Best Buy Rant

Four times in the past week, people from our institution (1700 users) have taken their personal systems to Best Buy and then come to us (corporate IT) for advice. All 4 times, best buy has been completely wrong and become a thorn in our side.

1. XP System is blue-screening with an error in VDEF.DLL. Best Buy says: replace the hard drive and re-install Windows. $400. Real solution: Uninstall crappy 3rd party software that VDEF.DLL is part of. Problem solved. Real Cost: $0.

2. Best Buy tells person to buy both Norton Internet Security and Norton Antivirus (WTF!). System gets screwed up. Tells them they need a reload, but don't have the discs, so a new copy of Vista costs $170 + $100 to reinstall. Total cost (antivirus + vista + labor) = $350. Real solution: uninstall that crap using norton removal tool. Real Cost: $0.

3. Best buy tells person they have "excessive cookies", does spyware removal ($100). Sells them some antivirus. Then they bring it to us for some unrelated thing, and we put symantec corporate (company policy for VPN users). User sees Symantec and Ad-Aware, which we installed, calls best buy in a panic. BB tells her symantec and ad-aware ARE A VIRUS and she should have us remove them, then bring it back so BB can make sure we got AAW and Symantec Corporate off of there.

4. User needs XP reloaded. Best Buy does XP reload, but doesn't load any drivers or even service pack 2 or updates. Cost ($300 for house call in a rural area) the tech didn't want to do updates over dial up. I have to come out and find drivers for their modem, sound, etc so they can use the corporate VPN. Thanks Best Buy! That sure was worth $300!

I've seen their Geek Squad MRI CD. It makes it so simple, a chimp could do virus scans. You literally boot it up and tell it to get updates, reboot in safe mode, and scan for viruses. They run diagnostics that you can get off Ultimate Boot CD (i.e. memcheck86, powermax). They think they're pretty cool -- running their automated CD made up of free tools. No-talent jackasses.

Their entire business model is based on the fear of "cookies", selling new hard drives to people, doing reloads of systems. They bring no value to the customer because they have no real tech skills. All they do is put the fear of god in you, do a half-fix, and a charge a lot of money.

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Comments

dynamik

nl wrote:

Their entire business model is based on the fear of "cookies", selling new hard drives to people, doing reloads of systems. They bring no value to the customer because they have no real tech skills. All they do is put the fear of god in you, do a half-fix, and a charge a lot of money.

I frequently hear that they prefer someone who can sell over someone who is technically inclined for their geek squad positions. Complaints against Best Buy are quite common: http://digg.com/search?s=best+buy&submit=Search&section=all&type=both&area=promoted&sort=most

mog27

I feel sorry for the people who go to these places and get taken advantage of because they don't know anything about computers and think that these astronomically high prices will fix their computer when a simple free solution will work better.

Darthn3ss

People are afraid of free. thats one of the reasons why linux isn't the most popular desktop OS.

Lee H

Hi

I also feel strongly about massive companies charging a lot of money to end user's who dont really know what they are paying for.

Most people will asume a household name is most reliable but us IT people know better, take PC World - they sold a stick of ram for £50 that i myself purchased 1 week earlier for £25 in manchester.

In a nutshell - Massive companies rely on end users nievity thus keeping prices high, makes me sick !!

Theres my rant, anybody else wanna join in

Lee H

Daniel333

Yeah. My Geek Squad days were verying "trying" to say the least. But everything you said there is 100% accurate as of when I left them 2 years ago. Last I checked our store was not even doing work in store anymore, everything was connected to remote client and the work was being done remotely.

itdaddy

you are right Geeks squad told a user that banks with our online banking that her VISTA
wasnt compatible with our banking site that is why she could not get in...I laughed
my Arse off when I heard that. She was so convinced that how could this almight Geeks squad be wrong due to all the promotions on TV. Just goes to show you the power of suggestion!
Promote it on TV and have a bunch of people who do not know squat about the topic and rake in the money! Donald Trump 101 yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hahahhahah
funny this thread is so true!

CabbageThe1

Most of them are downright dishonest. Here in Utah there used to be a company called Totally Awesome Computers, people would take there computer in there to get fixed and they would strip it of anything useful and send it back to the customer. So anything built by Totally Awesome was just a Dell, HP, or something else in a different case and with there name.

I had a woman bring a computer into our shop about 2 years ago (when Totally Awesome was still around) when she got it back from Totally she said that it was slower than when she took it in. Long story short they replaced her 3.2GHz Pent 4 with a 600MHz Pent 2 and pretty much did all the downgrades included in something like that. Needless to say she was pissed and so was I.

Companys that do stuff like that just give us all a bad name.

