| Cytelx |
| Cytelx Michael Bushey On-Site IT Support Long Beach, California |
| 2nd of Apr, 2011 by User317876 |
| Our company was contacted by Mr. Michael Bushey after we advertised needing an IT consultant. A lady in our office knew him and said that he could give us a good deal so we decided to go with him instead of a complete stranger. Over the phone, he sounded very intelligent and eager to help get all of our computer problems sorted out. We agreed to hire him for networking and troubleshooting the problems with all of the Microsoft computers on the premises. Upon meeting Mr. Bushey, I was a little skeptical of his appearance. He had a very long and unkept beard with a skin-shaved head and appeared to have not taken a shower or tended to oral hygiene for quite some time. Although reluctant, he still sounded like he knew what he was talking about, using really long words that I did not understand. I took that as a sign that he's just the computer guy and that's completely acceptable. We were given a quote that was absolutely ridiculous, which we declined - $100 per hour - all of this being without any credentials other than his word that he was good at what he does. We declined without hesitation and were contacted again by him saying that he over-quoted us not realizing how simple the task would be. We agreed to hire him at a flat rate and he accepted. Big Mistake! In the duration of Mr. Busheys time with our company, he wiped out all of our operating systems and replaced them with Ubuntu, claiming that it was free and much better than the $1,000's we were already invested in. Not to mention the fact that no one in our company knew how to use it. He claimed there were free versions of all the software we had been using and that it worked identically except better. We lost all of our accounting data as well as all records of clients. Mr. Bushey assured us that everything was backed up. Later, we learned that was not the case. Mr. Bushey stopped taking our phone calls after that day and left us without the use of our computers as most of them had passwords that we were not given. While Mr. Bushey had been in our office, he made flirtatious advances toward an openly gay male who claimed that Michael admitted to being bisexual. This would not have been a problem by itself except we later found out that Mr. Bushey had also been romantically involved with a family member of one of our employees which was creating a conflict of interest. After finally being able to contact Mr. Bushey he claimed that our employee had made advances toward him and that he would not return to our office because of the discontent it created within his personal life. We had already paid him for the work done but we still needed our computers restored to their original condition sans viruses that Michael claimed he removed by wiping out the entire system. He also claimed that the only way to fix our computers was to put Linux on them and tried to explain that our hard drives with the files backed up on them were corrupted and that the data loss was not his fault. At no time was he authorized to remove anything except malicious bugs or viruses, regardless of his personal preference for free software. We also have specialized legal sortware that was not able to run on the computers anymore. He offered to supply us with "pirated" versions of Windows that would be installed inside of Ubuntu, claiming that it makes Windows behave better. I told him that we were not willing to purchase any stolen goods from him nor were we willing to pay him for more hours of work to install anything else. After all of this, we ended up spending over $6,000 to another company to have our previous operating systems put back on our computers and have previous back-ups restored that we had made prior to Mr. Bushey ever touching anything. Being a law firm we cannot operate without client data, however Mr. Bushey did not seem too concerned with our business at that point. After all was said and done, we ate the cost and learned a very valuable, although expensive lesson. Always follow your first instincts and when someone claims to know everything about a subject without any credentials whatsoever, decline their offer. No matter how inexpensive it may seem upfront, you will pay in the long run. |
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