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***********! Whatever you do, do not, and I repeat, DO NOT take your equipment to @iT Computer Store in Stoneridge to have it worked on. You have been warned.

A few days, ago I received a verbal quote of R500 to clone data from my Lenovo laptop’s SATA hard-drive to an SSD. When I took the laptop in, they: • were not sure whether the laptop could accommodate the SSD (of course it can) • then wanted to sell me an SSD to SATA converter and thereby replace the 1TB hard-drive, with the 128GB SATA SSD I supp**** (crazy) • then they wanted to sell me a 256GB NVMe SSD (not what I wanted, not what I needed)

Finally, after confirming that the laptop can indeed accommodate the SSD, I was now quoted R750. An additional charge of R250 was now added for some obscure disk check that apparently needed to be performed. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and another attendant confirmed that this was not required, so the quote remained at R500. I was advised that the laptop could be ready later in the day but latest the next day. I contacted @iT Computer Store in Stoneridge for an update later in the day but was told that a driver needed to be downloaded and only the head technician knew how to do that! Also, he would only be in the next day. Anyway, I was promised the laptop would be ready by 13H00 the next day.

Having not received any feedback by 13H00 the following day I contacted @iT Computer Store in Stoneridge at 13H45 and was told that the disk was bit-locked and that they were busy decrypting it in order to perform the clone. It was apparently 3.5% complete and had been running since the previous day… all their words not mine… and so they did not know when it would be completed and thus could not give me a completion date. Doing my own quick calculation this “decryption” should then be completed in roughly a month’s time. And that’s when I decided I have had enough of this ineptitude. I had them stop the job and fetched my laptop. To add insult to injury, the attendant was quick to point out that I will have to pay R250 to take possession of my laptop for “work they had already done”. In hindsight that was a small price to pay to rid myself of this glaring incompetence and possible damage to my laptop.