Data Doctors Administrative Offices

Description of Work: Have gone to these people off and on for over three years. Originally, the franchisee was a woman whose name I cannot recall. The service was good. Suddenly , she wasan't there anymore and the service started getting bad. Finally stapped going there. Found new shop, but they moved out of state and I thought I'd try Data Doctors again. Bad idea. They wanted over $200 to remove virus andd reload operating system. Found new place to take my computer for repairs.

Description of Work: Had a virus and thought I also had bad sectors on my laptop hard drive. Took it in on Saturday and spoke to James, who said he would call me by the end of business with a diagnostic for around $60. Never heard from him, so called the store around 11AM the following Monday. Spoke to the store manager, Victor, who said I needed a new hard drive, but the data was retrievable and the repairs should be complete by end of day. He said he could sell me a new 500GB hard drive for $150, but I could get it cheaper at Frye's. Went to Frye's and got a 160GB drive and gave it to Victor around an hour later. He even took me to the back and showed me a read-out of the bad sectors, which were around 5% of the drive. He said they would clean and clone the data to the new drive for another $190. I told him that James had said the diagnostic would be applied to repairs, but Victor said they usually charge $250 to install, clone and clean. I told him to call me when the laptop was ready, but never heard from him, so I left a message Monday afternoon around 5:30 to see if my computer was ready. James called me Tuesday morning and said they could not retrieve the data after all and would have to send it to the "Data Lab" to retrieve it. This would cost an extra $199 in addition to the $60 diagnostic and the $190 they were charging to just install a new hard drive, so even though they hadn't done the work, they were still going to charge me. I asked to speak to Victor and he confirmed that the cost would be around $500 to get the data retrieved by the lab, including everything else. I told him that they should have just told me that during the diagnostic and I could have purchased a new laptop. I asked him to call me when they had the new hard drive installed. He hung up on me. It is now 4:30 PM on Tuesday. They have had my laptop for 2.5 days just to install a hard drive. I don't know what the final bill will be, but it looks like it will probably be around $250 to install a hard drive. These guys just seem to sit around and dream up ways to rip you off. When they can't rip you off, they get mad and retaliate with added costs. I just wanted a hard drive cloned and the data transferred which should take about an hour for a 160GB SATA hard drive, but they had my laptop for 3 days . . . and still counting . . . and still don't know if they will return it in working order.

Description of Work: I brought my computer in to have it diagnosed.