A common refrain we hear from the former and current Geek Squad employees we’ve been talking to is that Geek Squad used to be awesome. Robert Stephens built up an award-winning company with a reputation for being the best in the business. Then he sold it to Best Buy and they turned it to garbage.
One of these former Geek Squad employee shares his thoughts on their data recovery, outsourcing, upsell, and hiring of salesmen over techs policies, inside…
(Photo: bossco)
Geek Squad is a good company to work for. They have a nice ideology and cult-like attitude. However from my experiences working for GS, I have found that a majority of their Agents are rather ignorant about real tech work. Most of them only know how to run GeekSquad’s MRI CD and Customizer. Hardly any of them even use ESD (electrostatic discharge) equipment. And don’t believe the BS they tell you when they say “Our floor is specially treated for ESD”. That would only matter if you are wearing heel straps, which they don’t. Their prices are far overpriced. In some cased they charge double what their competitors charge. There are some very competent Agents, but most of them are from the pre-BBY buyout.
“Quality – We have an entire quality team whose responsibility is to ensure that our Agents have properly repaired the customers unit.”
Was put into place after NUMEROUS complaints from Precincts and customers from the poor quality.
FACTS
1. Data Recovery is not a big deal. They hook it up to any random desktop, run a recovery program (license costs about 1k a year), and click recover.
2. They outsource some of the repairs via a remote access application (AKA AJU or Agent Johnny Utah). These people are in countries that have no similar privacy laws that are in the US. So in other words, your computer with your saved bank passwords, government contacts, ETC; are being accessed by “Bob” in India, Pakistan, and various other countries around the world.
3. An Agent’s RPT or Revenue Per Transaction is around $250.00. Which means if you are spending less than that, their goal is to get you to spend more.
4. Geek Squad hires people based on their Salesmen and Customer Service skills before they hire on their Technical Prowess. They would rather Train a salesman to be a tech than train a tech to be a salesman.
Based on what’s been said here and previously, you might be better off taking your computer elsewhere for repairs. Unless you like the idea of a guy who used to work at Taco Bell fondling your laptop. Now we’re sure there’s some competent and even talented and enthusiastic folks doing repairs for Geek Squad, but there’s enough of them that aren’t to raise concerns for consumers. — BEN POPKEN
More From Consumerist
-
Best Buy Sells Me Exciting New Geek Squad Anti-Warranty
-
Geek Squad Expands To Target And eBay
-
Wait, Best Buy Replacement Plans Don’t Fix Or Replace Discontinued Gadgets?
-
This Amateurish Sign Pretty Much Sums Up All Of Best Buy's Problems
-
Geek Squad Wants You To Write Down Your Password On This Sheet Because That's A Horrible Idea
I just want to add to the criticism of Geek Squad. I had arranged for a housecall, took the morning off from work to be here during the four hour time frame they requested and – surprise – no one showed up. When I called, I was informed that the “system” had bumped my time by four hours. Geek Squad had my name, addess, email address and telephone numbers but chose not to call me to ask if the time change would work, offer to reschedule or even to let me know that there was a time change. Too bad I can’t bill them for the four hours I wasted waiting for them. Their indifference speaks volumes about thier attitudes towards their customers. I will never call them again and as long as they exist, will recommend people find a different computer service company.
I currently am the DCI for a geek squad precinct. I can agree with some of this. When i first started working for GS it was all about $$$$ and i made it my goal when i took over the precinct to make it about the customer. we have a a system that allows our customers to rate us on how well of a job we did by taking a survey at geeksquadcares.com then by entering your service order number you can leave comments about how you feel about the job we did for you. and based on your ratings we get an averaged number rating of 1 to 100. 100 being the highest. My precints score is 95 right now. My clients are happy with the services we perfrom for them. And if a customer were to score us lower than a 75 i will call the customer find out what the issue is and make an attempt to make them happy. With the way the economy is no business can afford to lose a single customer.(look at curcuit city/firedog)
Yes I do have a couple of agents whom are better salesmen than they are techs but they are still considered a good tech by anyones standards and they know how to trouble shoot a problem. sometimes they will need myself or a fellow agent to help them solve the issue but they are experienced enough to figure out what the problem is. We also now have required certs that each agent must complete in order to stay employed. I am A+and net+ certified and i also have my MCSA and I had a bit of difficulty with some of the questions on our required internal certs.
Yes our prices may seem high but at least in my area they are no more than any of our local competitors.
We push out on average 450 computers in a month. That is a lot of computers considering we have about a 150sq ft of work space and only 12 agents. So we do have an occasional redo who wouldnt have a few with that kind of volume. We are the best precinct in our district not only because of our volume but because we focus on the customers experience. I never want a customer to leave unsatisfied with our service. I will do what ever it takes to make each customer happy even if that means performing free services. Hitting our budgets are made a high priority by my superiors and that is understandable it is a business not Unicef.
All of these horror stories I have been reading just make me sick and embarrased for the geeksquad brand because I take pride in what I do and i Love what i do. So to all of you former best buy/ geeksquad customers I apolgize for your bad experiences, but you should step throught those doors again sometime after July 10th we have rolled out a new operating model company wide completely focused around making you the customer feel important, and wanted. From now on it is all about you.
I work for the GS, some comments are valid, Others are not. You need brakes on your car, it could cost you up to $400 or more depending on the issue. why not go to your local NAPPA store and by the break parts your self and fix them. Parts are cheap and should only take you about 1 hour, that’s how fast Goodyear can do it. Taking you car in for a oil change is the same do it your self and save money. Your plumbing in your hose is backed up go rent a snake and fix it allot cheaper then the hourly rate from someone you would call. Saying your lazy and taking your pc in to be fixed because you messed it up, tells me you have no idea what you did to your PC please help me. People it is a service and we all know services are not free. If you could do a better job you would not have brought your PC into a repair service center. Please don’t complain about something you know nothing about.
back in 2002 i knew a little about computers, i had this computer that would freeze coming into windows and sometimes it would load windows no problem i took it to best buy “i think this was before the geek squad era, but still the same shit people” and asked them to fix it, the computer was bought from best buy and was on warranty, but yet i had to pay 100 bucks the 1st time, i got it back and all my stuff was missing and they formatted my hd and re installed windows….
it had the same problem, i took it back a 2nd time that time i had to pay 183 bucks and same shit formatted and installed windows yet the same problem
took it back the 3rd time and told them not to format my hd cuz its not working whatever they are doing and they need to fix it, guess what, i didnt have to pay that time, but they formatted my hd and re installed windows…
i ended up finding out that there was a conflict with the aftermarket video card they installed a few months back so i took the aftermarket video card out took it back to them and got my money back and i have never been back since…
geek squad or not, best buy is filled with a bunch of dumbasses i went to buy some thermal paste i was buliding a computer a few months ago and forgot to buy it at frys and the 2 different guys i talked to to see if they had it had no idea what thermal paste was omg are you fucking kidding me, i found it but still my point geez