AngryTechnician Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 (edited) A colleague in another school passed me this last night: From: "David Petty" <[email protected]> To: ... Subject: LFT Date: 25-Jan-2012 09:53:12 +0000 Hi This is just a quick email to let you know that we are still offering to buy back your old laptops or projectors for cash or part exchange. If you would like your school to be included in this round of funding from us then just reply to this email and let me know. If you would like anymore information then please do not hesitate to contact me, you can also receive more information from our website http://www.laptopsforteachers.co.uk Please can you pass this on to your head teacher or ICT department. Kind regards David Petty Laptops For Teachers Email [email protected] The concern, which I share, is that this company seems to be strongly implying they are affiliated with the now-defunct Laptops For Teachers government scheme that many here will be familiar with. The use of language such as "If you would like your school to be included in this round of funding" makes it sound like a grant, while offering to "buy back" makes it sound like they were the ones selling them in the first place. Their website does make it clear that they are a limited company, and they have a number of positive testimonials (anyone from here?). Still, the sales tactic in the above email seems pretty misleading. What do you guys think? Edited May 2, 2012 by plexer Edited to remove free advertising for said company
MattHarwood Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 I've no experience with the company, but any organisation using tactics like that are automatically on my ban list. If they had a good product/service, they wouldn't need to resort to gimmicks/tricks..
X-13 Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 We will try to pay the best price possible for your laptops but please bear in mind, the price of second hand laptops can be difficult for us to price accurately. We will only give a price of what the laptop is worth to us as spare parts. ^ From their site. Seems dodgy to me. Buy old laptops at "scrap" price, clean, resell at "new" price. Well, not dodgy... More like just-not-cricket. If they had a good product/service, they wouldn't need to resort to gimmicks/tricks.. Sometimes, people automatically assume it's a scam, so they have to resort to gimmicks to get people to actually listen. Or it's a trap.
MattHarwood Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 Sometimes, people automatically assume it's a scam, so they have to resort to gimmicks to get people to actually listen. Or it's a trap. The cake is a lie! Maybe I'm cynical, but receiving "free printer" this and "everything is free apart from when you pay for it all" that day after day I don't believe anyone any more Oh, and the old "you've ordered from us before" trick...
X-13 Posted January 26, 2012 Posted January 26, 2012 Oh, and the old "you've ordered from us before" trick... "Yeah, I ordered and the money was taken. But you didn't send anything." Game. Set. Match. [And possibly free stuff if the person is sufficently confused.] @AngryTechnician Why not shoot an e-mail off to one of the testimonial schools? See if they ACTUALLY said that the site claims they said.
davepetty Posted May 1, 2012 Posted May 1, 2012 (edited) Good day to you all. I have read your messages with great interest and have taken any negativity on board and will in future change the wording of future emails, as this is not our intentions to mislead but to try and get school staff and technicians to read the message. Please let me reassure you all that we are a legitimate company offering a good service to all schools throughout the UK. We have worked with hundreds of schools and we really do try hard to offer a good service As I was an ex network consultant / network manager for a secondary school for over 7 years, I share all your scepticism but all I can ask if to give us a try if you do not like the price we offer for your old / faulty items then simple do not take us up on the offer. I hope this has been helpful and if any one would like to talk to us then feel free to get in touch, we can also give you the name of loads of schools that we have done business with. Kind regards David Petty Laptops For Teachers (company number 05392774) Edited May 2, 2012 by plexer Thank you for clarification but contact details removed.
kearton Posted May 1, 2012 Posted May 1, 2012 From Repairs Before sending us your faulty laptop we will always need the following: Access information: Username(s) & Password(s) They're having a giraffe...
X-13 Posted May 2, 2012 Posted May 2, 2012 From Repairs They're having a giraffe... I'll raise you: Upgrade to wireless. This is for laptops... Which have wireless built in. If they don't, they need a new motherboard [and case] or an adapter... Which takes all of 2 seconds to do and doesn't require an external company to do it. [May be wrong on the mobo part... I'm stunned by the levels of shenanigans.]
