Have a problem? Need an upgrade? New computer? Buying advice? Tuition? Broadband  / Wireless network Set-up? Been ripped off by High Street chains?* Contact us. We come to you. We solve it.

Most computer repair companies don't like to work with individuals. They'd rather deal with big firms. This leaves you, the home computer user, with very few options if anything goes wrong with your machine. You could take it to a High Street company; you will have to go to all the trouble of taking it there, and then leave it for several days. Then they will charge you an arm and a leg just to look at it. Plus a fortune for anything they decide needs replacing - always assuming they were right about the fault, which isn't all that likely! We never cease to be amazed by how expensive the high street megastores are. *To read the results of a recent independent investigation of high street pricing practices click here and then come back. We think we've made our point! Warning: DO NOT buy computer components from the big stores, and especially not the ones which sell everything but the kitchen sink. The Summer 2008 Argos catalogue has the old version of the My Book 750GB external hard drive for £200. Yes, £200. You can buy the more recent version, the My Book 2 at the same capacity for £84 from our online store (link above). Or there's the Sandisk Cruzer Titanium 8GB flash drive. From Argos, it's £90. From our store it's £18. Bit of a difference, wouldn't you say? That's a perfect example of people who know not what they are selling to people who know not what they are buying. Oh, and they quote the 'seek time' of all their hard drives. This is normally measured in thousandths of a second. For some reason Argos are quoting it in Meters. Doesn't fill you with confidence, does it?!

If you want service that appears to be dirt cheap, then please go elsewhere. We aren't dirt cheap. But we are reasonable. More importantly, the price we quote you is the price you pay. Other companies, if they're charging by the hour, will end up being very expensive. We know how much time it takes to do most things before we turn up, and we charge accordingly. That means that we can usually give you a binding price over the phone or the internet before we even come to you. There will be times when we don't know what needs to be done until we see the machine in question, but we will then try, after examination, to convert the price to that of one of our fixed-price services, so that we will be able to give you a price before work starts.

At Home Computer Repairs, we do sometimes work for companies which are household names, but that is because they've asked us to. Our main thrust is to help people who may be new to computing, or who have used computers for a long time, but have other things to do in their lives, rather than learn the ins and outs of computers. We first discovered computers in 1972. There was no such thing as a PC then. By working with them every day (in a high-tech British military electronics company) we had no choice but to learn how to use them the hard way, because the manuals weren't exactly clear! The same happened when the PC did come along. There was no-one to ask. So we all did it the hard way, and learned a lot in the process.

Here's our phone number to tell us your needs. If we're busy - and we're very busy these days, please leave a message. This necessary; we get so many unsolicited calls these days that unless your number is already known to us, we won't reply unless you leave a message telling us what it is you want us to do for you - and we can't reply if your number is hidden!

Tel: 07838 23 63 25

This is why we're here. When you need something done, no matter what it is, we can usually help. It was easy for us, being in a firm like we were. We would work at it until we figured out how to do a particular thing. People are often afraid to ask about computers because they think their question is 'silly'. It isn't silly. Even a Formula 1 driver had to be taught how to drive a car. This is the knowledge we're passing on. We don't know everything, either! It's amazing how often we get to the house of a customer who has a problem that we've never seen before, after all these years. Including things that should be impossible! But we have a think, and eventually work out what the problem is. Here is our Email link. Just tell us what you want, and we'll get back to you.

Email Us

If you want us to come to your house to give you advice, we will. To cover expenses, there is a small charge of £15 for this, but it is written off against the price of any work we do for you, which will usually be at a fixed price, once we know what it is that's needed. 

A lot of firms say their prices are 'from' a certain amount. So they look cheap. But they aren't. You will often find that a company will say that the price for a particular job is 'from X'. And of course people keep that figure in mind, which is what they're meant to do. When it comes to the bill, the amount will be much higher than the customer had imagined. 

