My experiences of computer dealers

I remember taking our son to buy hids first desktop computer. It was a large store (Named after the UKs favourite Indian takeaway food). He settled on a Philips Freevents with at that time the latest software IE Windows Vista 32 bit Home Premium .

While we were discussing its merits with the staff I happened to ask what happens if ity goes wrong is there a repair disc availible. Remember this was the machine they were selling to us. The guy said thats no problem you just burn a couple of repair DVDs from the built in software. I feigned ignorance of computing complexities and so off he went and returned with two blank DVDs.

He put on into the drive and went to burn the said recovery disks . He looked puzzled. Im sorry he said, you only are allowed to burn a single copy of the repair media and it looks like someone has already done so on this machine. He then proceede to take the blank disks to a different display model and burnt the discs from it.

I often wondered what would have happened had we left the shop with our "brand new" computer and not discovered this fact until it was too late. Would they have said we must have burned the copies ourselves. Plus what about whoever bought the 2nd display model.On a later date at the same store I was admiring a laptop when a staff member came oiver and baldly ststed "If you know the right people you can get this at a fraction of the marked price" It involved meetting him or ione of his colleagues around the rear of the store. Like a News of the World reporter I made my excuses and left. I kid you not!

The saga of the Freevents dosent end there as it did start to go wrong a long time later, It would boot up then just fail without warning and sometimes not boot up at all. I took it to our local small computer repair shop. He kept it a couple of days testing it - Thats what he said anyway - He claimed he tried new memory chips which he charged me for and diagnosed a motherboard failure, He offered to replace iut but I thought the cost wastoo high. So I settled his bill.

He would only take cash as he didnt have a card machine so I had to go to the hole in thew wall. I was passing Cex gaddget shop and spotted a desk top computer there at a good price so I bought it and taking it home found it had just two gigs memory. As luck would have it the 4 gigs in the old Freevents was the same kind of chip so I transferred

 

when I first got my Dell desktop, and had a problem later on (after warranty) I called dell and they remotely fixed the problem and it cost 100.00 dollars, so after that I started following the forums and learned how to fix things myself, I do not like to pay for what I can do myself and have not had to pay since then, if I do not know I just ask at a forum,

 

Had to go out there and theres a 120 minute time limit on editing Sorry about that - so to continue: I transferred the "new" pair of 2 gig chips from the Freevents into the new desktop. It started behaving exactly like the Freevents. Crashing suddenly or not booting. I thought thats odd I cant have two dodgy motherboards. So I took out the two memory sticks and replaced the memory chip from the 2nd computer its original chip. The erratic behaviour ceased. I next installed one of the Freevents chips and left the original chip where it was - The erratic behaviour returned straight away. I took the suspect chip out and installed its twin - The computer behaved normally with no problems. I then transferred the two good chips from it into the Freevents and lo and behold it too now was ressurected,

So much for a dodgy motherboard! I returned to the computer shop and told the guy my story as I told it to you. He bizarrely insisted he was still right the motherboard was faulty. I then asked him as he replaced the chips to exchange the dodgy one for a working one. At this pont he became agressive and even denied putting any new chips in my computer. HE HADNT GIVEN ME ANY RECIPTS I( I thought at the time it didnt matter as my computer was dead anyway,
Hindsight is a wonderful thing) so it was his word against mine. I left never to return there.

I put the Cex desktop on gumtree and sold it on ohh and when I did have it opened I had noticed its fan was packed full of dust and gunk iot was a mess.. Its a wonder it turned at all. I cleaned it out back to good as new.before I sold it. As for the Freevents it is still going strong and is now running Windows 10. Well that happened as I had installed windows 7 and Microsoft without asking me or seeking my permission upgraded it from 7 whilst their drive for 10 to take over the computing world was in full swing. I just came down one morning switched it on and there it was windows 10ed for me whether I wanted it or not!

 

Hi Aughey
Jesus what a mess you had, I hate dealing with my computer guy, he lives in a computer fashion world, 10 or the highway.
I have 16 years on this drive i am using, it's gotta go, I loath calling him.
Basically some one used the "One Copy" safety on a new machine to make a illegal copy for someone else, and you got ripped off.

I had one shop sell me 3 used broken cd/dvd drives in a row, I took the last drive to the back of the store and had the tech check it, he said, who ever sold you thins ripped you off, it won't even get up to speed, I said your boss sold it to me,
drum roll..........put on seat belts........tech says yes hes a real prick, stole his way to the top, , some guy beat him up in the parking lot for ripping him off, never got caught.


Some days i don't wanna even go out and deal with people, all the intrigues bore me and make me sick.