When Protocol16 was a smaller company, with no shop to drop stuff off at, none of the competitors paid attention to us. Oh how things have changed…

We’re well aware of two specific companies that like to randomly call up and give us a speil about all sorts of things. Mostly, I get annoyed or perhaps angry, depending on how my day is going – but I never let that come across on the phone as I really try to keep it professional. I’ve considered sending a strong message to both of these companies because I consider it a complete waste of time for everyone involved since our website lists pricing.

Unfortunately, this issue has gotten to the point where it’s laughable.

You see, we don’t cold call competitors (aka: Secret Shopping), whine about how our dog tripped over a laptop and popped keys off (you Sir, are obviously not a dog owner…), or argue about data recovery rates against Geek Squads (You mis-quoted the pricing anyway, and I don’t argue with customers), etc. We simply do standard research on all “ya’ll” and let our own customers speak volumes over the competition. We don’t feel the need to call a place, challenge their responses and test their knowledge to make ourselves feel better.

For instance, we know when someone’s shopping around on the phone, it’s obvious, and we welcome people to do so. When someone comes back to us and directly tells us who quoted her and how much, that’s great research. When we can do a virus removal for less than half of what one of our closer competitors do it for, that says something.

Since one of my postings about how cheap Protocol16 is, we’ve gotten phone calls from a few more places, but one in particular has decided to call a few times. The last phone call we got from them, they forgot to block their caller ID. Sorry, but even if I do figure out who you are and I do get upset, I maintain composure and act the part on the phone… They were shopping around for a particular fix and when we quoted them, they said “Well, X company can do it cheaper” – oddly, X company was them. Great – your website says otherwise, so keep telling yourself that while we take your customers. We’ve since had a few others forget that Caller ID exists.

For the competitor that emailed us and we replied “call us or we’ll call you” – it took me a while to decide on doing that instead of openly calling you out. I decided to maintain a professional attitude. Yes, we knew it was you. If you’re as smart as you think you are, you should be able to figure out how I knew it was you, even though you thought a throw-away address would be anonymous.

To our competitors: I will continue to treat you like a standard customer but lord help you if you show up in my shop and waste my time… I post a lot of information online for our own customers to do research on. That’s what you should be doing too. Stop worrying about the competition and focus on yourself and you’ll start to figure out what you’re doing wrong compared to us.

Now, to get some work done for actual customers.
Justin

PS – If you want to actually talk, just email me like a normal person, from your actual address. I’m much more open than you could possibly comprehend.

Over the past month, I’ve known about something going on, but have been quiet. Well, after receiving several of their old customers, I felt I’d share with anyone else out there that may attempt to visit their old computer company…

Northwest Computer Support has officially closed it’s doors to consumers.

That’s yet another competitor to us that has closed their doors to consumers this year. Unfortunately, the economy (and weather) has caused a slow down for a lot of companies across the US. Some of these companies were just barely hanging on. While NW Computer Support remains open, they’ve switched their focus to the more lucrative business environment.

So, if you’re an old customer of NW Computer Support, please feel free to give us a call – we’re here to help.
Justin

[Update: Northwest Computers hasn't closed it's doors, they've "moved" to a new location. The old building is no longer accepting customers. See the comment below.]

We received a phone call late last week asking if we could reset an IBM laptop password. While I’ve personally heard these things are tough cookies to take care of, I decided to personally give it a shot. After talking to the owner of the laptop, I found that he had called another shop first and they stated that “it’s impossible” and it was implied that the laptop was a paperweight, or “brick” as we call it in the industry.

That just made it more of an issue to try to solve this for the customer. After looking up all the “voodoo chicken magic” fixes online, I tried a few things and “poof”, fixed. The customer had the laptop back within an HOUR AND A HALF, for something that was “impossible”.

Please be careful who you call. To some people, something that is a real challenge is just ignored. I’m just the opposite – I love challenges and I now have a happy customer:

Justin,

The IBM T42p is running ubuntu just great! Thanks for your help! I’ll remember who to recommend when people need help with their PCs… you did a fantastic job.

To the competitor that said this was impossible: Thank you for the customer referral. If you have any other challenges, please send them my way…

To those that have a system-based password on an IBM, please feel free to contact us. We cannot correct the Hard Drive Passwords, as IBM won’t even do this, but Supervisor and Boot/Power On Passwords are generally fixable.
Justin

Hot on the heels of Best Buy’s “Pre-Optimization” service, which any user can do themselves, Best Buy has decided to release a new program. We’ll call it “More Trialware!” That’s right, Best Buy seems to think that users want even more trialware on their computers, and now they’re getting paid by the software companies to do it to you. All you have to do is buy an HP or Dell and click a few icons, install a program or two and Best Buy makes money.

They still have to take that new computer out of the box, load software on it before you even buy it, then try to put everything back in the box correctly – something they couldn’t seem to do correctly a week ago.

I’ll give you all a secret. If you want to “pre-optimize” your computer, download and install a program called Crap Cleaner and run it before doing anything else to that brand new laptop or desktop. There are a lot of other things to do as well, but that is be best place to start. After that, customize your computer to how YOU want it, and you’re already better off.