Computer repair services

Find the best and the worst providers and get tips on how to deal with them.

Guidelines

You want to have your computer fixed and back to work quickly, with minimal fuss and minimal expense. We rate the computer repair services based on this.

Tips and Considerations

An important issue to consider is the safety of your personal and financial information. There are notorious cases of repair technicians stealing or copying sensitive personal information.

One way to protect yourself is to encrypt your data. One user reported using TrueCrypt-encrypted virtual drives with password protection. Without this you will have to depend on the integrity of the repair provider. You can learn more about encryption in the security and encryption article.

The My3cents site has personal reviews of various repair services.

If you want to get service from HP (whom I have found to be very helpful in general) here are the guidelines from someone who worked for them in repair for a long time.

Remote computer repair

Remote computer repair services perform repairs on your computer in your home. This has the advantage of convenience and security. You can generally watch what the repair technician is doing. PC Magazine has produced a fairly recent review of these services. Firedog and GeekSquad rated best, but some experts I know have panned GeekSquad. support.com didn't rate as well as the others.

Carry in support

As far as vendor support is concerned, Consumer reports says that most manufacturer support is dismal.

Reviews of major chains that primarily sell computers also do repairs do not paint a pretty picture.

Chain stores are very focused on the bottom line. Therefore, they don’t pay the techs very much and don’t attract quality talent in general.

The large chain stores make the majority of their profit from sales, not from tech services, therefore they can afford to have customers unhappy with their support. If you know someone that had a repair done at one of these places that was happy and can identify a qualified repair agent, it can pay to follow up. However, you may come up against the security issue here.

Small shops depend on repeat business and have a vested interest in keeping their customers satisfied. If the small shop has been in business for a while, it is a good sign. If you need more reassurance, ask the owner for references and check them out. You can get a better sense of whether you can trust the small business with your private information than with a chain.

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1/26/2009