Bothered by some sort of virus, the desperate voice on the other end of the telephone line has called seeking immediate relief.
Larry Schwartz calmly asks a battery of questions, jots down the symptoms and provides repeated assurances that the problem probably isn’t serious. Schwartz concludes the conversation by promising that he’ll be right over to deal with the virus. With that, he hops into his car and disappears into the darkness.
Whoa! Hold it right there. It may have been common practice for doctors to make house calls during the Truman administration. But these days it seems the only chance of a doctor visiting your home is if you live on a golf course and he wants to play through.
The simple explanation is that Schwartz is not a medical doctor and, no, he doesn’t play one on television. The viruses he contends with are computer viruses. The Buffalo Grove resident is a computer repair specialist who owns Computer M.D.
Computer M.D. is just one of dozens of companies throughout the northwest suburbs involved in servicing computers. These “doctors” are on call for those people who buy a computer and then don’t know how to set it up or what to do when something goes wrong. He also supports business computer systems.
“Larry’s literally like a computer brain surgeon,” said longtime customer Steve Czyz of Data Labs, a computer service bureau in Niles.
Unlike many computer businesses, Schwartz’s company is 95 percent service-oriented, he said. The computer sales portion of the business exists primarily as a means to provide better service.
“We’re a service-oriented company,” Schwartz said. “We concentrate on service, while the others concentrate on sales.”
And Schwartz makes house calls. He estimates that 98 percent of all repairs are done on-site. The only exceptions are when an infinite amount of space is required for a particular task, such as rebuilding a large machine.
Computer repair services deal with a wide variety of problems. According to Schwartz, the most common involve hard drives and power supplies. Others encompass floppy drives, monitors and network interface cards.
Schwartz, who has two other people on staff at Computer M.D., said he works with more than 300 customers and 3,000 machines. He fields approximately 40 calls per day. Of those, he said he solves about half of the problems over the phone free of charge. For the others, he schedules appointments no more than four hours from the time of the call, provided the customer has a service contract. Most repair jobs take less than an hour.
The advantages of making house calls for this computer doctor are great.
“Most customers like to see the machine opened in front of them and like to know what’s going on,” Schwartz said. “When the repair is finished, we ask them to sit down and try it. That avoids making trips.”
He charges $250 per system per year for a typical service contract and offers an hourly rate of $70 for those without a maintenance agreement.
Schwartz said he never knows what to expect when his phone rings. At the other end of the line could be a high school student or the CEO of a prominent corporation. And the emotional state of his customers varies as much as the degree of their problem. Not too long ago, Schwartz received a call at 7 a.m. from a frantic mother who said her daughter’s term paper was locked inside their computer and wouldn’t print.
“They called us in complete hysteria,” Schwartz said. “The mother said the girl was in tears. It was like, `Oh my God! We’ve got to get this out or she’s going to fail!’ ” Fortunately, the Computer M.D. was able to quickly rectify the problem with a simple repair to save the day–and the grade.
Peter McGrath, who operates Better Byte Inc., a computer repair service in Arlington Heights, has also encountered hysterical customers. “If you can get them to calm down, half the time you can fix the problem on the phone,” McGrath said. “Every once in a while, you have somebody climbing the walls.”
Being able to talk those customers down is part of the repair process. Schwartz ranks customer relations as the most vital aspect of his business.
“There are times when they take it out on us. That’s part of the job,” Schwartz said. “When we go on-site, there are two things to fix: the customer and the machine, and the machine is not necessarily the more important of the two.
“What’s different about our business is that when the phone rings, it’s typically not a customer saying, `Hi, how are you? By the way, my machine’s broken and I was wondering when you can come out and fix it.’ It’s typically, `My machine’s broken. Why is it broken, and when will it be fixed?’ “
The urgency of the repair work is fueled by potential down-time that could cost a client millions of dollars. “You’re kind of putting out fires all the time,” Schwartz said. “They’re calling and they’re upset because their machine is down and someone’s not getting production done and they want it fixed.
“Sometimes you feel like you should have a set of red lights and a siren and rush to the site and take care of it. Sometimes you definitely feel like you’re the hero of the day.”
Schultz doesn’t have to worry about a lack of potential customers in the future. The computer industry continues to explode. A survey conducted earlier this year revealed that the number of U.S. households owning a personal computer has grown by almost 4 million since last summer to 31 percent of homes. The Wall Street Journal reported that 31 percent of responding households owned a PC, up from 27 percent last July, translating into an increase of about 3.8 million households. Overall, the study showed, about 58 percent of PC owners have had a computer two years or less.
And Schwartz’s business has grown along with the computer boom. “We went from 10 customers (in 1990-91) to over 200 customers now,” he said.
Schwartz started working with computers in 1974, repairing machines made by conglomerates such as IBM and Data General. He started his own business 10 years ago, and Computer M.D. now also employs Louis Foler of Wheeling, who works as a fellow technician, and Schwartz’s wife, Cheryl, who answers the phones and handles the books. When no one’s in the office, an answering machine pages Schwartz in sequential order. Business customers range from a one-terminal dentist office to a 300-terminal manufacturing plant.
“I trust Larry’s judgment on hardware, and he keeps me up to date and in-tune with all the latest products,” said John Cwik, manager of information services at Ogden Manufacturing in Arlington Heights.
During the last 15 years, the computer repair business has changed dramatically, paralleling the tremendous technological explosion in the industry. “I don’t want to sound arrogant, but the typical PC is pretty basic,” Schwartz said. “It’s not like 20 years ago when you had to walk into the room to attack the problem wearing a lab coat. . . .
“Back then a disk drive was the size of a washing machine,” Schwartz said.
“Today, the machines are much more throwaway. If a board goes bad, you throw it away and replace it with another one.”
With the continued massive growth of the computer age, the Computer M.D. hasn’t experienced much down-time lately. Even if it means making additional house calls.
“The computer used to be considered a tool for businesses. Now it has replaced the typewriter, the calculator, the fax machine; it’s replaced everything,” Schwartz said. “It’s basically the entire business now.”
