Does it bother you when a non-computer literate person gets screwed by a consultant/repair shop?

[vi edit]

Sorry, but this was some leftover miscelaneous debris from my other post. Have you ever been called in to help somebody out, or to give them a second opinion on what a consultant or a computer repair shop shot them for an estimate?

Just recently my landlord gave me a call to see if I could fix her laptop. She had a 3 year old IBM thinkpad w/ a P-120 and 24 megs of RAM. She could no longer get it to connect to the internet. I went over there and looked at, and the Modem PC-Card seemed to be shot. She never took the laptop anywhere, and it just stayed on her desk all day so I asked her if an external modem would be fine, she said that as long as she could connect to the internet with it, she would be more than willing to pay for whatever she had to to get it running. I told her for about $50 I could get an external modem, have it up and running in about 10 minutes, and she'd be set.

She turned pale at this point. I asked her if $50 was too much. She got this big grin on her face and pulled out a piece of paper. It was an estimate from the shop that she bought the laptop from. They wanted $450 freaking dollars to fix her laptop. When I told her that I could do it for about 15% of what they wanted, she was ecstatic.

That was just one incidence. I won't even go into the number of times that I've talked to people who've paid $50 to take a computer into a computer shop just to have the shop install Dial Up Networking and add a DUN account for their ISP.

Anybody else have any horror stories to share?

 

[GP01fb]

This one time I was at CompUSA and I overheard this customer wanting to install some RAM on his desktop. The sign behind the repair guy said they charge 40 bucks to install RAM or HDs. :Q Shoot, I'll do it for only 30

 

[Shuxclams]

2 Examples for you of the things I have seen;

1) Law office contracts a firm to get a LAN together for them, there are 15-20 users that use Westlaw and WP. The Law office ends up with a Compaq Proliant 5500R dual Xeon, 400 rack mount UPS 70GB DLT drive and a 18x5 RAID array plus the new Deskpro's and printers. They spent about $100,000 for a LAN that needs a single file server and some decent clients PC's for less than half of that.


2) Property management office has major problems on thier network, they get fed up and I do the assesment, they have old Cyrix 200's, P200MMX and 1 P-II 233 all the PC's a mixed and matched geniric boxes and they have co-ax cabling and a 10Bt hub. I come in and tell them they need a server, Proliant 800 w/256MB, RAID 1 18GB, and a single 600MHz+ CPU plus new Deskpros and a 10/100 hub they get the estimate and are happy that it is pretty cheap and also upset that they have to "upgrade so soon", I ask "what do you mean so soon" and they reply with "we just bought all the new equipment last year".


There are crooks out there and its hard to go into a place and gain trust after someone has taken atvantage of them like that.





SHUX

 

[Z_Amon]

My worst times are in the big office superstores. The salesperson almost always tries to sell a system that I know to be a problem, or sells features that the person doesn't need. The worst was always watching somebody get sold on the "value" of a Packard Bell- fortunately, the good salespeople finally started only selling them with a 3 year service contract, which at least partially made up for the fact that they were so problematic.

In response to this, and the amazing number of sales people who would ignore me and instead talk the older patrons I started giving out advice of my own. Since I looked like I knew what I was doing, and was often dressed similarly to the sales people, customers would come ask me about systems. I'd usually give them good advice, at least half o which was to seek somewhere other than a place that doesn't specialize in computers. A few customers later, I'd usually get helped...

As for the $50 to install DUN- that's a call that I don't mind letting the consumer make. In my home town, there are freely available documents that include the instructions on how to set it up, with pictures and clear descriptive text. If the user doesn't choose to read those, even after being told that they exist, then they are paying for the convenience of the setup, and $50 isn't an unfair amount to pay, especially if the tech has to travel, and has to deal with making a housecall. If they're unaware, and nobody tells them, then it starts to become more questionable.

Z.

 

[RSI]

I don't have any horror stories for you, but I know what you're talkin' about, that's for sure!

I see it all the time... It happens at any computer shop, just about. You buy their computer, they charge you ridiculous amounts for installation, software configuration, and SIMPLE repairs.

My school has a 233 server I believe, and their workstations are 633's with 32MB memory, they crawl nearly as slowly as my P83/24MB!

The problem isn't the systems, I guess it must be a crappy server or hub, because 633/32MB running Win98 is plenty fast enough, and they all (most of them) have 100mbps PCI DLink network cards, which are good (I have the same at home).

-RSI

 

[vi edit]

Shux, I'm in the position right now where I'm cleaning up after a consultant took the money and ran.