AngryTechnician Posted May 2, 2012 Author Posted May 2, 2012 What percentage of your staff do you think are capable of installing the drivers for a PCMCIA card? I wouldn't peg it at a particularly high number here... Asking for passwords is properly dodgy though. When I work on personal laptops and need access to their account, I ask the owner to remove the password temporarily. Knowing other people's passwords is a legal liability as far as I'm concerned, given the amount of password reuse.
X-13 Posted May 2, 2012 Posted May 2, 2012 What percentage of your staff do you think are capable of installing the drivers for a PCMCIA card? I wouldn't peg it at a particularly high number here... Asking for passwords is properly dodgy though. When I work on personal laptops and need access to their account, I ask the owner to remove the password temporarily. Knowing other people's passwords is a legal liability as far as I'm concerned, given the amount of password reuse. Drivers aren't that hard to install... Also, I tend to ask them to make me a temporary account. That way, if I need to restart anything, I can carry on.
Mr_Jiminy Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 (edited) Seeminly this company is now offering offiste data backup... Odd how there is no mention of it on their website... (looked for rolling eyes smiley, but couldn't find one). Quote from their email to one of our clients... "We also offer a managed offsite data back up solution for your staff & Students Data, this is up to 4TB (Terabyte) per school of Data space at the London's Dockland Data Centre. Only £50.00 per month". Edited June 5, 2013 by Mr_Jiminy
supawat1 Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Good day to you all. I have read your messages with great interest and have taken any negativity on board and will in future change the wording of future emails, as this is not our intentions to mislead but to try and get school staff and technicians to read the message. Please let me reassure you all that we are a legitimate company offering a good service to all schools throughout the UK. We have worked with hundreds of schools and we really do try hard to offer a good service As I was an ex network consultant / network manager for a secondary school for over 7 years, I share all your scepticism but all I can ask if to give us a try if you do not like the price we offer for your old / faulty items then simple do not take us up on the offer. I hope this has been helpful and if any one would like to talk to us then feel free to get in touch, we can also give you the name of loads of schools that we have done business with. Kind regards David Petty Laptops For Teachers (company number 05392774) You said you have worked with hundreds of schools. Could you please give me those school contact details or at least school name? Thank you
edutech4schools Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Maybe I'm cynical, but receiving "free printer" this and "everything is free apart from when you pay for it all" that day after day I don't believe anyone any more Not always the case. I use inkjets and toners and if you buy a batch of toners they will send you a free printer. It is not very green because if a printer in the school dies I just order a new batch of toners and replace the faulty printer for free.
AMLinington Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Boot and Nuke FTW: Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing Shouldn't be asking for passwords and domain linked laptops that are no longer on the domain won't log in with AD creds anyway. The company should just nuke them rather than faff about logging in. Sounds dodgy to me and if @davepetty had previously been in the industry as he suggests then he would know that giving out passwords is a big no no for data protection not to mention the potentially harmful child-specific data that may be on said old laptops. Wonder if they'd take them sans Hard drive...
davepetty Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Hi Supawat1 Please check out some of our testimonials on our website Homepage | Laptops for Teachers Kind regards David Petty
davepetty Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Boot and Nuke FTW: Darik's Boot And Nuke | Hard Drive Disk Wipe and Data Clearing Shouldn't be asking for passwords and domain linked laptops that are no longer on the domain won't log in with AD creds anyway. The company should just nuke them rather than faff about logging in. Sounds dodgy to me and if @davepetty had previously been in the industry as he suggests then he would know that giving out passwords is a big no no for data protection not to mention the potentially harmful child-specific data that may be on said old laptops. Wonder if they'd take them sans Hard drive... Why is my name in this?????
the_one_that_cant Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Why is my name in this????? Probably because he was referring to your post?
