CONCORD COMPUTER CONSULTING

WARNING!!!!!!! DO NOT HAVE ANY OF YOUR ELECTRONIC DEVICES REPAIRED HERE, YOU WILL BE RIPPED OFF OUT OF HUNDREDS OF DOLLARS. I would give zero stars if possible. The man in charge, Nick, not sure if he is the owner or not, is a scam artist. I spilled water on my macbook air and looked for the closest repair shop to me, which happened to be Concord Computer Consulting. Upon drop off, Nick mentioned nothing about an hourly rate, base fee, or anything of the sort. He asked me if in the event my laptop was completely water damaged, if I wanted him to back up the data on my hard drive (photos, videos, etc.) onto a flash drive. I said yes, but again, no price was discussed. I told him that I was moving out of state on Thursday (I brought the laptop to him Tuesday afternoon around 3 pm, his store closes at 5). He casually mentioned that in the event he couldn't fix the laptop, he could sell me a "refurbished" MacBook Air for "a really good price, between $1,000-$1,100. He went on to say he gets them from Apple and are quality "brand new computers". Keep in mind everyone, that a brand new 13" MacBook Air retails at $999 directly from the Apple store. After tax, a little more. I thought it was rather odd that before he had even looked at my computer he was already trying to sell me a new one, but stupidly did not take it as a warning sign that this man was a scammer. After I had left and taken a few steps down the road he called me back into the store to tell me that depending on how much data was on the hard drive, that would determine the cost. I thought ok, that makes sense. Knowing that I only had maybe 400 or so pictures and videos on the laptop, one movie, and not much else, I didn't think there would be very much data to put on the flash drive. Aka, wasn't thinking it would cost me an arm and a leg. So the next day, Nick calls and informs me that my computer won't turn back on, and he suspects the motherboard is dead from the water damage. He said he had already pulled all of the data off the computer and backed it up onto the flash drive. Then, he tells me my total will be $378!!! I had spoken to four other shops in the area who said they charged nothing to assess the damage of the laptop, while several others said they charged between $60-$80 to assess the damage AND to back up the data on the hard drive. So immediately, I know something is wrong, the price is far too high and I am being ripped off. Instead of confronting Nick on the phone about this, I simply said "Wow, that's a lot of money. Definitely won't be able to afford to pay that and also buy a new laptop." At this point, once he realized I would not be paying for his repair services and also buying a "new" MacBook from him, his game plan changed. He said he would "fiddle around with it a bit more" and see what he could do, Isn't that what he was supposed to be doing already? Several hours later he calls and leaves me a voicemail, wouldn't you know, saying he was able to get my laptop up and running again! What a miracle.. So I call him back, he said the laptop indeed is on and functioning properly but has one problem, the battery will not charge. He said the laptop had 74% battery left but regardless if it was plugged into the charger or not, it would not charge any further than 74%. Strange, but I did dump a half glass of water on it so it seemed understandable. He then went into very technical terms about replacing the "Mac I.O. board" and that he could order it for me for $200! Ha. So at this point, I realize I can't really take anything this man is saying as the truth. Who knows if the battery is truly broken, who knows if the water damage is truly fixed. He was simply trying to scam me out of as much money as I would give. I told him no thank you, do not order me the part (as he said it would take a week for the part to arrive, and I was leaving the following day). He said ok, that he would just "tack on an extra $40" for diagnosing the problem, and we could "call it $400 even". How $378+ $40= $400, I'm not sure. So he says I can come by that afternoon to pick it up. There was no way I was going to pay this scam artist $400 for a essentially still broken computer, so I asked if I could pick it up the following morning instead (so I could bring my father with me, who happens to be a lawyer). We show up to pick up the laptop, sure enough get to arguing about the ridiculous cost to which he defends by saying the other repair shops I had talked to ALL had no idea what they were talking about. Went on to say he had been there for 17 years, he's a Christian, therefor he doesn't lie, etc. This is all happening with him yelling at the top of his lungs, standing uncomfortably close to my father and I. Also I should mention that he is about 6'2 and upwards of 350 pounds, so that made things even more tense and scary. In the end I paid him $250, a price we were essentially bullied into. DO NOT GO HERE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES!!!!!

A frustrating process because after a hard drive replacement we took the computer back home. Only took 20 minutes for it to completely stop working again. Repeated the above process again including another breakdown. Finally we left it for a week for repair and a more thorough check-up, after which it has been working fine. Still don't know exactly what caused the problem. On the plus side we did not get charged anything beyond the initial repair and the attention given to the recurring problems was very good. About two years ago we also had a slow acting laptop checked out and successfully repaired here and we purchased a printer which has been working well.