A PC Qik review, part 3

Well, get a load of this crap. Whilst vacumming the 2 fans inside our computer, I couldn't help but notice that our motherboard has been replaced. It's kind of hard to miss that, you know? Now why on earth did those crooks at PC Qik choose to steal our perfectly good mobo and replace it with a different one? One can only surmise that replacing our motherboard has made it far easier for them to snoop on us, which they've been doing (and rather sloppily)for at least 2 months.
They have also stolen files right off our desktop, including the famous PDF I received from PC Qik in early October. A document of which I have multiple copies in multiple locations; ditto for those priceless emails I exchanged with the owner of  Painesville's Original Crappy Computer business.

Of course, there's more to come on this subject.
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Now a word about the safety of the computers at Painesville's Morley library. Don't use them. Notice that anyone can peer at your keyboard or monitor to see what you're typing in(passwords, user names, etc)or to see which websites you visit. Also, kindly notice that clearing your browsing data takes two or three attempts.
You can't just click the button and hope it has wiped your browsing history out. Go check it out for yourself.

A good library has privacy screens or cubicles or some other physical barrier that minimizes snooping by others. And a good library has fully functional browser sweeping so that the person who uses the computer after you has no idea who you are or where you went.

A PC Qik review, part 2

More damage to report courtesy of the gang at PC Qik, Painesville.
We can no longer insert a camera's SD memory card into the appropriate slot on the computer; we are forced to use a USB cord from camera to computer. This is minor compared to the next bit of info.
The bastards at PC Qik either removed our perfectly good Network Interface Card(NIC) and replaced it with one of theirs OR they disabled it. This illegal removal of our NIC is why the router no longer worked as it did in August. The router's diagnostic log kept stating the following: NIC is not installed.
The NIC  gives the computer its MAC address and allows any swine who knows the MAC address the ability to snoop on us, change our computer and its various setttings and basically, control our computer.
The greedy pigs at PC Qik have an external drive attached to our computer, as well as various readers and storage devices. They also have at least one subsystem on our Windows XP system, including one written in Linux.
Friday nite I attempted to install Kasperky Internet Suite because I knew the free Comodo firewall I downloaded the previous week was not functioning properly. But lo and behold, I kept getting all these weird errror messages and continual attempts to reboot. I am well aware that a virus or worm can also prevent normal operations but given the malice of the PC Qik boys, I suspect it was more than just a freaking virus.
Here's why: after downloading the latest update from Kaspersky and with the Kaspersky CD in the CD drive, the frigging computer did not install internet suite but instead immediately starts the damn rescue disk, even though I did not authorize it. And right before my eyes, comes the Linux files, which we have not put on our computer. So I somehow shut the effing thing down but then our internet didn't work anymore. Windows network diagnostic kept telling me that the winsock was damaged.
I also noticed a file named NWreboot or something similar; I am guessing this is NetWare. Well, who the eff put that on our humble desktop computer? Who but the g-damned crooks at PC Qik?  They are supect numero uno.
So, we did a system recovery again on Saturday afternoon. I spent all morning on the phone with Time Warner road runner, our substandard ISP(they read our emails; let other people read our emails; fail to deliver some emails; fail to release and  renew our IP addy and have tagged our desktop with a permanent I.D. of sorts, so that no matter where we go, the snoops at TWC know about it).
Sunday, I see their external devices are once again attached to our computer because of the NIC and MAC.
More info to follow.

A PC Qik review

I brought my desktop into PC Qik, Painesville, Ohio in early September because there was a noise emanating from the back of the computer and the CD-drive occasionally malfunctioned. Nothing else was wrong with the computer because my brother, an electrical engineer had visited in July and had tweaked our desktop just like he always does when he visits Ohio.

The Windows XP operating system was in peak condition; the registry was free of errors; memory was fine, etc...had a  good anti-virus installed and updated; SpyBot anti-spyware installed and updated. There was no need whatsoever for the assholes at PC Qik to do what they did to our desktop computer but they did it anyways; it was easy money and that's what the gang at PC Qik loves the most.