davepetty Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Seeminly this company is now offering offiste data backup... Odd how there is no mention of it on their website... (looked for rolling eyes smiley, but couldn't find one). Quote from their email to one of our clients... "We also offer a managed offsite data back up solution for your staff & Students Data, this is up to 4TB (Terabyte) per school of Data space at the London's Dockland Data Centre. Only £50.00 per month". Hi Mr Jimmy We have only just started offering the services this week and it will be a completely different business under the laptops for teachers Ltd brand. It is not on our website as a new website is been developed for this. As a ex network manager I am used to the headaches of backing up schools data securely offsite and thought offering the services was a good idea to share with other schools. Your opinion on this would be appreciated as I do not want to be spending loads of money if schools or more importantly network managers and technicians will not want to use it. Many thanks David
davepetty Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Probably because he was referring to your post? What do you mean I have not been asking for anyones passwords
AMLinington Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Probably because he was referring to your post? She ;-) And yes, as I referred to a point made in @davepetty's original post, I referenced the writer by name. I could have quoted the original post to the same purpose like so: Good day to you all. I have read your messages with great interest and have taken any negativity on board and will in future change the wording of future emails, as this is not our intentions to mislead but to try and get school staff and technicians to read the message. Please let me reassure you all that we are a legitimate company offering a good service to all schools throughout the UK. We have worked with hundreds of schools and we really do try hard to offer a good service As I was an ex network consultant / network manager for a secondary school for over 7 years, I share all your scepticism but all I can ask if to give us a try if you do not like the price we offer for your old / faulty items then simple do not take us up on the offer. I hope this has been helpful and if any one would like to talk to us then feel free to get in touch, we can also give you the name of loads of schools that we have done business with. Kind regards David Petty Laptops For Teachers (company number 05392774) As I said, where data and child protection is concerned, would the faulty laptops be taken without the HDD because lets not even start on Microsoft licensing headaches - since the OS is useless without the site licence, there should be no requirement for renovators to log in under any circumstances. The disk should be nuked and a fresh OS installed over the top. I can't understand why as @kearton points out, the site requests login details :-7 Drivers are freely available on manufacturers sites and quite frankly the OS is probably not up to date anyway so it cannot be a driver issue. That would probably be my biggest concern since trash kit is trash kit, whether you get cash for it or not is largely irrelevant but the biggest headache when disposing of defunct kit is data protection and a company asking for the login details rings alarm bells - perhaps unjustly, but we would be remiss in our duties of care if we did not consider this. Perhaps this requirement should be reconsidered if the company in question wants people to go out on a limb and try a new service from them?
AMLinington Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 What do you mean I have not been asking for anyones passwords Taken from: Repairs | Laptops for Teachers Repairs We understand that your Laptop, plus the information on it, is vital to you and your teaching. If your laptop becomes faulty we know it has to be repaired as quickly as possible, so we're able to offer a next day collection via DHL. All repairs are treated as urgent and will be repaired by one of our experienced technicians and returned to you as fast as possible. We will always try and pick up, repair and return your laptop to you in 5 working days. We will even help you over the 'phone to see if we can repair the laptop free of charge. Give us a call or use our enquiry form on the Contact page for a quick quote. Ripon Laptop Repair Top ten most common repairs/upgrades we carry out: ◦Screen replacements ◦Hard drive replacements ◦Data recovery ◦Keyboard replacements ◦CD/DVD drive replacements ◦Memory replacement and upgrades ◦Motherboard replacements ◦Overheating, unscheduled shutdowns ◦Re-installation of the operating system ◦Upgrade to wireless Before sending us your faulty laptop we will always need the following: tick The power supply unit and cable(s) that came with the laptop tick Any external device that is failing, e.g. external hard drive, CD/DVD drive etc tick Access information: Username(s) & Password(s) Connect with Facebook Connect with Twitter Connect with Youtube Subscribe to RSS Feed Featured Video Sign up to FREE Newsletter Enter your email address below:. Find us on Facebook It should be pointed out here though that the 'Repairs' section seems to refer to the repair service offered on the reconditioned laptops rather than the ones purchased as 'defunct' although again I would probably suggest that given child/data protection and the pupil-specific data teachers store on their laptops (and as an Ex teacher I KNOW I had all sorts of emails and stuff from SEN and the CP officer about pupils in my classes) that the teachers user account is not used to maintain the machine...
davepetty Posted June 5, 2013 Posted June 5, 2013 Looks slightly dodgy if you ask me What looks slightly dodgy?? I am just trying to run a genuine business, As an ex schools network manager I thought I was offering a services that would be needed by quite a lot of schools.
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