One evening in May, Dania Shawwa was sipping coffee in her East Side apartment as she worked at her notebook computer. The words in front of her represented a solid year of work -- her master's thesis, "A Treatise on Vision in Ben Okri's Fiction." She was taking one last chance to look it over. In the morning she would print the document and send it by overnight mail to her professor in Chicago, making her deadline. In a week she'd complete her degree. She placed the coffee cup on the desk and typed in a small correction. Then, as she rose from the chair, her hand brushed against the cup. Coffee sloshed over the rim and onto the desk, and a few drops splattered across her computer keypad. She quickly grabbed a paper towel and began to blot the liquid from the keys. There didn't seem to be any real problem. Until the screen went black.

Dania tried to restart the computer. Nothing. She hadn't made a backup copy or a recent printout of the 53-page paper, but she wasn't really concerned. Somewhere inside the computer, she knew, was her finished thesis. Someone surely would be able to get it out. She didn't even care if the computer, an old-model Apple PowerBook, ever worked again.

Dania opened the Yellow Pages and found an ad for the Computer Era Corporation. The ad displayed the Apple logo, along with the slogan WINNER -- APPLE 1992 AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN CUSTOMER SATISFACTION & SERVICE. The shop, at 380 Park Avenue South, was only a few blocks from her apartment. She picked up the phone, and the man on the other end told her to bring the machine right over. His easy confidence reassured her. Her data would be saved by the award-winning technicians at Computer Era.

I met Dania the next day, when I saw her leaving Computer Era in tears. I was there to pick up my own computer, which had been dropped off at the shop as part of a New York investigation of computer-repair operations in the city. I had spent weeks getting my perfectly functioning computer "fixed" and was, by this time, well acquainted with computer shops around town. Several shops had shown themselves to be incompetent or dishonest. Computer Era, though, had distinguished itself far beyond all the rest.

The computer business has undergone colossal changes in recent years as the machines have spread from the hands of a few enthusiasts to the public at large. Not long ago, many of the people who owned computers also knew how they worked and could often repair or at least diagnose their own problems. In the late eighties, I was working as a repair technician at a small computer shop called Mac Emporium on East 23rd Street. Customers were on an equal footing with the staff there and would stop by just to chat; often, they knew more than we did. The people who worked at Mac Emporium were devotees of the machines. The store mostly sold hardware and software. The repair service was a bonus.

But the business has changed. As computers have become ubiquitous, they are sold in discount stores, toy stores, and hundreds of little shops by people who might just as well be selling cameras or T-shirts. Price competition has squeezed profits on hardware to razor-thin levels.

"For the last four years, margins in the computer retail business have been lousy," says Lise Buyer, who analyzes the retail-computer industry for T. Rowe Price. "It's way too competitive, and too many people are selling the same products. The real opportunity is in service and support."

And that's the problem. As computer ownership has gone from hobbyists and engineers to the rest of us, "the opportunity to capitalize on customers' lack of knowledge has grown exponentially," Buyer explains.

Stores like Mac Emporium (which was later absorbed into J&R Computer World) are rare today. Most often, customers are talking to salespeople who don't use computers themselves and are unable to answer even basic questions about the machines.

Customers, in turn, have a kind of blind faith in the operation of their computers. They learn no more than they need to; they routinely work on machines they don't understand and take for granted. Until there is a problem. Then the slow panic sets in with the realization that it's not just the computer that's at stake. It's the data contained inside -- financial records, a novel, research notes.

Or a master's thesis. I called Dania after I met her outside Computer Era, and she told me about her experience with the shop's service department. When she dropped off her computer the day before, she was careful, she said, to explain her situation: The computer itself was not important to her. She just needed her thesis printed out to make her deadline the following day. She had left the computer and an impression of her American Express card.

She knew the charges would be high: She'd agreed to pay $120 for a diagnostic fee, and she paid an express-service fee of $187.50; otherwise, Computer Era said, the shop wouldn't be able to look at her PowerBook for several days. Then there was the minimum service fee for two hours' work, $331. With tax, the bill added up to more than $691 -- probably close to what her computer was worth, but nothing compared to the priceless few bytes of information she needed.

Several hours after she dropped her PowerBook off, she says, she received a call from Bob Michaels, the technician she'd met at the shop. He told her that her trackball was broken, the I/0 board was shot -- she had no idea what that was -- and that her hard drive had to be replaced. He told her that a hard drive would cost $675, and that she had to replace the drive to get her data back.

