How Break Fix Pros came about

History of EZMM Software and Break Fix Pros

In 1985 after the passing of my mother, I decided that I wanted to pursue a passion of mine of starting a graphics business, so I had a friend of mine who was and art teacher at a local high school and he and I started a small graphic arts company that would create custom clip art.

Back in the mid-to late 80’s there was very little of this type of media and so we had a unique niche and soon had some very lucrative contracts to product custom clipart for our clients. One day on a deadline for a $ 10,000.00 contract I walked into the office to start working and turned on my computer and buzzed and beeped, but no video came up.

So, in a panic I started calling computer repair stores in the area, and after multiple calls to shops with the same answer, “Bring it is we’ll take a look at it, next week” or worse, next month. Finally, after all the failed attempts I got a response from a computer shop about an hour away from my business. The guy on the phone said, “I charge $60.00 an hour for travel and $90.00 per hour onsite.

I was like I don’t care, just come fix it and agreed to his terms and sure enough about an hour later he showed up and now get this. He looked at the computer, never touched it and handed me a bill for $120.00. I was livid. So, being in the computer graphics business, I called my client who said, “Get a hold of so and so in Chicago”.

I called the place and spoke with salesperson, and she was very helpful and said, “It sounds like you need a video card.” I asked how much, and she stated it was $90.00. I placed the order and the next day it arrived. Now no one told how to put in a video card, so I opened up the case and didn’t turn it off and stuck it in and there was a pop and the card was fried. I call back Lynda my distributor and said, “I think I got a dud.”

She said, “No problem Michael, next time power off the computer.” The replacement came, I turned off the computer, inserted the video card, disconnected the video cable from the onboard video connector and my monitor and computer came back to life.

Now, I couldn’t figure out why the other guy couldn’t have billed me the $120.00 plus an additional $120.00 for that same video card and fixed the issue, and realized the guy didn’t know his backside from a hole in the ground. Long story short, I closed my graphics business and started a computer business with some great people and by the time we closed doors five years later we had put that guy our of business, and he was arrested for fraud because a local television station action team took a computer to him to repair with a piece of tape on the case and got a bill for over $900.00 and the tape seal wasn’t broken, so they reported him to the State Attorney General’s Office who did a sting and he did the same thing to them but for over $2000.00. This is back when a computer could be $10,000.00 plus so it was quite lucrative. As a matter of fact, the computer he came to work on was an Epson Equity II that cost me nearly $10,000.00 with a printer, scanner, monitor, keyboard, and mouse.