Daniel333

During my Geek Squad days, we would ship out laptops for repair (we used to do them in store, but the company sourced it out later) and they would come back "downgraded". Normally smaller hard drive sizes, less RAM. DVD+/- came back as just +'s. Etc.

I started to mark internal components and note it on the tickets (as well as SN).

It happened way too many times to say it was an accident, there was a serious systemic problem the company chooses not to address.

Slowhand

Even when I worked as an A+ technician for CompUSA, Best Buy was seemed shady when it came to technical services. Months after they'd bought out Geeksquad, we still had the Geeksquad techs bringing in-warranty systems they'd picked up from customers in the field to us, so that we could spend the time to send it to the manufacturer for warranty repair. I remember doing a lot of after-the-fact fixes for customers who were unhappy with the quality of Best Buy's in-house technicians. The problem of integrity and competence of their technicians isn't necessarily the technicians' fault, it probably lies with the company, as a whole.

I think the trick is that Best Buy is relatively new to the technical services arena, and as such, they seemed to have overlooked the customer service aspect. What it seems like to me, even to this day, is that Best Buy spreads itself too thin. They want to support and sell computers, TVs, refrigerators, car stereos, home entertainment systems, etc., but they don't do any of it particularly well. And what suffers when you begin to do too much at once, but you don't want to spend so much money that you'll go out of business, is that you have to cut corners somewhere. In this case, it was putting the effort into creating quality repair shops, (along with a slew of other customer service related issues).

CompUSA (for what it was worth) is gone, and in their heyday, they muscled out pretty much all the smaller, independent computer shops. And, with the big, red elephant in the room having been taken out of the picture, Best Buy is pretty much the only game in town for in-store purchases and repair, so why bother improving?

CabbageThe1

During my Geek Squad days, we would ship out laptops for repair (we used to do them in store, but the company sourced it out later) and they would come back "downgraded".

My Point .......... PROVEN

hetty

In general people just dont know any better so they go with what they know or the easiest option. So give them your business card if you are looking for some business, simple as that. You can be envious or be shocked at the markups they are charging but theyve got premises and bills to pay. They dont want very knowledgable (expensive) people as staff, because they wont make as many of the huge markups with people who knows how to fix something cheaply. Better that a customer comes in and hits a sales man who thinks he can fix computers. That way they both dont know any different.

I dont mean to slag off anybody who is working in BestBuy or PC World. Really I dont. Everybody has to start somewhere, but the sooner you get a clue about computers and you see whats going on. Its time to move on and better your career.

intelzee

CabbageThe1 wrote:

Most of them are downright dishonest. Here in Utah there used to be a company called Totally Awesome Computers, people would take there computer in there to get fixed and they would strip it of anything useful and send it back to the customer. So anything built by Totally Awesome was just a Dell, HP, or something else in a different case and with there name.

I had a woman bring a computer into our shop about 2 years ago (when Totally Awesome was still around) when she got it back from Totally she said that it was slower than when she took it in. Long story short they replaced her 3.2GHz Pent 4 with a 600MHz Pent 2 and pretty much did all the downgrades included in something like that. Needless to say she was pissed and so was I.

Companys that do stuff like that just give us all a bad name.

ya my uncle got a really nice computer for 3D Rendering from Totally Awesome Computers, he payed about 3500$. when i whent to his house and looked at it i saw that it was just a nice dell that would cost you about 2000$ at the time....

KGhaleon

Get use to it. You think companies get to where they are using honesty?

While I dislike Geek squad and many repair businesses, you have to realize that they(like every company) are just trying to make money. These days you can buy cheap computers for $200-300... so many clients would just buy a new computer rather than fork over that much to redo a system and recover data. Where I live, I charge people $40/hr for my time and work...that's not a lot of money, and generally I cap it at 2-3 hours so the customer feels at ease(most jobs don't exceed $120). I don't get customers very often since most people will take their machine to a well known business like Best buy/GS to have the repairs done.

I won't lie to customers or carry out shady activities on someones computer, but it's easy to see why Geek squad does what it does.

snadam

I thought the upsell part was just bad, but they are sending out PCs for repair and coming back with inferior parts?!?!? WOW, that would tick me off.

Ive said it before in a n earlier post, but having worked at best buy pre Geek Squad, and personally knowing the staff behind the bench, they have been pulling this crap for at least 6 years...I felt so bad for customers coming in for PC repairs.

