I should have watched the video first, because I would have put this in the first post.
Is there computer fraud in the world? Sure. A few of the shops were stupid about it, and one outright tried to rip off the customer - I'm talking about the last guy there. The Best Buy kid was just being stupid, the last guy was trying to defraud the customer.
I do feel that that video was unfair however. The other shops were simply charging their basic repair rates. Just like with a mechanic, a plumber, an electrician, HVAC repair, whatever, there is always a minimum shop rate. None of the hourly repair rates were out of line. And, ofcourse, oh gee golly wiz, as the narrator states all somebody had to do was push the IDE cable back in...the problem is always simple - once you know what it is. All of those shops would have had customer data entry to deal with (to setup the invoice), They would have needed to at the very least get it on the bench and wire it to a monitor, keyboard, mouse, and power to see what is happening (got to confirm that, yes, as the customer says, it isn't starting up). They do have a right to try to make a profit on their businesses. There was one altruistic soul who fixed it for free. He is doing that for the sole purpose of trying to attract future business from the customer. Not a bad strategy in this case, but it shouldn't be something the customer should expect. And remember your Business 101 class here - nothing is ever free - there is no such thing as a free lunch. But you might say, "shouldn't they have just popped open the case and found the problem real quick?" No. That isn't the proper diagnostic procedure. The diagnosing starts by trying to confirm the stated problem of "It just won't start up". Ya can't put the cart before the horse.
In this case, pretty easy...error message clearly shown on the monitor. Pop the case open, and plug the IDE back in. Restart machine and make sure the problem is fixed. All done right? No. Why is the cable unplugged? Techie has to scratch his head for a while and ponder how a computer that was working fine now magically has an IDE cable pulled and neatly tucked out of the way. These things don't just fall off. They have to be pulled off. Maybe it was being pulled because of a routing problem? Hmmmm. That doen't seem to be it (clock is ticking btw). Hmmmm...But wouldn't the customer have told me they were jacking around inside the thing? Oh, right I'm supposed to automatically consider that the customer is being an ass and purposefully screwed up the machine just to make me look bad on a hidden camera so that they can say I charge too much for my services which I have honed over 20 years.
Let me tell you the old story which illustrates the point.
A guy's furnace stops working and he calls the furnace repair man. The repair man spends a couple of minutes, puts in one new screw, and hands the home owner an invoice for $80. Now the guy is mad. "Hey, all you did was put in a screw. I could have done that! How come you gave me a bill for $80?" "Simple", responds the repairman. "70 cents for the screw, and $79.30 for knowing where to put it".
I have paid an enourmous amount of money for my education. I have spent an enourmous amount of time in research and in honing my computer repair skills at every opportunity. I don;t feel at all bad when I charge somebody for work. And I always have a minimum charge. Unless it's my Mom.
So yes, it was sad that a few of those repair places didn't do the right thing. However, with the exception of the guy who did free work, the vidoe basically demonized all of the shops - just for charging their repair rates. One other guy stands out, he talked about jumper settings being set wrong. I could take that a few ways. He might have been just "fluffing" up what he did so that the bill wouldn't seem so harsh - it would have been the same minimum charge either way. Or, he might actually have felt that the hard drive jumper was not set how it should be and changed it. He might have changed it from cable selct to master, because of a personal preference. His charge was still fair either way.
LDB