Geek Squad - Incompetant, arrogant "experts"

Posted by leet60 on 2012-11-04:

The "geek squad", in my opinion is virtually useless. They have "canned" diagnosis for almost any problem. Taking your computer to them for service is like having a brake shop repair your engine. I always try to use a local repair service if possible.

Posted by Dakota1015 on 2012-11-04:

The best and the brightest IT people do not work for a company that pays them Burger King wages, calls them geeks and dresses them up in 1960s Blues Brothers costumes. Just sayin....

Posted by FoDaddy19 on 2012-11-04:

"Took my Dell 5100 Laptop to the local Best Buy "Geek Squad" to remove an error message on boot up"

That's a 9 year old laptop, I'm impressed it's still running.

"Received a phone call two days later from a geek, explaining that the hard drive had failed and the motherboard was malfunctioning "

It's entirely possible that the S.M.A.R.T HDD diagnostics detected an imminent HHD failure, in which case the unit could boot normally after the warning, but the warning is there to let you know that your HDD is likely on borrowed time. So it's likely the HDD was on the way out. As for the mobo diagnosis, it's possible that the IDE controller could be bad, but if the optical drive still worked, then that probably wasn't defective.

"They had also removed the hard drive and connected it to their "Mule" for diagnosis.(Typical "one size fits all" mentality)"

Please understand that HDD's come in three main variety's; SATA, which is the most common by far today and has been the standard for 6 or 7 years now, IDE, which used to be the most common, about 10-20 years ago, and SCSI, which never made much headway in the consumer/retail market, but was around during the time IDE was common. So test a HDD is really a "one size fits all" approach as there are only two real standards in play here. What I'm trying to say is, it doesn't require any proprietary equipment to test a HDD out of a Dell vs. one out of an HP, it's all standardized.

"Took the unit to a local computer repair shop who discovered that the hard drive had been re-installed improperly (bent connector pin)"

Very easy to do on those 2.5 inch IDE laptop HDDs, fortunately it's also easy to fix most of the time with a pair of tweezers.

"Took the unit to a local computer repair shop who discovered that the hard drive had been re-installed improperly (bent connector pin)The smug arrogance of the Geek "tech" and that that they denied any fault being theirs, is what really ticked me off -- apart from the obvious fact that the repairs were attempted by unprofessional idiots"

It's possible they did it, it's also possible the other shop did it. And are trying to cover themselves. Either way it a bent pen is an easy fix most of the time. However if you were get a SMART warning upon startup the HDD will need to be replaced in the near future, back up your data now. I don't think the cost of a IDE HDD (which the 5100 takes) would be justifiable given the age of the unit though.

"It is obvious that this repair service is a real money spinner for Best Buy (who "own" it)"

It is, GS is a major source of revenue for Best Buy, their margins on Geek Squad services/labor are huge.

In the interest of disclosure, I should mention that I was a Geek Squad agent for three years. I, along with most of people who worked in my store were overqualified for the work we did. I had a 4 year degree, and several certifications (A+, Network+,MCDST,and MCSA) However, most companies require that you have have several years experience (regardless of qualifications) before they'll even look at you. For me and most of my co-workers Geek Squad was a stepping stone, it was the job you had before you got the job you wanted. I worked at Geek Squad for 3 years, it was enjoyable for the most part, the pay sucked, but I liked my coworkers, we were shared alot of the same interests and were fun to work with. During my stay I can't say a really learned anything I didn't already know, but the freebies were nice and the employee discount didn't suck back then either. I can only remember one time in three years where we made a big mistake ( we replaced a motherboard when all we had to do was replace a floppy disk cable, I screwed the pooch on that one, but we were only out $80 for a cheap replacement mobo, so it wasn't the end of the world, and the customer ended up getting a new mobo for free. These days I'm a network admin overseeing about 200 computers, virtually everyone I worked with at Geek Squad has moved on to bigger and better things as well. Geek Squad as a whole takes a lot of heat for being overpriced (it is), but not all precincts are bad. It is true that alot of the kids that work there aren't going to be as qualified as you might think, but there are some people who work there because they can't find anything better right now, and most of the time these people will be very competent. It's the luck of the draw really.

Posted by Joe on 2013-05-03:

the installed a ram module in my laptop, without removing the oem module. the new module has different specs than the oem, and the mismatch has been causing my computer to crash. that said, their online support for software is OK, although there is alot of hopping from agent to agent.