Worst Repairshop Experience

[CompTIA_Rep]

Post your worst experiences with Bestbuy (geeksquad), Circuit City, CompUSA,... Only major stores.

Here is one with Best Buy.
At my shop, we dont sell computers, just advice and labor. The closest store to buy a replacement/upgrade computer is Best Buy, and frequently they have the best deals on mid-range budgets. Well, we see a lot of very old computers, and therefor, send a lot of people to BB.
A Best Buy manager visited our store and threatend to sue us if we kept sending people over to buy computers because they were losing their reputation as having the ability to fix machines, and they were losing money on comptuers because there were no labor charges in the sales.. and they never buy stuff they dont need (cause we tell them not too). I believed he called his threat Unlawfull Slander of Reputation. Later, we got all kinds of corporate "doings" such as the IRS came by. The labor bord came by. Health inspectors have dropped by too.

And we still tell customers to go buy at BB, just mention our name when you make the purchase.. and they do... Funny things.

 

[Darkfire001]

Have you thought about selling integrated systems yourselves? Some of the distributors that I purchase from have pre-made HP systems and such including warranty's/etc.

Would save you the hassle of dealing with BB and put some cash in your pocket of course

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

Thanks for the offer, and in fact, we have had offers though companys such as dell. but here is why we dont.

You get a customer who brings in a computer and we find that the motherboard is bad, will cost 200 bucks to replace... and its just an overall beter value to get a new computer. Because we dont sell computers, people trust our judgement more and know we arnt tryn to make an exta buck.

So it all goes down to customer relations. They apreciate the fact they can trust our opinions when it comes to hardware releated replacements and upgrades or general bad values.
And the best deal on computers changes every week. So its beter for the customer if they buy from them and not "our" stock.

 

[Darkfire001]

Yep I agree, however what you could try doing is checking out some other local shops and basically providing a few suggestions to your clients.

Best Buy has some reasonable prices, but it does hurt that they would talk down your business simply because your "educating" your clients

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

I would suggest a local company if they ever had a resonable deal... but its near impossible to build a machine for cheaper then that of a large company.

But best buy isnt the only one, we go though all the advertisements each week, about 7 were Im located.

Usualy we can direct a customer to a AMD 3-3.2 ghz machine with 256-512ram 100gb hdd... for 199-299. Keep in mind most computer people use comptuers for web and email.. if they want more we recomend more.

Acutaly compusa had one not to long ago for free after rebates... no attachements, just straightup mail in rebates.

 

[ConsciousTech]

My shop sells pre-built systems all but the monitor for $469.00, (including non-bundled Windows XP Home SP2 preinstalled), we only recommend them to people on tight budgets, and would never recommend anyone that walks through the door to Best Buy or CompUSA, mainly because the ones here are notorious for bad customer service.

The joy about looking into pre-built computers is you can look for the basically the bare minimum to YOUR standards and decided which ones to carry. For instance, I would never allow a premade Dell to walk through this door because my personal belief is that Dell engineering is nearly grade school by industry standards.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

You can not build a beter budget machine then what a big company can offer.

Example

Best Buy
Emachines Semptron 3200ghz
256megs ram (suggested upgrade)
DVD/Cdrw
Printer
Monitor
___________ = $199 (average price of similar deals ~299)

Every week there is a similar deal, usualy around 299, but COMPusa had one one time for Free after rebates... and it was NOT a MSN/AOL ripoff.
And dont tell me Emachines sucks. Now that they are owned by Gateway, they are very reliable and Customer suppot has been great. They are rated above everyone including the parent computer Gateway in reliability. Source is Consumer reports.

Now if someone wants a mid range, they usualy go with what ever is around 700$. If they want to have a awesome computer they have us build it, or buy a high end gateway, dell....

 

[ConsciousTech]

The 469$ machine we sell comes with a 2.2GHz cel cpu, and basically everything but a monitor... keyboard, speakers, mouse, etc. eMachines may not suck anymore but the majority of pc repairs that end up with dead motherboards/cpus here at my shop are eMachines and Dells... usually 1+yr(s) old.

Also I have had HORRIBLE support with eMachines, I tried going online to download a chipset driver for one computer I was actually able to ressurect and I got a message saying somewhere along the lines of "We are sorry for the inconvenience but we cannot help you at this time." etc.
Thank god for driverguide.com.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

Well support for any company has never been perfect but no complaints with emachines either.

As for dead motherboards, thats not unsusal because customers can stuff the computer in a desk cubby and never move it clean it or anything else. I havent seen any reviews saying that the motherboards Emachines uses is worse then other lower end systems from other companies, And i can not say i see more emahines with that problem.
As for cost, they can almost buy 2 for what your asking. Thats the problem. Adding windows to an in-store computer makes it hard to sell for a good price.
$199 vs $439.

Today, just a quick look...
$400 Compaq
AMD 64bit 3500
512mb ram
200gig sata
DVDr/w
17in monitor and color printer.

thats a bit beter then a 2.2ghz
--------------------------------------------
for $300 you can get a Compaq Laptop
299.99

thru Aug 5
+Add to Shopping List
Semtron 3.100ghz
• Includes HP printer PSC1410
• 14" screen
• FREE DVD/CD-RW drive instant upgrade
• 256MB DDR SDRAM, 40GB hard drive


V2000Z #337920/PSC 1410 #331906

 

[exp328]

I just don't understand how you could survive on just advice and repair. I have been self employed the last 10 years and I can see my profit (if any) and margin eroded every year. If I don't sell whole PC I will have to give up my business.
I remembered when we still use win95 and 98 I ususally go to my clients (mainly small businesses and home users) once evry 2 months and reload their windows, now with XP my business cut by about 25% thanks to PnP. I used to charge $ to just hook up a printer and config print queue for Novell server now that never happen. So, you must know something I don't.

 

[CompTIA_Rep]

The way our business worked and pulled a profit enough for 3 techs, a company Scion, and shop was this: We had the best service hands down. We have 24 hours turn-around, great onsite support for home/business, and great services at cheaper then Bestbuy prices. I did studies of the competition in my area and found the customer service and prices were horrible. This means that people would come back, refer friends,...
Knowing what you are doing AND having the tools and resourses to do it effeciently and quickly + good advertising, makes a comp repair business sucessfull. Advertising and promotings is a full time job.

We support windows 3.1-vista64bit, and our techs know what they are doing very well in each OS. And by support, I mean we actualy see people who are using 3.1 - windows 98 and many times we can convince them its time to upgrade, but we also fix their problem with their old machine too.

Either way...
If you want any suggestions let just reply.