On May 3, 2007 a reader wrote in to explain an issue he was having with Best Buy’s Geek Squad. His computer was randomly shutting off and generally acting crazy. His warranty was with Geek Squad so he took the computer in for repair. Geek Squad wiped his hard drive and returned the computer without fixing the problem.
We suggested he write Geek Squad’s founder, Robert Stephens, for help. In the 9 months and 8 days since we received his first email, no further repair work has been done, despite a friendly email from Robert promising a “credit for further service,” and that he would “ask that they keep me posted until it is resolved to your complete satisfaction.”
May 3, 2007:
Here is my best buy horror story. I sent it to Robert Stephens today. I’ll let you know if he gets back to me…My computer was running slowly generally and shutting down completely at times, so, as I had it under warranty with Geek Squad (and still do), I brought it in to be fixed. When I brought it in, they said it would take about five days to fix, and I said that would be fine.
Five days later, I called to ask if my computer was ready, and they said it was. After making the trek to Best Buy (I had to leave work to do so, and it takes about 45 minutes to get there) the Geek Squad representative said that actually it wasn’t ready, and they would need another seven days, and, as an afterthought, almost, that my hard drive had died while in GeekSquad’s care. When I asked how, as they hadn’t even begun to try to fix the problem yet, the Geek Squad representative couldn’t tell me. I asked if they could save the files on the hard drive, and the Geek Squad representative said they would.
Seven days later, when I came back, after calling again and being told my computer was ready, I was told that, actually, they couldn’t save any of the files on my hard drive, and that I would need to go back to my apartment and get the original cd so they could reload windows. I had to go all the way home and all the way back – an hour and a half trip that was totally unnecessary, as they could have just told me to bring the cd on the phone.
When I got back, the Geek Squad representative reloaded Windows on my pc, but I had lost all of my files, many of which were (needless to say) very important to me. Worse than this, soon after I got home, I found that my computer still shuts down randomly at times. So, not only did Geek Squad destroy my hard drive; they also failed to fix my computer.
At this point I don’t know what to do. My computer still needs to be fixed, as it cannot remain in this state, but I don’t feel comfortable bringing it to GeekSquad, which has already cost me hundreds of dollars in lost files and software. I had such a bad experience with GeekSquad that, even though I am still covered by its warranty, I feel that sending my computer to GeekSquad at this point would be comparable to sending my computer to a butcher.
Bezalel
May 8, 2007:
Here is Robert’s reply to me, followed by my re-reply to Robert. I’ll let you know when I hear back from him.
Bezalel
Thank you for taking the time to send me your letter. I rely on direct feedback from our customers like you to let us know how The Geek Squad is doing. I know the store management would very much like to resolve this for you. I am including them on this e-mail so they can work to prevent this from happening again.
In addition to refunding all of your service money, I will ask that the store give you a credit for future service if you will please accept it from us. If you or anyone you know ever has any experience that is less than perfect, I want to know about it. We care very much about quality and I hope you’ll give us another chance. I will ask that they keep me posted until it is resolved to your complete satisfaction.
Regards,
Robert Stephens
Founder and Chief Inspector
The Geek Squad
“Serving the Public, Policing Technology, and Protecting the World”Dear Robert,
Thank you for your email. I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear that someone at Geek Squad actually cares about my problems. However, it is not clear from your email just what you or Geek Squad will do to alleviate my problem. Please elaborate.
In addition to refunding my service money (which I take to mean refunding the cost of the warranty), I think the best way to fix this problem would be for Geek Squad to restore my hard drive. I have my hard drive (it is currently in a box, as I mentioned in my last email), and the people at Geek Squad said that they could restore it, but it would be expensive. If you could cover this service, I would very much appreciate it.
Additionally, while you write that the store will give me a credit for future service, you don’t make clear what this service is – as I am already under warranty, I don’t know how much I need credit for future service. My issue isn’t bringing my computer to Geek Squad – which I can do already as my computer is under warranty – but trusting Geek Squad to fix my computer. In this, unfortunately, you have yet to alleviate my concerns. Please do so.
Thank you again for your concern, and for your help. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Sincerely,
Bezalel
June 8, 2007:
I just wanted to follow up with you regarding my awful experience with Best Buy and Geek Squad. They have only gotten worse.