Dania was confused and annoyed. She could not afford to buy a hard drive, she said, reminding Michaels that she only needed her data back. She told him that she would come to the shop in the morning and straighten it all out.

When Dania showed up at Computer Era the next morning, she was greeted out in front by the "customer-satisfaction coordinator," Tom Mackie. He disappeared into the back of the store and returned with two invoices

She was stunned. One bill totaled $1,626.02 for hardware. Computer Era had replaced her main logic board ($387.10). They had replaced her 120-megabyte hard drive with a 500-megabyte hard drive ($672.60). They had replaced her trackball ($142.40) and charged her for two hours' additional labor ($300). The second bill was for labor for recovering her data and reinstalling the software on her new hard drive ($1,209.29). This was in addition to the nearly $691 she'd already paid. Computer Era had already charged her American Express card $3,500.

Dania insisted that she didn't want any of that work done. She would happily have paid the original $691, or even an additional $400 or $500, to have gotten her thesis back, but she didn't want to pay $3,500 for hardware she didn't need and labor she didn't ask for.

She tried to bargain. She'd pay for all the labor, $1,200 or so. They could keep her computer. All she wanted was a diskette with her thesis on it. Surely they could come to terms. Mackie was firm: Pay it all, or Computer Era would keep the computer and the data.

Dania realized then what had happened. No one would ever pay $3,500 to retrieve a computer that was worth less than a third of that and no computer shop would expect a customer to. Unless, of course, the customer was desperate. ("Data very important" someone had written on Dania's invoice.)

Dania fled from the shop and phoned her professor in Chicago. Her master's degree would have to wait.

Computer Era had not only charged Dania for parts and labor she didn't need; it had also inflated prices and work hours to ridiculous extremes. Whatever damage it might do to the computer itself, the chances of spilled coffee affecting the data on a hard drive are very slim. Dania's thesis should have been recoverable from the hard drive in about half an hour, and could have been handed to her on a 50-cent floppy disk.

Horror stories about Computer Era have circulated for years. While working at Mac Emporium, I'd often dealt with angry and dissatisfied Computer Era customers, and the owner of a repair shop nearby told me recently that they show up in his waiting room, too. So I suggested an experiment to New York Magazine: I would offer my own Macintosh PowerBook -- after backing up all the data -- to test Computer Era's technicians and compare their performance with those of various repair shops around town. And to supervise the experiment, I enlisted a highly regarded independent computer technician, John Greenleaf.

Greenleaf looked over my computer and certified that it was in perfect working order. Then we introduced a tiny software glitch. (Note to Macintosh users: We hid the Finder file inside the Apple Menu Items folder.) So when we turned on the computer, it went through its paces and then flashed a question mark indicating that a file was missing. We similarly disabled a notebook PC.

These are both very common problems, which can be diagnosed over the phone. And indeed, some computer shops we called told us what was wrong and how to fix it as soon as we described the symptoms. When I worked at Mac Emporium we would constantly talk customers through such problems, and if they were just too thick to follow instructions, we'd have them bring it to the shop. As soon as someone had a few minutes to spare, we'd fix it for free.

People don't expect that kind of service today, and they rarely get it. For several weeks, a New York Magazine editor and I called shops around town, picking them the way we figured most people would, through the Yellow Pages -- looking for the biggest display ads and lines like "award-winning service." When we called Computer Era and described the problem, they sounded a voice of alarm. It could be serious, we were told. Better bring the computer to the shop immediately.

It was with some trepidation that we left the computer in the hands of Tom Mackie and his service department. Before we left, we made sure to emphasize that there was a valuable manuscript on the hard drive. The last element was key: We wanted to see if they would do the same thing to us that they had done to Dania, in effect holding her data hostage.

Computer Era held on to my computer for four days and then reported the diagnosis. It was, they said, serious. The I/O logic board was defective. Cost: $372.60

The hard-drive-controller assembly was defective. Cost: $142.10.

Labor plus tax. Cost: $237.31.

That would be $752.01 on top of the $129.90 already paid for diagnosis -- nearly $900 to "repair" a computer that was in perfectly good shape. Computer Era had flunked our test.

We told them over the phone that we couldn't afford to fix the machine right away and asked for a written estimate of the work that needed to be done. Then we went to get the PowerBook, stopping off in a diner across the street afterwards to replace the missing software file. But there was a problem.

