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

loxleynew

I think people that know nothing about computers see the word "geek" and think they are some computer braniacs. Out of curiosity I googled geek squad and only horrible stories popped up. That's never a good sign.

KGhaleon

NetAdmin2436 wrote:

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.

Well, that doesn't sound that bad. I worked data recovery for years and I know that clean rooms cost several thousand dollars. You may have gotten lucky in finding a place that would do it cheap, but are you sure it was a clean room and that they weren't a shady bussiness? Clean rooms are generally going to cost you 2-3K and are usually 98% successful in recovery.

NetAdmin2436

KGhaleon wrote:

Well, that doesn't sound that bad. I worked data recovery for years and I know that clean rooms cost several thousand dollars. You may have gotten lucky in finding a place that would do it cheap, but are you sure it was a clean room and that they weren't a shady bussiness? Clean rooms are generally going to cost you 2-3K and are usually 98% successful in recovery.

I've had others recommend Gillware to me before. This was just (1) 80 GB SATA Hard drive (no raid or nothing), a few thousands seams excessive for a simple disk.
http://www.gillware.com/

Devin McCloud

A girlfriend of mine called me and told me she went to best buy and had a print out of their prices for repairs. I was blown away at the cost for cleaning virus's($400)...removing their logo's and simply installing a program on your pc ($200-250). Just to come to your house was $60 and additional money to fix the problem. I never buy anything their ...I go browse and then find it on ebay...but every time I go there, there are 10-30 waiting in line holding their desktops. Amazing!

Kaminsky

devil's advocate here..

What about garages when you take in your car to be fixed.. Don't they operate the same way ? Unless you know a good mechanic who doesn't mind fixing your car, you have to go put it into a garage. PCWorld (uk), the US stores your mentioning are just the same thing....

All you need is techies/mechanics with certain skills (obviously your going to want to keep the costs down as much as possible - typically minimum wage techies just trying to get experience ) which you then sell on to the general public at exorbitant rates simply because those customers have nowhere else to go...

A mechanic tells you your asymetric flange widget ( made up - don't google it ) has blown and you'll need a new one.... what can the uninlightened do but nod OK and stump up the cash.

If these mechanics/techies are so cheep that in their work they make inexperienced decisions, what can the uninlightened do but believe them again...

You would think there was opportunities in this for people to start up their own little service but these stores also deal with the same customer coming back time and again moaning about the same fault. They warranty their work which means if it goes wrong again within a certain time they have to fix it again for free and have to put up with all sorts of grief from the general public... Personally, I wouldn't want the grief of all that.

skrpune

Kaminsky wrote:

devil's advocate here..

What about garages when you take in your car to be fixed.. Don't they operate the same way ? Unless you know a good mechanic who doesn't mind fixing your car, you have to go put it into a garage. PCWorld (uk), the US stores your mentioning are just the same thing....

All you need is techies/mechanics with certain skills (obviously your going to want to keep the costs down as much as possible - typically minimum wage techies just trying to get experience ) which you then sell on to the general public at exorbitant rates simply because those customers have nowhere else to go...

A mechanic tells you your asymetric flange widget ( made up - don't google it ) has blown and you'll need a new one.... what can the uninlightened do but nod OK and stump up the cash.

If these mechanics/techies are so cheep that in their work they make inexperienced decisions, what can the uninlightened do but believe them again...

You would think there was opportunities in this for people to start up their own little service but these stores also deal with the same customer coming back time and again moaning about the same fault. They warranty their work which means if it goes wrong again within a certain time they have to fix it again for free and have to put up with all sorts of grief from the general public... Personally, I wouldn't want the grief of all that.

Agreed. For those who don't have a technical bone in their body and who don't know any freelance techs trustworthy enough to monkey with their machines, the big box store's geek squads are the only place to go. Best Buy & other shops have a LOT of overhead that the average travelling geek doesn't, so their prices are bound to be higher. They also offer lots of guarantees/warranties that the travelling geeks don't. And I haven't met many IT folks who'll make housecalls (or business visits) to fix your issues without charging a gas surcharge or a site visit fee.

I'm certain that when I take my car in to the shop, they overcharge me out the yin yang...but since I have no idea what all those little whosymawhatsits under the hood do, and since I don't know any mechanics who do work on the side, I've gotta go pay through the nose whenever I want something done on my car. I can change a battery & jump start a car & change tires, but that's about it. The computer equivalent of that is someone being able to swap out RAM or maybe a video card but seeking professional help for changing hard drives, fixing boot problems, etc. Some people are just too scared to even change RAM - they are afraid of what they don't know, and what may seem simple to a techy person may seem like rocket science to the uninitiated.