Best Buy & Geek Squad Policies

[petergubler]

My wife took our Compaq computer to the Geek Squad at the Best Buy in Las Vegas located on the corner of Lake Mead and Rainbow on Monday the 26th of October 2009.  She told them that either the video card/video card driver had stopped working and was not communicating with the monitor, and that the hard drive was full and needed to be defragged.  She mentioned that I, her husband, had thought it would be a good idea to put the files contained on our computer's hard drive onto an external hard drive in order to free up space for our computer.  The employee who spoke with her was rude and condescending toward her.  In the end, they had her pay $386 up front for the following services at the following prices:

1) Data Protec (Advanced Data Management) for $80 (this appears to be a charge for saving our data files)

2) My Passport Esstential for $70 (this is a 250GB flash drive)

3) OS Service Diagnostic & Repair $200 (this appears to be a total wipe of our hard drive of all programs except some basic programs like Windows Media Player)

4) Computer Cleaning $30 (the employee who spoke to my wife had opened up the computer case and noticed a bunch of dust and suggested a cleaning)

5) Sales Tax $6

My wife was told that our computer would be ready by the 29th of October.

The Geek Squad called my house today, October 31st, and said that our computer was ready to be picked up.  I drove down to Best Buy and spoke with another representative.  He pulled out our computer and set it up to show me how my computer was working after the Geek Squad had supposedly finished servicing my computer.

The screen flickered like it had done prior to taking it to the Geek Squad.  The employee said it was probably a result of my machine not talking to monitor correctly due age and settings.  I instructed the employee to run a program.  He chose Windows Media Player and my computer promptly crashed showing a blue screen that let him know the graphics card and/or graphics driver were not working properly.

The employee then opened the computer case and all the dust that was in there previously was still in there and it took him all of 5 seconds to point out that the upgraded graphics card we had in the machine was fried.  I was beside myself at this point as it looked like the only thing that had been accomplished by the Geek Squad was a total wipe of every good program on our computer and a back-up of our data files on the 250GB flash drive.  The orginal problem that drove us to bring our computer in was still unresolved and the cleaning we were being charged $30 for hadn't been performed.

The employee then went on to say that all that was needed to be done to fix the problem was to remove the upgraded graphics card and run the computer with the standard graphics card that was still in the machine.  So he pulled out the card and then took 5 to 10 minutes to clean out the dust in my computer.  After that, I noted that my computer could use an upgrade of its RAM.  The employee helped me find 1GB of RAM that I could buy and put into my computer.  Considering what I had just been through, I thought that I might be able to get a pretty good discount on the RAM so I asked the employee if he could give me one.  The employee said he would have to ask his manager.  The manager came and said all he could give me was a $10 discount - frustrated, I took the discount and paid $65 for the 1GB of RAM.

I then looked at my computer with the cover all ready off and asked if the employee could stick the RAM in the RAM slot for me so I could go on my way.  The employee looked at me straight in the eye and said that he would have to charge me another $40 to stick the RAM in the RAM slot of my computer.  Agast I said that I would do it and started to take the RAM out of the package; I was promptly told that I couldn't do that at the counter - I asked if I could sit down with my computer and work on it and he said that would be all right.  Two minutes later, I had my RAM in my computer and put the cover back on the computer case myself and then started thinking $40 to do a two minute job is $1,200 an hour - man I should get a job installing RAM!

So after $451 and missed deadlines and horrible customer service, I am writing this post on the Best Buy Geek Squad message board and I am going to copy this post and put it on my blog and let all my Facebook friends know how the Geek Squad is actually the Fraud Squad and that my wife and I are taking our business elsewhere in the future.

[SlimJim77]

Yep, this situation "blows", no question.

I do doubt it's systematic, however. Thanks for sharing your experience.

[petergubler]

It "blows" is an understatement.  Whether or not it's systematic, my new mission in life is to make sure everyone knows how much the Geek Squad and Best Buy "blows".

