The title may be a bit much, but for the people involved, it certainly is no picnic.
Today, I once again discovered another example of how computer repair companies are not to be trusted. Several studies and undercover journalists have proven before how untrustworthy they are and how often they prey on their customers but real examples does make you shake your head even more.
This happened to my friend just now:
Her laptop produced artifacts while playing games and after that would often lock up causing Windows to no longer boot after a while. Most people here know what that means: a broken graphics card due to overheating. So she gets it picked up by a specialized repair company to make sure it gets repaired properly.
She tells me and I warn her of how these companies are unreliable but she says it will be fine. After insisting, I make her call the company to specifically mention for them to look at the graphics card. "Okay we'll run some tests to make sure".
So she calls three days later "Oh yes, we replaced the hard drive. You had boot problems." (mind you Windows was merely damaged by the crash caused by the graphics card). So she insists they take a look at the graphics card. "Yes we'll replace it if needed".
So yesterday she finally got the laptop back and got billed .... $500. What did the receipt say?
- did some tests
- replaced hard drive
- did more tests
10 minutes after playing her game ... the artifacts were back and her laptop locked up. Running tests may take a long time but starting them takes a second and then you just need to let them run = zero effort! A hard drive? $100 tops. So they charged $400 for reinstalling from the recovery CDs, nice. Jack asses. Oh, and I forgot to mention the best part: they didn't recover the data on her old drive. Which was perfectly fine.
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Story 2 (personal story)
My brother's computer was having problems but he has quite an old one with an older ATX power supply. I didn't have any parts to test what was wrong so I sent it to a computer repair store. I suspected it could be the motherboard, CPU or power supply (the memory I had tested) but having no spare parts to test, I had to rely on them to do it.
A week later I got the PC back with them saying they replaced the PSU. We paid a reasonable amount ($100 or so) including the new PSU. A few hours later, my brother was playing Diablo II when we heard a loud BANG. Electricity in the other house went out and smoke came out of his PC. When I went to open his PC I saw this:
They had tried to connect a new ATX PSU to his old mobo. The thing is, this doesn't work - the power slot on the mobo is smaller on older models and the ATX has 4 pins more than could fit. So they had cut that part OFF. Crudely. And had managed to cut off part of the insulation on the wires next to it. On top of that, they had put in a really really cheap PSU of 200W - my brothers PC may have been old but it had 3 hard drives, a GeForce 3, a sound card (SB Live) and a DVD player and CD writer. Not to mention it was an Athlon Thunderbird which needed a lot of power. Anyone with half a brain knows 200W is not enough for that - especially not with a PSU which is so cheap it could only comfortably do 150W without becoming unstable.
Bottomline: two hard drives were fried, graphics card fried, mobo fried, memory fried, CPU fried - the only surviving things were the CD and DVD drive oddly enough. So when we took it back to the store, you know what they said? "You put it on 110V instead of 220V!" (Europe uses 220V). Now, if it was the other way round, they may have had a point but giving it too little voltage wouldn't have make it blow up. Despite a LOT of complaining it was basically their word against ours so we were screwed. The PC itself wasn't worth that much but my brother lost all his data and they even tried to blame US for it. Well, karma got their asses and a year later, they went bankrupt.
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Personally, I no longer trust these companies at all. They're like a garage: they abuse their status and knowledge to deceive the customer into paying for things that are not needed.
So, anyone have any interesting stories of their own?

But if the power supply is meant taking 220v and you switch it to 110 its got twice as much power going through it as it should. Its weird that it didn't blow up straight away. I switched the power switch before because i was an idiot and didn't know shit about computers and it blew up straight away.Luckily only the psu was destroyed. But it sounds like they screwed you and used that as an excuse.

Ah right, you're correct - but it was just an excuse they gave - the PSU wasn't really set at 110V. They said we switched it back to 220V afterward which is ridiculous. Basically, they just tried to blame us.

My father and I visited a PC store that specialised in second-hand laptops, as he needed one for personal work. We had a look at a few and found a decent ex-student laptop for $600. I insisted on checking everything, so checked the battery and found that it had a mysterious message written in Niko, saying "broken" scribbled on top. When I inquired about the message, I was assured that it was fine, so I booted it up without AC power to see. After giving it five minutes of run-time and seeing XP estimate an hour and thirty minutes of life, I decided to buy it against my better judgment.
I booted it up at home without power and found that 15 minutes later, the battery died. Whatever was wrong with it, it couldn't store more than 15 minutes of juice. I called the shop and asked about a replacement, and they said the battery isn't protected under warranty, and it would cost $100 for them to order a replacement. I didn't bother. :|
I've heard a number of other horror stories about different shops in my area, including from people who have worked in them. I'm frankly not surprised that I'm not the only one that doesn't trust them.
I'll leave you all with [url=http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Sky-News-Undercover-Laptop-Investigation-Repair-Shops-Caught-Hacking-Into-Personal-Files/Article/200907315343387?lpos=UK_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15343387_Sky_News_Undercover_Laptop_Investigation:_Repair_Shops_Caught_Hacking_Into_Personal_Files]this interesting report[/url] by Sky News, which found a number of computer repair stores in its area were more than dishonest, some even stealing personal details from customer computers.

