I rarely write bad reviews, especially when it comes to family-owned and operated businesses. With…read morethis one, I had to ! My son wrote this review on behalf of my elderly aunt.
In my son's words: My elderly great-aunt ("Elle") who lives in the Bangor area signed up for this "service" to keep her PC protected. I have reason to believe this business is dishonest. I went into my elderly aunt's house and helped her out with an issue she was facing with getting [gmail]. [com] to load up on her chrome browser. Apparently, she had been working with these folks at "borked pc" for over 2 months to get this issue resolved. I identified the issue in less than a minute. Her Chrome browser had 2 profiles, one of them active and the other, signed out. Elle recognized neither one of these profiles. So when she typed in "gmail.com", it would take her directly to the gmail account associated with the active profile on her browser. She neither wanted that account nor remembered creating it. So I deleted both the profiles on her Chrome browser (1 active profile, and the other signed-out profile as well). I put in the google credentials Elle wanted, and that was that. It resolved the issue. Took me all of 3 minutes do do all this.
Now, here are my issues with Borked PC:
#1 - Instead of fixing this simple issue, and charging Elle a one-time fee, they left the 2 unnecessary profiles on there, and NEVER ADDED "The" account / profile (google account) that my great-aunt actually needed. That would have been a simple and permanent fix. Instead, the folks at borked pc signed her up for a $30 a month "support plan" to "help" her with future issues or training. I honestly think that it is unethical to sign people up for plans for what should have been a simple one-time quick fix. I do believe in the possibility that the 2 useless google profiles on Elle's chrome browser were created intentionally by the folks at borked PC to lead the browser to a wrong gmail account, so Elle would keep going back with a persistent issue, making the case for a "monthly support" that much more seemingly important to Elle.
#2 - They installed an application "tier2tickets", and labeled it "borked pc" and put an icon on the shortcut with a borked pc logo, probably for easy identification. A few days before I came in to look at her PC, Borked PC had sent her an email that the application I mentioned above was removed from Elle's computer. Days later, I noticed the application still sitting there, and it was unmodified for months. The application is one of many commonly used technical support applications, and it works based on trust. It allows a tech support person to remotely control your computer, add or remove files on the clients computer, install or remove software, and conduct other maintenance operations remotely. In the wrong hands (scammers), it could be used for nefarious purposes and can be used as a ransom ware by unfairly controlling a target's computer. And it was just sitting there, allowing Borked PC to control Elle's computer at will, despite the email days earlier, declaring that it had been removed. I removed the application in it's entirety, removed any other software that Elle did not need, use or recognize - Including microsoft teams which, by the way, I wrote the source code for and CAN be misused.
#3 - These are rural parts with a mostly retired older population that isn't tech savvy. I believe that at many levels, there is a concerted effort from Borked PC to get people to sign up for support SUBSCRIPTIONs when it is SIMPLY NOT REQUIRED for most of the issues that people show up to Borked PC with. These folks seem to be cashing in on this population in the area.
I personally wouldn't go to them unless I needed a screen replaced or a hard drive replaced - but will never allow them to put any software on my computer, let alone pay them a subscription.
About me: I been a Software Architect for 12 years with Microsoft in Redmond WA. I currently work on Big Data, Progressive Artificial Intelligence, Bias detection in AI and Machine Learning. I know what I am talking about, especially with these mom and pop shop level technology scams that I mentioned above.
Borked PC needs to get their act together and work more honestly, or I can force them to. And it would be wonderful to meet you in person. Waiting for your response !