Gouged By A Geek

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Gouged By A Geek
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What is it they do?

• What is a geek?
• A person who is interested in technology,
  especially computing and new media.
• A geek will generally do some sort of computer
  repair.
• Most people with computer issues will call on a
  geek to assist them.

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What does it mean to be Gouged By A Geek?

• Geeks are meant to help the customer with their
  issues.
• These repair technicians will take advantage of
  you.

• But this is not always the case.
• What does this mean for the natural consumer?

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Technical gods, or technical frauds

• Most places that have computer repairs dont
  train their employees.
• Most of the time its viewed as a business to make
  money.
• So these geeks are not always knowledgeable of
  the issue.

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And the result

• Give you a fake diagnosis using technical terms
  to make it seem worse.
• Up the price of common parts to make a bigger
  buck.
• Even take money under the table to make more for
  themselves.

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Prices and Geek Squad

• Geek Squad and what they do
• Repair crashed hard drives
• Help protect and back up important data
• But are they really properly trained for this?
• What about prices for parts?
• They charge ridiculous prices for components such
  as ram.
• But you can get a 1gb stick for 44.99

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Personal Experience With Geek Squad

• Took it in to get a piece of RAM installed.
• Cleaned my computer of all virus and such before
  I turned it in.
• They took five hours to install one stick of RAM.
• And also removed virus that were in my
  computer.
• In the end charged me close to 120 dollars.

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How to prevent this

• Do your research on the company you plan on going
  to.
• Do it yourself, the internet is a reliable
  source.
• See if the company you bought it from can repair
  it.

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Comments

• Is this story somehow an example of bad
  journalism? I think it's good journalism.
  Computer repair (just like car repair and health
  care) are problems that free markets just don't
  solve very well. There's no way for consumers to
  make informed decisions since diagnosing the
  problem is the job. Most people not only can't
  diagnose these problems themselves, but don't
  make this type of purchase very often, and have
  little or no objective data to go by. It's a
  tough problem.-timeOday
• As the parent poster said, it's not that "geeks"
  in general are untrustworthy. It's assholes that
  seek to make money off their geekdom that inspire
  spite. If I had a dollar for every time someone
  brought me a computer and said "The Guy at Best
  Buy said the motherboard is dead and it will cost
  400 to replace" only for me to go into safemode
  and remove spyware/virus bloat and fix the
  computer, I'd be paying someone to make my
  Slashdot posts for me!-eepok
• In other news, some business people are shady and
  try to rip off consumers! See the groundbreaking
  report tonight, at 7!-sloppyjoes7

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A geek in action!
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And now you know!