[Tomoko]

They may or may not have totally screwed up the Diag and Repair. Sometimes the only way to restore a PC properly is to wipe and reinstall, not in that many cases, but sometimes this is the ONLY resolution to a problem. Certain viruses and also things users do can do enough damage to system files to warrant this. They screwed the pooch by not fixing the graphics issue though, they should have found it necessary while doing the repair to pull the part and should have recommended a new one.

As for the backup services,  doing your own backups is the best way to go (mine run nightly). A few google searches can teach you to do this. Yeah, they forgot the cleaning, but did it on the spot. The 250 GB Hard drive (There are actual HDD'S in those slim cases) is market price. Also, isn't Advanced Data Protection normally 150? There must be some kind of sale going on right now.

I see a lot of posts around the internet upset at the costs of computer repair services, I myself am in independent tech and also face these questions, but less so because I charge less overall. Keep in mind that you're paying for those color printed dossiers, uniforms, advertisements, etc, and all of the branding associated with GS. If the prices upset you, shop around, there are MANY independent techs who charge less and have very little overhead. I only have business cards, find customers through word of mouth, only charge a 15$ trip fee for up to 25 miles of travel, and also go over what I fixed step by step and point the customer to resources to learn to do many things on their own.

Yes, they didn't do a couple things right, and I believe that discounts are warranted, but in the end, like any other product or service the company is free to charge what they want.

[petergubler]

Yeah, they are free to charge what they want. They treated my wife poorly, they missed a deadline, they didn't do all the work that they charged for and wouldn't have but for me catching them by making them run a program, they were going to charge me $40 for a two minute job after the whole fiasco, made me take a seat to do the two minute repair myself, and weren't going to man up and give me a killer deal on RAM as compensation for making me come all the way down to the store and basically help them diagnose the problem and then wait while they did the stuff they said they were going to do in the first place (the whole ordeal ended up costing me 30-45 minutes of my time at their store). There's something to be said about customer service and these guys ought to go back to customer service school if there is such a thing!

[petergubler]

Oh and one more thing; I wouldn't have been upset about cost if they had done what they said they were going to do.  When you pay brand name prices, you ought to get brand name service; and sir, this was definitely not brand name service!

[Jallred007]

They are doing the same run around here in Dayton, Ohio. I have a post on here about my Compaq laptop.

This is true trouble, I am starting to wonder if there is a regulation for quality on these Geeks. I do not want to push blame on them, but after they have a couple chances with fix our computer, at which they fail, we should just be handed a new one. They cannot figure out what is wrong with it after a YEAR! 

Oh well, I feel your pain, sir.

[Dorothy-BBY Community Supervisor]

Good evening petergubler -

Welcome to the Community, and thank you for sharing your experience.  John, one of our Community Connectors, will be reaching out to you to address your concern early this week.  I appreciate your patience.

[John-BBY Community Connector]

Hello petergubler,

I was extremely disheartened to read about the experience you and your wife had at the Las Vegas  store on Rainbow Blvd. in seeking service for your computer.  Repair situations by their very nature are frustrating and any additional complications just make things worse.  I'd like to offer you my personal apology since it's clear that we did not live up to our own ideals in providing a superior experience for you or your wife, much less meeting your expectations.

There is never a circumstance in our stores when you shoud be treated less than respectfully.  Truthfully, I'm disappointed that your wife was treated rudely when she visited the Geek Squad. Considering that she was informed and knew what services were needed to achieve an operable computer, I don't understand how anyone could be condescending.  It sounds like the Agent with whom your wife worked found a way though and that's really inexcusable.

I'd like to look into the situation in more detail and see if there's anything I can do to offer a better resolution than you received.  I'll need some additional information from you to begin, so please watch for a private message from me.  To check your forum inbox, please sign in with your user name and password and click the envelope icon in the upper right.

I'm grateful that you took the time to write us about your experience.

Sincerely,

[petergubler]

Just to keep everyone up on the process who is following this post, I was contacted on November 3rd by John.  I sent him my service information and other information for verification and for use in coming up with a solution.  I am now waiting to hear back from John.