At 12:58, Rod Pereira, owner of Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) called my cell phone and left a message on my voice mail, saying that he'd been unable to reach me by e.mail and asking me to call him or to send my e.mail address to his e.mail address.

(Geek Available got my USPS address and cell-phone number at the same as my e.mail address, when I first gave them my computer for repair, so they've had two other ways of reaching me besides e.mail. At that time, I was asked to recite rather than to write my e.mail address, so there may have been a transcription error, but Geek Available should have received a bounce-back from that — it is unlikely that AT&T has a user account with anyone of the more typical misspellings. Certainly AT&T sends a bounce-back when it rejects e.mail as spam.)

I have no desire to communicate with Pereira off-the-record, so I sent my e.mail address to his.

I have received the following from the Better Business Bureau concerning my complaint against GeekAvailable (underscore mine):

The Bureau has decided to close this complaint and consider it unresolved. You have indicated that the company's response to the complaint does not settle the matter, and the BBB has determined that the company's response does not adequately address all the issues or make a good faith effort to resolve the dispute.

When I told Rod Pereira that I would go through the BBB first, rather than court, because it would take more out of your hide, this outcome was what I had in mind. The BBB won't take a case if it has already been taken to court or to a government agency; so Pereira's record with the BBB would have remained as it had been (one resolved complaint). But I can still exercise either one (or both) of those options after an unsatisfactory attempt at resolution through the BBB; and now Pereira's record there reflects his bad faith behavior.

Of course, Pereira could have minimized the loss to his hide by refunding the evalutation fee and offering some compromise on the other costs (enough to satisfy the the BBB, rather than me), but I had a feeling that he'd let adolescent machismo get the better of him.

I am now waiting on billing records from a credit card issuer, then I will take Pereira to court. Pereira will thus be made to bear court costs on top of repaying me.

Yester-day, the Better Business Bureau sent to me a copy of a fax in which Rod Pereira (Geek Available AKA GeekAvailable) asserted

Answering the issue under ID [here omitted], I would like to state that the computer was returned to him as soon as he showed up to pick it up on Tuesday, the 27^th
As seen on the documents provided attached to this, I already sent him an email explaining that we actually dropped the ball on his particular case and saying how sorry I was for that
I absolutely refuse the reimbursement of any computer rental fees he could have had as it wasn't agreed under any circumstances

I informed the BBB that I'd received no such communication from him, that his communications to me since I'd contacted them had consisted largely of various misrepresentations, that vague admission to dropp[ing] the ball was not sufficient, that he'd not returned my computer before extracting an evaluation fee (the diagnosis of which evaluation was incorrect), and that the delay from Saturday until Tuesday didn't result from mere ineptitude and that I was plainly entitled to reïbursement for that.

Pereira can agree to repay me in the process, or we can go to court, in which case he will have to repay me and bear the court costs. I'd say that he should cut his losses.

My latest review of Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) has been deleted from Kudzu and when I tried to repost it now, instead of absurd messages about failed searches I got this message:

We're sorry

Your previous review of this business location has been deleted by the Kudzu.com team.
You won't be able to write another review for this location.

For more on our rules regarding reviews, please see our Visitor Agreement and Guidelines for Writing Reviews.

So, plainly, Kudzu is an advertising site masquerading as a review site. No big deal. The more significant result of the exercise was earlier catching Geek Available lying about not using parts got from eBay; I'll be using that later.

On 27 May, after Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) moved their page on Kudzu, I posted a new review:

Beware!

Instead of buying repair parts through reputable channels, Rodrigo Pereira (owner of GeekAvailable) uses eBay account "rodrafael" (which, as you can check, used to be named "geekavailable"), to buy questionable parts from unreliable dealers, without telling his customers that he is doing so. When things go wrong, Rod doesn't take responsibility; he lies and stalls and misses appointments. My computer was supposed to be repaired in about 72 hours; thanks to Rod Pereira I lost two weeks.

To-day, Rod Pereira posted a new response with a new version of events:

Dear Daniel McKiərnan, this kind of part can be found with the same 6 months warranty for $30 on ebay or way more through Dell (not even counting on the waiting time). We didn't lie when we told you that we would be on shop on Saturday, but as you can see on our business hours, we don't open on saturdays and unfortunately you got to our shop too late without any calls in advance. We could never realize you would still come and couldn't wait for the whole day as we were only organizing the shop. We told you to come as we wanted you to have your laptop back ASAP. And actually, you didn't lose 2 weeks. You dropped your computer on May 15th and instead of having the parts here on 72business hours (on May/20th) it got here on May/23rd,^[1] the same day you called yelling at the lady that you wouldn't wait anymore. Following my instructions, she just told you that would return the computer back to you as you demanded since you were extremely rude and unpolite. Regards, Rod

So I've tacked-on an addendum to my review:

Geek available lied to me about when the part was ordered; at one time (and this can be documented) they lied about not using eBay; at another time (and this too can be documented) they lied about having been open until 2:30 on that Saturday. I was there at 2:10 because I was told that they'd be open until 3:00 that day. (Had they instead said that they'd not be open, then I'd have gone on later Friday afternoon.) They lie now when they claimed that I yelled. And on the 23, the day that they claim that the part arrived, I called after mail delivery, was told that the part was not there. So either they were lying then (which would have been weird even for a dishonest business) or they're lying now.

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^[1]Mind you that Rafael Schneider Pereira told me on Tuesday (27 May) that he thought that the part had come-in on 24 May. (I rather doubt that it was even mailed by originalpartsglobal before 27 May, as he'd promised them tracking, but on 23 May they said that he'd not provided a tracking number.)

On top of everything else, Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) had misdiagnosed what was wrong with my computer display. But the computer should be back in working order some time on Monday.

