I regularly scan the isles of stores that I’m in for deals or to catch issues like I’m writing about today.

Scanning the shelves, while annoying to my wife, allows me to catch good deals that allows me to keep the prices down for our services. As much as I annoy my wife, I find some really good deals here and there, but I also find stores taking advantage of ignorance.

In certain industries, shop owners and salesmen have figured out that slapping a higher price onto something means it’s “better quality”. This happens a lot in the tourism and furniture industries, but can be seen many other places.

Well, the other day, I was at a major Office Supplies retailer and I was shocked at what they were doing. In this case, the store was selling a particularly nasty hard drive for well over what it was worth taking advantage of people. This is about as close to preying on ignorance as it comes.

In the industry, we call this specific hard drive the “Deathstar” – seriously. This glass platter, “should have been put out to pasture years ago”, drive sells for $53 to $75 online at the major technology retailer websites. This specific retailer took that price and knocked it all the way to $109.99 – $10 more expensive than a quality counterpart sitting right next to it. So, they doubled the price of a bad drive, put it next to a better brand and would bet money their staff would have recommended that drive to me.

I understand the need for making money, but this is far beyond that. On top of that, they were selling the drive for $10 MORE than online! What the heck….

Folks, please be careful who you buy your technology from. Just because things are more expensive doesn’t mean you get quality.

Sigh… Some businesses are out to make money, while others are in business to help others.
Justin

Part of any business owner’s job is to “shop” around. While we’re not like a lot of other companies that will call a list every month with some crazy story and request pricing, we will check websites and a few other odds and ends. On top of this, our customers report back all the time about what our competitors say, do and what they charge. That’s right, our own customers, through shopping for the right price, will tell us exactly what the competition is doing and charging.

I have two words that describe us: “WE’RE CHEAP!“. Several close competitors are charging nearly double what we would for simplistic jobs. On top of this, I have personally diagnosed customer problems right in front of them and sent them on their way, with no bill.

This happened most recently with a couple that had brought a desktop in that wasn’t connecting to the internet. I’ve worked around the internet since..lord knows when. I’ve supported it, worked on networks, etc. Unless something is really bad, those types of things can be fixed with just a few settings. Well, I plugged the computer in, fired it up and instantly got online with no problems. It turns out that the network cable they were using at home was bad. They said they had another and left quickly and happily knowing that they didn’t get charged for me to plug in a machine and do nothing. Other places may have taken this machine and charged money to “fix” it…

We charge $70 an hour for home users (including home based businesses) and $90 an hour for businesses (2 or more people). On top of that, we have several discount programs. Are you a Bethany Village Business Tenant? DISCOUNT! Repeat customer? DISCOUNT! We don’t play around… We gave over $1,000 in discounts during the first quarter of 2010… We’re serious when we say we want to save you money!
Justin

My first thought when I saw the subject was “I didn’t order anything…”, then I opened in and went “HUH???” then I moved the mouse over the links thinking “Scam!” – yup.

These people are getting SNEAKY…

If you receive the following email (I’ve blacked out my personal address), just delete it. Don’t click any of the links – you DON’T want to do that…

Buy.com Email About Computer Purchase

Once again, those pesky malware creators are trying to cause problems. Here’s the original message:

Dear Microsoft Customer,

Starting 17/06/2010 the ‘Conficker’ worm began infecting Microsoft customers unusually rapidly. Microsoft has been advised by your Internet provider that your network is infected.

To counteract further spread we advise removing the infection using an antispyware program. We are supplying all effected Windows Users with a free system scan in order to clean any files infected by the virus.

Please install attached file to start the scan. The process takes under a minute and will prevent your files from being compromised. We appreciate your prompt cooperation.

Regards,
Microsoft Windows Agent #2 (Hollis)
Microsoft Windows Computer Safety Division

This message also comes with an attachment. Delete it. The attachment has a few nasty things in it, to include the Fake Antivirus software that’s been going around.

Again, just delete the message and move on.
Justin

While I’m extremely disappointed to have to say this, Sunbelt Software has released another update that has caused problems with VIPRE.

At the moment, their chat and phone representatives are utterly swamped due to the problems. After getting through, I was told that a bad update was released last night and that it would be “fixed shortly”.

For now, it appears that they have turned off the update service in hopes of containing the problems.

If you have problems, restart your computer and it should help the situation. In about 2 hours, hit the “Update” button in the software and it should download an update (as long as they fix it by then).