Yeah, what they claimed would have been physically impossible (or at least highly improbable). If the PSU gets a higher voltage than it can handle from an external source, it acts like a giant fuse - the PSU blows, but it shouldn't fry anything connected to it, let alone EVERYTHING.
Must have been an older PSU, though - most I've seen in the last 5+ years don't have manual switched, they switch voltages automagically.

Here's a good story: I installed Norton 360.

Yeah it was 4 years or so ago but even then, the PSU was really really cheap.

This reminds me of a UK TV series a few years back. I forget the name of the series, but they basically go out of their way to trap cowboys. This generally involves a house set up with a bunch of hidden cameras and mikes, actors and a very easy to fix problem specifically created by an expert in the field.
In one particular episode, they were going after a PC repair guy who would do call outs. So they got a high end PC with top range parts in it and then created a simple problem (don't remember exactly what the problem they created was now, but it was probably nothing more than a lose cable).
They call this guy out, IIRC he finds and fixes the problem without letting the owner know, makes up a new problem and states he needs to take the PC with him to fix it. They let him have the PC and a few days later he returns it.
They get their expert to look at it and find he's actually stolen most of the high end parts, including the graphics card, replacing them with far inferior parts. And naturally, billing them for it. -- Of course they knew this is what the guy does. So when the hosts of the show confront him over the theft, in his dash to get away the guy does serious damage to his expansive car. Talk about karma =).
Now if I could just remember what show that was, as it have it on a DVD somewhere...

Damn, that's really going even further.
I must admit I've done a similar thing with a friend. He had a GeForce4 in his brand new PC which he had won in a contest but he only played really old games. When his PC started to shut down now and then, I traced it back to them having used a weak PSU. So ... I swapped his GeForce 4 with my GeForce 3 :p and the problem was fixed and I had a better graphics card ;). He was never going to use it anyway.

Just as a small advice: never ever ever try and repair a laptop at another place except the manufacturer.

I'd like to add that you should avoid second-hand laptops altogether too, as their components tend to be very expensive to replace.

And that's why I (almost) always do the repair stuff by myself.
The last hardware problem I had: the LCD screen stopped working after I replaced the CPU on my laptop. I spent a weekend trying to figure out the problem, but in the end I was glad I didn't go through the computer shop that's just in front of my parent's house.
Heck, after all I'm in the "computer business" since I was fifteen and nowadays PCs are almost dirty easy to repair :-P

I always fix my own hardware as a) I enjoy it, and b) I am anally precise about the build quality in my computers. I would never trust any of the quacks in my local computer repair stores, let alone pay them money that only encourages their delusions of skill and competence.
The local jokers pale in comparison to the disaster that is PC World, though. I was recently buying ddr2 memory from them as I noticed they had made a mistake with their prices (4GB same price as 2GB) and asked one of their Tech Guys for the voltage ranges of the items.
"Sorry, but I don't know geeky stuff like that." he responded.
Classic.

When I was unemployed, I solicited at a computer repair shop as hardware repairman but they said I was under-qualified. I asked them to test me (they merely went by actual work experience whereas I've been repairing PCs for years on a freelance basis but not officially so to avoid paying taxes).
So they gave me a test based on a PC that had entered the shop: wouldn't boot, the light of the case would go on, fans would turn, but that's it. No beeps, nothing.
I said "Most likely a mobo problem or PSU problem".
They said "no, it's the graphics card obviously - it won't send an image to the screen".
I went "Erm no that's not true - the hard drives show no activity and you'd hear the computer boot up even if you couldn't see it."
They argued with me, and I said "sorry I refuse to work with a company as incompetent as this" and I left in anger.
Two days later, I went back to the store pretending to buy photo paper but mostly because I knew they'd have found the real problem by now and they had. The looks on their faces when they saw me made it very clear they had and that I had been right and when I brought up the subject at the registry, one of the workers there who hadn't been working when I went there for my solicitation gladly spilled the beans - he was the one who had fixed the problem and was obviously frustrated by the lack of competence from his fellow workers as well.
It was very frustrating because I needed a job badly but I refused to get a bad rep for working at a place that couldn't even figure out simple problems like that!

I mostly buy hardware under warranty. Two years or so, if the PC is older than that, I diagnose for the problem, take the hard drive out if its something important to replace, and sell it cheap for parts. Then I buy a new one at a friend of a friend PC shop, and they make extra effort to make it and to fix anything broken, if I still have it unther warranty. In the last six years, I've spent about 1500€ for two new PCs (700 a pop) and had one DVD drive failure. My friend had something more serious, but they fixed it just fine. Just like anywhere else, it's reasonable to know your handyman.
And a small eye bender: we wanted to buy a new PC for general use, and we got a sweet deal at a big local general retailer. We paid 300€, but got 200€ in free back sales, therefore getting the PC of a measly 100€. The funny part is, after almost four months, it is still working just perfect, and it's almost at par with my one year old 800€ PC. The components are standard, but they work very well and the PC has a three year warranty. Short of blowing up and killing everyone in the block, this deal really can't go wrong.