The Year of the Geek

TESTING!

When I am given a computer to repair by a customer (or anyone to be exact!) I do my best to be quick with the job as well as do it RIGHT. I test everything about the computer that I changed/fixed/replaced. I do not want people bringing their computers back to me for the same issue, it doesn’t make sense for someone to have to bring their machine back after I just fixed it. Unless it’s something totally different.

Why am I writing about this now?

My MacBook Pro iSight seemed to stop working randomly one day. I tried to use it and it didn’t work. System profiler didn’t show it, something was wrong. I brought it to Tekserve first. They claimed that it was hardware but since I had a small dent on my computer (no joke) they wouldn’t cover the warranty because Apple would deny it. I found another place in the city which I was told would take laptops in almost any condition as long as the condition wasn’t the cause of the issue and repair it under Applecare. Sure enough they replaced my logic board and my iSight worked again. I got my computer back in 2 days time.

I get home I try to use my DVD drive and find it doesn’t work. System profiler acts weird saying it works sometimes….then it doesn’t….whatever. I open the laptop and re-seat the cable. It loads a DVD but when I start doing reading from the drive it loses it. Something is obviously broken. I take it back and explain to them the issue. They take it and call me 2 days later saying they cannot reproduce the issue and it seems to work fine. I say, well, if you say it’s working fine, I’ll come by to get it. I get my laptop home and sure enough, same issue. I bring it back the next day. They claim they put a DVD in it and it read it so they deemed it as fine. Really? You did exactly what I told you I did and didn’t think to read from the drive?

After a conversation I tell them to replace the drive ASAP; meaning get the part and call me when it comes in so you can install it right then and there because I’m tired of not having my laptop. They install it and tell me to come back because it’s fixed! GREAT! I go and ask “Do you have a disc I can boot from?” He hands me a Leopard install disc and sure enough the disc does not load at all. Mr. Tech then tells me “Oh you have a third-party boot software (rEFIt), it’s probably the issue. It wasn’t hardware, it was YOUR software.” I then need to explain to him that it was fine until they replaced my logic board. I also ask “did you replace the ribbon cable also?” to which I never get a straight answer for (No). The tech doesn’t believe me, so I uninstall rEFIt on the spot and boot. The disc gets loaded, oh my god! He then gets a smug look on his face and says “It was obviously the software, see it’s loading.” After waiting 15 minutes, it doesn’t load. This was about the time where I wanted to shove the guy’s face into a wall; he finally takes my advice and boots from an external drive, HIS DRIVE, and goes into system profiler. The drive is no where to be found. Thank you. Hardware failure.

Now, I am told that they need to send it to Apple for repair. Why? All you need to do is replace the god damn ribbon cable, and if that doesn’t work, the logic board is bad. It’s not difficult to diagnose!

So, after 4 trips to this place I lost my laptop for at least a week now all because the tech’s didn’t test the repair properly. If you install a new optical drive, or if a user says “something is wrong with my optical drive,” what should you do? Should you pop a disc in and say “Oh it showed up, it’s obviously not broken at all?”

NO!

You put in a disc, read from it, install something, burn a disc, ANYTHING THAT TESTS THE DRIVES OVERALL PERFORMANCE! NOT THE EJECT MECHANISM! NOT THE [does the disc load, software?] MECHANISM!

What have we all learned (except Digital Society apparently)? Test your repairs!