[Mashiro]

For the last two years every now and then the monitor would be "dark". So when he took it to a computer shop to check out, for the last two years every few months they would fix something in the computer that they thought was responsible for the dark screen of the monitor. Some of the theories were the memory was corrupting due to issues with the mother board. I was in Canada at the time.

More current, the same thing happened a couple of months ago, it got one of the fixes again. So when the monitor went dark again last week, I recommended my brother in law who had lost trust in his computer to go to another computer shop for a second opinion. Long story short, based on the previous theories of the other computer shop, recommendation was to ditch the computer. The computer shop suggested that my brother in law buy a pre-built computer (a no-brand imported from China) and the idea was that the content of his "old" computer would be ghosted on the pre-built computer. Expectation was he would get a computer that would be a clone of the "old computer", i.e. with Windows 7, and with his Windows 7 Microsoft Games, which is one of the main reasons he wanted to stick with Windows 7.

Long story short, today my brother and law asked me to help him "unbox" his new computer. And guess what. After we connected everything, the monitor had a dark screen.

How to, as a computer tech store, rip off money from customers that don't know much about computers and tech - 101.

That computer store... I highly doubt they diagnosed things properly. All they were after was probably the money.

Desktop computers almost never or very rarely drive things like the brightness of a computer monitor (notebooks are a different thing and even on notebooks the brightness of external screens cannot be controlled). So selling a customer a new computer when the monitored used clearly seems to be having an issue is a absolute money grab action. Pretty much like nowadays car mechanics start changing parts randomly in cars when issues start to happen... this is causing costs and not resolving the actual issue that will come back after some time again. WHY? They don't do the proper diagnosis or partially even lack the knowledge. Same with that computer shop.

Reading your story further confirms that your brother in law should NOT go to that place ever again. This kind of people hurt the reputation of many other hard working and professional small computer tech stores. Sloppy work, wrong diagnosis, only looking to sell and etc. all signs for a bad computer tech store in terms of service and support. Now if they would have admitted everything straight from the start there would actually be no issues since everyone can make mistakes but charging the customer over and over, letting him buy a new computer, paying a lot of money for that "ghosting" and still not having fixed the actual issue... no way this is in good faith.

I'm sorry you and your brother in law had to go through such unprofessional piece of PC workshop.