This week a Toshiba P15 with DVD problems came in. Our local customer found us as a last resort for his excellent laptop.
Initially the hard drive went bad. The owner tried to install the OS on the laptop but the optical drive was not working. The P15 came with a DVD+RW drive. The customer went to a small shop on Capital Blvd here in Raleigh. We won't mention names but it is important to note that this particular shop is now starting to advertise laptop repair. =( Anyways, they sold him a DVD drive out of an IBM laptop which didn't fit very well. That drive didn't work. Our customer was unhappy and when he asked for an explanation they told him he could try to flash his BIOS at home but that his motherboard was bad. He told them the DVD drive was useless to him if the motherboard was bad and they told him he could not return the drive. WOW, what absolutely horrible advice terrible customer service.
Bummed out, the customer went home, did some research and found out that we specialize in laptop repair. He dropped his laptop off for a free diagnostic. 2 days later we called him to tell him the DVD drive worked, the other shop had been installing their own drive incorrectly. He had us properly install the drive and his OS and drivers. His invoice was under $100.
We also informed him that we had if he brought in his old DVD+RW that we would replace it with one (in stock). This would restore the DVD recording functionality and bring the machine back to it's stock appearance rather than having a mismatched ThinkPad drive that doesn't record sticking out of it. He plans on trying to get a refund from the other shop and coming back.
Another happy local customer.
We're not out to bash other stores- we just want to explain the difference here- we've repaired thousands and thousands of laptops over the last several years. When it comes to certain repairs the inexperienced computer technician (and sometimes even the manufacturer) will misinform- we hear the same story here every single day. It is very unfortunate.