After I had gotten Computer Era's "diagnosis," I began to wonder if the shop would take the risk of returning my perfectly good laptop after giving me an itemized list of all its defective parts. Now I waited as the screen lit up. Before I dropped the computer off, the screen would show a "Welcome to Macintosh" message and then flash the question mark, meaning it could not find the system on the hard drive. This time, the computer went straight to the question mark -- meaning it could not even find the hard drive.

Later, John Greenleaf looked at the machine and confirmed: The hard drive was damaged beyond repair. And the I/0 logic board, the computer's main processor, was shorted out. In other words, my perfectly good PowerBook now matched Computer Era's written diagnosis. It had more than $700 worth of damage to it. Greenleaf had no doubt that Computer Era had destroyed my computer. Since we didn't want their service, the store had made sure we needed it.

"With all the time they waste wrecking the computer, it seems to me that they'd make a lot more money if they just did their job," Greenleaf commented as he was putting the screws back into my now-useless machine.

By this time I had been in touch with the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and I apprised them of what had happened. They looked in their files and came up with a folder of complaints against Computer Era, copies of which they showed me. (One letter, dated April 15, 1996, complained that "additional charges" of $985.35 had been added to the customer's credit card after he had specifically told Computer Era to get permission first before doing any work. Sounded familiar.) When I described the investigation to the DCA, they said they wanted in on it, to gather evidence against the company.

So I took another PowerBook -- this one belonging to my editor -- and performed the same minor operation on it while the Department of Consumer Affairs videotaped the proceedings. The video shows quite clearly that the computer worked fine before we hid the system file, and could be restarted with a floppy disk in about five minutes. A woman from the DCA dropped the PowerBook off at Computer Era and once again said that she had valuable data on the hard drive.

Again, Computer Era told us the hard drive was destroyed and had to be replaced. And when we declined to replace it, the computer was returned to us with a hard drive that was ruined beyond repair (although this time the logic board was intact).

I called Bob Michaels to confront him with our evidence against his shop, but he never returned my calls. Then I called Tom Mackie. When I told him that the Department of Consumer Affairs had documentary proof that my computer was fine when it went into his shop, he offered that perhaps it had been dropped while being transported. I assured him that had not been the case.

"We have a disagreement on that one," was his reply.

Again I went over the evidence.

"We have a disagreement on that one," he repeated.

And that was Computer Era's only defense.

I told Jose Maldonado, the new commissioner for the Department of Consumer Affairs, that invoking his agency had failed to arouse even the mildest concern in Computer Era's customer-satisfaction coordinator. Wasn't there something he could do about that? I asked.

"We intend to put them out of business," Maldonado said firmly. On the basis of the video evidence the agency now had and the stack of complaints, he said, the DCA would try to have the license revoked or at least suspended.

It was hard not to be skeptical. The agency licenses about 45,000 businesses in New York City, everything from salad bars to nail salons, and seems stressed far beyond capacity already. When DCA joined New York in our second "sting" on Computer Era, it didn't even have a computer of its own to use and could barely scrape the cash together to pay the diagnostic fee.

In the end, despite all the evidence, the DCA had no way to put Computer Era out of business or even slow it down. The store's owners, Erwin and Robert Haas, were summoned to a hearing over Dania's case and several others, but recently settled out of court for $12,000. (Of that money, $2,800 was passed on to Dania; she eventually got her master's degree on the basis of her hastily reconstructed thesis.)

Computer Era never admitted to any liability, and the shop continues to repair computers. Had the owners not settled, the shop's license could have been revoked in the hearing -- but as Bob Martin, DCA's general counsel, admitted, "It is unusual for an administrative-law judge to revoke a license the first time around."

Like most people who believe they have been victims of consumer fraud, Dania didn't think to press criminal charges; she complained to the DCA instead. Yet Computer Era has clearly done hundreds of dollars' worth of damage to people's computers; a vandal who did that kind of damage to a car or public property would certainly be charged with a crime.

Bob Martin explained that the Department of Consumer Affairs does not have the authority to proceed with a criminal case; that is the jurisdiction of the attorney general or the District Attorney. And, at any rate, criminal prosecution in consumer cases is rare, and takes place only in high-profile politically charged situations, such as when charges have been filed in recent years against garbage haulers, home-improvement contractors, and towing companies.

"The problem isn't the law," a prosecutor at the New York State attorney general's office said after being informed of the situation. "What this computer shop has done is clearly a felony. The damage is over $250. The problem is that the criminal-court system is such a broken-down institution that if I were to bring up a case like this, the judge would look at me and say, 'What are you doing here? Take this out of here.' They just don't want to hear these kinds of cases."

