My nightmare at uBreakiFix began when I bought a new gaming laptop so that I could have some entertainment while I was on the road for my job. Long story short, I tried to set up a dual boot with Linux on it and while I was doing that I screwed up the hard drive partition table. After attempting to do a factory reset on it (a process which Acer makes next to impossible, but that's an entirely separate 1 star review) and after failing to do a fresh Windows re-install from a USB thumb drive that I had used successfully many times on many desktop PCs over the years, I decided to seek the help of a "professional".
Searching my area I found the uBreakiFix shop, which I had a positive experience at before (at a different location) when I had to get my iPhone fixed. So I get to the place and I take it in, and I tell the "tech" (and I use that term very loosely since he appeared to have zero technical knowledge, or at the very least, less knowledge than I had) that it needs a reset to factory default. He tells me that he can take care of that just fine, then tells me that it will be over 3 WEEKS!!! to get it done. I told him that was an unacceptable amount of time to wait for a very basic software reset, and that if it was going to take that long to complete that I would find another shop. He then tells me that if I sign up for this thing called "Asurion home plus" (its pretty much one of those protection insurance scams where you're billed monthly for repairs that you don't even need) that not only could he repair it for free under the plan, but that I would also have higher priority in the line and that I would be able to have the laptop repaired by the end of the week. I knew it was a scam from the outset, but I reluctantly signed up for it since I didn't want to wait 3 weeks to get my laptop back. So he signs me up for it, and I wait till the end of the next week and go back to pick it up.
When I went back on Friday to pick up the laptop, the woman who was working the counter that day (seemed to be handling customer service/management, pretty sure she wasn't involved in the tech stuff at all) told me that laptop repairs were MINIMUM 3 weeks, so it most definitely wasn't done yet. I told her that i was an Asurion home plus member, and that when I signed up for that the "tech" told me that it would be only 1 week, since it was a software repair and they didn't need to order any parts for it, which didn't seem to make much of a difference at all. While I was standing at the counter I heard a voice (presumably the first "tech" but I couldn't see him since he was standing in the back) say to me "I'm working on it right now, I'll call you when I get it taken care of", which I assumed since he was working on it at that very moment, would be another day, maybe 2 days of work.
Another week goes by with no call, so I stop back into the shop to find out what is taking them so long with my laptop. The same woman from the second time was there, she told me that the "tech" had ran into some kind of problem with it, but that he wasn't in the shop at that particular moment so she tells me that he'll call me when he gets back in ("about 15 minutes", she said). About 45 minutes later I received a call from the "tech" who told me that there was a problem with the drivers (duh!) and that he couldn't load Windows on to the drive. Then he tried to pull the whole "Hey, you were going to put Linux on this thing anyways right? Why don't you just forget about Windows and just do that?" After I tried to explain to him that this was a GAMING machine and therefore needed to have Windows on it, this guy actually says to me "Oh well we can't load the drivers on to the hard drive that's currently in your laptop, but we could put a new drive in to it and then load the drivers on to that and somehow that will make it work". I told him that aside from being idiotic (he never quite did explain how he could load drivers on to a new drive that i would have to buy, but not on to the BRAND NEW one that was already in my laptop) it was unacceptable to replace a brand new part and that if he couldn't handle it that I was taking it someplace else.
I went to pick it up today, over 3 weeks later, and not only was it NOT fixed, it was actually WORSE than it was before! Before it was booting up with a Windows error code, now its not booting up at all and its reporting "no bootable drive". So I tried to go in to the BIOS to see what's up with my drive and it turns out this "tech" put a password onto it! Why!?!? No matter now, the laptop is currently in the hands of a real professional at a laptop shop down the street who is going to get it going for me. I'll have a review for the second shop once the work is completed but until then, avoid uBreakiFix like the plague. They have very little (if any) technical experience and seem to only be in the business of selling protection insurance scams. Would give them 0 stars if i could. read more