And to-day's additional Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) datum is that the fellow who goes by the name of Rafael Schneider is in fact Rafael Schneider Pereira.

(A datum for yester-day would be that the Better Business Bureau informed me that they had forwarded my complaint to Geek Available, and would again contact me in two weeks, or sooner if Geek Available replied within that time.)

Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) would not release my computer without my first paying an alleged evaluation fee. Rodrigo Pereira himself was not there; I spoke with Suelen dos Santos Ferreira and with Rafael Schneider. I told them that they wouldn't get to keep the money, because I would recover it by way of the Better Business Bureau or by way of the courts. Mr Schneider claimed not to know much of what happened, and for all that I know he may have been telling the truth. I related events to him, emphasizing that I could document essential points, and explained that, in the context of the delays and lies, and failure to let me know that they were attempting to obtain the part by way of a dubious channel, they were not entitled to any fee. Mr Schneider called Rod Pereira, who apparently insisted that they charge the fee. (Of course, things having played-out in this way precludes Pereira being able to claim that he hadn't intended to charge the fee.) Mr Schneider said that, as an employee, he was compelled to take the fee, and that I could do what I thought was fair in response. I told him that what I thought was fair and intended to do was to see to it that the business failed. I advised him to look for employment elsewhere.

So I paid the fee — writing under protest above my signature on the credit card form — was given my computer, and left. I paused in the hall to put the computer in its back-pack. As I did so, Ms Ferreira came after me with a form, telling me that she needed for me to sign it, to show that I'd taken receipt of my computer. I said I understand. and left without signing. While I of course won't pretend that I didn't recover my computer, I really had no reason to facilitate their paperwork.

Meanwhile, the review that I had most recently posted to Kudzu was again deleted, and when I attempted to repost it I twice got an error message about Kudzu being unable to understand my search. I wasn't attempting to search, but I figured that perhaps Kudzu might stop behaving oddly if I used a different account. That worked.

Rodrigo Pereira has now changed his eBay alias from geekavailable to rodrafael (Rafael Schneider being one of his associates at GeekAvailable.com), in an attempt to make his tracks less traceable.

This particular dodge is worse than useless for him — I can show that he’s done it with the eBay history of the account names, and it will make it more plain to the Better Business Bureau that he’s trying to conceal what he’s been doing.

Meanwhile, I note that my review was deleted from Kudzu. So I wouldn't recommend using them more generally as a guide to the businesses with which one should deal.

Up-Date: Now I note that the whole company listing has been removed from Kudzu, after I'd posted a new, brief review.

Up-Date 2: Actually, the entry for Geek Available (AKA GeekAvailable) was moved, with my review deleted. So I've posted a new review.

At Kudzu, I wrote a negative review of GeekAvailable.com (AKA Geek Available):^[1]

ThiefAvailable

GeekAvailable estimated a turn-around time of 72 hours, but did not even order a needed part for 48 hours (then lied about when they'd ordered it), and actually ordered a substandard or counterfeit part from an unreliable seller on eBay! After more than a week, they were still making excuses for not doing the job (because the eBay dealer was still waiting on a shipment of junk from China). Then the geek went into hiding, with my computer! Who knows when I'll get it back and what will have happened to it? (I've complained to the Better Business Bureau.)

in response to which Rod Pereira wrote the following:

Dear competitor: we don't order parts on ebay (that's why we have warranty on everything we sell/service and we don't accept installing cheap parts clients order there and ask us to install to make it as cheap as can be yet it means losing the job sometimes) and we can't hide any computers as we have a shop. If you had a computer with us you could just walk in and pick it up. The only computers that are on shop are either waiting for pick up or for authorization on the job. Please make sure you'll be a little more ethical next time. regards, GeekAvailable management.

So I simply tacked-on an addendum to my review, suggesting that people search for bids on eBay by geekavailable,^[2] identifying the number of the lot from which he tried to get a part for my computer, and explaining how I'd been told that the shop would be open until 15:00 but was closed before 14:10.

Then I tried calling his sales number, and Rodrigo Pereira answered, from some noisy venue. He professed amazement at what I'd done, replied with a bald Okay. when I told him that I'd already furnished the Better Business Bureau with proof that he'd ordered the part off eBay, acted outraged at a claim that he was in anyway responsible for his business being closed when I was told that it would be open, angrily told me that I could pick-up my computer on Monday through Friday, and hung-up on me.

So, basically, having been busted, he reäcted in a way that can be classified as some mixture of adolescent and sociopathic.

Up-Date: Having been busted, Rod completely rewrote his reply:

Dear Client: friday you called saying that wouldn't like to wait for the part to get to our shop. We said that we could meet you at the shop just so you can pick your computer back. Check in our business hours and you'll see that we don't open on saturdays. We would be there until around 3 to go through some house cleaning. My associate left the office at 2:30 as you haven't called or showed up by then differently than the other two clients that she mentioned that would stop by to pick up the computer. We could have just told you to come next week but decided to help you having your computer ASAP. it's unfortunate you couldn't make it but she couldn't wait the whole day as it was a favor she was doing for me agreeing to hand your computer back to you on a day she wouldn't even ordinarily be working. Please come to the shop on tuesday and your computer will be waiting for you as it was on saturday. Regards, Rod

I added another addendum, which made it plain that he'd rewritten his reply, that I had been there at 14:10, and that he had stolen many days of my computer from me.

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^[1] Later, both this review and a positive review were deleted from Kudzu. Then the entry for the business was moved, then the positive review was restored. I can only guess as to what silliness will follow.

^[2] The account alias has since been changed to rodrafael , so the appropriate search would be for bids with that name.