee of one of his franchisees.

I am sure glad I know how to fix all but the most difficult of my computer problems myself, and for those I have a downstairs neighbor (Who I share a cable connection) that can handle anything else. Not so many people are this fortunate and have to depend on "experts" to do it for them.

It's kind of a hassle to have it be known that you "know a few things about computers" at my workplace as I am asked to fix printer connections, and other little glitches all the time - in addition to my regular tasks. Sometimes I wish I could just say that I didn't know how to do it so I wouldn't be bothered. I even have some co-workers asking me if they can bring in their home computers for me to fix for free. Not a nice situation when I decline..

If the repair industry keep going the way it is, I can see the reputation being lumped in to that of "Car salesmen" like the story mentions.

This video is a little misleading. I own a computer service company. For example, a stick of RAM will not just cost '$25.00' and a reinstall will NOT cost '$60.00'. If we charged that, no money would be made in this business. If people want their computer fixed correctly and quickly, they will have to be charged a decent price (but, for that price, they should be diagnosed correctly).

The cost also depends on region in the country. I am part of a national franchise company with over 700 locations in 60 countries. I worked in Minneapolis and in Chicago. Prices are about 150-175% in Chicago.

To conclude: Onsite diagnosis is sometimes a bit harder than testing on the bench, as we typically do. The problems are that customers are sometimes in a hurry, they like to watch and look over your shoulder, and they also sometimes ask a lot of questions (all of these are acceptable, however, they do cause some problems when onsite).

@JohnnyE:

You don't have to reinstall all your apps etc. if you need to reinstall Windows. Simply install your OS on its own partition. If Windows needs to be reinstalled for some reason, only the OS partition will be reformatted and the rest of your data (on seperate partitions) will be unharmed.

Ok first things first. I work at Geek Squad, I also did in home service for another company for 3 years. If I respond to a housecall and the motherboard gives a beep code, im going to assume that the computer has never been opened/moved since opening it voids the warranty and most people dont move their computers around, so why would the ram become unseated. unless someone intentionally tampered with the machine, its not possible. why would a tech respond to a call assuming someone tampered with the computer. if the want to test the industry then they should have a real problem and check the quality/thoroughness of the repair, not tamper with something like the ram.

@WRAITHSAMA: Not if you want the applications to work... If you do a clean install of Windows, even on it's own partition you are going to loose the registry.

Prices are ALWAYS higher from a retail store vs. an online store. This is no secret. Real stores have far more employees, and a lot more space to pay rent on then online stores. It's not GeekSquad's responsibility to make sure you know all the different purchasing options.

Diagnosing a computer is kinda of tough and requires experimentation. I've seen a bad mouse cause Windows to blue screen but only when using the middle mouse button. Any problem can cause such a vast array of symptoms it's virtually impossible to diagnose a computer hardware problem without swapping out hardware.

For someone to copy your data without permission is inexcusable.

If you don't agree with the pricing, DON'T ASK FOR HELP from that company.

This story trash. It makes all computer tech look like fools. Besides do you think a real computer tech with real experience is going to be working for Geek Squad for $11/hr? If you want real service from a real tech get ready to shell out the $100/hr cause thats what the big boys charge. Good luck trying to get them help you though. They are usually busy contracting to companies.

Finally, is this brilliant journalist saying that you're better off not getting your computer fixed?