ABI Computers — Attraction in Troy

tl;dr: Just bring your machine somewhere else.

Brought an old laptop in to have the broken touchscreen assembly (glass on top of lcd screen) replaced. I left the machine with the owner, who seemed perfectly reasonable. But I guess he handed the repair off to his employee, a younger guy, and that’s when all the problems started.

To begin with, it took three tries until the correct replacement assembly was ordered. Their communication about this was mixed; the employee had trouble communicating over the phone, but a callback to the owner yielded a quick and simple explanation.

That by itself isn’t necessarily a big problem. Not as long as the machine was properly repaired in the end, right? First, the experience of picking up the machine was more than frustrating. Only the employee was in the shop; he handed me the machine and immediately became absorbed in using an unrelated (either hus, or a customer’s who was not in the shop) laptop. I turned the machine on to test the touchscreen; while that part worked just fine, a few issues immediately jumped out at me. The one I tried discussing with the employee was a problem with the keyboard, where several keys would have their inputs eaten and it would take multiple presses to get a response. This is almost certainly due to glass shards and dust from the damaged screen getting under the keyboard; I would have maybe been interested in paying to have the keyboard properly opened and cleaned out. But, he dismissively told me this was not a problem, ‘there’s just some input lag,’ and walked away from me deeper into the shop. I tried showing him, but he was only interested in whatever else he was doing. He wouldn’t even look at me, let alone respond to anything I was saying. He hadn’t even given me any means of paying for the repair or anything; what was he expecting me to do other than stand at the counter, talking to myself for no reason? This was obviously frustrating, so I told him I would like to pick the machine up later, from the owner. This he decided to respond to; he told me to come back about two hours later. I did, but the owner had not returned. At this point, I didn’t trust my machine to be left at the shop, so I asked to just pay and get the experience over with.

OK, so the employee is either a poor communicator or downright rude to and dismissive of customers. What about the repair job itself? To begin with, the area of the upper casing bordering the replaced screen was thoroughly and deeply scratched. But even that’s just aesthetic damage, right? The machine was already brought in with aesthetic damage, so what’s more? Well, the screen was also not properly reattached to the upper casing; there are two gaps running along the top edge of the upper casing in which dust, moisture, etc. can easily get inside and quickly cause more damage. Further, in the repair process they somehow destroyed the built-in webcam! And, the last bit of (currently noticed) damage: even though the touchscreen worked fine when picked up from the shop, about a week and a half later the assembly’s touch functionality started intermittently failing! (Maybe this is the result of dust, etc entering through those aforementioned gaps, maybe there was a mistake in the actual installation; who knows)

So, all the frustration of being outright ignored by the employee when trying to pick up the machine, all the wasted time while the correct replacement part was found by trial and error, all the extraneous damage to my machine, and in the end the touchscreen replacement was not even 100%. Hopefully, another shop can undo this...

It's truly a shame that I cannot give this place 0 stars. What more can I say? This place exemplifies terrible computer repair shops. If you have half a clue about how a computer works (or even if you don't), stay far, FAR away from here.

I took my laptop here because the monitor wouldn't turn on. Hadj assured me that he would be able to tell me the problem by the next day. I walked in the next day, and nothing. Same thing the day after that. Cue the better part of a week, and I finally get a call from him telling me that it's the motherboard (which, according to him, costs $350 + $100 for service to repair). How did he come to this conclusion? "Well we tested the hard drive and the RAM, so it must be the motherboard." /headdesk. When asked for specifics about the motherboard, he simply responded "Oh, we don't have the tools to test that sort of thing."

I then ask him about the video card, which he claims he cannot test as it is built-in to the motherboard. After I personally show him that this is not the case, he retracts his previous statement and says he'll look into the video card. I have a lot of classwork that I need to use my laptop for, and at this point, my patience is starting to wear a bit thin.

Cue another 4-5 days. He then calls me up and tells me that the video card is $375 + $100 for shipping. Not only that, but apparently he still doesn't know if the problem lies with the motherboard or the video card. His solution? Buy both and pay the service fee twice. For those not inclined to do math at the moment, the bill comes out to $925 (to fix a $700 laptop, mind you). I thought this was a bit silly, so I went on eBay and Amazon to check the prices for these parts. Guess what? They were all $80-100 lower than what Hadj was charging me.

The day after that (Have you lost count by now? Me too.), I asked him about his parts pricing. More specifically, I asked him where he was getting these ridiculous prices from. He said that he could not tell me, and when asked further, he regurgitated the good ol' "I just can't. We don't do it." I then ask him about why he didn't just buy from eBay or Amazon. Guess what his response was? Yep, you guessed it: "We can't."

At this point, I was rather fed up, so I decided to take my laptop elsewhere. After getting more than a slight bit upset, he then proceeds to charge me $45 for a diagnosis fee, despite diagnosing literally nothing at all (Gee, the display won't turn on. I wonder which parts aren't working?) I pay because I want to get this over with, but at the end of the day, this place is easily the worst business experience I've had so far. If you can take your business anywhere else but here, please do so. It will save you a lot of headaches down the road.

EDIT: By the way, I got my computer fixed at a real computer shop (thank you RCR!), and the problem was a loose video cable as I had originally thought. Not only did it take them less than a day to fix it, but it also cost me less than 1/20th of what ABI was charging me (for the wrong problem, I might add). Once again, whatever you do, don't take your business here.

TL:DR; Highly unprofessional. Never met a single deadline that they set or called once (except to dish out exorbitant prices, of course).

Will overcharge for everything. Parts, service, diagnosis (Diagnosis? What diagnosis?), you name it.

Won't provide details about anything. If you have half a clue about how a computer works, talking to these guys is like talking to...

We dropped off our desktop because it was no longer turning on. About a week later we got a call from them stating that the CPU had melted. Okay. We'll pick it up as soon as we can. It was the holidays so finding a time to pick it up was difficult but attempts were made and each time the store was closed, even though we went during business hours. Many calls were also made but never a response. We finally made it to the store while they were open to pick it up but were told that the computer had been dismantled and the parts sold, including a brand new, never been used power supply. The power supply was purchased and installed two days before dropping it off and, considering the computer hadn't ever turned on while said power supply was installed, I consider it never been used. We have the case, though! Yes. An empty case. I'm sure I can do my schoolwork very efficiently on a case. I do not recommend this place at all and, if negative stars were a thing, that's what I would rate them. Go elsewhere or risk losing...