Best Buy & Geek Squad Policies

[tharun]

Something also happened to me to give me a very bad impression about the competency of Geek Squad.  My laptop wouldn't boot up and I took it to the maplewood best buy to have it diagnosed by the geek squad on 5/5/2009.  They gave me a call on 5/7 and said the HD had crashed.  Thankfully I had the presence of mind to tell them not to do anything further (install new HD) and that I would pick up my laptop.  They gave me a folder with a 'recently declassified' stamp and all that basically making it look like a intelligence folder.  The service order was 00010-948904378.  The repair comments were:

QA=FAIL (HDD: read/verify), REC: New HDD + install + restore = ~$300 w/tax...AT client picking unit up as is ....AK

Would you believe me that I am typing this up from the same laptop which they said the HD had crashed.  All I did was go to the advanced boot operations and ran the recovery manager and clicked the 'recovery with automatic data backup' which backed up the data and reinstalled windows vista.

They took ~$70 for the diagnosis and emphatically stated that they would not be able to recover the data (they could send it to the company to try to recover it they said but it would cost me in the 1000s)

For my life, I cannot understand if they did it because they are just plain stupid and ignorant or didn't care and wanted to sell another HD and sponge off another $300.  Anyway this changed my perception of BestBuy and geek squad.    

[JM]

Re-imaging a hard drive can temporarily fix an issue, and I have seen this, especially when it is a "read" issue. Obviously, the unit can be re-imaged as the "write" capabilities of things are working properly, and it could very well continue to operate for some time before having continued issues, however, the Diagnostics done are high grade software "burn in" tests, of sorts, that do at least two tests on the read's functionality of the hard drive before noting a failure, so the failure call was from the specific Diagnostic system, and not an Agent - thus, the hard drive itself is in fact having an issue reading data (hardware issue), and as noted, re-imaging can correct the issue temporarily, but it is not a permanent solution. 

[Elizabeth-BBY Community Supervisor]

Hi tharun,

I've asked Aaron, one of our Geek Squad Community Connectors, to review and respond to your concerns.  You should hear from him within the next few business days.

Thanks for posting!

[Aaron-GS Community Connector]

Hey tharun,

Repairs are rarely a fun prospect to consider, so I can certainly imagine how disappointed you must have felt to hear that your computer’s hard drive might need to be replaced. I’m glad to learn though that you were able to find a resolution by performing a destructive O/S restore (a clean installation).

Like JM pointed out, however, reinstalling Windows may only prove to be a temporary solution. Disc read errors can often be signs of larger problems, such as bad sectors and improperly aligned drive heads, both of which may ultimately necessitate hard drive replacement. It is our responsibility then to make sure that you are provided appropriate recommendations whenever such issues are discovered through the course of diagnostics.

If you have any other questions please do not hesitate to let me know. You can send me a private message by clicking on the “Private Message” icon in my signature below or by clicking on the letter icon in the upper right-hand corner of the page.

[tharun]

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for taking the time to reply.  My issue is if the laptop could be restored like this, then I need to be given the option, especially if data can be backed up (and I specifically asked them that).  All I was told was that the HD had crashed and no data can be recovered.  I am still using the same laptop, and like you said quite possibly it had bad sectors, and I have scheduled regular defrag of the drives to improve performance.

But the fact remains i paid ~$70 for the diagnostics, and I got the wrong diagnosis.  As a customer, when I go to a reputed store and pay money to have a specialist look at my laptop, I expect to be told what is going on (the HD has probs, can likely crash, has a read issue etc.), and what my options are (back to factory install, back up and install, go for a new HD and install software etc), and believe me, the person I talked had no ambivalence, it was a flat out 'crashed HD'-end of the story.  And that is why I cannot take seriously what JM says about all the high grade software burn-in testing techno jargon.  It seems he/she is making excuses for somebody's mistake.  If that was true then I should have been told that the HD was having read issues and not that it had crashed.

-Tharun

[jalverson]

same thing happened to us at the Va Beach store and ALOT more.  I am DONE with best buy.