David Lock

Mods – this is more general stuff than specifically computer related.

So what do you reckon?

My daughter came back from college with her laptop refusing to cooperate, freezing up as soon as she turned it on. I don’t know any computer whiz kids so I found a guy in my local paper who said he fixed computers and he came over. I explained the problem and he got going. Nice guy but slow. At the end of the day he said it was OK, charged me £160 and went home. It wasn’t, it was still freezing up. I took it around to his house, left it with him, and collected it when he said it was OK. It wasn’t so I called him again and he came around, fiddled about and then said he couldn’t do anymore and suggested I took it somewhere else to get it sorted. He recommended a place in Crawley so I took it there. They fixed it and charged me £70.

I wrote to the guy and said I want a full refund of the £160 he charged because he didn’t do the job. No reply yet. I don’t want to phone him as it’s not my style so I have written again (recorded) saying I will take this further. My question is whether I am being fair about this. His ad didn’t have a No fix – No Fee clause so should I pay for the time he spent? Also what further action could I take? Is this a trading standards thing or is it small claims court stuff and whose side would they take? Comments invited. Bloody computers! David

NotoriousREV

It's going to depend on what he billed you for. If he's billed for his time he could argue that you got what you paid for, if he billed you for "fixing the laptop" then he's obviously failed. Morally, he owes you a refund, IMHO.

OllyK

Not sure to be honest. What "exactly" does his advert say. If he is making no guarantees and is charging an hourly rate, then he has put the hours in, whether or not he achieved an end result you are happy with.

Having said that, his price seems steep to me anyway. Did he change any parts in the PC or was he just messing with config / doing a re-install?

David Lock

His ad says

"COMPUTER problems? For experienced friendly and local help at home and office call Trevor on......."

I asked on the phone what he charged which was £30 hour although he actually charged £25 hour as I think he was a bit embarrassed as to how long he took.

No parts involved, just trying to get bugs out of software and he did get some out. However the firm that did fix it finally said they found 159 faults!

He didn't give me a bill, just a receipt for £160.

dl

OllyK

As mentioned, morally I think he owes you at least some cash back. Legally however, I suspect you may have a harder time, but what do I know?

Kevadair

Dont know where you stand legally but uve been shafted twice!!

Ure problem sounds software related with no parts needed. A simple restore back to factory settings would have no doubt resolved ure '159' faults and a heap of money.

Best of luck getting your £160 back from a so called pc specialist

Stueyb

Did you get an invoice or was it cash on the hip, because no receipt = no real proof. PS Im in the wrong game. £30 per hour is more than I make as a professional systems administrator !

Reality

4 hours and no fix - would be OK if your mate was trying to fix it - but for a "specialist" that's hopeless.


Unfortunately I doubt you'll have any legal come back - suggest you try to appeal to his morals - failing that you could threaten him with violence - Geeks don't tend to like big angry blokes (assumes you're big and can do Angry or know someone that is/can ).

David Lock

Yes I'm big but much much good with the Angry aspect

Yes I have a written receipt

More like 6 hours to try and fix

Oh and salt in the wound is that it needed a new battery - £155 !!!!!

Incidentally I asked the firm who finally fixed it if it had been a difficult job. On the scale "Easy to Hard" they rated it moderately difficult. dl

Stueyb

Prolly spent the money and bought a tank of fuel for his scooby

David Lock

Ferrari more like.......

bigsinky

i charge £30 an hour for computer consultancy including repairs. if i dont solve a problem (i usually know within the first 15 minutes if something is beyond me) i only ask for my travelling expenses.

David Lock

Don't live in Sussex do you?

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Sounds like they used some sort of registry cleaner on the computer.

I've fixed a fair few machines in my time, but noting 100+ faults by hand while I am fixing the machine is just not going to happen. Finding and resloving that many faults by hand would take weeks. Its hard enough to fix a machine when there are only 2 or 3 faults going on at the same time.

