Let me start by asking, have you ever switched car mechanics, barbers, hair stylists, even dentists or doctors? If so, and it wasn’t just because you moved, was it so you could get a better price or better service? I’ve found that people are always looking for the best price, value, and service for their computer repair needs. I’m sure that on Oahu, that you can easily find a cheap PC Tech very easily because they make a point of it. I’m sure that you can find the best value or the cheapest tech if you look hard enough, and maybe even the one with the best service if you get enough referrals, but I am also sure that you will “not” find a computer repair service that can offer you all three.
I won’t say for sure that you’ll get what you payed for, because I know there are some underpaid PC geniuses out there as well as a bunch of overpaid PC quacks. But when it comes to PC Technicians, you not only have to consider their background and certifications, but their experience and work ethic, not to mention any corporate red tape their hands might be tied with if they are from a big company.
Experience
At a minimum, your PC technician should be CompTIA A+ certified, anything more is icing on the cake and may not even be necessary unless you need a tech for some high-end corporate network. As for myself, I had a continuous hands-on career troubleshooting electronics for 23 years before I got certified. While this has been the foundation of my success, many young and promising PC Techs out there are getting their experience on your dime. Nothing wrong with that if they price accordingly, but you have to remember what you are willing to sacrifice when it comes to price, value, and service. Have they only repaired a few hundred computers in their career, or several thousand? I would also like to know who they modeled their skills after. I knew a seemingly competent tech that turned out to have some very bad habits when it came to electronic safety and troubleshooting techniques. If all you saw was the end product, you would initially be impressed. But this person was quickly let go and many of the computers he “repaired” later came back for rework.
Not the Cheapest and their Level of Service Was Not a Good Match
I frequently shop at one of the local mega-stores for some of my tech stuff, and I sometimes overhear a tech talking it up with a customer with their young, confident voice, and the tech’s advice always seems to be in black and white. But I can tell you that there are so many variables from one customer’s needs to the next, that things are never black or white. They might not even be gray and could end up being any color of a rainbow.
If you sense this sort of situation when dealing with a bigger company, and feel that somehow there must be a better solution that can be tailored for you, then you are probably a victim of their restrictive policies and red-tape. You certainly won’t be getting the cheapest service at a mega-store and in this case aren’t getting the level of service you require. You might be better off going to a neighborhood computer repair shop where things are more relaxed and personal, and probably more experienced anyway.
Any good technician worth his weight at a computer mega-store will probably go into business for himself or look for a position in the corporate world eventually. That place was probably just a stepping stone for them. Because of this, there is a high turn-over of people at these places and there are always new techs in training. But then again, there are always those techs that will never be good enough to move on. Which one do you think worked on your computer?
The Price of Inexperience
I often hear inexperienced techs quickly sum up problems by saying that “your hard drive needs to be reformatted” or “we need to run a system recovery”. While this may be true in the end, I rarely see a computer that I immediately say needs to be reloaded. If it is important to the customer to retain all their programs, data and customizations, reloading is an absolute “last” resort. Inexperienced techs will usually try to convince you that your system needs to be reloaded when they realize that they don’t have the skills to fix it any other way. Sometimes you have to reload, but rarely as a first resort.
On the surface, it seems like us PC Techs are a dime-a-dozen. But in my experience, anybody can say they work on computers, but the ones that really can’t are easy to spot. They almost always prefer the “reload” approach. Its these ones that are a dime-a-dozen.
When I do reload a machine, I put in about a solid 6 hours into it with the latest drivers, Windows Updates, spyware protection, misc applications, tweaks and data transfer. But most machines I see that were reloaded somewhere else were missing drivers, spyware protection, weren’t tweaked, and didn’t have the latest Windows Service Pack updates. These machines were an internet vulnerability disaster waiting to happen. They would work fine for a while but would probably fail within 6 – 12 months from an infection.
Speaking of infections, I also see computers come in that were unsuccessfully repaired somewhere else that were still infected. They found most of the infections, but missed some too. This is where I get to see the work of other companies and I can tell you that I look very carefully. I see rookie mistakes all the time. There are many scans, settings and techniques that were never ran. You can tell because almost everything you do on a computer leaves a trace.
Speaking of traces, most techs don’t cleanup after themselves. I’m not talking about wiping the potato chip crumbs off their workbench, I mean that they leave behind remnant files, folders and registry entries from the programs they ran to repair your computer. I admit that most of the time, they are pretty much harmless, but I think it is not professional. I like to think of it like all the candy wrappers and soda cans you might find in the walls of your home from some crusty construction guys who built it (if you ever had the chance to see). You don’t know they are there and they probably won’t hurt anything anyway, but once you know, would you want those same guys building your next home?
Fly By Night
I started out in the business of computer repair as a freelance mobile technician. I had a family to take care of so I was very serious about it. Although I was new at it, I was confident in my ability because I already had a couple decades of electronic troubleshooting under my belt. I quickly met other guys in the mobile business and found out what a dog-eat-dog business it was. Some guys were good enough, but there were several that were what we call “Fly by Night”. Some of these guys can linger on for a few years eating through customers until it catches up with them. Because they have some skills, and some problems they get called for aren’t that hard, they end up with some happy customers which just enables them to continue giving the rest of us a bad name.
Most of them have no website, no yellow page ads, don’t accept credit cards, or only use Paypal if they do. They also tend to put up these Flat Rate Computer Repair signs at freeway ramps and intersections near their neighborhood. When you call a professional and wonder why we charge so much more than these fly-by night guys, please do the math and figure out for yourself just how experienced these guys are. They “might” be able to do 3 to 5 call a day at $40 or $50 a repair minus expenses. My customers have complained to me that they either milked the job and took too long, or they got in and out so fast that they didn’t do a thorough job, probably so they could get to their next appointment.
Okay whatever, but my complaint in all this is that there are many customers out there that can’t even begin to comprehend or appreciate what a true professional does during a computer repair when we do the job right. A lot of what we do goes unsung. And even if we told you the little details, you probably still wouldn’t care to understand it and it might just put you to sleep anyway. Yes it costs more, but we also want your repeat business and referrals for our good work done the first time. While this will usually save you money in the long run, its like one of those things you can’t quite measure, kind of like taking vitamins and never getting cancer.
I think I will have to put this article in my rant category, but my point about computer repair services all being the same or not is obvious. They are not. Sure we all say we are the best, and I know my daughter thinks I am. But look for the obvious signs, get referrals, and when you call around, don’t just jump on the lowest price, because you just might end up paying more in the long run with a lot of frustration in between.