Recent story. Lady at my work said she received a replacement disk formatted with her OS and everything, so essentially it was install and go. She didnt want to send her entire laptop to the manufacturer to install the disk, so went to geek squad as recommended by the gateway guy (allegedly). They were going to charge her something like $200 (dont quote me on that) to INSTALL IT! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? A LAPTOP hard drive install? Its essentially unscrew the lid, pull out old, put in new, screw on lid...DONE. I was shocked to say the least, because I think thats a tad overkill for a gateway laptop hard disk...

CabbageThe1

Yah, its getting pretty ridiculous to say the least!

undomiel

I can understand a bit what happens with the inferior parts. I don't know about Geek Squad but Dell outsources their depot repairs and a lot of these places have very poor quality control so it is a bit of a roll of the dice to find out if your computer was repaired or not. That's why I refuse all depot service and just do my own repairs. On site is usually much better but there is still a lot of questionable activity there as well, like technicians upgrading their video card with a quick switcheroo, or garnering themselves some extra ram that the customer wasn't utilizing (they rationalize) anyways. I could also see the Gateway guy recommending Geek Squad as well if the customer was unwilling to work with him on the phone to go through the steps to replace the drive. Though it is also very likely that he was too lazy to work with her on replacing the drive. I know that back when I was doing phone support the only time we'd recommend Geek Squad was when data back-up was involved since we were not allowed to help the customer with that. Liability.

Zoomer

About a year and a half ago, my sister had trouble with her computer. She couldn't get on the internet and her computer was slow, she was desperate and took it to Best Buy. Geek Squad's advice was reinstall. They said her computer had a massive virus on it. (She hardly uses it to go on the internet, mainly just Word and pictures for her photography) She had data on their that they didn't backup entirely after stating they would backup everything. Luckily she backed up all her important docs to a flash drive. So they "backed up" her data, wiped XP and reinstalled for $450.00. They tried throwing all kinds of extra services at her, but thankfully she said no.

She brought her computer back, it was still slow and still could not get on the internet. She calls me and I find out that her dorm requires certain TCP/IP addresses. I walk her through setting them up and then I find out she only has 512k of RAM. After upgrading for about $50 to 1GB her computer works fine. Unfortunately she lost most of her photography pics and never got her money back. I have NO IDEA what those "techs" were thinking.

I know a couple of guys that quit Geek Squad because of their overpricing and treatment of their customers (assume everyone of them is dumb). Sometimes I just want to stand outside of Best Buy with a sign warning people with computer problems to stay away.

Turgon

The places work to an idiots policy and employ idiots. The customer pays. By the time the whole sorry operation is wound up, 'Mr Big' made his millions.

It's a sick world but there we have it. Always take your own precautions at such places!

KGhaleon

Zoomer wrote:

I walk her through setting them up and then I find out she only has 512k of RAM.

Wow, you're right. No wonder it was running so slow.

jarjar

I frequently have a computer from a a fellow employee sitting on my work bench. I cringe when I hear that someone went to BB or CC for computer help. Not because I lost out on a few bucks, but because I know they got hammered and lied to.

hypnotoad

Have you guys ever seen the GeekSquad MRI CD? It's basically just a bunch of free programs like ad-aware and some windows registry fixes put on a CD with a super-easy interface and some flashy graphics. Seriously, go download it from you-know-where. It is an embarassment to anyone who has ever tried to fix a computer.

KGhaleon

There was a topic about it, but I got the Geek squad MRI disk in place of the driver disc for a Linksys card I purchased from Wal-mart a while back.

It was an interesting conversation at wal-mart the next day when I took it back(not without making a copy of the disk).

Soulreaver

hmm geek squad....reminds me of the time i went into best buy to get 2 sticks of ram, i had to ask one of the geek squad people to open the glass enclosure to get it out, with a straight face this person offered to install it for me for 75$ ram was (102$)

Shiz Stain

LMAOOOO, sorry for bring this old thread back up.

But I feel you man, alot of my dads friends went to Best Buy to get there pc's fixed and all they do is nothing really and sell them useless programs/services really.

Then my dad tells his friends to come to me and BAM done problem fixed. They offer me money but I don't take it I just tell them its better for me I get hands on work experience lol.

Funniest thing I saw, Best Buy Geek Squad person installed Vista on a computer with only 256mb ram, 64mb video memory, and then he thought that replacing the old 60gb hdd to a 250hdd would make vista better on the computer, when in reality it took about a good 30-40mins to load. Long story short I fixed that pc, added all the drivers (which BB didnt even do), and it worked nice and since the computer gave me a good laugh I added him an extra 256mb ram stick for free lmao.

Oh and if you read one of my previous posts, they wont even let me do an internship for school at Geek Squad, and I offered to work for free but oh well there lost.

royal

Darthn3ss wrote:

People are afraid of free. thats one of the reasons why linux isn't the most popular desktop OS.

