Unlike the positive experience that most people here apparently had, I had an overall unpleasant…read moreexperience with San Diego Computer Consultants/The Chip Merchant.
My bottom line impression of SDCC is that they are fine if you know nothing about computers and want something simple done, but that their level of expertise is intermediate - not wizard-level - and that they are lost with complex problems.
A few weeks ago, I borked my three-month old Win8 computer by hard booting it. I eventually found a self-diagnostic text file that said that the master boot record needed to be rebuilt. It also seemed that Windows/DOS had suddenly lost the ability to see most of my hard drive's approximately 600 GB of music, pictures, and files, so it might need to have the File Allocation Table rebuilt as well.
Having dealt with trying to repair a crippled Win8 installation before, I knew that Microsoft had closed off many of the avenues that previous versions of Windows had for an amateur like me to try to get in there and fix things. So, I thought to myself, "Perhaps it's best not to waste time trying ... bummer that it'll cost a hundred dollars or two, but I'll take it to experts, and they'll know what to do to get it working again".
I saw that SDCC had a sizable number of five star reviews here on Yelp, so I thought that they would be trustworthy place to get the work done. I tried to ignore the one or two star reviews, and also the review that had started with few stars but revised themselves higher after feedback from Jorge (the SDCC owner?).
When I dropped my computer off, the tech at the register who was friendly and reassuring. I specifically told him that what I was hoping they would be able to do was get Windows working again, and also restore my missing files. As I left, I felt nervous, but guardedly optimistic that they would be able to help me out.
A couple days later, a tech named Alex called, and cheerily told me that that my computer was now ready to be picked up, since he had reinstalled Windows. I was devastated. Reinstalling Windows meant that there was no chance of repairing my old installation of Windows, and so I had lost all of my installed software, all of my configurations, all the files that I did not have backed up, and the two weeks of work I had done since the last time I had backed up most of my files
To my mind, reinstalling the operating system is a last resort, something one does after trying all other means of repair and admitting defeat. It's also something I know how to do, and don't need to pay an "expert" to do for me. Alex not only did not call and ask me if I wanted this step done, he assumed that I had no files to restore, and that it was safe to wallpaper over the missing files with a new Windows installation; somehow, the message that I had missing files that I wanted recovered was not passed on to him.
I suspect that Alex did not even try to rebuild my master boot record or file allocation table, or know how, and I suspect that he made no effort towards any other method of repairing my windows before doing the simplest but most destructive of all possible repair options, a reinstall.
To Alex's credit, he had copied the disk's surface to an external drive before reinstalling Windows, and he offered to copy this disk image back to my computer if I wanted. And, also to his credit, he was patient with me being angry on the phone (to some extent, I admit that I was taking out on him my frustration with losing my installation and my files). I appreciated that he apologized a couple times for not calling to check in with me before reinstalling Windows.
My computer was then apparently passed on to a tech named Rick, whose job it was to look for my missing files and try to restore them from the copied external disk image. Alas, this challenge was apparently beyond his skills and his tools' abilities. I asked him to guess what had gone wrong with my Windows installation and why he was unable to restore my files, and, in both cases, he kept simply repeating that Windows and/or my files were "too corrupted". I asked him to be more technically specific, but he was either unwilling or unable to give me any more insightful of an answer.
To Alex and Rick's credit (and this is why I am giving a two star review, rather than a one star), my bill at this point was zero dollars. Since they were unable to help me, they did not charge for the considerable time that they had put in trying.
I then asked Rick to leave the Windows reinstallation on my computer's hard drive, and to make me an external drive with an image of my computer's drive before the reinstall. He told me that this would take two days. It wasn't until six days later, however, and two phone calls from me, that Rick finally let me know that my computer and this new drive were ready for pickup.
All in all, my experience with SDCC was a frustrating one.
