I love Wednesdays. I pick one store and work in it the whole day. This week I had a great customer. Before I get on with the story I have to tell you I’m not a believer in the old saying, “the customer’s always right.”

With that being said, I’m not always right either and sometimes I doubt myself. This week’s story is about me doubting myself and screwing up my shop computer in the process. Because I messed it up trying to prove a point to the customer I figured I’d score some mileage and use it for this week’s article.

Apparently when this guy dropped off his machine he instructed my employee to leave a specific piece of software on his computer. For the past several years he has been subscribing to iyogi.com’s online support and didn’t want their utilities touched. As it turns out, the software installed by iyogi is the stuff we typically remove.

When I called the guy Wednesday afternoon he asked me if I removed the iyogi software. When I explained the process we use he became belligerent and insisted we reinstall prior to him picking up his machine. With some finesse on my part I convinced him to let me show him the software in detail.

With the customer at the shop, I installed the suite of software on my shop computer. I made sure we read the end user license and highlighted the paragraph that requires us to agree to installing third party titles. We watched as virus after virus installed after we accepted the agreement.

While we were waiting for the junk to install, the customer explained that sales people from India contact him regularly to make sure he renews. In addition, they verify their software is current. The pitch they throw at him has something to do with his computer running slowly. As soon as the software finished installing he agreed their utilities were garbage and then insisted I not install them on his computer.

Iyogi is an India base tech support company with offices in New York. I regularly hear about people getting duped by them so I figured I’d dedicate this week to the scam. Rather than making outbound cold calls, iyogi relies on inbound requests then follows up with outbound calls to perpetuate their scam.

The company advertises online and relies on people contacting them for HP, Dell, Sony, or other support. Once connected, their first level support crew connects to the customer’s computer and points out issues. Second level technicians point out more issues and install their suite of tools onto the computer. Of course, this makes the computer much slower which creates an endless cycle.

If the customer refuses to pay, the online technician may act maliciously and delete necessary Windows files. If, on the other hand, they hook a customer they will keep selling their products and services. As with my customer, they kept calling and informing him about his computer’s poor performance.

For some customers online support is a good option; some people may have a quick question they need answered or may need something fixed and don’t want to disassemble the computer. For most situations, however, online support means crooked swindlers who only want to take your money. In this case, my customer fell victim to the scam every time his phone rang and ended up thousands of dollars in the hole with nothing to show.

(Jeromy Patriquin is the President of Laptop & Computer Repair, Inc. located at 509 Main St. in Gardner. You can call him at (978) 919-8059 or visit www.LocalComputerWiz.com.)