Advanced Computerized Concepts

The only thing this guy is advanced at is stealing. He is not a computer technician, believe me. Either he hasn’t learned computers since Windows ’95, or he’s a down-​right con-​artist. I know computers well enough, so when they asked me about this, I realized my Parents fell right in to his trap.
They saw that Office Depot or OfficeMax could do virus clean up and computer tune ups for about $ 65. My Father wanted to «go local» but somehow didn’t understand he was being led in to a trap by «the local guy». This fellow operates in boonies in his rundown embarrassing manufactured home. Red Flag 1. Then you start talking to him. If you don’t understand computers, your technician should be empowering you with understanding before he does his job. This fellow swirls you around in nonsensical lingo until you resign that he knows best: Red Flag 2. Then he asks for advanced cash or check only payment. Usually people ask for the money when the job is complete: Red Flag 3. He charged $ 225 right of the bat having provided no services: Red Flag 4. Then he did something that I can only describe as Extortion. He claimed that he had only performed virus clean up when in reality he had wiped the hard drive clean with a fresh install of Windows XP, knowing darn well that there was no back up. Then he said it would take another $ 300 to restore the data. He double talked, saying the data was lost, or maybe with a few hours work he could restore it «from a little structure». That’s not how it works. He said things like, «adding RAM won’t improve performance.» When he returned the computer, wiped clean, he did not give us back one of two hard drives that were in the system. He clearly intended to keep that hard drive hostage containing our data until we paid his extortionist fees. A $ 65 job at Office Max would cost $ 525 with him, if he had his way. Unfortunately, I interfered and played hard ball. Guess what, he deleted the data from the drive before returning it to us and claimed «all data was lost». How does someone who offers data restoration lose your data? Think about this: he was holding hostage my parent’s family photos, tax information, my father’s novel in progress, our records!
DO NOT GO TO THIS GUY EVER AND HE REALLY NEEDS TO BE INVESTIGATED