Computer VooDoo

I had an old external drive that failed… of course, I didn’t have it backed up, and it basically had every recording session that I’ve done over the last six years. Found Drew (Computer Voodoo) through Thumbtack. He came out and picked up the drive, and had an estimate for me within 24 hrs. A few days later he had all of my data on a new drive — no tricks, and no sudden price increase. He was upfront with his fee (which was a little less than the average going rate) good with his communication, and everything was done by the timetable he promised. Couldn’t be more satisfied.

About a week ago the FBI virus struck my computer, and although I work in the IT field, I couldn’t even get the computer to safe boot to a command prompt. Got ahold of Drew, he came over, picked up the computer and within 3 days, had the computer back, all fixed, cleaned up and running as well as it did brand new. Gave some good advice on virus protection and hard drive maintenance. I’m thrilled. Got all my software and files back! Thanx so much!

Way back when in late October, I was backing up my smaller external hard drive data to my big external hard drive. I deleted the old backup, and was preparing to copy/​paste the new backup when the drive failed to appear on the computer. I tried again, and it did not reveal itself. I checked the manufacturer’s website, and read their message boards. Apparently I was fuc$ed, and had just lost every digital photo I had ever taken. In addition to my tens of thousands of photographs of countless memories, I had also just lost every song I had ever downloaded. I would have to listen to whatever was currently on the memory card of my PSP forever and ever and ever. I tried to work with the thing for a few weeks, but after no luck, mid-​November, I checked Unilocal for a data recovery guy.
This guy came up, he was local, and seemed good. I emailed him for a few days, and he convinced me. So I gave him a call, and he came over to my place and picked up my drive. He showed up in a nice car, and was a clean cut guy, seemed reputable. No money exchanged hands, just the hard drive. He smiled and said to me «I’ll have it fixed in no-​time and have it back to you. It’ll be $ 150.»
The next time I heard from the guy was when I gave him a call towards the end of December. He informed me that my drive was being particularly difficult, and he had another thought for solving it’s issues. But it would be an extra 50 bucks. I agreed and hung up. I sent him another email a few weeks later, and he replied, giving me a status update. Then he kinda fell off the planet, I attempted several times to phone him, but each time failed. Eventually, I simply got a message stating his voicemail hadn’t been set up.
I didn’t hear from him again when I got a reply from an e-​mail I sent him in March. He said my drive was nearly complete, and would only take a few more days. A few days later, he sent me a bill for $ 590. But due to the delays on the thing, he cut it down to $ 325. I wondered what happened to the $ 200 we had agreed upon back at the end of December.
I got my data back yesterday. He had done what he said he would. It was a brand new 1 TB drive, and it had everything on it. All of my photos, and all of my music. The drive was larger than the 750 Gig drive I had given to him back in November. Sentimentally, the drive was worth more than $ 325, so I paid him for his extra work. He apologized for the delays and spoke of the epic difficulties of my hard drive’s recovery process.
So, all in all, he did do very good work. He recovered all but .02% of my data. He’s a nice guy. But, his communication skills are sorely lacking. Every contact we did have, I had to initiate. I called and/​or emailed him about once week asking for information on my drive. I heard from him (in reply only) only a handful of times compared to the dozens of times I emailed and called him. I’d have certainly been just fine with him letting em know that my drive was extra difficult, and it would cost more. But the surprise $ 125 increase in the bill with no warning or heads up was a shock.
With luck, in future transactions he will contact his customers and keep them in the loop with updates and information on the repairs of their devices. I hope he does, because he could be great.