ER

Evan

I've read your review. It's never great to receive a 1 star review, and I feel sorry that you spent your Labor Day weekend posting this here when I'm sure you have many things you could be doing, instead.

It's been months since your PC was brought to me in June. It was fully tested, worked on, and shown to be stable in my shop upon completion in July as logs and camera footage show. The logs I documented, the logs we both saw on your PC showed this.

I spoke to you via email more than any other customer in my years of business. We spoke back and forth over 70 emails!

It's safe to say I remember you very well. You said you built this $2500+ PC yourself (https://pcpartpicker.com/list/HVsjKX) and you said it was never working right after you built it. You said there were crashes that were becoming a problem that only a Windows reinstall would fix. You were reinstalling Windows every few weeks like this when you first brought the PC into my shop. We did not know if the problem was your craftsmanship in building it, or a parts failure, or something else.

Given you were only seeing the crashing after weeks of use, I gave you a quote of $300 to test the PC long term, longer than any customer I've ever had, and to replace parts, etc. You agreed to this quote. We never exceeded that quote, we stayed in budget. You were never mislead on costs because I communicated an honest number to you, upfront.

You asked me if you needed to change your passwords or bring cords, which I declined and said I just needed time with the PC to test it. It was not evident to me why you wanted to change your passwords for specific reasons, but I was about to find out.

You brought the PC in with who I assume your father, but I don't know because he never said a word he just kept humming and making a clicking sound, and we discussed the issue in-person. I then asked you for your Windows login to get into the PC so I could start my testing. You immediately cut me off and angrily said I had told you I would not need the password changed, and that now you'd have to change your password everywhere to keep me out of your website accounts (Are you using the same password everywhere?? Don't do that!).

That interaction gave me a feeling I wish I had listened to then, and almost made me fall out of my chair (lol - this is all on camera), but I insisted on giving you good customer service, smiled and said I would need a way to get into the machine if I was going to help you. I then calmly turned the PC on and pointed out I could login with the PIN and would not need your password. You stopped fussing. I'm used to people's children having tantrums in my shop, but I will say your behavior there and this review has taught me I don't have to help people if they are that disrespectful from the start. It is indeed a red flag. Thank you for that lesson, I am going to remember it a long time after I forget how awful you were to me and the public by misrepresenting things here.

We discussed the issue some more and you revealed you are in the field of professional animation. Very cool, we could probably have talked shop for a bit as I use animators on my own projects. In any case, you were using the high end PC to run very high end, intensive programs to do rendering for animation - and those renders are where the crashes happened for you. After they started, Windows would cease to work right.

I warned you that I was going to test things in the way I test for all my customers. This method supports 99% of my customers and makes sure my processes are uniform and can make a PC stable for the majority of my customers in a lean, quick, accurate fashion.

My business is built on helping the most people it possibly can. This means I have to support a wide range of issues, but naturally, I encounter some issues more than others, issues that will be what the majority of people see regularly, consumer level issues like bad Windows drivers or overheating Macs. My process tests up to and beyond this, but it isn't always going to catch the stuff that's outside of what 99% of people do with their PCs.

There can ALWAYS be a case that my testing cannot catch things that are being done by specific software that is only encountered in very high end PCs in specific professional environments.

I sometimes CANNOT catch or even know how to appropriately test for industrial grade issues. I told you I would test for everything I possibly could - there are limits. I told you this when we met and as I was working on it in our lengthy emails. I don't think you ever heard or read it, though, because here you are saying I didn't do anything for you. We both know I did a lot for you, and I personally think your PC is still crashing because of something you are doing to cause it, knowingly or unknowingly, and you’re so disturbed by this fatal personal flaw, this lacking in technical intelligence, that you are lashing out at me instead of handling it by talking to me like a human, asking for help, and getting that help… Instead of attacking me over the past 6 months. If you think that’s harsh, remember: you did it to yourself.

I do not feel it's appropriate to say I didn't do anything for you, given the proof I have of doing many, many things, which is labor and is all that I charged you for. When you pay someone for labor, you are paying for their time. When you pay a computer repair person to look at your machine, you may indeed be paying them to give you information about your issue. It's not nothing. I actually did quite a lot for you, certainly not nothing, certainly not service deserving of one star.

I tested PC and did not see the hard crashes you described. I saw some issues with Windows' explorer exe and began troubleshooting. I swapped the RAM out with different sticks, tried different RAM configurations, underclocked components, swapped the GPU out, made sure the BIOS was updated, updated Windows, checked for driver issues, reinstalled drivers, swapped the CPU out, redid thermal paste... I did a lot. All on camera, by the way. More on that later.

I *never* saw the hard crashes you described. I believed you, though, and tried my hardest to make it crash like you said. I did the same rigorous testing I do with every client of mine, the one that's fixed countless PCs and earned me my 500+ 5 star reviews! We both know the PC never crashed in the way you described because Windows Reliability Monitor kept logs of what was done, and I showed you them in an email.

