Idiots Over at PC World

[jæd]

But doesn't this go straight to the heart of the matter?

"Pain to diagnose in a limited time" does not equal "impossible to diagnose."

I'm replying in reference to the Canadian news-piece which uses this (I believe, I haven't watched *your* video) as part of their sting. Some of the techs fail to diagnose this in the time given, and the journs (in-accurate) assement is they are trying to rip people off..

 

[mhendo]

I'm replying in reference to the Canadian news-piece which uses this (I believe, I haven't watched *your* video) as part of their sting. Some of the techs fail to diagnose this in the time given, and the journs (in-accurate) assement is they are trying to rip people off..

Well, you'll get no argument from me that the journalists in these "gotcha" stories are often worse than the people they're trying to expose, but i don't think there was any such misrepresentation by the journalist in that CBC story i linked to.

I still don't think it was the greatest piece of journalism ever, and there was way too much breathless hyperbole for my liking, but in that story the techs didn't just fail to diagnose, they misdiagnosed and offered solutions that:

(a) would not have fixed the problem

and/or

(b) were an attempt to sell the customer a whole heap of shit that she didn't need, including in a few cases a whole new computer, and in one case a trip to a special vacuum-sealed room where her hard-drive's data could be recovered at a cost of 2 grand.