A friend is being scammed, advice wanted please

welshyyyyy_2

Hi I'm hoping someone can give me some advice on what to do, a friends father has been landed with a rather hefty bill (£600) by a company to fix his Toshiba laptop. He had an issue with not being able to open his email due to what appeared to be a virus, so rang BT (his ISP) - they tried to help but suggested he ring Toshiba for some reason, they were unable to help so referred him to a company "UK IT Tech Ltd". I cant vouch for the conversations with BT or Toshiba or this UK IT Tech company but the upshot is a £600 bill from this IT company for what sounds like running an anti virus scan, installing AVG pro on his laptop (with a 3 or 4 year licence costing £100+) and running CCleaner.
My friend has rung this company and spoken to someone and managed to "talk/shout" them down to ask for £300 instead. The guy on the phone apparently reduced the fee when my friend refused to pay and said "if my boss finds out, he'll take it out of my wages" - which sounds more than a bit iffy to me, no reputable company would say anything like this.
This all sounds very dubious to me, apart from the obvious rip off charge for essentially about an hours work (going on my previous experience of running scans and using free software such as AVG and CCleaner) - at the most I would expect to pay about £100 to a local computer shop if they were to do similar work to whats been described for their time. £600 or even £300 just sounds like a figure plucked out of the air to take advantage of someone
Apart from the strange situation of BT recommending him to Toshiba, and the even more strange that Toshiba recommended him to this company, has anyone ever heard of them ? (their number is 0800 0903828 which I can't find if I Google it) and any recommendations about what to do next ? This sounds like the scam where the company rings you, the fact that he rang them and then got ripped off just doesnt sound like the usual way this "scam" works
Latest tonight is that they contacted my mates father again earlier and he is panicking and wants to pay them. The guy said to my mate when he spoke to them that the conversation with his Dad was recorded and he could send it to him to prove that his Dad was told the costs upfront. He has since said that his company won't allow it. So that sounds like some threatening way to get their money when they have nothing to back it up with

Any suggestions about how to proceed would be very welcome

Many thanks

zagubov

This reminds me very much of this recent thread.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5507115

welshyyyyy_2

thanks, Toshiba recommending this dodgy company sounded unlikely but after reading that thread it's certainly possible

DCFC79

Was this Toshiba recommending the firm or the employee getting a kickback from the firm for passing the customer onto them.

Sicard

Why can't he reset the pc to factory settings? This would format and reload the operating system thus wiping out any nasties.

DCFC79

Sicard wrote: »

Why can't he reset the pc to factory settings? This would format and reload the operating system thus wiping out any nasties.

He could have done yes but I dont believe the owner has the laptop.

welshyyyyy_2

DCFC79 wrote: »

Was this Toshiba recommending the firm or the employee getting a kickback from the firm for passing the customer onto them.

Isn't it the same thing, if its a Toshiba employee recommending these people then they represent Toshiba. I'm guessing that Toshiba may not know about this though

welshyyyyy_2

Sicard wrote: »

Why can't he reset the pc to factory settings? This would format and reload the operating system thus wiping out any nasties.

That's the next thing to do, there may not even be any nasties, this company might have run a scan, added the anti virus software and the computer is clean, it's the disgraceful £600 bill (or whatever they're going to knock it own to) that's essentially the main issue here. They might do a good job, (I don't know) but with extortionate prices

AndyPix

Do you have an actual invoice for the work carried out, breaking the cost down ?


That is discraceful and i would simply refuse to pay it on the grounds that it extortionate.
It sounds like they dont have any proof the costs were agreed before the work carried out and as long as they dont still have hold of the laptop im not sure there is much they can do.


I would have charged you £25 for that job, and im sure most highstreet independent computer shops would have done it for around £50


Tell them to send you a proper invoice, outlining each cost, along with the proof that this work was sanctioned (ie a signed purchase order or recording of verbal contract) and you will pay the fee.
Otherwise to stop contacting you and you will see them in court

welshyyyyy_2

AndyPix wrote: »

Do you have an actual invoice for the work carried out, breaking the cost down ?


That is discraceful and i would simply refuse to pay it on the grounds that it extortionate.
It sounds like they dont have any proof the costs were agreed before the work carried out and as long as they dont still have hold of the laptop im not sure there is much they can do.


I would have charged you £25 for that job, and im sure most highstreet independent computer shops would have done it for around £50


Tell them to send you a proper invoice, outlining each cost, along with the proof that this work was sanctioned (ie a signed purchase order or recording of verbal contract) and you will pay the fee.
Otherwise to stop contacting you and you will see them in court

Good suggestion, thanks Andy I'll pass this info on. I've done similar work for family and friends (i used to be reasonably tech savvy in my previous job) and i would have probably charged similar to you, or a bottle of whisky ! I was thinking £100 at the very most and that would be way too much but potentially (as they have his address and phone number, which he gave them when the call started) there could be potential harassment from them, ie constant phone calls etc, which have already started to stress him

System

welshyyyyy wrote: »

This all sounds very dubious to me, apart from the obvious rip off charge for essentially about an hours work (going on my previous experience of running scans and using free software such as AVG and CCleaner)

Yeah, lots of people like you say that. Its an hour if you're doing it for personal, lucky and you don't give a toss about losing data. When you're doing it as a business it is an entirely different story and a quick run through of AVG and CCleaner quite simply doesn't cut it because you have to be absolutely sure as possible that its completely clear and that usually involves not just sorting out the issue with the virus but any other OS issues and issues with the hardware such as a blocked CPU heatsink as well to be sure its not malware causing the problem. When you get the inevitable "all my babas photos are on there and they're irreplaceable" and the reply to "do you have a back up" is inevitably no then you can spend more than an hour just retrieving the stuff and sticking it on a removable drive/DVD.

As to the "I'd have done it for £25", all I can say is I've sorted out plenty of messes left by people who are in that club. I would do it for £25 but all that'll get you is the hard drive wiped by zeroing it and the OS reinstalled and I won't even bother about backing up your data so consider it lost if you haven't backed it up yourself. You want more than that and you're paying by the hour because this is the kind of job that has a tendency to take a long time with some of the stuff out today.