Complaint Review: Computer Expert /Laptop Repair Center - Glendale California

   So I searched all over eBay spending hours for a company that would do the work cheaply and effectively. This is something that 99.9% of people do, search for the best price.  Well I made a mistake by not getting to know who I was dealing with better.

   The first time I sent Computer Repair / Laptop Repair Center located at 1301 West Glenoaks Blvd #103 in Glendale California area code 91203 I spoke at great length over the phone to one of their employees or perhaps maybe one of the owners named either Karen or Garen.  He was very hard to understand because of his accent so I was never able to find out if it was Karen or Garen but we spoke for a long time over the phone.  I explained to him how I had piles of laptops that all needed the particular motherboard repair that he advertised his company specialized in.  That repair was the classic problem of turning on your laptop and getting a blank black screen only.  This is also known as a problem with the GPU and it needing to be reflowed.

   So I take a chance and send the first laptop out to him. He tells me that when he opened it up the motherboard was totally messed up from liquid damage and that it needed to be replaced.  I never opened this laptop so I didn't know what the motherboard looked like so I trusted what he said because I knew he knew I had way more business to send his way including the fifty to sixty other people I sent his way (yes I sent almost 60 jobs his way alone). So the laptop's original problem was that it had a defective graphics chip that after so long would come loose on the board giving the black screen issue. Well what Computer Expert / Laptop Repair Center advertised they would do to fix this was replace the graphics chip with a brand new much upgraded version of the graphics chip on the motherboard making it run cooler and taking care of the blank screen problem for good.

   Well after agreeing to go ahead with the "motherboard replacement" I just assumed that Garen / Karen would put a motherboard with one of the newer graphics chips in the laptop. I mean does it make send to put a replacement motherboard with a chip that’s just going to go bad within a few months? Well that’s exactly what they did. They put an OEM replacement or used OEM motherboard into the laptop! Not only that, the motherboard had a bad ram slot so only one of the two ram slots worked and out of the two hard drive slots only one of those worked to! So I had to pay to send this laptop back again after only having it for a few days.  They sent it back and still only one of the hard drive slots worked but since I was only going to put one hard drive in it, I overlooked it and sold it working fine.

   Next I made another huge mistake. I offered them a deal that I would send them six laptops that all needed motherboard repair work done or some other small problem they all had.  I told Garen / Karen that if they fixed the motherboard problems with all of them, I would let them keep the three nicer laptops out of the four as payment because their shop also sells refurbished laptops like me. So it took almost two months for them to finally send me back the four laptops after having to call them every week and then every other day.  It got to the point where they would not answer my calls and I had to call from a freshly made Google voice number to get Garen to answer. I'm not sure if he did this deal behind his partners back or what it was, but he also had me originally ship the laptops to an apartment address. Not to the business. 

   I went along with it and eventually after a couple months I got them back in a beat up box.  I told him I wanted all the laptops to turn on / boot up and to be able to load windows. That was the deal.  1) White HP DV5T was fixed and turned on great so that one was good. 2) Dell Inspiron 17R turned on but no matter what was done would not allow windows to be installed and eventually suddenly stopped turning on after a few days. 3) Small Gateway GT260 turned on with no screen now, but the screen worked before and it wouldn't turn on? Few days later messing around with it and the screen came back on for a few minutes then went back out? 4) Compaq F700 turned on but one of the ram slots was broken. Both ram slots worked before but ok it turned on.

   After all that waiting the Dell Inspiron had to be sent back again at my cost and I recently got it back a few weeks ago and it still turns on but in no way can an operating system be installed in it. Not what I asked for. I told him both times I sent it back to him that it wouldn't install Windows when it was on. The HP DV5T I was able to sell and it is still working so that is cool.  I sold the Compaq F700 and a week later the client called me up asking me to take a look at it because when she turns it on all she gets is a black screen and when plugged into a monitor still nothing but a blank screen. She hasn't brought it to me yet but she knew it didn't have a warranty when she bought it so thank god I didn't get stuck with it if the problem was faulty repair work so I can't blame that one on Computer Expert / Laptop Repair Center for sure.  The small Gateway and Dell inspiron 17R I still have because neither works.

    I still cannot load Windows on the Dell after having sent it to California twice and back and the small Gateway has stopped turning on altogether when I was troubleshooting it. Plus, the original HP DV9000 laptop that I started out with talking about of which I sold to a friend..... He brought it back to me two and a half months after I sold it to him and guess what?  It turns on and gives the black screen problem! So after having taking a look I seen that Computer Experts / Laptop Repair Center put an original OEM motherboard with the class action lawsuit motherboard in the laptop which was known to overheat!  They didn't even change the GPU / graphics chip on the old style motherboard; they just put the whole motherboard in. Now what kind of EXPERT knowingly puts a badly made graphics chip into someone’s laptop?

    In the long run out of the seven laptops I sent back and forth to California totaling $132 in shipping cost altogether, I was able to sell four of them. Out of those four 1 is still working as far as I know. Yes only ONE! Now I have this HP DV9000 that needs to be sent back to California because they gave it a three month warranty and it's only been two and a half. But this is ridiculous and now you can understand why I wrote such a long report on how I feel I was ripped off because out of the laptops they repaired that I sold that stopped working immediately after selling them because of the shotty work they did It makes me look bad and now I have to waste more time and money sending another one back out to California from Michigan across the country spending money I don't have just to honor a warranty. 

   So if you’re looking for someone to repair your laptop I would not send it to these guys.  Yes they advertise good prices but from the other reviews I've read they have done similar things to just about every other reviewer as what they did to me. So beware is all that I can ask of you.