Skillbank offers economical PC maintenance and IT support to
small local businesses, charities and private individuals.
Skillbank is based near Rowlands Gill, to the West of Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
Our motto "Advice is free" means we can give clients answers to simple questions at no charge.
Confining our operations to the local area minimises costs and enables us to provide a timely response to clients with IT problems.
Maintenance and Repair
Our highly qualified and experienced staff can help with most areas of IT support. Clients frequently need help urgently with issues such as virus or spyware infections, (malware) networking problems, or data loss. We aim to provide the needed support rapidly and efficiently to minimise disruption to your business. Your hardware can also need maintenance - from a simple clean-up to replacing parts.
Some clients find it an advantage to have planned maintenance, and we can arrange regular visits to test and clean your system hardware and software, and ensure your computers are virus free and backups working effectively.
Data recovery
Increasingly we are receiving requests to recover data from a failed hard drive, or external storage such as memory sticks. While a dedicated data recovery service can often recover more data (if you have £1000 to spare) we have had a lot of success in retrieving data economically through our use of specialised software on our dedicated Linux based PC.
However early detection and intervention gives the best results, so when you first notice problems - such as a slow PC - contact us! Your treasured family photos, accounts or documents may be easily recoverable. Best of all we offer a "no data no fee" policy so you have nothing to lose by asking!
Advice, Security and Consultancy
In addition to our maintenance and repair service we can also provide further IT support, such as training in the use of Windows, and standard applications; and also resolving issues with peripheral devices (printers, scanners etc) or networks and internet access issues.
We can also advise on on-line security, and offer some alternatives for secure deletion of your data if you are disposing of equipment.
Good advice costs less than bad decisions - especially when it's FREE! At skillbank.co.uk we are always happy to offer limited advice to existing clients free of charge. Why not check the "advice" and "links" pages to see whether your questions are answered there?
Our work for charity
skillbank.co.uk supports the Mairie Curie charity; normally a percentage of our profits is donated, but in addition we refurbish and sell donated equipment. 100% of the income from this (after deduction of the cost of any replacement parts etc) goes directly to the charity and is boosted by gift aid.
So if you have an unwanted PC or laptop - even if its not working - please consider donating it for us to sell. All donated equipment has previous users files securely deleted; and I can even offer data recovery from the equipment if necessary.
However if its 20 years old, powered by gas or needs new valves we wont be able to accept it!
Service agreement and warranty
When we accept an item for repair we will ask you to complete and sign a service agreement and data protection consent form; if you are bringing an item for repair you may wish to download this and bring the form with you.
Service agreement.pdf
We provide a 90 day limited warranty on items supplied by us, and repairs we undertake. Our liability is in all cases limited to the price you paid for those goods or services, and does not cover misuse. If you have bought an item from us you may access the terms of the limited warranty here.
Limited warranty on services and purchases