ESS Data Recovery Tried to Charge $765 for a $80 fix, Internet

My external hard drive would not respond when I tried to access it.  I called the manufacturer and because it was out of warranty they told me my best bet was take it to a data recovery service locally and they had a list of companies they partnered with.  I went too ESS because they were close ad were listed on the manufactures partner list.  I was told by ESS that the board was bad AND the drive was bad.  I received an email telling me that the cost was $850 and that they would give me a 10% discount to $765.  We decided that was more than we could spend and would have to save up so that eventually we could get our photos and other important information back sometime. 

I decided to stop at another place (((competitor's name redacted))) on my way home even though they weren't a partner with the drive Manufacturer.  I went in and they took the casing off my drive and it took them a minute to get it open because 2 of the srews were beneath a sticker on the casing.  ESS had obviously never even removed the drive from its casing!  After taking it apart the guy at (((redacted))) determined that rather than having 3 failed drive heads as I was told by ESS, only the board was bad.  I left in 25 minutes with all of my data on a new drive for only $80.64.  I've never felt s taken advantage of in my life.  Either ESS does not know what they are doing or they are dishonest.  I don't know which it is but I hope no one has to pay what almost had to for no reason.

sorry, allowing you to give a competitors name would instigate others to just file against their competition, to only come back later to suggest their company, ..plus, if you post a competitors name more than likely they will show up on search engines as a Rip-off! - - your comments on this policy are welcome. CLICK here to see why Rip-off Report, as a matter of policy, deleted either a phone number, link or e-mail address from this Report. In this case we removed an alleged competitors name