Thank you for reading another installment of  the Exodus Technology Solutions blog. I know that I haven't been posting nearly enough as of late due to our recent location change. For those of you who do not know, we moved over one building and now located at 29215 Ford Rd. Just one block East of Middlebelt and on the South side of Ford Rd.

  One of the many things I would like to discuss to day is some signs you can trust a repair business.

Usually, a legitimate company will try to give you a real idea of the cost before leaving the shop. It's one thing to find more issues and it ended up costing more, but that's a rarity overall. Most cases I find it's either what I expected it to be initially or something more simple. At least half the repairs don't require a part replacement and the cost is all labor based. If it's a laptop about 4 yrs old and the motherboard is bad, it may not be worth repairing. I don't mind informing a client that a PC repair costs is close to the worth of the PC itself. But that means I won't push a $300 repair on a client and so far, I have only had one repair cost more then $250 (upgraded 3 parts). These are just some examples of the real cost a client should be paying, not $100 onsite fees just to show up (then a diagnostic fee before we even get to the repair cost).

  This is a strange industry with few standards on experience, ethics and price competition. I do hold some respect for a few competitors, but there are plenty who prey on clients who have no computer education. Between Craigslist technicians who work from home (no standard, no ethics and you can't hold them accountable) and the family friend who fixes everyone's PC, you have no idea what your getting. Are they really experienced? Will they use legimate software? Can they find you the best prices? Will they warranty their own work? Are they really using new parts or old ones? What's the chances you will hear from them again after you pay them? At least with a business, you can hold them accountable for bad work (usually they care since word of mouth is how we advertise best). Plus we usually have manufacturers and distributors to find us lower part prices then you can find on your own.

  The larger companies are a different issue all together. Instead of just being a repair shop first, they are a store with marked up prices. They would prefer you to buy something new or spend a lot of money per repair. Geek Squad for instance, most repairs are not competitive price wise at all. They would offer expensive warranties that don't cover nearly what they make it sound like. Then it's a $150-$300 repair charge with most PCs and $100 onsite fee just to come to you. No promises on how long it will really take to fix it nor will the technician be truly qualified. Many of the big companies that are getting involved in the computer repair industry are not offering an affordable services for what they offer. Just because they have an established name and money, doesn't make them a good source for technology services. If they are a store first, it's a conflict of interest overall and they have to charge more because of the huge overhead costs. My company has low overhead, therefor I can charge much less per repair job. 

  This week, I made a point to price shop my competitors again. We try to shop them every few months or so for comparison and to see if our prices have impacted their  business. Wouldn't be the first time that we lower our prices and force the competition to do the same. One company located right by us was one of these competitors. They gave us 4 different prices on virus removal that ranged from $30-$100. This doesn't include anything they would add to the bill such as virus protection, data transferring or a diagnostic fee. Another business near us tried to tell us the only way to remove a virus was to reinstall the windows operating system. This can be true with some viruses, but not the one we mentioned. We remove the FBI moneypak virus every week and it stays gone without having to replace an OS. Just something to be careful about and don't take your PC anywhere that doesn't have some kind of warranty in place.