They say they'll sell you cheap computers, too. If they are cheap, then they're no good. Simple as that. But actually, they aren't usually cheap. You'll often see a picture of a computer that is priced at £299, and again you'll remember that price. When you look at the small print, you'll discover that to make it work, you'll need the 'optional' extras, like a monitor and a copy of Windows™, and enough memory to make the system work reasonably, and even a keyboard and mouse! Hardly 'optional'! Add that all up, and you are back to a true price of £500 or more, at which point you will find you could have bought a better system for less elsewhere.

Remember: 'If you pay cheap, you pay twice'.

Currently, we can't bring ourselves to provide any complete computers for less than £500 - £600, for the simple reason that if you ever buy one cheaper, unless you know what you are doing, it will cost you money to have us come along and upgrade it to and make it as good as you thought it would be.

However, paying a lot of money doesn't need to mean good value either. Here's a case in point. Unfortunately, it's most often this way round - that someone bought a computer, and then had a problem and spoke to us, in our experience.

Case History
One recent customer had bought a computer from a company who are famous for letting you go in, order, wait, and then your item turns up. They also sell kettles. She took it home. She was pleased - at first. She shouldn't have been. Her teenage son couldn't understand why it was running so slowly. Simple; it only had 256Mb of memory, which is one of the classic ways that the High Street vendors save money - about £30 in this case.

This was trumpeted by the sales catalogue as wonderful. It always is. In fact, that amount of memory is what the computer needs just to wake up. Try and actually use it for anything much and it will slow to a crawl. All the other main components of the machine - monitor, printer, etc were also of a very poor specification. On top of that, we then had to tell her that the £800 she'd spent on the computer was silly (we didn't put it like that - she wasn't to know) and that we would have given her £350 for it at the most.

She also had to pay us for the extra computer memory and our expenses to upgrade her computer to something she thought she had in the first place because a catalogue had impressed her so much. All told, she spent double what she should have.

So, from the above, you can see that the amount to pay is the correct amount for what you are getting. Too little, and you will have to pay to upgrade the machine to something worthwhile. Too much, and you may have a good machine, but you shouldn't have paid so much for it. This seems obvious, but unfortunately it's all too easy for the unwary to be bamboozled by ridiculous advertising claims.

While we're at it, if you still want to go ahead and buy a computer from a High Street megastore (and you shouldn't), here's a bit of free advice: Never, under any circumstances, buy an extended warranty for a computer! They are incredibly expensive, and are completely pointless. With the money you spend on the warranty, you could buy a new computer just as good as the one you've just purchased. The warranties are how they make their huge profits. The cost of all hardware is always going down. Replacement costs are always less in the future. The warranties on their computers are typically several hundred pounds over a few years. If we had to come to you after the first year, the most we would charge for anything (other than for any hardware that needed replacing, which isn't very likely after only a year) is about £110 or so. The extended warranty would cost you a lot more than that. Just say no!

We don't feel the need to try to increase our charges to customers. We want you to be happy with our service so that you tell your friends. We get about 60% of our business this way. Once we know what you need, we give you a fixed price. The amount is payable at the time the work is done. For payment, if you have an internet connection, we can accept all major credit / debit cards. We also accept cash, and cheques if backed by a card.

Finally, we use certain software every day on our own computers, simply because it is the best there is.

If you have an internet connection (and you wouldn't be seeing this otherwise!), then you had better be using antivirus software. The 'best in class' for home computers is made by the now world-famous company called Kaspersky. They do a combined antivrus / antihacker program offer at a superb price, given the fact that in a recent test by a famous computer magazine it was the only one that had a 100% pass! You will almost certainly have (or have heard of Norton Antivirus) on the computer you own. It used to be good. It isn't now. Please use the link above to see the offer for Kaspersky and other superb software. It is not an option, If you are on the Internet then you should have this program. Kaspersky aren't the only providers of firewalls and antivirus software that we rate highly. Go to our Offers page and you will see the ones we do rate.

** The British Bankers Association have made it clear that if you are the victim of internet banking fraud, by someone getting hold of your banking details from your computer, and you don't have what they consider to be good quality and up-to-date antivirus software, then they will hold you liable, and will not reimburse you for your loss. Well, they can't argue with Kaspersky Internet Security - it has the best detection rates in the business! If you don't have it, get it here now!