Most people who walk in have one of three faces on. Worried it’s beyond fixing. Worried it’s about to be expensive. Or worried they’ll get the same vague “could be the motherboard, hard to say” runaround they got somewhere else. Here’s exactly what happens when you bring a laptop to our Bloomsbury bench — minute by minute — so you know what to expect before you arrive.
1. The first 10 minutes — visual and symptom check
Whoever’s on the bench takes the laptop, opens it, looks at the screen, the keyboard, the chassis. We ask three questions: what’s it doing, when did it start, has anything happened to it (drop, spill, water, charger swap). That’s enough to triage 80% of repairs into one of about a dozen categories — backlight, battery, board-level, charger jack, fan, keyboard, screen panel, SSD, RAM, software, thermal, liquid damage.
If your laptop boots, we run the OS-level diagnostics. If it doesn’t, we connect it to a bench supply and watch what the board pulls in milliamps. That tells us in seconds whether the board is alive but stuck, alive and shorting, or properly dead.
2. Diagnostic — free, and properly written down
Diagnostic is free. It’s also written down — you get a one-page report listing what we tested, what passed, what failed, what we recommend. No “trust us mate”. If we have to open the laptop to diagnose, we ask first. Most diagnostics finish the same day, occasionally next day for board-level work that needs the microscope.
3. The quote — fixed price, no creep
Once we know the fault, you get a fixed-price quote in writing. Parts cost, labour cost, turnaround estimate, warranty length. If the price is going to change because we find something underneath the first fault, we stop and ring you before doing anything else. We’ve never quietly added £200 to a bill in 22 years and we’re not going to start with yours.
4. The repair — by hand, on the bench you walked past
Every repair is done in the back of the shop, not shipped to a depot. ESD mat, magnifying lamp, the right tools for the chassis, OEM or OEM-equivalent parts. Board-level work goes under the microscope with the soldering station. Liquid damage gets stripped, ultrasonic-cleaned in our tank, and tested before we even discuss replacement parts.
While the laptop’s on the bench you’re welcome to come and look at it. Most customers don’t. The ones who do leave reassured, which is the point.
5. Test, package, hand back — with a 12-month warranty
Before any laptop leaves the bench it gets bench-tested for the symptom you brought it in for, plus a full system check (battery cycle, SMART data on the drive, thermals under load, all I/O ports). If we replaced a part, that part is covered for 12 months. If the same fault comes back inside that window we collect, fix, and return — free.
The honest bit
Some laptops aren’t worth fixing. If yours is one of them we’ll tell you on day one, not after we’ve taken £80 of “diagnostic” off you. Same goes for water-damaged machines we can’t recover, or boards where the chip we’d need is unobtainium. We’d rather you spent the money on a refurbished replacement than throw good money after bad — and we sell those too, with the same 12-month warranty.
Want to bring yours in? Walk-ins are fine 7 days a week, 9am–7pm. Book online if you’d rather have a slot held, or drop us a WhatsApp with photos and the symptoms — we usually reply within 5 minutes during opening hours.
