Stop saying repair. It's not a repair.

And now you're trying to use "they took the battery out once" as justification to charge them a hundred+ bucks? Seriously?

Dude, snap out of "I'm talking to a dumb customer" mode for a minute, here. I'm not a dumb customer and I'd be livid if I went into pick up a computer for my grandma or some shit and saw she was charged an hour's labor because someone lied and made her believe there was an actual problem.

I've had repairs come in that I plugged it in and it booted right away when they said it wouldn't boot. I let it run some tests and boom I can smell the burning metal while it is still on.

And that's an entirely different scenario. They were having problems without a clear and obvious solution. You can't just assume something's wrong because a person removed a battery that is fully intended to be removed, for christ's sake! I mean, they probably just fucking replaced an old one.

I mean, if you tell the person "Your battery was just in backwards and there's 99% chance that nothing else is wrong but if you're really worried about that 1% I can test it out for you but it's gonna cost 100-whatever dollars" then sure, but that doesn't seem to be what we're talking about. We seem to be looking for ways to deceive people who are bad with computers for profit.