Computer store charges

[JonJ678]

People go into computer stores and say things which aren't even remotely true. Replacing a component on the strength of what a customer said would be thoroughly foolhardy, if the hard drive isn't faulty then something else is, and replacing the drive wont help anyone.

A new drive is under £50 sure, and reinstalling windows doesn't take many man-hours. Carefully backing up their data, scanning it to reduce the chances of preserving viruses, putting it all back in the right places and setting it up so it looks much like it used to does take time. Changing the hard drive over can take anywhere from 30 seconds to 20 minutes depending on the laptop, and it's not unreasonable to want to take the drive out to run diagnostics on it.

£20 minimum charge sounds very cheap to me. You're going to look a right fool if the drive itself turns out to be fine, or if there are other significant problems with the laptop, and you've told him you can definitely fix it with no problems for the price of a new drive.

 

[JBuk]

Of course he didn't expect it to be done for free. Personally though I believe they are over charging him because they think they can get away with it.

It wouldn't even take 5 minutes of their time to run a diagnostic even if they did do what they claim. These are like solicitors charges.

Thanks for your responses guys

There is probably a minimum charge ,so even if it takes 1 minute to do the work he will have to pay it if he has signed for it

this is not an overcharge, it's a common business practice

 

[Kohaashi]

£20 minimum charge sounds very cheap to me. You're going to look a right fool if the drive itself turns out to be fine, or if there are other significant problems with the laptop, and you've told him you can definitely fix it with no problems for the price of a new drive.

Well they've told him what he already thought, that it is the HDD. He didnt ask them to check; he had agreed for it to be replaced, which is why they had previously told him £150.00, which is why i told him not to pay them to replace it.
I don't work in IT repair anymore but I'm pretty confident I could do what they can do from personal experience alone. Thanks for the concern though.

That's meant genuinely, not sarcasticly.

 

[Blackhawk47]

There is probably a minimum charge ,so even if it takes 1 minute to do the work he will have to pay it if he has signed for it

this is not an overcharge, it's a common business practice

Yep, they charge it to cover their time looking at it and spending time dealing with it. It really is that simple. If they didn't charge anything then all the that time would be wasted for nothing.

Well they've told him what he already thought, that it is the HDD. He didnt ask them to check; he had agreed for it to be replaced, which is why they had previously told him £150.00, which is why i told him not to pay them to replace it.
I don't work in IT repair anymore but I'm pretty confident I could do what they can do from personal experience alone. Thanks for the concern though.

That's meant genuinely, not sarcasticly.

Thats the thing though, as someone who has worked in a small computer shop. You have to take what a customer says with a pinch of salt...I remember people dropping laptops in saying that "oh I've got a virus' blah blah when it turns out the power supply has died or some other component is playing up or they deleted some files etc.

Did you not offer to look at it for him before he took to the shop?

 

[Raumarik]

We're getting one side of the story here, sounds like they're replacing the drive, installing an OS and obviously have time and possibly a license to cover if your mate didn't have a valid Windows license.

I don't see why he took it to a shop but if you do then you should expect to pay this, they have a lot of overheads to cover and I don't see why they can't charge for their time as well as parts, lets face it every trade does it and he did sign the agreement.

 

[Andy]

Did he ask for the disk to be checked or replaced?

 

[Electronic Dave]

They are a business pure and simple and that £25 charge is to be expected for a check...personally I wouldn't charge anything for checking / fault finding, but they are a business at the end of the day. You can't expect to have a laptop drive changed for £25 by a business.

I had a laptop given to me by a friend the other day. After several tests and a Linux boot CD with multiple hd0/partition errors, I concluded that the hard drive is faulty (no boot up after POST). I checked BIOS, changed drives with a spare HDD and did a dummy Windows install - all working fine.

I quoted £50 for the above job with a replacement second hand hard drive, Windows XP fresh install, drivers, updates and additional software, plus screen clean and anti-bac wipe - it stinks so much of smoke that is must be having a crafty fag when I'm not looking!

Replacing a laptop hard drive and installing Windows isn't a hard task, but it can be time consuming if your a perfectionist like myself.

 

[HangTime]

they are charging him £25 for a diagnostic check, which simply means they've ran a disc-check app and left it for a couple of hours, at most!

I doubt they've even turned the thing on

Which is it!

I'd say £25 for a diagnostic check is reasonable if he's just walked in off the street, ultimately businesses will charge for their time one way or another. A local business you frequent regularly, maybe they might waive the charge depending on how much work is involved.

 

[gambitt]

If I took my car to a garage and asked them to change my tyres but they balanced my wheels instead, then they would not be getting any money no matter what I signed.

 

[Ekim]

If I took my car to a garage and asked them to change my tyres but they balanced my wheels instead, then they would not be getting any money no matter what I signed.

Sure but if you took your car in and you told them you thought there was something wrong with the engine, you wouldn't hold it against them if they double checked what was wrong first?

 

[AJK]

If I took my car to a garage and asked them to change my tyres but they balanced my wheels instead, then they would not be getting any money no matter what I signed.

Right. And similarly, if the laptop had been taken in with a faulty hard drive, and had the keyboard replaced, you'd be justifiably annoyed. Not a valid comparison really (edit: see Ekim's post).

 

[gambitt]

Sure but if you took your car in and you told them you thought there was something wrong with the engine, you wouldn't hold it against them if they double checked what was wrong first?

My mates HDD recently failed on his laptop so he took it local computer store to have it replaced. They haven't replaced the drive.

 

[JBuk]

Sure but if you took your car in and you told them you thought there was something wrong with the engine, you wouldn't hold it against them if they double checked what was wrong first?

My mates HDD recently failed on his laptop so he took it local computer store to have it replaced. They haven't replaced the drive.

