Chatham County Computer Repair Services and Networking: Siler City, Pittsboro, Goldston, Fearrington, Bonlee, Bennett, Silk Hope, and more

I’ve been sitting in front of a computer almost every day of my life since I was three years old, so I eventually got around to thinking, “why not use all the experience I’ve accumulated to create a team of amazingly skilled computer aficionados?”  Since I set out to do just that and opened up shop, we’ve been in Siler City for around half a year now, starting with just myself and one other technician.  Since then, we have clearly provided a sorely needed service in Chatham County, because I now have four in-shop and at least two regional on-site computer techs doing work for me.  You see, we have some “crazy” ideas about doing business, such as **putting customers first** instead of our own wallets, and we’re willing to tell you exactly what’s going on without holding back information or making pie-in-the-sky promises.  Here, it’s not about the bottom line, it’s about YOU.

If you’re looking for anything computer related for your home or business, we can help you.  We’re aiming to be a one-stop computer shop, and we do pretty much everything you can imagine.  Since our opening, we’ve already set up or done major overhauls on a few local business technology infrastructures, and almost every single day, customers are waiting outside of our front door for us to open up because we’re that good at what we do.

Because we’re also the only shop I know of that is a convenient drive for Chatham County residents that deals with Macs and Linux, we’ve also helped local people who previously had no local support whatsoever for those computing platforms.  We also perform some repairs that most other shops don’t usually offer, such as replacing bad capacitors on motherboards, which has saved tons of our customers from buying expensive new computers with a simple $80 procedure.  We offer the best price you’ll find anywhere on laptop hardware and power jack repairs, typically half the cost of most competitors and totaling at least $19 less than the cheapest national laptop jack specialists as well.

I think that what ultimately makes us different is the fact that we care.  We care about you and your computer, and we care about your specific needs.  We want you to be happy.  You’re not just a number or a source of income.  You’re a prized and valued customer the second you walk in the door.  That’s all there is to it.  It might not be the way other people do business, but by gosh, it’s OUR way, and it’s going to STAY that way.

Areas we provide services in include Siler City, Pittsboro, Goldston, Fearrington, Bonlee, Bennett, Silk Hope, Ramseur, Asheboro, Liberty, and even in more distant places such as Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, Apex, Cary, Raleigh, and Garner.  On-site or in-shop; it’s all up to you!  Call us and tell us how we can help you out.

As for the obligatory details, we’re at 1416 East 11th Street, Siler City, NC  27344.  Our hours are 10-7 M-F, 12-4 Saturday, closed Sunday.  You can reach us by phone at (919) 200-6003 (which automatically kicks over to a second line if the first one is busy) and on the Web at nctritech.com you can read much more about us and what we do.  Thanks again to all of our customers who’ve helped us to be such a huge success!  We love all of you!

(It occurred to me that I haven’t made a single post actually plugging my business for the local areas it covers; that’s why I wrote this.)

Antivirus 2010 on the horizon…and how we’ll help destroy it!

I just put up a new site in anticipation of the latest nuisance that I only recently came into contact with: “Antivirus 2010.”  You can view the new site at removeantivirus2010.com, but be aware that it’s pre-release at the moment, which is why I haven’t done any SEO or cross-linking for it yet beyond this post.

Antivirus 2010 is the successor to the infamous beasts “Antivirus 2009″ and “XP Antivirus 2008.”  The scammers behind these fake security programs have literally raked in hundreds of millions of dollars, and I’m quite sick of seeing them on our customers’ computers.  The major problem with removing these kinds of beasties lies in their inner workings: they use rootkit tactics inside kernel-mode drivers loaded very early in the boot process to hide themselves from any and all anti-virus and anti-spyware solutions on the market.  The loaded driver’s name always starts with the capitalized string “TDSS” and the older versions use “TDSSserv.sys” as the name.  The ultimate problem is that there is no simple way to delete this driver because of the security manipulation done by this virus: the service registry key permissions are typically null, automatically meaning everything in Windows is denied access to it and successfully hiding it from programs like AutoRuns, StartupList, MSConfig, and HijackThis; furthermore, the virus hooks numerous key NT kernel system calls and “edits itself out of the list” whenever a directory listing or process list is requested by any program on the system, such as Task Manager, Windows Explorer, and even whatever antivirus solution you use.

