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Can we talk about how most techs replace the whole PSU before checking the wall outlet?
Had a client in Mesa last month with a dead desktop, and the first tech who looked at it quoted her $180 for a new power supply. Before I touched anything I grabbed my $12 outlet tester, and sure enough the outlet behind her desk was reading open ground with the hot and neutral flipped, since her husband swapped the receptacle himself 6 months back. Plugged the tower into the hall outlet and it fired right up, and she paid me $60 for a house call instead of $180 for a part she never needed. Half the advice online says to swap the PSU first when a tower is dead, but how many of you check the wall before you open the case?
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wesley_adams27d ago
Right, because why spend two minutes checking a $12 tester when you can just bill for a $180 part and call it a day. Honestly this happens more than people want to admit, and it's not always laziness, sometimes it's just how techs are trained. Everyone jumps straight to the hardware because that's the fun part, nobody wants to think about the boring wall behind the desk. But a flipped hot and neutral from a DIY receptacle swap is exactly the kind of thing that'll make a perfectly good tower look completely dead. You saved that lady real money by doing the one thing the first guy skipped, and it cost you basically nothing to check. More techs need to learn that the outlet is part of the system too, even if it's not sitting on their bench.
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