I am thoroughly pissed off at the guy who "repaired" my laptop. How do I get him to make it right? He seems to have lied to me and I need to know the right things to say when I confront him to make him reveal the truth.
The reason I took it to him is because the fan quit working and I couldn't figure out how to open the case to check it myself. I usually do all my own repair work but in this case I was stumped. And his price quote was reasonable. The laptop was overheating. It's six years old and I figured the thermal paste under the CPU heat sink might need replacing. He told me that to clean the fan and replace the thermal paste would cost me just $45.
You might wonder why I would want to repair rather than replace a six year old laptop. I'd already replaced the hard drive and the battery, and aside from that it was working just fine, until the fan stopped running. And no way can I afford a new machine. I wouldn't want one with Windows 8 or 10 on it (this one has Windows 7) anyway.
So I dropped it off on Saturday the 11th and got it back Friday the 17th. He showed me before and after pics of the fan. It had been totally clogged with a combination of cat hair and dust. Now it's running at least 20 C. cooler than it had been. Fine, I am happy.
Except... when first started after bringing it home, around noon last Saturday, the clock said it was 4:11 a.m. and the date was shown as Monday June 27th. I wondered if the guy had done something to the motherboard battery. That was the only thing I could think of that would have caused this issue. So I sent him an email about it.
I had also noticed that the button to turn the laptop on was sort of tilted. It slopes to the right, where before it sat flush with the top of the machine. Also, when I first tried to start it, the light came on under the button but the laptop didn't start, it just shut off after a couple of seconds. I tried again, this time pushing the button at the same angle as the "tilt", and it worked.
Here's the exchange I had with him by email:
me: Did you do something that required removal of the motherboard battery?
Because the time on the computer's clock was about eight hours too
early when I turned it on. It also had Monday, June 27th as the date
(on Saturday, June 18th)..
I suppose I ought to have asked you to replace that battery, since
it's six years old....
Also, the on/off button seems not to be seated quite right. It is
titled... and the first time I turned it on, it shut itself off again
before even trying to boot up. The second time I pushed harder and at
an angle (the same angle that it's titled at), and it booted.
It's running about 20 C. cooler than when I brought it to you. That's very good!
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him: i didn't touch the battery but i know it was completely dead and i had to
use one of my chargers to even get it to turn on when i got it. the power
button is embedded in the casing and wasn't messed with so i don't know
why it would be tilted. the power did the same thing to me when i first
tried to start it and i can only figure is because the battery wasn't
fully charged. otherwise it could be because of the mess that was on the
motherboard, i couldn't completely remove all the debris because most of
it was some sort of bug droppings and was stuck to the board. i didn't
remove it because i don't have an electronic cleaner to do so. I'm glad
it's running cooler, it should run better now that the fan isn't
obstructed from debris.
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me: The laptop battery was fully charged when I gave you the machine. It's
fairly new and has 12 cells so should have been good for at least four
hours.
I was talking about the *motherboard* battery in the previous message.
That's what I ought to have asked you to replace.
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him: [no reply]
I had charged the battery to 100% just before giving him the machine. There was absolutely no need for him to have put it on a charger. I hope he didn't damage it. The Toshiba PC Health Monitor says it's ok now, but earlier when I read that, it said "Battery Health: Poor". Now it says the opposite.... go figure!
He didn't have to start the laptop until after he cleaned the fan. Which means he had taken the cover off before trying to start it up. I think when he put it back together, something must have been caddywhompus, otherwise why wouldn't the start button work right? And I had told him the battery was fully charged, when I dropped it off. And why were the date and time goofed up if he didn't touch the motherboard battery?
Oddly, this morning when I tried to bring the machine out of hibernation, it wouldn't come back. So I shut it down completely, left it off for a while, then tried again. Nothing happened except the fan ran for a few seconds. The screen stayed black. I tried this once more (to no avail), then decided to try a complete reset; I unplugged the machine, took the battery out, and left it sitting for ten minutes, then tried again. I figured this would have ended my previous session and caused the "Windows didn't shut down properly" dialog to appear -- if it started at all. By this time I was fuming at the repair guy.... I figured he must have well and truly wrecked my laptop!
But, surprisingly, when I reinserted the battery and the power cord, then pressed the button (at that damned angle) to start it again, the first thing I saw was "Resuming Windows"... and it was as if I had never shut the machine off at all!! THIS I do NOT understand!
Anyhow, I think the repair guy goofed something up... I did tell him that the battery was good and fully charged when I dropped off the machine, and the power button is definitely not right now. He insists he didn't mess with that, but clearly something isn't right. What can I do about it?
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