They have probably run something like CCleaner (http://www.ccleaner.com/update/?v=1.23.160&l=1033). Although the software that they have used could have been paid for.

MikeCardiff

iTrader: (2)

Bloke sounds like a bit of a muppet - he could have backed up all personal files and done a clean install within a couple of hours, and there would have been no faults ( at least until your daughter got back on the internet and started opening 'amusing' attachments sent by her dopey mates ).

Regardless of what his advert stated, you employed and paid him on the understanding he would fix the laptop - which he didnt do, therefore he owes you a full refund.

If you took your car to a garage and asked them to fix a problem and they said 'yes we can do that it'll be £200', and they couldnt, would you pay them for their labour they had used while they were trying to ? You dont have to pay someone for them to learn they arent capable of doing what they say they can - thats their loss !

jjones

"159" faults.

seems like they ran adaware or similar and charged you for their "expertise".

David Lock

That's sort of my thinking too Mike. And I even thought of using the car example in my first post.

Incidentally I phoned Trading Standards and they said that at the very least he owed me the final repair cost, £70, which I paid. They were less sure on the £160 which I think I wasted as they said it could be argued that he had contributed to the repair - an argument which I don't buy but they are the experts, I'm not!

I do remind my kids about attachments and all things viral but in one ear and out the other (but if she goes thro the uni system they have some decent firewalls and anti-virus stuff so I am told). dl

lordlucan

Blimey....thats daylight

Im an MCSE, MCP, and MCDST (Microsoft qualifications) and I would have charged you a beer David ! Guess thats why im not a millionaire !!

IMHO the easiest and quickest route is to back up data and settings, XP even has a nice wizard for this ! Then rebuild machine fresh, tops 2 hours although theres not as much cash involved in this option....

If you get stuck again David let me know, im in T Wells not too far from you.

Check ebay for the battery.

Rgds
Jason

David Lock

Thanks Jason, I would be more than happy to whizz over to Royal Tonbridge if/when it all goes **** up again david

rik1471

Sounds like they've just run ad-aware or spybot. I'm in the wrong business

(just noticed post above stating similar... oops.)

The Zohan

Nice one, thanks for that link !

bennyboy

Its Royal tUnbridge

David Lock

Wundered about that

It's btw

Oh and T not t

turboman786

£160 sounds like a real rip off......Forget the niceties, get the boys down and go kick the crap out of him!

:-)

David Lock

LOL - I was wondering when the heavies would move into this thread

lordlucan

Royal Tunbridge Wells !!!

MattN

It's always difficult to know what is fair. After all he could have fixed some major problems that would have cost £200 at the other place, and the final issues he could not resolve.

I agree you at least due a refund of part of the sum as he claimed to have fixed it but hadn't.

Place an ad next to his and state PC repairs, cheaper than Trevor!

David Lock

Yeah then I would take them in, get 'em fixed in Crawley for 70 quid and then charge the client £160

Markus

David,
Does seem a tad excessive, would like to know exactly what Trevor, a) found, b) could fix, and c) could not fix. Then I'd also like to know what the other company did.

As others have said, backup, reformat, reinstall OS and restore backup would not have taken too long, and probably would have resolve most, if not all the issues, unless they were hardware based issues, rather than software.
I've personally found the above to be the quickest way to sort things out, as you can spend a fair amount of time trying to track things down. It's one of the reasons I dislike PC support, and why I refuse to do it if I can (when it's family, it's bit hard to tell them to fnuck orf )

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

A full reinstall often seems easy, but when I have done that for people they soon realise that there is a little more to it

Even if you use a slipstream install of XP SP2, just think of all the time it takes to update.
Then install Av software and update
Then antispyware, and update
Then a firewall and update, and configure and train
Then the new versions of MSN and Windows Media player
Then office and update
The Java
And flash
and realplayer
and quicktime
and
and
and
and setup and reconfigure their email using the wrong passwords that they have supplied

The list just goes on