San Carlos Computers

Wow, I can’t leave zero stars?
Took in one of the family laptops because its hard drive had gone out (laptop got dropped). This guy replaced the stock 500Gb hard drive with a used 325Gb one he had lying around, and reinstalled Windows. Five to six days later I called to go pick it up and the keyboard had a region of keys that didn’t work; he encouraged me to download a driver and install it myself (even though I was paying him to fix the thing and had waited nearly a week). Once we got it home, we started getting warnings that our copy of Windows was not kosher.
Long story short, the next technician (who was competent, from a different shop) simply reinstalled it with a good copy of Windows and suddenly things worked fine. San Carlos’s shifty business practices shouldn’t be tolerated; I won’t give them another chance and don’t recommend anyone else to do so either. Read the reviews first! This guy deserves all the poor ones he’s racked up.

Second trip to this business: The computer I run my business from lost wifi on Saturday morning and I took it to Hassan that afternoon. He had it debugged and returned to me by Monday afternoon. The price was very reasonable and he still apologized for having to charge me that much. Only five stars for a rating… sheesh…

I think most of the one star reviews are from people who don’t even try to fix their problems before bringing it to the shop, they just say «it’s broken. fix it.»
I took my desktop there because I don’t have the extra parts to find out which piece of my tower went bad. I took it to CC computers in san mateo, and they couldn’t tell me s**t except that I needed to install my OS… which if they had actually taken time to look at it, they would have found out that my video card died, like these guys did. I left it at the shop in san mateo for over a week and they didn’t even look at it until maybe a week and a half on constant checking up. This guy fixed it in three hours. If you actually know something about computers, these guys are a good place to go. If not, just take your stuff to Best Buy.

Henry was able to fix my computer the next day, and offered me great resources to find out where to get help for software issues that he wasn’t aware of. I appreciate a small shop like this because you never know when you are going to need it, but surely the quality is better than most retailers (AKA Geeksquad).

A friend recommended me this place before I saw Unilocal reviews. My Dell Latitude E6400 had been overheating recently and perhaps that combined with a few drops (ouch!) contributed to the demise of its motherboard (flashing LEDs on attempted start-​up).
I might not have gone if I’d Unilocaled first, but I felt like Hassan treated me fairly. He was honest about repair vs. replacement cost. I told him I needed the hard drive recovered. He packaged it, provided USB and power cables and demonstrated on a PC that the drive was readable. He offered to sell me a refurbished unit if I wanted, which I’m considering but would likely buy new or try ebay/​Craigslist (the latter is where I got the Dell to begin with).
Other PC repair folks had rave reviews but this shop was a bit closer to me (RWC). YMMV.

I have been a San Carlos resident for 25+ years. According to the owner of San Carlos computers he has owned this store for 19+ years. I purchased an external hard drive & enclosure from him yesterday 2÷5÷10.
The hard drive is a joke I went there this morning to return it, and basically was told to leave it there and he would return my money during the week??? I have a very UNCOMFORTABLE feeling about this guy. I took the item home and it is the same result. The hard drive makes a ticking sound similar to a BOMB. The hard drive is dying… Thank goodness I am computer savvy. The owner is a joke, and that’s ok. I will make lemonade from the lemon he sold me… Buyer Be ware!!!

I had to pick up a laptop ac adapter for my dad and this place is pretty close to where he lives. Unfortunately, the one he sold me didn’t work even after I ran back to my dads to get the original for him to see.
The upsetting part was the return. He told me he could get a replacement in ‘a few days’ but that wouldn’t work for me. I ask for my money back and he says he doesn’t have any cash right now — could I please come back later for my refund. I asked him to go to an ATM since I was very busy and he pleads with me not to make him do that. I did pick up the refund successfully the next day, however.
My thoughts are this — only visit this shop if you care to be treated like a second rate citizen and not a customer.

I wish I had never taken my comuter to this store. All the guy had to do was reinstall the programs from the hard drive restore discs and he couldn’t even manage that. When I got the computer back and called him to find out why he had not installed the blue tooth driver, the guy started yelling at me. It took my IT dept. an hour to clean up all the hardware driver conflicts that this guy did not install properly and it cost me another $ 50 bucks for Dell to remote into my computer and identify all the missing drivers.
DO NOT HAVE THIS GUY DO ANY WORK ON YOUR COMPUTER and/​OR TRUST him.

This guy did one thing to me that I will never, ever forget, and that motivates me to give him one star. I had an HP Laserjet that suddenly started making this really, really bad noise when it printed. I took this in, and this guy referred me to some other store, now thankfully gone, in San Carlos that allegedly repaired printers.
I took my printer in to the friend’s store, and asked him to take a look at it. He did, quickly, and then gave me this greasy smile, and said, «If I can fix it right now, on the spot, it’ll be $ 50» or something. What am I going to say? No? So, I agreed, and he reached into the mechanism and fished out a binder clip that was jamming the gears. it took him about ten seconds. He was actually proud of having screwed me out of a quick $ 50 for basically nothing.
If this is who this guy refers customers to, I cannot imagine how he treats his own customers.

Had a problem with a CPU fan. Hassan gave free advice over the phone, but I still brought it in. He determined I had a bad power supply. He installed an upgraded fan and power supply, all in about 2 hours after I dropped the PC off. I was very happy with the speed of service and the end result.

Some BASIC expectations as a customer include: Customer being ready in the time frame given to them. Laptop repaired and given back to them the way it was brought to the store, fully functioning. Notification if there were any problems. Respected as a paying customer. But unfortunately at San Carlos Computers, none of these expectations were met. My laptop was returned to me 2 days after set time when it would be returned, when laptop had supposed «blue screen» I was not notified at time of service but when paying for and picking up laptop, the PN (product number) did not match my documentation of the laptop I brought it, and while laptop did not even turn on when I brought it home when only the backlight screen was out, the owner of the store yelled and screamed at me stating the I must not go to church and that he wanted to throw the laptop in the street and watch me chase after it… ALL for wanting my laptop, the one I brought in, fully functioning the way I brought it in, with the correct PN number (which they stated was a simple casing switch issue), and screen fixed (which I paid $ 160.00 for). It wasn’t until the CORRECT casing was replaced, that the computer would not turn on at all that one of the employees offered me another computer to compensate for the one which was obviously damaged. Offer was accepted.