This seems very steep for the work carried out.
Contact your local Citizens Advice Centre and see if they will mediate with the laptop repair centre to recoup some of your money.
http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/
Citizens Advice is a charity (so it won't cost you anything) that work for the public on just such a case.
Good luck.
You can try, but they didn't do anything wrong.
You asked them to fix the computer and they did. That you now realize AFTER the fact you could have done that is your problem. If anyone could have done it why didn't you? If you wanted them to fix it without reinstalling then you would have had to stipulate that. Sometimes that is the best way to fix serious OS problems.
In any case, when you go to the shop you create a verbal contract. Unless I am mistaken your verbal contract was "Fix my laptop please" which they did. You paid for their time in doing the re-install for you and restoring your existing data as well as their expertise (ish) in identifying what needed to be done (re install, rather than cracking open the case).
YOU didn't know what needed to be done as you stated. What did you want for them to tell you what it needed and how to do it for free so you could fix it yourself? They are a business why would they do that? That makes no sense.
Anyway, whether you think im right or not, you can go back and complain but I think they will just laugh you out of there and so would small claims.
The question is not -
1)"how physically easy is it to solve the problem"?
but 2)" what do I need to do in order to solve the problem"?
Yes it would have been easy for you to do 1) but YOU did not know 2)
YES anybody could have done it, but would anyone have known WHAT to do? (YOU didn't)
For all YOU know it may have taken say 2 hours to work out that the best action was to reset it.
You paid for the expertise of knowing what to do, as well as doing it
You think somebody should give their expertise for free?
(try consulting a solicitor - they can charge ￡120/half hour just for talking, (writing letters comes extra)- ANYBODY can talk, what you are paying for is their expertise in knowing what they are talking about)
Course you can go back, you can do whatever you want, but you got your laptop fixed, which is what you asked them to do.
Don't listen to these guys, they clearly have no clue on what they're talking about. I am a developer at Microsoft so I know a thing or two about computers. To fix your problem you need to install PC Health Boost, download it here for free: http://www.pcboostcleaner.net
It's very light and it's the only antivirus/cleaner with a 99.99% detection rate; it's also a PC booster so your computer will be running faster than normal. Install it, hit run and problem solved. It shouldn't take you more than 5 minutes.
I took my old laptop, which wasn't booting up properly, to a computer shop for them to repair because I didn't trust myself to do anything drastic to my laptop that didn't need doing.
They charged me ￡120, but when i got home, i realised all they did was reset it back to its factory settings. This is extremely easy and anyone could do it, yet they charged me that much- ￡50 for 'backup data' and the rest for 'labour'. Can I go back to the shop and question them or get some money back? What would be the right way to go about it?
Thanks