Worst of all, it locks your system down like this even in safe mode, and its early boot loading means boot-time scanning solutions such as Avast’s can’t get rid of it either.  It’s a truly clever little booger, immune from all your favorite security software.

Spybot can’t get it, nor Ad-Aware or Malwarebytes.  We can get it all gone, but traditionally you had to call a very highly skilled and expensive local technician to get this stuff removed, because a clean boot environment is required as well as somewhat complicated knowledge about the inner workings of Windows and how viruses tend to slip up in the process of securing their presence on your system.  Antivirus 2010 makes almost no mistakes, so you’re currently stuck either getting that expensive local tech or reinstalling.

Until now.

I’m currently writing software that will give Tritech access to a 100% clean environment remotely–free from viruses and spyware, which enables us to perform these horribly difficult virus removals remotely.  The details will remain a secret, but suffice it to say that there are precisely zero computer service providers in the industry today that can perform this kind of service right now: the kind of custom software needed poses a significant barrier to entry, and the alternatives are so much easier and safer to rely on.

It’s revolutionary.  Plain and simple.  No one else we’ve found does anything like it.  We’ve checked.  Regardless of whether you need to remove Antivirus 2010, remove Antivirus 360, remove Antivirus 2009, remove SecurityCenter 2009, or remove any other disgusting infection, we’re rolling out a campaign that can get it done, regardless of your location.  You don’t have to find a local tech and you don’t have to pay out the yin-yang.

Imagine getting this done wherever you are in the world, even if you’re in a hotel in Germany, and paying as little as $30 to have it done.  Geek Squad charges a minimum of $199 (I really hate that whole “$999.99 can be advertised as under $1,000″ pricing scheme! GRR!!!) to do this in-store, and they don’t even offer over-the-internet virus and spyware removal.  PlumChoice charges nearly $90 just to hop on their “SmartPlan,” and they can’t do what we do without an on-site appointment either. iYogi…well, if you think you’ll get this kind of quality and experience at their pricing level, you deserve what you get…they’re like a version of Dell’s Indian tech support that you actually pay money for, and you shouldn’t be supporting the iYogi Craigslist spammers anyway.

Bottom line: only Tritech Computer Solutions in Siler City, North Carolina, USA can remove difficult infections of viruses and spyware over the Internet.  No one else does this, period.

(Edit: a commenter objected to this statement, indicating that it implies other remote computer service providers are ill-equipped to handle difficult virus infections.  The distinction lies in the fact that no one that we have looked at currently does anything like what we’re rolling out; they certainly COULD do it, but they don’t; that’s why it says “no one else does this” instead of “no one else is capable of doing this.”  What we’re rolling out is unique, and fills a niche currently worked around by hiring a local technician…which sort of negates the purpose of “remote computer support” in the first place.  See comments on this post for more information.)

The only bad news is that this is still a work in progress.  I’ll update this post when that changes, as well as post a new one.  We’re looking to have this support platform completely up and running within about two weeks; more testing is necessary before release to ensure maximum reliability, but when this service of ours officially opens for business, it’s going to completely pull the rug out from under all of our competitors, and we can literally say that NO ONE ELSE does it.  We’re truly one of a kind in this industry.

Why you shouldn’t trust big box store clerks…

UPDATE: The TigerDirect store being referenced is under new management.  I have spoken with the management about this issue; he already took care of it.  Turns out their commissioning model before the new manager arrived was causing employees to reach return rates of 30%-40%, which is egregiously high, because they would up-sell too much garbage to make the commission.  He also fired half the staff there; the people that I have worked with recently have proven to be a delight.  The store in Durham, North Carolina is the one I was previously referencing, and I’d encourage anyone in the NC Triangle proper to visit there, because good management means a good business.  The salespeople know they make some kind of minimal commission on their sales, but they aren’t made privy to the details and so they don’t know what to “push,” meaning they just do their jobs right and they make more money–as it should be!