Bob Martin agrees with the prosecutor's assessment, but he also doubts that pursuing a criminal case is the best way to handle consumer fraud. "For this kind of activity, and because we license these repair places, we think we can do an effective job eliminating or keeping to a minimum these kinds of scams," he said.

As Tom Mackie might say, "We have a disagreement on that one."

If the law provides little recourse in this situation what about Apple Computer? The computer company built its reputation on being user-friendly. And at a time when sales are slumping and analysts are wondering if the company has any future at all, it might be a time to build up some good will.

Some customers with grievances against Computer Era, including Dania, have also complained to Apple over the years. Still, Apple's toll-free service hot line continues to give out the name of Computer Era as an authorized repair service. No one in authority at Apple would comment, despite repeated phone calls. A spokeswoman said that Apple can withdraw certification if there are too many complaints against a particular dealer, but she refused to address Computer Era specifically.

Finally, I called the public-relations department to ask about the "Apple Award for Excellence in Customer Satisfaction & Service": What was it? And why did Computer Era get it? I had conjured up an image for myself of Tom Mackie in black tie ambling up to a podium and accepting a large gold plaque while a roomful of Apple executives erupted in applause. But the first person I spoke with at Apple had never heard of the award. Nor had the next person I was connected to.

"Where did you hear about this award?" yet another representative asked me. I told them about the Computer Era ad in the Yellow Pages. They said they would get back to me.

Later that evening, the call came back from Apple: "We have nothing to do with that, sir." (Much later, a representative said he had heard of the award but could not confirm that Computer Era had won it.)

It remains to be seen whether Maldonado and the Department of Consumer Affairs will rise to the challenge of combating high-tech consumer abuse. Although things worked out in the end for Dania, it is unlikely that her case would have gotten the scrutiny it did if New York hadn't called the DCA's attention to it. For now, at least, most consumers are left to fend for themselves on the digital frontier, where a bad guy might be wearing the badge of "authorized repair" in his carpeted showroom while the good guy may be working alone in a little shop.

Though computers are complicated machines, from a repair perspective they are essentially composed of a few modular parts. Most technicians figure out what's wrong with your computer by systematically swapping good parts from their inventory with the parts in your computer until they isolate the problem.

A good technician will demystify the computer and make the consumer understand the essential simplicity of a problem. If a technician starts spouting mumbo-jumbo and explaining how complicated your repair job is going to be, he's probably preparing you for a big bill.

According to John Greenleaf, much of what goes wrong with a computer is very basic, and can be repaired by a user who has a little bit of knowledge. "Ninety percent of what I see is simple software problems," Greenleaf says. "The rest of the time it's something serious."

Computer repair is a booming business in New York. As the industry grows, it is increasingly attracting practitioners who care more about getting your money than fixing your computer. Still, there are a lot of exceptional and honest repair operations around.

We conducted our survey with a Macintosh PowerBook and an Epson notebook PC. We removed a key file from each computer and called some shops at random; in all cases we feigned utter ignorance about the possible cause of the problem. The responses varied widely.

In general we found that the outward appearance of the repair business made no difference. We received great service from some small operations and terrible service from "authorized" repair shops with certificates and corporate logos all over the walls. On the other hand, some large and seemingly impersonal stores gave us very personal service.

This survey is by no means scientific. The responses we received could have been the result of the particular person who answered the phone when we called or stood behind the counter when we walked in. Still, we learned some valuable lessons. The very best shops asked us to describe the problem and then talked us through a diagnosis and repair job on the phone. In all of these cases, the person answering the phone was a technician, not a receptionist, and any technician should be able to explain to you in simple terms what might be wrong. He or she should be explicit about the costs up front, and should agree not to do any work until it is authorized. If you feel that the technician is trying to confuse or intimidate you about the problem, call another shop.

Always ask if there is a diagnostic fee, and if that fee will be deducted from work done. In general, try to choose a shop that does not charge a fee. Diagnosing computer problems is rarely time-consuming or difficult. You should also ask if the shop stocks spare parts. Shops that keep common parts on hand tend to turn jobs around quickly with lower labor costs. Of course, checking with friends or the Better Business Bureau is always a good idea. And always back up your data.

Remember, there was nothing actually wrong with the computers we brought in, and a good technician should have been able to determine that in minutes.