Those logs show what crashed in the hours I tested the PC, and what stopped crashing after my work was done. I described to you and then noted the program stopped crashing when I replaced your RAM with RAM I provided. If you haven't already erased the logs, review them, please. Here's the picture I sent you showing I fixed the crashing I saw: https://i.imgur.com/EN2J2As.jpeg <- Note there are NO crashes after I made changes. Each X represents a crash - There are crashes every day BEFORE you brought it to me, some on the day you brought it to me, but then once I get the PC and note the issue, I made changes that resulted in NO crashes. The issue I saw was resolved. The picture is proof.

I noticed you said you think I didn't test or didn't test your PC for long enough. I wanted to let you know I film my shop 24/7. I have footage of the hours and hours your PC was hooked up, me working on it and testing it, all with no hard crashes as you described when you brought it in. You were talking to me the entire time I tested it, so you know this already, but you are saying I didn't test it for long enough... If you'd like the video footage, you know where I am. Until then, I would appreciate it if you retracted any statements about your PC note being tested. There is no way I did not test that PC long enough. Did you even stop to ask yourself "What if he has cameras??"

Temperature issues: You received the computer back and then said you were seeing temperature spikes ONLY when running your high intensity programs. 95 celsius is a normal temperature to reach with a Ryzen CPU + high intensity programs, I see it regularly on the rendering PCs I work with, but I understood your concern. I was not seeing spikes of that nature in my testing and would have noticed, obviously, as the computer would have stopped working while I was stress testing it if it was overheating. Obviously it was fine in my shop because as we saw in the video footage, nothing crashed, failed, or melted.

Why were you seeing spikes? Chattanooga has lots of people moving here, and I see a lot of them when they arrive because their computer stops working after they get done unpacking the PC from the car. It's because PCs do not do well in car trips - components get shaken and come loose and stop working. It's why the first thing I do after a desktop is brought to me is try to turn it on with the customer so we can make sure it's working and not suffering from a car drive caused issue.

This is why you told me about the temps, I deduced the CPU cooler was shaken when the PC was moved from my shop and put in your car. You did, and sure enough, a part of the cooler was loose. This is NOT a sign of poor craftsmanship. This is gravity. I cannot control what happens to a PC in a car ride, you know that, and you also know it's unfair to blame me for this, but you did it, anyway, to have ammo against me in your review. Do you really think I could be so sloppy and have 500+ 5 star reviews? Or are you just being a little bit unfair?

You then started to say you were getting crashes even in browsing the internet, and by then I fully understood you had gone into the PC and moved the CPU, likely damaging it. I waited for you to get back to me if it was still happening, but you never messaged me again until this review.

Cat hair: Oh, man, can you tell me what color the cat hair was? These are the criminals, maybe you can pick them out of a lineup? https://i.imgur.com/UoLug96.jpeg

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The Big Picture

After all the hardware work was done, I told you the issue could be software-related - even a motherboard replacement, as we had replaced everything else in the PC so far... You scoffed and made me feel inferior with your replies. "I already did that," was where it left off at. You did not inspire a sense that you were receiving what was told to you at any point in our interaction.

Worse, you waited months to leave a review and tried get something out of me, money, which you seem to have plenty of. If you honestly wanted your PC fixed, you may have had BETTER results had you offered to show me where the crashes were happening and how you made them happen and worked with me to get the results you wanted.

How is it you're still having crashes and haven't reached out to someone else to get this looked at or resolved in two months? Even after you left this awful review here, I offered to put you in touch with other shops to get the help you MIGHT need, and you refused it.

Why? Is it because you aren't having issues with your PC? Because you talked to other shops and they refused you? I wonder... You said yourself in your review you're a smart guy, or rather smarter than other people, but let me tell you: you cannot assume everyone knows your job and your tools and expect them to know what you might or might not know. It's better to lift others up than look down on them. It's a lonely place to feel you're smarter than everyone around you.

As for your one star review, all I can say is I know I don't set out to harm anyone with my business. I use this business to support my family. My mom is in hospice care (https://i.imgur.com/ia73Zgh.png). I feed the woman who worked decades of her life to support me with a spoon she cannot hold for herself. When I am feeding her, I feel a feeling that you probably will never understand.

I know the hard work I put into this business to keep her cared for shows because my reviews show just how many people LOVE me and my service. But my business CAN suffer when people leave careless reviews like this. Are you happy leaving reviews like this? Do you ever stop and wonder what you are doing when you attack someone and who you can possibly affect when you say this? What are you really after? Your reviews on Google show you travel the world (Quebec), you have a nearly $3000 computer most people would kill to have, even if it crashed. How are you this miserable with so much potential?

Thinking about all of this, we may never see eye to eye, and you may never change, but I know I am lucky, I am loved, and I want to help my customers. I hope you find what makes you happy and invest all your anger into loving it, instead.