COMPUTER SOS

"I'm surprised Ms. (member name removed) would submit a negative review three months after her service and why she didn't contact management to voice her disappointment so we could explain to her and offer a resolution. When the laptop was dropped off on 6/24 for a diagnosis, the customer signed off on the service order stating that the work requested to diagnose it was “shuts off on its own – may be the fan.” Our bench/diagnostic fee is $85 plus tax that is collected when the unit is brought in for service. This bench fee is to cover the time required for a proper and thorough diagnosis. In this case, we spent over an hour attempting to diagnose and resolve the power issue. When the technician began to look at the laptop, it would not power on consistently or would turn on and immediately turn off. The technician was able to get it to boot into Windows but it locked up which occurred before he disassembled it. He tested the ram and it passed. Therefore, he disassembled the computer to reapply the thermal paste on the cpu/heatsink, reseat the processor and reseated the ram. He also cleaned it out. However, the “power on” issue would still occur. When the machine would power on, the technician tested the ram but could only get the machine to partially boot up only once. The power problem was not at all related to the power button as her daughter thought; it was because of the bad motherboard. The cost to replace the motherboard was not feasible for an older laptop, so we recommended they replace the laptop instead. The mainboard was the final diagnosis because of the power issue. If there was an overheating problem, reapplying thermal paste for better heat dissipation of the CPU would be the correct method of resolving an overheating problem. In addition, the drive was throwing up a read error, press ctrl alt del to restart. This could have been a final symptom of a failing hard drive. When the mother and young daughter picked up the laptop on 6/25, the mother stated that she should never have bought it for her daughter because she beats on it. The computer showed evidence of this as it was missing a number of keys and its appearance showed signs of further abuse. It had an overall beat-up appearance. The mother never complained about our diagnoses or asked to speak to a manager or to an owner. The fee the customer paid was for a diagnosis which we did diagnose the laptop correctly. Based on the diagnosis, we recommended they not put additional money into the laptop to repair the laptop due to the condition and age of the laptop and the need for a new motherboard, possibly a new hard drive, and the missing keys."