Justin

vipre, sunbelt, slow, lockup, 100%, no updates, latest update, last night, won’t update, windows, off

I make no bones about it when I say that I talk with a lot of people in the industry. Many times, we see patterns before the media does. If we each notice 5 computers that come in at the same time, we can quickly work together on how to fix it.

Well, one of those technicians that we talk with on a normal basis was interviewed in his hometown. The message is so strong that I figured it would be best just to repost the story from the News Website (watch the video).

The screen shots, the messages and the advice in the video is spot-on.
Justin

We’ve been busy here lately, but we caught something while recycling a machine for one of our clients. It seems that a “competitor”, who has since changed his business name, was shaving the OEM stickers off machines so that he could re-use the license to charge the client more money while spending none of his own. The client had XP, the machine says “Vista” but the sticker says “XP” as well – typically not a problem, until you read which type of license he used.

What to watch out for... Arrows show the differences in sticker vs actual Manufacturer. Circles show damage from "shaving" the sticker.

If you have a machine custom built, or ordered through a local company, always inspect the stickers. This machine was a ACER and it had an eMachine’s XP sticker on it. I’ve attached a picture so you can see what I’m talking about. The circles point to the sticker damage from this individual removing the sticker. If you see something like this, don’t buy the machine – period. Microsoft has every right to disable Windows, and does so. For Windows Vista and 7, this becomes more of an issue because they both check in with Microsoft every 6 months to ensure that your license hasn’t been copied/installed somewhere else.

Note: A Vista/Windows 7 machine sticker looks like paper, with a hole, that has a security thread through it.

I take great pride in knowing that we provide some of the highest customer service scores in the area (Angie’s List Honor Roll, plus all our other reviews). I cannot stand it when individuals like this take advantage of customers to save a buck here and there. There are other ways to save money, and we do it all the time with customers. If it eats into our profit margin, so be it – the customer is happy and that’s what matters.
Justin

This is not really computer repair news, but it’s worthy of mention on a computer website.

If you’re like myself, you may have Verizon services like DSL or FiOS at home. If, you were like me yesterday, you got home to a Comcast letter stating that Verizon is leaving the NW – and to switch while theres still time!

Well, yes, Verizon is leaving. A new company called Frontier is taking over operations. This is just like when Verizon came to our area – they took the lines over from GE…

Your FiOS and DSL services will stay running, as long as there’s no huge fiasco with billing. If you have more questions, feel free to read this article.
Justin

PS: To the specific technician in a specific call center in a specific town that sends us customers: Thank You….

Yesterday, when I woke up, I heard about a new project that was trying to cause turmoil for FaceBook, MySpace and other “Social Networks”. At the time, I had never heard of Diaspora, but I watched the videos and it made sense. The New York Times covered it, then a few other sites, including one called Slashdot, covered it.

These four teens in New York set up a donation request on Kickstart, asking for $10,000 to fund a summer full of coding. They hoped to get the majority of the framework done so they could start helping the masses with privacy fears and such. Well, they reached that goal by mid-day 8. I hit Kickstart on day 10 and it had just hit $20,000… Ok, so there are a lot of disgruntled people out there that really dislike what Facebook is doing – good, I’m not the only one. Well, I watched that number sky rocket yesterday, then it kept going and going and going. This morning, upon waking up, people around the world have donated over $95,000 to this project (edit – OVER $100,000!!!), and that number is still going up. Oddly, right now, the average donation is $42 and change. It’s interesting because according to a great book (later a movie), and an older inside joke with geeks, is that 42 is the meaning of life…

If you’re interested in seeing how what Facebook has done with your privacy, check out this handy little page (click on the different years to see how your profile has leached out). If you’re interested in contributing to a global cause that thousands of other people agree with, check out their donation project on Kickstart.

If this project doesn’t have Facebook worried, they’ve made the first mistake in the art of war: Know thy enemy.
Justin

If you have a website that uses WordPress, make sure you’re running the most recent version. GoDaddy and other web hosting companies are scrambling at their installations due to a malware attack.

This typically happens when a web hosting company is using a customized version of the software and hasn’t upgraded it yet. Unfortunately, many companies just take too long to patch their systems. We see this with some companies that like to wait for months before running Windows Updates on their servers. The key is to test on systems before doing anything and a lot of places are failing to do that.

So – if you’re using GoDaddy or another hosting provider, check out your blog, as you may be infected. Link for help.
Justin