PC world wanted £249.99 just to look at my laptop, I repaired it for.....

culpepper

Good work OP.
We have two mended lappys at our house which only needed the power connector putting back.
One place (not PCW)quoted £130 which I think is about the price of the same motherboard new, so I imagine PCW looks at the laptop,looks up the cost of a replacement motherboard and that is more or less what they quote as the repair cost.

JasX

no.1swimmum wrote: »

and PC world wanted £249.99 just to look at it - no parts etc included.

also worth pointing out once you start hitting the £300 make you can quite comfortably buy a brand new fairly up to date laptop for the same money....

firbyfred wrote: »

i found a website that I could download various laptop's step by step manuals, the ebook cost about £2.80 to download,

Dollardog wrote: »

Would you mind telling me the name of the website please?

you two, if you hunt around and google "service manual" plus your laptop's name or model number you can usually find them available free, especially if its a major brand. yes the first few sites google comes up with will try to charge but not all will, and/or someone will have posted it somewhere.

jimbms

I never use PC World, I prefer going to computer stores.

nomoneytoday

It's a fixed price fix. Sometimes it will be cheaper to DIY, other times the parts and labour will cost them more

Redman30

aliEnRIK wrote: »

PCWorld absolutely LOVE to tell people they need a new motherboard when theres nothing actually wrong with it. They must make a [STRIKE]fraudulent[/STRIKE] killing on it

PC World actually damaged the motherboard in my 1st PC when I foolishly let the 'experts' 'install' some extra RAM for me for a fee of course. (like 10 years ago or something, doesn't sound like much has changed).

They took it out the back, spent a while messing around. I took it home and it BSOD'd immediately. I took it back. They blamed me. I showed the the recipt for the work, and asked them to remove the RAM while I watched. As it came out you could see all the pin connectors bent and twisted where this muppet had forced the RAM in and knacked my machine.

Cue me being without my machine for a week while they sorted out the damn thing. At least I got the RAM free, but if I rceall correctly I had to go back again cos they had'nt put some software on it...

So I did it myself from then on.

aliEnRIK

Sounds about right. The usual story is they claim its the motherboard and just replace it anyways when theres nothing actually wrong with it

plainsie

Our Laptop (Fujitsu) which cost £800 broke one month after warranty was finished and PC World quoted a few hundred to fix. So went to a small independant pc store and the bloke said it was the hard drive that was broken and we could probably fix it ourselves which hubby did. Then couple years later Iomega hard drive was causing problems and we went there again just to ask and they said it's no good, chuck it and buy a new one. Went home checked on net and found out how to fix it and did it. Can't believe how bad they are in PC World. Incredible.

HoofeHearted

Last year a friend brought round his brother's laptop and asked me if it could be repaired.

It was a Compaq Presario V6000. He had bought it from PCW 13 months ago and was just out of warranty. PCW wanted the usual ~£230 to repair it.

PCW were either totally ignorant (quite possible) or chose to ignore the knowledge on this model in order to make quick money.

After a little research, I found that this was a known issue with this model and HP/Compaq were offering free pickup/repair/return on them under an extended warranty. [Fan not working enough, so resulting in mobo frying].

One happy chap and PCW did not get the repair fee or the money for a new laptop that the owner was thinking of buying.:j

ampersand

Just want to go back to o.p. and offer lavish praise - I know you will be feeling so good about having achieved this, so very well done. Congratulations!