This story happened quite a while ago, probably 6-7 years or so.
I had a very average PC back then. I'd had it for a couple of years, when it started acting up. It would randomly lock up, restart itself, or just shut down all together. I got BSOD'ed a lot. It would always start back up just fine whenever it did restart, but obviously having it restart randomly was an inconvenience. I decided to take it in to a local computer repair shop to have them take a look at it.
I left it with them for a day and they returned it to me, saying one of the fans on the motherboard had been dying, and they replaced it for me. They charged me for the fan itself, and some kind of service fee for the actual installation. Nothing too expensive. I was happy and went on my merry way.
The machine worked fine for about two days. Then I got another BSOD, and the machine would not boot, at all. I had an old backup machine that I would use when I had problems with my current one, so I took the hard drive of my current machine out and stuck it in the old machine, which I'd done numerous times before. Only to discover my hard drive was fried. I couldn't recover anything on it myself.
I looked at the new fan that the shop had put on the mother board of my current machine. Turns out the fan wasn't designed for the kind of motherboard I had. I don't remember the specifics, but basically the fan wasn't powerful enough to keep up with my motherboard. The result was that my machine overheated even worse than it was before, since the old fan was still working intermittently.
I took my machine back to the shop and demanded an explanation. They scratched their heads, shrugged, offered a feeble apology, and gave me my $30 for the cost of the fan itself (not the service fee for installing it.) I asked about my hard drive. They took a look at it and said it was a complete goner, due to overheating. I would need a new one (which they could sell me for a considerable markup from what I could get it for online) and they could also recover all my data for me...for several hundred dollars.
I also found out that the employee who had worked on my machine the first time and installed the new fan, was a high school trainee. According to the other employees, he was their "best employee" and "the best at what he does." Seriously? I know some high schoolers who are pretty good at what they do, but if a 15 year old trainee is your best employee, your company has problems.
I was just out of high school myself at the time, so I didn't have the presence of mind to do anything except leave in disgust.
I had a very average PC back then. I'd had it for a couple of years, when it started acting up. It would randomly lock up, restart itself, or just shut down all together. I got BSOD'ed a lot. It would always start back up just fine whenever it did restart, but obviously having it restart randomly was an inconvenience. I decided to take it in to a local computer repair shop to have them take a look at it.
I left it with them for a day and they returned it to me, saying one of the fans on the motherboard had been dying, and they replaced it for me. They charged me for the fan itself, and some kind of service fee for the actual installation. Nothing too expensive. I was happy and went on my merry way.
The machine worked fine for about two days. Then I got another BSOD, and the machine would not boot, at all. I had an old backup machine that I would use when I had problems with my current one, so I took the hard drive of my current machine out and stuck it in the old machine, which I'd done numerous times before. Only to discover my hard drive was fried. I couldn't recover anything on it myself.
I looked at the new fan that the shop had put on the mother board of my current machine. Turns out the fan wasn't designed for the kind of motherboard I had. I don't remember the specifics, but basically the fan wasn't powerful enough to keep up with my motherboard. The result was that my machine overheated even worse than it was before, since the old fan was still working intermittently.
I took my machine back to the shop and demanded an explanation. They scratched their heads, shrugged, offered a feeble apology, and gave me my $30 for the cost of the fan itself (not the service fee for installing it.) I asked about my hard drive. They took a look at it and said it was a complete goner, due to overheating. I would need a new one (which they could sell me for a considerable markup from what I could get it for online) and they could also recover all my data for me...for several hundred dollars.
I also found out that the employee who had worked on my machine the first time and installed the new fan, was a high school trainee. According to the other employees, he was their "best employee" and "the best at what he does." Seriously? I know some high schoolers who are pretty good at what they do, but if a 15 year old trainee is your best employee, your company has problems.
I was just out of high school myself at the time, so I didn't have the presence of mind to do anything except leave in disgust.
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