Austin, A Computer Repair Paradise?

Filed under: Uncategorized — ajrimmer at 1:00 am on Saturday, April 12, 2008

The following is a dramatization. Is Austin “The Promised Land” for the weary and battle-worn computer consumer refugees who’ve survived the service contractor/computer repair jungle, and lived to tell about it? Computer Service & Repair pricing is considerably worse (specially for Laptops), I hear tell (through the Bicoastal grapevine), in other areas, where the people have been made numb by the Visigoth-like service technicians descending upon each and every middle-class hamlet, burning and pillaging as they go. But Austin, TX is like ‘The Shire’ in LOTR, its unspoiled greenery and pristine rivers flow with the sweet innocence of decent folk whose computer problems have yet to be properly pillaged.

Don’t get me wrong, there are many reputable computer shops in Austin that sincerely try to be fair and just with their customers by offering inexpensive computer repair solutions, and I salute them. But sadly, more often, the wool that is being pulled over the eyes of the average computer owner (or Laptop owners - they need repair work and solace as well - you will find it in these pages) in Austin, TX, is that somehow the normal rules of business, such as supply and demand, don’t apply to Computer Repair, and that computer repair services should cost so much more because computers are so difficult, valuable, or mysterious. Why shouldn’t computer repair be available at low-cost just like everything else?

These purveyors of the medieval ‘one-shot deal’ approach, prevalent with many onsite computer repair companies, are everywhere preying on the non-technical and digitally challenged. This ’short-sited’ business philosophy (aka: make as much money as possible in the first, and only visit) assumes that there are an endless supply of non-technical, customers who still have a late 80s - early 90s fear of doing computer repair themselves, and still see the average computer service technician as some kind of mystical guru who will divine and resurrect their computer for fifty gold pieces from the purse containing their life savings.

These Gentle Folk of the Shire will eventually wise-up to the fact that computers are just machines that serve a utilitarian purpose. Would you pay $150.00 to fix a $45.00 toaster? Then why would you pay over $500.00 to repair a used computer that can be easily replaced for less than $250.00? (That’s outrageous even by our living standards – the caviar flows in the streets). The plain fact is that computer repair should and can be affordable in Austin, Texas and everywhere else….to be continued…. 2nd in a series