Oh, no, they quite often do whatever they want and bill you for it.

"I'm here for antivirus setup."

6 days later

"Here's your formatted hard drive with Windows 7 64 bit installed alongside your new antivirus."

"I... my files... and... 7? I had XP."

"That'll be $650."


Related: First time I've seen Barrel admit he didn't know shit about a topic.

Viruses and malware are available with that price and ease of use, too. Stupid people will, more often than not, find those first.

Yeah, going to the Geeksquad or to tech stores in general to get your computer fixed will generally leave a big hole in the ass of your jeans where your wallet was. But for the most part, from what I've seen of the people walking into the shop my friend Dave owns, they deserve to be paying the stupid tax. I can guarantee you, most of these people shouldn't own a computer, much less be using it for something as sophisticated *stifles laughter* as frolicking on the internet (what do you mean there were viruses in that link that I clicked?).

Most of them cannot even seem to grasp the idea that you should pull your tower open and take a can of air to it once in a while to help prevent overheating and degradation of the parts from all the dust.

And god forbid you have to order a replacement part. Dear mother of all that's holy, if they miss one day (despite the fact they broke/drenched the machine a week ago) of this upcoming online seminar, the world's gonna end, can't you speed up the delivery any faster? What? It costs extra for express/overnight delivery? Nevermind.

I feel your pain, man, but I can offer no more comfort than that. The worst is yet to come. On a related note, are you required to wear a uniform, or can you show up to work with a PEBKAC T-Shirt on?

We really try to do as few unnecessary things as possible, in fact the only times I see them say they have to do a full wipe of the system and reinstall the OS is when the system files are so hopelessly corrupt that not even their rescue discs can do anything about it.

The antivirus they run combines definitions from Pandascan, McAfee, Norton, Kaspersky and Webroots into one executable so rarely do they have to wipe a system on account of a virus. The $200 fee is basically "find the problem and fix it". If we need a part we usually have it by the next day or so after the customer is notified. They've improved that part of the process a lot. The only problem I have with it is we are legally bound not to use Malwarebytes because of it's non-commercial use clause.

[Edit] The part I hate most about this job is how we give people ready-to-use systems with antiviruses pre-installed, they still get a virus after a month or two of use, and I have to explain how no antivirus is 100% effective.

Huh? I probably know more then Bob does on computers because my schooling and career is with computers so I don't really get what you're getting at with this?

You find his service useless and expensive becuase you don't need it. If you do not have the same level of expertise with, for example cars, then a mechanic is something you're willing to put up with.

I see where Smarty's point is, but-

Bob isn't USING any of that expertise. He's running a DVD with pre-made files on it. He's not fixing anything, he's just going "okay, something is broken." and mailing it to the proper repair center. He doesn't get to do shit.

Well...

I mean I get to do some shit. I'm basically a help desk most of the day, but there does come the occasional hard drive swap, RAM upgrade or PCI hardware installation. Things we need to send out to Kentucky are broken LCDs, any motherboard/cpu replacements, and power supply replacements.

And essentially everything for a laptop except for hard drives or RAM.

I did what now? That doesn't sound like me.

Also I don't think the mechanic analogy is apt because even if you know how to fix a car you can't do it without a whole set of expensive tools and the repair can be physically dangerous.
This is not the case for computer problems.
Fixing a computer is a knowledge problem.
Fixing a car is both a knowledge and equipment problem.
Totally differents.

Let me gather myself before telling you guys this story.

:crying:

:(

Okay so...

Today a woman comes in with her brand new Mario Kart for the Wii that she had purchased just a couple days ago. Upon closer inspection it appeared the system had "ringed" the disc either by something mechanical inside the Wii being out of position or outside vibrations. A coworker began asking her questions to see if he could discern what had brought the ring on. After some light interrogation we discover she has children, but they were not at fault as they hadn't used the system since she bought it.

She then told us that she had been having problems with the game since the day she purchased it. She said the Karts wouldn't go anywhere when she tried to drive them. We asked her what she used to play it. She said the wheel accessory. We asked if she placed the controller inside the wheel before using it, she said it wouldn't fit in the slot.

...

I told her that it should, but she kept repeating that the controller just would not fit comfortably inside the wheel. Just to clarify that we were on the same page, I brought her back to the video game department and pointed at the controller. I asked, "that's the controller you have?" She said, "no, that one." She pointed at a different box.

The Nintendo Wii box.

She had been using the Wii itself. As a controller. Waving it around, shaking it, trying to steer with it. After politely correcting her usage technique, I walked back to customer service and asked them to please give this woman a replacement.

*gives Bob a bro hug* There there my friend, there there.