I received the following E-mail today, and it bothered me enough to bring about a nifty little anecdote about why clerks at major chains generally can’t be trusted.  Note that I frequently shop at TigerDirect and send clients there quite often as well (with a warning to be careful about the advice from the salespeople), but one can’t deny problematic business models, and this irked me enough to open my big fat mouth.

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Hey Jody.

Everything seems to be working well. I was able to return the CA software to Tiger Direct, but they gave me a big hassle.

The guy said CA is better than Avast. Is that true?

Thanks,

[CENSORED]

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My response (true story):

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A little hint…

I overheard some TigerDirect employees in the [CENSORED] store talking one night before they closed up.  They were discussing how successful each of them had been making sales that day, and they discussed it in terms of how many COMMISSIONED ITEMS they sold, along with some “best of” stories from their sales history as well.

Guess what they get commissions for selling?

You got it:

* CA products
* PC Pitstop Optimize
* WaCa extended warranty/service plans

All three of which I strongly discourage the purchase of.  If you know of Clark Howard (consumer advocate and personal finance radio host), you know how much he hates extended service plans, too.

I have literally hundreds (as in triple-digits, probably to the tune of at least 200) customers on Avast as their only virus protection.  Most of these customers have been repeat customers for at least one additional session, and it has served all of them well enough that I have had single-digit rejections of Avast long-term in favor of other products–usually because of the customer’s bias (I am thinking of one specific customer who MUST have Norton or bust, in fact) rather than the product itself.  It does better than Norton, and unlike Norton it does not do so at the expense of your machine’s performance and stability.

Yes, CA is better than Avast.

If you’re making a commission selling it.

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If a representative from TigerDirect corporate wishes, they may contact me and I will gladly explain and elaborate.  Having commissioned salespeople is a great way to chase off customers, primarily because when they discover that they’ve been played like a fiddle and up-sold one too many times, they don’t typically stick around.  In all honestly, I only send customers there because they have great prices.  If they want to go somewhere where the staff is much more knowledgeable and the salespeople are not commissioned, I send them over to Intrex instead.  (I don’t worry about either store taking away my service/repair clientele–I overhear pretty long turn-around estimates from their repair counters measured in weeks, whereas my business is measured in hours or days at the worst!)

While I’m poking at specific players in the computer field, I have to say what every other computer technician already seems to know:  Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” is the worst computer service provider in existence on all counts.  Extremely high prices, a plethora of customer complaints, duplicating customers’ private data for personal purposes, disastrous complaint handling (as seen in the hateful remarks of a certain “Agent Orange“), and if you don’t believe a word of it, check out the ten-page confession from a former employee that resulted in a lawsuit being filed against the company.  Or two.

Oh, and don’t let me start talking about Circuit City’s “Firedog.”  They have their own insider employee confessionals as well.

This is what happens when you engage in a race to the bottom, hiring salespeople that are morphed into “computer technicians” that will accept the lowest pay imaginable in a skilled trade while still getting the job done just barely good enough to shut the customer up, and if they get a few of the customer’s private nude photos to add to their collection (or a video of the customer showering), so much the better.  I guess the notions of “privacy” and “paying people what they’re worth” and “hiring experienced employees” and “making the customer happy” don’t matter when it’s all about the quarterlies, baby!

Honestly, I’m surprised that those two big box stores stay in the computer service business at all, given the horrible track records they’re developing.  I used to debate starting yet another computer service business until I came to the realization that these stores aren’t even close to being called my “competitors.”  After all, how much competing does Tritech really have to do when the biggest and best-known “competitors” are in the process of self-destruction?  It’s half depressing and half exciting, but one thing is for sure:  because of their failures, the door has been opened wide for the success of companies like mine that haven’t developed a disconnect from the customer’s needs in favor of the almighty dollar.

The ultimate irony?  Geek Squad and Firedog, in their attempts to gain as much money as possible while paying out as little as possible, actually lose more money to their poor customer service than they would to hiring good people and paying them what they’re worth.

If you are from Best Buy and would like to hire me as V.P. of customer relations while simultaneously preventing me from slowly eroding your business due to my superior philosophies on customer service and strict ethics enforcement, please email jody@nctritech.com with what you have to offer.  Thanks!