I "found" some of his invoices from the machines that he bought for work.
Take into consideration that this invoice was from 1996 -

HP Vectra
P-75
8 Megs RAM
840 Meg HD
CDROM
Sound
Keyboard
mouse
17" Monitor
--------------
$3400


Earlier that same year, I bought the following system

Gateway
P-133
32 Megs RAM
1.6 gig HD
Modem
CDROM
Sound card
Keyboard
mouse
speakers
15" trinitron
----------------
$2300

I wondered why my boss was so ecstatic when I bought the Dell Optiplexes w/ 17" trinitrons for only $1200

 

[Shuxclams]

How about this one;
I went to a company who is upgrading their accounting software package to a SQL db solution, I tell them what the requirements for the server and clients are suggested by the software company.
Dual 600MHz+, 25GB free on a RAID 5 after OS installationa and 1GB RAM, the clients should be 600MHz+, 128MB RAM for Win98SE or 256MB for W2K, we will need Veritas for backups and SQL 7 or better. The 1 owner says "get me 1GHz all around, I don't want any crappy stuff" So I spend a day speaking with my rep at Compaq and get a pretty good deal, it'll save the client $800-900 from retail and I get a chunk for profit, I send out the quote and the other owner calls back and says he doesnt want anything, that the stuff he has should work just fine. He is mad and wants to know why Compaq has a server listed for $2300 in their catalog and I am charging so much, I try and explian that those are just a bare box and when you add a RAID card, DAT drive, backup software, memory etc it makes the price higher, he thinks I am lying and doesnt want to purchase anything. Well they have an old Proliant w/ a PPro 200 and 64MB RAM with a 9.1GB RAID 1, he wont get very far with that, I mean they already bought and paid for the Software package, $12,000 and the clients are P class with 64MB RAM running 98SE. I called back and said that I wasnt going to do anything until the 2 owners got together and decided what they were going to do. Still havent heard back from them. Losers.







SHUX

 

[shiner]

Yes, and that's yet another reason I have been thrown out of Best Buy several times. There was this idiot salesman giving some little old man and woman a song and dance about how they needed this superfast PII 450(top of the line at the time) and they needed to load it up with 256mb ram, CD burner, etc...etc... when all the old folks wanted to use it for was to email their son in Idaho. I know...I was also surprised to find out they could get the Internet in Idaho. Anyway, after hearing all of this BS I walked over, told the people that he was feeding them a line of BS and that they didn't need all that power just to email and that a less expensive system would do them just fine. The old guy asked the salesman to get the manager. When the manager came over the old guy told him what the salesman had said, then about what I said and asked who was telling the truth. To my shock the manager said "well I believe our salesman may have overstated your needs" and basically told the guy the same thing I did. At that point the old guy told me and the manage "thanks" and walked off saying that he was going across the street to CompUSA and buy a cheaper computer. No sooner had he walked off than the manager asked me to leave the store. When I refused we had yet another confrontation that led to me being "banned for life" from Best Buy.

For details on my banning for life see this thread.

 

[BoberFett]

What annoys me is that the person that got screwed knows I'm into computers, and should know that I'm willing to help, but went to the shop anyway. It serves 'em right for telling me what they think of my knowledge and advice.

 

[Passions]

Doesnt only happen in computers, how about $10 for 2 Tyenol? Muahahahahahaha....

 

[Howard]

Only in America. tm


Man, don't get me worked up on this. I get real pissed just from, get this, :

- man walks in

Man: Hi. My wife and I have finally decided to buy a computer.
Saleslady: Sure. You have a choice of either Pentium III, or AMD.

 

[visgf]

In defense of hospital pharmacies, the reason it costs so much for some drugs is really just extra thrown in to cover other hospital costs. They would rather charge you extra for some aspirin than put a pharmacy consultation fee on your bill. It's much cleaner that way. I'm only saying that because those expensive aspirins go towards my paycheck every month.

 

[apoppin]

<<Does it bother you when a non-(fill-in the blank) literate person gets screwed by a consultant/repair shop?>

Yes and No.

No one is expert in every field. Millions of people every day get screwed by auto-repair shops, lawyers, dentists and doctors, repairmen, plumbers, carpenters . . . well, you get the picture.

It pays to be educated on our needs and comparison shop. Ask around for advice and references from knowledgeable friends and acquaintences. This expenditure of our time will generally pay off in finding honest help.

The old addage from thousands of years ago is still true: &quot;caveat emptor&quot; (let the buyer beware).

 

[Daniel]

I replaced a outsourced consultant in the place I'm at now. He charged $100 a hour, plus mileage and whatever
else he choose to tack on. I came in and found out one of the users called him a week before to come in and plug in their speakers, 1 hour worth of time and mileage back and forth to stick the speaker plug in, ugh. Now this guy calls me about once every few weeks to see if I need any of his help, umm no thanks.