Below is an account of what happened on May 1st through May 8th resulting in the loss of all our business and client account data, while in the care of CompUSA:
Wednesday, May 1 Took CPU into CompUSA and Jeff (who claimed to be a technician, but it was later reveal that he was actually only a customer service representative) recommended replacing and even increasing RAM memory from 128 to 512 as he said a RAM error message showed the current RAM was damaged. This cost was $183.16.
Jeff installed the RAM and appeared to have some trouble as he said it would take 10 minutes to install, but he didn't reappear from the installation until 30 - 45 minutes later. He gave us our old RAM stick back in the new RAM package.
We took the PC back to the office and got a NEW blue screen error message; therefore, we took the CPU back to CompUSA on 5/2/02.
Thursday, May 2 Fred, the Technician Manager, attended us and advised us to change the motherboard. He said he was 98 % sure this would solve the problem. He said he had no trouble booting up the computer and asked us to bring in the XP CD-Rom, and said the computer would be all set to go in 3 days, unless we paid $30, for priority service, then we could get it back the next day. We opted for the priority service and Fred said it would take a maximum of 2 hours to fix our PC the next day.
Fred also rechecked our old RAM. While Jeff, the day before, said this RAM was damaged and advised us to replace this, Fred said it was actually NOT damaged, and that he would reinstall this to give us a total of 640 MB of RAM memory. Fred also reassured us that the motherboard had nothing to do with the hard-drive and that we should not worry about losing any of our data currently on the CPU.
He even said that since we are business owners, we should buy a CD burner to save data on a removable disk, a firewall to prevent hacking, anti-virus software to prevent viral damage, and a UPS, because SDG&E does not provide stable electricity, and during electrical outage, damage will occur to our hardware. He said any business should have these four items. He convinced us to spend $417.77 on these items.
Friday, May 3 We called around noon to check on the status of our CPU. Nate was the technician that answered the call. Nate said the CPU was not ready and he would call us to let us know when it is ready.
At 6:00 PM, that day, we still had not heard anything, so we called to check on the status once again. Nate answered again and said the CPU was still not ready. I reminded him that we paid for priority service, which became apparent that he was unaware of, as he said the CPU would not be ready until the middle of the next week. He then said he was the only technician working that day and to call back later.
At 8:30 PM, we called and Nate said he was currently working on it and it would be ready in 20 minutes.
We got there at 8:50 PM and Jake, a customer service representative, said Nate would be done shortly.
At 9:00 PM Jake gave us our CPU and we asked if everything was all set and he said, Yes, we should not have any trouble.
We got the computer back to the office and turned it on to find that all of our icons on the desktop and the data on the hard-drive were erased. Furthermore, our old 128 MB stick of RAM had NOT been installed and was missing altogether.
Saturday, May 4 We spoke with Jake who said Nate would not be back until Monday. I explained the situation to Jake who stated that, it was NOT normal to erase data without communicating to the customer. We asked him if he could call Nate at home to find out if he possibly saved the data on a CD and put this, and our old RAM stick, somewhere but forgot to give it to us when we picked up the CPU the day before. Jake said he would definitely call Nick at home
We called back around noon that same day to see if John got in touch with Nate. Dick, another customer service representative, answered the call and said he specifically remembered Nate working on our CPU. He said Nate had trouble with the new motherboard and that he spent an hour working on the computer only to find that the new motherboard was defective and he had to start over with another new motherboard. Dick also stated that Nate was not sure if he was to back up our data but deleted everything since there were no directions otherwise.
Sunday, May 5 We spoke to the manager, Fred. Fred said we should do a search on the hard-drive for our data, as it was NOT normal procedure to delete data. I told him that I did a search along with an XP technician over the phone, and the technician said the data was deleted. Fred said he would speak to Nate on Monday, May 6th. We attempted to get in touch with Fred for two days.
Finally, on May 8 we got a hold of Fred, who said that he did speak to Nate who did in fact delete our data, but located our old RAM stick and we could come and pick that up. When we asked for an explanation, Fred changed his story to say that our CPU was unbootable and that Nate had to delete our data.
We had lost our business a result of CompUSA's negligence. To this date, we have yet to get an apology.
(Names of the individuals have been changed)
Jone
Oceanside, California
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