This can't be right?

timbim_2

Sounds like an independant shop. If it is, threaten to never return!

BritBrat

Who was it?

Not PC world was it?

Even I could do a better job of it than that and I have no PC/IT qualifications but I knew more on some things than the IT department where I used to work.

aliEnRIK

BritBrat wrote: »

Who was it?

Not PC world was it?

Even I could do a better job of it than that and I have no PC/IT qualifications but I knew more on some things than the IT department where I used to work.

In my personal experience with PC World they are THE most useless bunch of ***** ive ever dealt with! Im not suprised at ALL by your comment mate

jiblets1

No it was a local company, genie computers. And to be honest I was really surprised, as my parents have used them a few times, as they like the personal touch of a local company that will visit the house if neccesary. I think, tbh, that my parent's laptop is past it's best and will need replacing. They won't be buying from this company now.

[Deleted User]

What reason did they give to explain why they did what they did?

superscaper

Mozkowitz wrote: »

You do realize how many man hours it would take to note down, search for, and reinstall every program and setting you previously had on your old set up. Also the entire point is maintenance is to get rid of the majority of useless junk slowing down the computer, most of which will be garbage your parents have picked up by installing things willy nilly. The easiest and most effective way to do this is save all important data and do a clean sweep. Would your parents have known how to do this? I imagine not, therefore they would be charged for someone to do it for them.

Im curious to know what you were expecting actually. You will always be charged even if they take a look to see what the problem is, what you think they just clock on and off between going through the computer, finding the problems and fixing them? They might spend an hour looking for a problem and 10 seconds fixing it or 10 seconds finding a problem and a hour fixing it, its all circumstantial and its still on their time.

Any decent competent company would have made it clear and forewarned the customer BEFORE accepting their computer to work on. The worst computer company I've ever had the misfortune to use still ensured that we'd backed up our data and confirmed verbally first that it was ok to wipe the drive. And that's a company that has the worst customer service I've ever used!

Not making a customer aware of deliberate loss of data as far as I can see makes them liable for the consequences of those actions. If it costs them far more than they charged in order to recover/reinstall the lost programs etc then that's their own fault for their poor customer relations and procedures.

jiblets1

Mozkowitz wrote: »

You do realize how many man hours it would take to note down, search for, and reinstall every program and setting you previously had on your old set up. Also the entire point is maintenance is to get rid of the majority of useless junk slowing down the computer, most of which will be garbage your parents have picked up by installing things willy nilly. The easiest and most effective way to do this is save all important data and do a clean sweep. Would your parents have known how to do this? I imagine not, therefore they would be charged for someone to do it for them.

Im curious to know what you were expecting actually. You will always be charged even if they take a look to see what the problem is, what you think they just clock on and off between going through the computer, finding the problems and fixing them? They might spend an hour looking for a problem and 10 seconds fixing it or 10 seconds finding a problem and a hour fixing it, its all circumstantial and its still on their time.

As stated by other posters, the problem is that my parents asked for somthing to be done to speed up their computer, and were not informed that this would be done by wiping all their programmes. Almost all programmes will need to be re-installed by my parents (taking them many man hours actually), as they had already removed all obviously useless programmes from their hard drive themselves, negating the "speeding up" that had been achieved.

My parents did not know what to expect from the company, surely the company are the experts, therefore it should be them informing my parents what will happen. That is what they are paid for.

aliEnRIK

Personally, id be mad as hell and DEMAND a refund. Thats just ridiculous.......

superscaper

loaner wrote: »

Unfortunately, this type of behaviour is common in the pc industry, time constraints, laziness, cheap prices, are no excuse, it is just unprofessional. If you give a disk to another person/manufacturer/IT dept, I would always assume the worst, and backup (image) beforehand. Send it off to a manufacturer, and you might not even get the same disk back.

The irony is that the people who actually would think to back up and know how to are far more likely to be the people who'd fix their own systems and computers and NOT use a computer/pc repair company etc. And conversely the the vast majority of a pc repair company's customer base will be those who are not that techie and need to have their hand held through procedures and things many of us take for granted to be explained to them.

So the onus is on the computer company to make the customer aware rather than the onus being on the customer to already know. The reason I wrote the Backing Up sticky was precisely because so many people were coming on here to find out how to back up and what backing up was. And that's people who'd at least heard of backing up and had a vague idea of the concept. There's still plenty of people for whom backing up wouldn't even cross their minds even as a concept and that's something I'm aware of simply from posting on this forum, so a company who deals with pc customers day to day, face to face should be more aware of that fact than I am and so should have no excuse really to not inform the customer of backing up/drive wiping etc.