What follows here is hindsight information; obviously had I known how crooked and deceptive PC Qik in Painesville is, I would never have let them anywhere near our desktop computer.

First of all, why they call themselves, "PC Qik" is a great mystery, as they are very, very slow in even diagnosing the customer's computer. Secondly, PC Qik doesn't even give the customer a copy of the work/sales order. There is no customer copy; there's only the store copy which they alter and amend to justify their "work". They circle problems you didn't circle. They lie about your computer on the only work order that exists. Handy, isn't it? A normal business uses business forms that come in duplicate(white copy, yellow copy) or triplicate(white, yellow, pink) and the customer always gets one of the copies but as you shall see, PC Qik is far from normal.

The boys at PC Qik don't even use standard, diagnostic methods to ascertain what(if anything) is wrong with the customer's computer, be it a desktop or a laptop. So there is no diagnostic data to check;  there  is no raw, unadulterated information from the customer's computer or about the customer's computer to show the customer. There are only built-in biased opinions about the customer's choice of anti-virus products and anti-spyware products because PC Qik is a reseller of AVG products but they don't bother to disclose this financial relationship to the public or to customers.

I suppose they also have a similar financial relationship with PC Tools Registry Mechanic, which is a bloated , so-called registry cleaner.  Naturally the boys have built-in biases against any optimizer/reg-cleaner that's from a competitor of PC Tools.

Oh but it gets  worse, if the butt-heads at Painesville's Crappy Computer Business of the Decade don't like how your computer or OS  has been tweaked, they'll strip it down to the regular, run of the mill style.  They pretty much laid waste to perfectly good system.  Among other things, the morons at PC Qik  screwed up our Win Sock and TCP/IP settings; removed Windows Power Shell and removed the  dot- Net framework. 

(Their damage to our Win Sock and TCP/IP settings affected the router I had set up on August 16, 2010; we had to pay someone else to get the router to work after the crooks and liars of PC Qik had done their dirty deeds in the week ending September 16, 2010).

So how did this happen? How were they able to do this damage? As I said earlier, PC Qik is very very slow in checking your computer.  I brought it in on the 8th, stopped by on the 10th to inquire about it and didn't get a call until the 14th.  The phone call is what you must watch out for because they purposely make you wait so damn long to hear their opinion-based "diagnosis".  Somehow, on the phone, the PC Qik tech immediately put me off guard; he disarmed me so that he controlled the flow of the conversation.  I still don't know how he did it but it was slick and quick.  He didn't mention an estimate and I didn't even think to ask for one because he had disarmed me, the customer.  Upon reflection, the tech spoke more like an AVG products-salesman than like a trained computer expert. 

So that's how it happened.  A short, slick phone call paves the way for a tidy $160.  And to make things worse, the gang at Painesville's PC Qik didn't even bother to fix the freaking noise!  It was a faulty case fan and the guy from Mentor, a disabled veteran only charged $10 to replace it.

As you can well imagine, PC Qik does not stand behind their work; they do not honor their own Satisfaction Guarantee . It took several email requests just to force them to magically produce a data-less scan result because remember, PC Qik doesn't use real diagnostic tools or utilities so there is no log of verifiable data.  I'll share this info in a later post.

Clearly, the owner and staff of PC Qik in Painesville, Ohio do not respect the customer(especially if it's a woman); the customer's computer, be it a desktop or a laptop; the customer's time and money or the customer's rights of speech, which include the right to question the intelligence of the thieving  business owner and his staff.


If you value your computer, your time  and your money,  avoid PC Qik like the plague.

A PC repair shop to avoid

Hello and welcome to the Avoid PC Qik blog. Here I explain in detail why you'll want to avoid taking your computer into PC Qik, a computer repair service in Painesville, Ohio.