No, Linux isn't the most popular OS because its drivers are a pain in the ass to get working (at least from what I've seen although it's been a few years since I played with linux), its a pain to get software installed (make/make install/configure although I know there are things like RPM), and a lot of applications that normal users want just don't run on it (users don't want to have to install wine and tweak stuff). Not saying Linux is bad, I like linux and it does have its purpose. It's just not for the normal user.

On a different note, when I was in high school, Geek Squad (wasn't Geek Squad at that time) didn't hire me because I didn't know what Ramdac was.

To save you guys from looking it up, it's the RGB circuitry on a video card.

tiersten

royal wrote:

No, Linux isn't the most popular OS because its drivers are a pain in the ass to get working (at least from what I've seen although it's been a few years since I played with linux)

It is better now. Most things are autodetected. Depends on how friendly your particular distribution is.

royal wrote:

its a pain to get software installed (make/make install/configure although I know there are things like RPM)

Yeah. Its a total pain to install software on Windows! I have to download the source and then compile it using Visual Studio! I know about Installshield and prebuilt binaries however.

skrpune

Shiz Stain wrote:

LMAOOOO, sorry for bring this old thread back up.

But I feel you man, alot of my dads friends went to Best Buy to get there pc's fixed and all they do is nothing really and sell them useless programs/services really.

Then my dad tells his friends to come to me and BAM done problem fixed. They offer me money but I don't take it I just tell them its better for me I get hands on work experience lol.

Funniest thing I saw, Best Buy Geek Squad person installed Vista on a computer with only 256mb ram, 64mb video memory, and then he thought that replacing the old 60gb hdd to a 250hdd would make vista better on the computer, when in reality it took about a good 30-40mins to load. Long story short I fixed that pc, added all the drivers (which BB didnt even do), and it worked nice and since the computer gave me a good laugh I added him an extra 256mb ram stick for free lmao.

Oh and if you read one of my previous posts, they wont even let me do an internship for school at Geek Squad, and I offered to work for free but oh well there lost.

Geek Squad techs are hit or miss. I've known some who were great. One guy I used to work with at a small tech shop was a former employee of Geek Squad...he would routinely fix things for customers for free (like 'broken' iPods that just needed a reset) and would offer free advice to customers for simple fixes so they could do it on their own. He obviously had to do all this on the sly and do it while his managers weren't watching, but it just goes to show you, not all Geek Squad geeks are cut from the same cloth. Some actually have a clue AND a heart!

By the way, Geek Squad is no place to be doing an internship...they wouldn't know what to do with an intern because they're not set up for that. It would actually cost them money in the long run to take time out to teach you stuff, and I'm sure there's some sort of insurance/culpability aspect to it as well - if you're not a paid employee and yet they let you monkey around with people's stuff, then they might be held liable for any goofs. (Not saying you would goof up anything, just saying that you might be seen as higher risk as far as corporate is concerned.)

Internships are more meant for either IT companies or small businesses who want to expand their IT department at a low cost by adding an intern to "shadow" their main IT guy/gal. If you're still looking for an internship, check out craigslist & job boards - I see adverts for internships all the time - and you could also do some networking..ya know, the people kind of networking...talk to people you know & see if they know anyone who knows anyone who needs help in their IT department at low or no cost. Your school might be able to help hook you up with companies that needs interns too.

Shiz Stain

Yeah I know what you mean. I doubt my school will help me but I can try. What job boards should I search , im located in St.Louis and from what I've found they mostly want programming interns.

skrpune

Shiz Stain wrote:

Yeah I know what you mean. I doubt my school will help me but I can try. What job boards should I search , im located in St.Louis and from what I've found they mostly want programming interns.

try them all - monster, dice, careerbuilder, etc. I don't live in St Louis, so I don't know what your local newspapers or local boards are like, but do some creative googling and you can find some more places to search.

NetAdmin2436

The Geek Squad is awesome, what are you guys talking about? .....kidding of course

I've only had one experience with Geek Squad, and it will be my last. Two years ago I went to best buy with a Hard Drive I *thought* was physically damaged since it would blue screen any computer immediately whether it being booted off or or not or attached as an External USB. It was a side job I was doing for one of my co-workers home computer and apparently she absolutely needed the pictures of her horses or whatever off the hard drive. They were going to charge me like $1500 to send the hard drive to a 'clean room', then additional charges for each GB they recover. Basically I figured it would be around 2k.

Woah, no thank you. The lady at best buy said they would have to send the HD out to another company to do it anyways. So I went home and Googled (which I should have done in the first place, duh) and found Gillware out of WI that would do it for like 500 bucks. It just goes to show you the markup they have.