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KMBC Investigates Computer Repair Stores

Uploaded by: kmbctv
Video Description:
These days most of us have a computer or maybe two at home. But what do you do when they are broken?
Companies tell you they can fix your broken computer and that they have got the experts. Over the last three months, KMBC's Kris Ketz and KMBC employees investigated.
Armed with a hidden camera and microphone, KMBC took a computer to three major electronic stores to see what they would find. But first, Ketz took it to KMBC's own expert, computer tech supervisor Hank Palmer, and asked him to do something to the computer, something simple so it would not work.
"The only thing I did, I went into this bios, in set up and disabled the hard drive. It's one key stroke. That's something anybody should be able to look to make sure it's working," Palmer said.
Ketz reported that Palmer disabled the hard drive bios, basically turned it off. Palmer said it is something any technician should find with a routine check.
"These things have built-in diagnostics, and that's one of the places you go in and test it," Palmer said.
KMBC dropped off the computer at three different electronics stores -- Circuit City, Best Buy and MicroCenter. All of them have diagnostic fees just to look at the machine. They range from $60 to $70. KMBC paid, and after a few days, went back to see what they had found.
The first stop was Circuit City.
"They said it would either need a hard drive to be restored or a new hard drive. It would be $129.99 for a restore. That's not including a hard drive," said an employee for Circuit City.
A 160-gigabyte hard drive would add $99.99 to the bill.
Then KMBC went to Best Buy.
"All it says here is, I guess, they couldn't do anything with it here. Probably means that it's a motherboard issue," said an employee of Best Buy.
The employee told KMBC's investigative team that they could not fix it and that it would have to be shipped to IBM, and if it was a motherboard, it would be expensive. But since Best Buy could not be sure of the problem, they did refund a $59 diagnostic fee.
The news from MicroCenter came by phone, Ketz reported.
"It's actually the part on the laptop that goes in and attaches to the motherboard that's bad. Also the hard drive is bad. To ship it out and get it fixed, it's a flat rate of $275," said an employee with MicroCenter.
Add a $275 fee to the diagnosis fee.
When asked who was able to fix it, Palmer said, "No one. No one fixed it."

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