He took the laptop to them to be fixed which is when they asked for the drivers cd. He left the laptop with them and was returning with the drivers cd a few days later

.

 

[Ekim]

Sure but if you took your car in and you told them you thought there was something wrong with the engine, you wouldn't hold it against them if they double checked what was wrong first?

My mates HDD recently failed on his laptop so he took it local computer store to have it replaced. They haven't replaced the drive.

People go into computer stores and say things which aren't even remotely true. Replacing a component on the strength of what a customer said would be thoroughly foolhardy, if the hard drive isn't faulty then something else is, and replacing the drive wont help anyone.

 

[v0n]

I grew up in times when businesses had "no fix, no fee" mentality. I was surprised when repair shops started charging "diagnostics" or "documentation" fees, and very shortly they effectively cut the branch they were sitting on. Because of those "diagnostic" charges or "minimum service fees" it was pointless to fix your kettles, irons and slow cookers as after the "initial fees" and "parts + 25% + delivery charges" people quickly discovered it was safer bet to splash few tenners more and buy new item. After small item repairers, it was time for large items repairers to fall down from the stupid tree. And shortly there were no shops to repair our sawing machines, fridges or washers and dryers.

This bizarre business model then moved on to electronics. Suddenly to repair your TV set you had to pay "call out fee" and "documentation retrieval fee". Shops then often added "minimum one hour" fee. no one expected them to drive around for free, but people soon discovered that if you had to pay £80-100 minimum to have your old Fergusson VCR or Sony TV checked out, before the "technician" even opened a single panel and told you how much it will cost to repair, you could as well just go and buy Bush VCR from argos or Sanyo telly from Asda.

And here were are 20 years later, talking about laptops being disposable goods, where it doesn't strike anyone as strange for repair shop to charge for doing ef all, and quoting close to £200 for HDD replacement, "installation" and "diagnostics". They are business and that's what businesses do - charge for their services. That might be true, but its once again doing business stupid way. Because why would you spend £200 repairing one component in a laptop when new ones, with warranty can be had for just £80 more? And if you think about it - it's stupid enough that we don't fix our irons, fridges and TVs, but discarding laptops just because business model is "rob or die", that is just taking a wee.

So, I understand that we all got used to the ninenties "PC business worth its weight in gold" mentality, but it is over. Repairing and building PCs isn't unique skill. And shouldn't attract premium. So my vote is that £20 for no services rendered is silly, unrealistic and will eventually damage this industry. Hard drive for many old laptops will costs about that much.

 

[gambitt]

He took the laptop to them to be fixed which is when they asked for the drivers cd. He left the laptop with them and was returning with the drivers cd a few days later

So they knew he was bringing the drivers cd because they were going to do a fresh windows install.

 

[JBuk]

People go into computer stores and say things which aren't even remotely true. Replacing a component on the strength of what a customer said would be thoroughly foolhardy, if the hard drive isn't faulty then something else is, and replacing the drive wont help anyone.
.

True, but if you ask for specific work to be carried out then only that work should be done unless the customer is contacted and agrees.

 

[Raumarik]

True, but if you ask for specific work to be carried out then only that work should be done unless the customer is contacted and agrees.

Not if it states in the agreement he signed that they'll test components before blindly replacing them, it's not as if he said he wanted it upgraded - he wanted it fixed.

You are getting a second hand and one sided story here after all.

 

[JonJ678]

I don't work in IT repair anymore but I'm pretty confident I could do what they can do from personal experience alone. Thanks for the concern though.

That's meant genuinely, not sarcasticly.

No offense taken, I do get where you're coming from here. There are some things that a shop can do which an individual generally cannot (such as reballing a gpu) and some things which are best done by the owner (such as backup & reinstall). Take your friends laptop as an example, if he thinks the hard drive is dead it probably is. Though a knackered windows install will show most of the same symptoms. If it's died, why? Was it dropped while running, in which case the motherboard may be cracked. Or did it overheat, in which case the gpu is suspect and the fan may have failed.

Reinstalling windows is trivial, as is testing and replacing a hard drive if need be. Replacing a fan can be vexing, resoldering a gpu is beyond my skills and fixing a cracked motherboard is probably beyond anyones skills. Merely spotting a cracked board can be difficult without specialised equipment or ridiculous amounts of experience.

So it may be a trivial fix, but it may not be. £150 does seem excessive for a reinstall & new hard drive, but as mentioned earlier if it includes a legal windows license it's pretty good.

So my vote is that £20 for no services rendered is silly, unrealistic and will eventually damage this industry. Hard drive for many old laptops will costs about that much.

Broadly speaking I would agree with you, except that I think the laptop repair industry is on its way out regardless. The cost of replacing them is becoming so negligible relative to the man hours & cost of parts required to repair them that it's often a better idea to buy a new one with a decent warranty instead.

True, but if you ask for specific work to be carried out then only that work should be done unless the customer is contacted and agrees.

This is the reason why diagnostic charges exist. If the customer comes in and says "it's broken, how much to fix it?" then you're going to have to spend some time working out what's wrong. If you do that for free then you're giving away a lot of man hours. If someone comes in and says "my hard drive has failed, how much for a new one?" then you can quote immediately, but you're still going to have to check that he's right and that takes time.

You cannot contact the customer to ask whether you should proceed before knowing exactly (or near as) what must be done to repair the device, and you can't know that without spending time on it. Hence diagnostic fees.

 

[The Halk]

I suspect IT repair has gone to the dogs for no reason other than the comparitive cheapness of parts.

When I got my first IBM compatible PC I think it cost about a grand. That was a very long time ago.

Now you can get something suitable for internet, email and facebook etc for less than £400, with an OS. Yet incomes and disposable incomes have soared.