For me it depends on the age of the computer. Sometimes, frankly, it's simply not worth spending the money to fix it**.

As a matter of fact, I see this as a good thing. For example: lets say someone calls me about a 4-6 year old Dell. Unless they get a friend/family member to fix it for free, anyone they call is going to charge them more to fix it than it would be to buy the least expensive Dell currently for sale (at around $290 shipped).

They can then donate that old machine to anyone who wants it (though I usually urge them to hold onto the hard drive).

**Have you seen how much Geek Squad charges to do in-home virus removal? $300! That's the price of a new computer right there! I don't know how they get away with that, and much of the time they don't even fix the issue! I've followed up on a $600 Geek Squad visit and fixed the issue in under an hour. That's not bragging, it was just a really easy thing to do, and I cost a fraction of that