Anything Goes Discussions

I consulted with a new client this evening who was having problems with his home computers. From our first conversation on the phone, I surmised that we were talking about one computer with a spyware problem.

Now here is where it gets really intriguing, I was told by the client that The Geek Squad had been out to fix the router. While the technician was out he said the router was bad. He setup the new router without any security, and when asked to setup wireless security along with wireless settings for the other two systems the client was told by the tech that he couldn’t do it because that was not on the service ticket. They could only do what was on the ticket, which was troubleshoot the router. Before he left he was nice enough to press that annoying Cisco button on the front of the router that is supposed to setup the encryption, but just nukes your Internet connection. That was enough to make the Internet crawl like there was massive spyware on the system. The client called the Geek Squad tech to get him back to make it work properly, but they said he didn’t return their phone calls.

After surveying the situation, listening to their story, I saw that the problem with all 3 of the computers in the household was mainly their access to the Internet through the router, not spyware. I also noticed that they were all running both McAfee and Norton Internet Security at the same time. They also had a few other problems such as a network manager program trying to control the Windows settings along with McAfee and Norton. Once we had decided on a virus program, I set about cleaning up the tangled mess of installed security programs so that I had a clean system to work with while trouble shooting the wireless router. I also did my due diligence and installed an anti-spyware program that the customer had purchased.

After an hour of cleaning out the security mess, the craplets that were installed and checking the running services I rebooted and tried the router. Unfortunately, the router was not accepting any connections at any speed, taking 5 minutes to load the admin page, so I reset the router. From this point it took 5 seconds to log on, and 5 minutes to set the router name, domain for the ISP, SSID, WPA, the shared key, save the information and renew the lease on the IP address for the ISP. A minute to reboot and we were blazing away on the broadband connection through the router. So, in just over an hour I had the main system running pretty well.

I then focused on the other two computers at the same time, walking between them while they did their uninstall’s of the unneeded security programs, setup the wireless for each one and tested them with multiple sites. That took an hour, maybe just a little longer and we had 3 systems running and the client was happy.

So, lets compare:

The Geek Squad’s:

• $159 for 1 hour of the VW guy, one computer and it didn’t work.

Mine:

• $70 for 2.5 hours, 3 computers, one wireless router with the security set up and everything works.

Which would you rather have?

The client was happy and I’m sure that I will get repeat business from him, along with positive word of mouth business.

Technorati tags: Computer Consulting, Software, Wireless, Computer Security, Customer Service, Best Buy, Geek Squad