Shock: College kid complains that campus computer store rips people off

I link to this article because A) I go to NYU (don’t go there; go to a real college instead) and B) it has to do with technology.

Some kid’s computer crashed, right, and took it to the campus computer store. Right there I’d call him a dope because anyone who’s spent more than five seconds in there knows how outrageously overpriced it is. (I’m pretty sure blank CDs are free at this point. Why the store charges more than $5 for a pack of 25 is beyond me.) Then he asks how much it would cost to repair the computer.

“Well,” the dude at the counter tells him, “it’s $75 to diagnose the problem.”

To that I say, are you joking? $75 to diagnose what’s wrong with a computer?

Oh it gets better. If the kid decides, sure, I’ll throw away $75 for the store to tell me “oh your hard drive crashed,” then he can look forward to paying $125 to transfer data from the damaged hard drive to a new one. (Any Live Linux distro will help you do this for free, mind you.)

Then the kid walked down to the Apple store in SoHo where the geniuses fixed the computer for free.

(The rest of the article is some quasi-socialist anti-NYU rant. Don’t bother with it.)

So yeah, if you’re computer breaks, just find some local nerd to fix it for free. Promise him a beer or something. Just don’t get suckered into forking over money when there’s no need to.

At Computer Store, lots of bucks for very little bang [Washington Square News]