click4pc on watchdog....

[Funkstar]

I saw this last night.

My thought at the time was "I would probably miss that to start with, would take me more than 15-30min to diagnose" But that probably because it's been sooo long since I've seen an IDE drive. If I was a repair tech though it would be different, I'd be more used to old hardware.

Although I agree with the sentiment that once a misplaced jumber was discovered, I'd be hammering for lying and being taking the piss.

[MadduckUK]

so whats the diagnosis ?

I have already said.

The hard drive is changing it's own jumpers?

Surprisingly, no.

Sorry, in my book a hard drive that can move it's own jumpers is surely faulty. therefore correct diagnosis.

In "my book" a hard drive that can change it's own jumpers is magic, you should probably buy it off him and tour the country as part of a freak show.

I would have charged him £300 for being a time wasting liar.

Why stop at £300? why not £3000?

You can join in with the game if you like, i'm sure together we can get this problem sorted

[badass]

Just a couple of points, Watchdog may well have a point that the overall business model is suspect. but with the 2 examples, they simply expected the impossible.

example 1. They send a got a computer technician to go to a fake customers address saying that the computer had stopped working. Watchdog had gone to the hard drive and changed the master / slave jumper. Even if the technician was not dodgy and was a genuine honest tech support guy, how was he supposed to diagnose this?

If a tech asks the customer, "have you done anything to the PC" and the customer replies "it just stopped working"
then why would you even look for the slave jumper?

The second point.

they said that they broke data protection by only formatting the hard drive and not using techniques to fully erase old data. This is beyond harsh because to be 100% that data can't be recovered, as far as i know you risk damaging the hard drive beyond repair.

The company in question where dodgy, but Watchdog in my opinion are just as dodgy and mislead the public often, just for shock value it seems.

You appear to be under the impression that watchdog is something more than purely an entertainment program?

Seriously. It's just entertainment. They provide no public service whatsoever but the sarcasm is awesome.

[j1979]

You can join in with the game if you like, i'm sure together we can get this problem sorted

It's obvious the problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

[MadduckUK]

It's obvious the problem exists between the keyboard and the chair.

Man, we are so past that bit - this is what happens when you make a thread and come back 3 pages in.

The big point now is that blatantly dodgy as the situation is, it is something that should have been found, and found pretty quickly IMO.

Going about it the right way quickly narrows down what the problem could be, and worst case, even if the techie has never seen an IDE drive before (which I still don't believe is at all likely) is that they end up with two drives that work seperately but not together, and a jumper diagram on each of the drives. That is all the hard work done.

[damiwi]

I run my own Computer business in my local area and I watched the episode with interest. I know of customers that have been advised to buy new Computers when all they needed was replacement RAM, Old Second Hand hard drives fitted at higher cost than new etc. I was recently contacted for a quote to remove a Virus and when I said it would be £35-45, the Customer said his local shop had said it would be £180. The one criticism that I could level against Watchdog would be when their forensic expert said that a new hard drive would be around £30. I don't think he was aware that at the beginning of the year Hard Drives had tripled in price due to the flooding of the component factories. Therefore the price of a new Hard Drive would have depended upon when during the year the problem occurred. It's only recently that prices have come down and they are still dearer than 2011. Obviously IDE hard drives are more expensive than SATA too. I doubt their expert was building PCs but he should really have checked his facts. The actual fix with the jumpers is fairly straightforward and has been addressed on this thread already so I won't go into further detail.

[ajax2061]

I saw this show and watched it very closely as live very close bromsgrove and work in a computer shop, while a jumper might not of been the 1st thing i looked at, but I would of looked for it just in case one had fallen off (have seen this in the past) also would of tried to boot each drive by itself as it could of been a faulty ide cable and this would of show if the drive was booting on wrong setting.
Being in the trade in this area I have seen some dodgy things from a few different places around here but there are some great shops also that are trust worthy like where I work at.
As for pricing we would of done a new hdd with install and data backed up and moved for about £100 quid end of the day with full updates and parts it can take quite while and time is money, if you take it too a shop then expect to pay a fair price we have rent and wages and overheads to pay after all.

[sammyc]

On a side note; never deal with a company with a misspelled website..

[cached] "In the event of something going wrong with your PC/Laptop/Software or peripherals Click4PC has a number of services desinged to get back up and running with the least inconvienence possible."

[Kumagoro]

How much did they charge anyway.

[MadduckUK]

Probably some kind of invoice?