Anyone heard of PC Doctor?

donmega85

Has anyone heard of PC Doctor Ltd? (PCDoctorLtd.co.uk)

I've been thinking of doing some residential/small business IT work anyway, but am struggling to get my name out there other than to direct friends and family who I would never charge.

I was browsing a job site (I think it was cvlibrary) the other day and PC Doctor offered 2 'positions'. One was a permanant kind of role where you drive around fixing people's PCs - 45 hours a week Monday and some Saturdays - salary was very varied for this one job (17k - 32k...hmmmm) But it also had an ad hoc, 'work as much as you want/need' for £20 an hour?

Has anyone ever done work through them? I don't see £20 p/h being too much (ie too good to be true), as very often people pay £50 p/h for their PC to be repaired.

Thanks in advance

N1mr0d

Hi I have not heard of PC Doctor as such but my partner is a gardener an picks up all the clients that she can handle by advertising in parish magazines. These are usually quite cheap. I also put together an A5 flyer for her and had this printed by a firm in Wales. 500 full colour cost just £24 delivered then it was off to get some exercise dropping them through letterboxes.

davester

Did a search of company no. They do exist at that address, but I can't find that they are a member of the FSB.

Tricky76

I havent heard of PC doctor. Are you looking to be employed? I think you should keep trying to have a go yourself. Do you have a website to promote your buisness?

paulwf

You can check all their customer invoices here:

http://forum.pcdoctorltd.co.uk/

That's a massive confidentiality breach, possible data protection breach, and really poor form for a company that should be expert at IT.

paulwf

I know business is about making money and overheads have to be considered etc etc but I just couldn't charge someone nearly £100 to say call BT it's a line problem or again nearly £100 to say you need to change the battery in the wireless keyboard that's why it's not working.

I've nothing against professionals earning a living doing skilled IT maintenance but I like to do the basics for my less tech savvy neighbours for free, sorry but I just couldn't charge them £70 to roll back to an earlier restore point or £50 for basic email tuition.

Edit: there's also quite a few instances of them not being able to fix the problem and advising a new laptop and charging £75 for that advice!!!

davester

The FSB informed me today that due to their privicy terms they cannot say if a company is a member if they have chosen not to be on the directory. To me the FSB is a badge of honour in that it shows you have some standard level of service. To then say I want to not be in the members directory seems plan silly.

lincroft1710

davester wrote: »

The FSB informed me today that due to their privicy terms they cannot say if a company is a member if they have chosen not to be on the directory. To me the FSB is a badge of honour in that it shows you have some standard level of service. To then say I want to not be in the members directory seems plan silly.

So if you find a business who claims to be a member of FSB but may in fact not be, FSB won't tell you if they are or not. !!!!!!!

davester

lincroft1710 wrote: »

So if you find a business who claims to be a member of FSB but may in fact not be, FSB won't tell you if they are or not. !!!!!!!

Yep pretty much it. So the FSB badge to a consumers point of view is worthless unless the company actually allows them to be on the directory.

donmega85

lincroft1710 wrote: »

So if you find a business who claims to be a member of FSB but may in fact not be, FSB won't tell you if they are or not. !!!!!!!

Well Said... Pretty pointless if it can't be verified IMO...

Paulwf - I see what you are saying from their invoices that they have posted - whether they are legit or not. Yes I would feel like I was stealing from people if I was doing some of the things they are charging for, like this:

---

Start 16:35 - 16:55
1 hr @ 55
Tot £64.63 online DC

Skype issue no mic
no issue found when arrived on site
tested mic settings all okay

---

What a load of c*** £64 to be told nothing's wrong?!

Anyway, my point was every man and his dog claim to be 'IT experts' nowadays, so it's purely a numbers game, rather than your capability, so I was wondering if PC Doctor could simply act as a middleman for the time being. But nah, I have morals (somewhere!)

I'm a qualified server/infrastructure engineer, with a number of projects drawing to a close, so I can see a lot of free time coming up. I can't really help businesses of any size due to my full time job, but have got the thumbs up to do residential stuff.

Thanks for your input folks! It seems money can be made with them, but only if you play by their rules...

davester

The FSB questioning is because The FSB cannot confirm or deny you are a member due to their privacy policy. As the company is not in the FSB members directory, there is no way a member of the public can confirm you are a member or not. Therefore the use of the logo on your site is meaningless.

If a scammer can put the FSB logo on their site and noone can check they are really a member by asking the FSB then how can the public trust a legit trader who opted out of the directory over a scammer in terms of which trader to use?

I would have thought that a FSB logo and what it represents, should be something a legit trader would be proud to say they have achieved and strived for. And being on the members public directory would be a positive reflection and conformation to a potential customer they wouldn't be ripped off, conned etc.

Your customer testimonials on your website and for any website for that matter true or not cannot really sensibly taken with any pinch of salt, due to the number of fakers like recently convicted of fraud ebay merchant that was faking testimonials and also bidding on his own stuff to raise the sale price. I am not suggesting you are a scammer or con man, but you have to appreciate and I'm sure heard in your circle of contacts of flybynights that have dented your industries reputation.

I looked at your website and saw your company number which I checked and did point out thatyou existed, I then checked with the FSB directory, where you couldn't be found, so emailed the FSB to ask, only to get the "due to own privacy policy we cannot confirm or deny". So if the FSB won't tell me then your logo would be meaningless. That is all I said, people commented on that.

The public are getting more and more aware of scammers and their tricks, posting logos of organisations real or made up is a common practise. So it falls on the legitament traders to beable to prove themselves. Which might mean you ask the FSB to put you on the members directory. That way someone who come across your company maybe a large company that wants to outsource some IT work, will want to look up your FSB claims, only to fall short as I did and move onto another company that can be verified.
I have always felt sorry for the world that we cannot take claims at face value anymore, and Rogue Traders and Watchdog, Cowboy builders etc are all products of the level of dishonesty the public can be subjected too.