While Robert Stephens sent me a friendly email telling me he would do everything he could to fix my problem, the people he passed the problem on to (my local NY Geek Squad and Best Buy representatives) have just passed the buck for the past two and a half weeks.
After a constant barrage of emails from me, they finally two weeks ago asked me for my computer’s information, which I gave them promptly. However, since then, I haven’t heard from them at all, even after having sent numerous emails to everyone cc’d by Robert Stephens (including Stephens himself). In fact, when I called Best Buy this morning at the number included in the email of the woman supposed to help me, her extension didn’t work and the phone service, at least, had no knowledge of her employment at Best Buy. Uch. Robert Stephen might mean well, but his (former) company sure does suck.
Bezalel
February 10, 2008:
Here’s an update on my Geek Squad horror story. It isn’t pretty: The short of it is Geek Squad screwed up my computer, Robert Stephens (former CEO of Geek Squad), told them to fix it, and the Best Buy/Geek Squad people refused to. My latest email to Robert follows:
Unfortunately, I write this email bearing more bad news regarding the atrocious service I have received at the Geek Squad at 86th and Lexington, in New York. I brought my computer in this afternoon to get fixed, as you advised me to do in the email below. However, Andre [redacted] told me that they would not fix my computer, as per your instructions in the email below. Instead, Andre said that all that Geek Squad would do is run a diagnostic test, and I would have to pay for fixing the hardware. Andre claims that when you wrote that “I will ask that the store give you a credit for future service” you only meant giving the computer a diagnostic test, but not actually fixing the computer.
Forgive me my outrage, but this is downright ridiculous. I already know what is wrong with my computer. My computer has the same problem that it did when I brought it in to get it fixed originally – and when, I might add, Geek Squad failed to fix it the first time. For me to have to pay for all but the most basic services now is both outrageous and runs counter to the letter and the spirit of your email to me. Please make clear to Andre [redacted] that Geek Squad and Best Buy should cover both the diagnostic test AND the hardware issues that Geek Squad failed to fix the first time around.
As Andre [redacted] has said that Best Buy and Geek Squad would not fix the hardware issues on my computer without clear instructions from you to do so, I would appreciate you letting them know that my computer should be fixed as soon as possible.
Thank you very much for your help. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
How awful! If we were you, we’d begin thinking seriously about small claims court.
Does anyone out there have suggestions for Bezalel?
(Photo:meghannmarco)
Sounds like a similar story I had with them.
check the fan that’s inside your power supply – make sure it’s spinning – i had a very similar problem with my pc and fixing this cheap part fixed it.
It sounds to me that Robert Stephens is merely for decorative purposes only and the ONLY reason Best Buy keeps him around is to give Geek Squad “street cred”. In order to keep Stephen’s nose out of BBY’s bottom line, Best Buy insulates him from what’s really going on behind the scenes.
Seriously, if they can’t fix a machine under warranty, they do have to replace it, that’s federal law. Anybody that sells a warranty has to provide the services stated in the warranty for the time period stated in the warranty. You can’t just say “I can’t fix it” and wash your hands of it. If you can’t fix it you have to give a refund for the item, or replace the item.
I hope its not the HP DV6000 or DV9000
[h10025.www1.hp.com]
The laptops have had their warranties extended
This came out last week, via Circuit City Employee Forum.
It definitely is a hardware issue, much like the Dell Desktop X-top Capacitor issue on the motherboard. causing the computer to power off after 5-10 mins. then the computer fan will sound “like a jet engine”
Circuit City Policy:
After 3 failed repair attempts, the warranted item will be refunded, and the warranty will be pro-rated. Thus you can go buy another computer.
@LikeYourFace: I was just trying to make the point that we can’t always fix everything that comes in. Also, he may not even have the Best Buy service plan. What he *may* have, and the story is vague on this, is simply the 30 or 90-day warranty on labor after having a Geek Squad service performed.
Folks, I openly and freely agreed that he got terrible service, but to draw a parallel from that to an entire company doesn’t make sense. Consumerist posted a news item about an undercover (hot) chick taking her computer to be fixed at several LA tech benches. *Only* GS did not check out her foxy pictures and other files, and only GS diagnosed the problem correctly as a simple, unplugged power supply. Did you people go and lavish praise on GS for this solitary act of competence? Nope. So why do these piddly issues keep coming up as a giant branding iron over a company that employes thousands? @Nighthawke: Yep, we entrusted gramps to the surgeon and he failed at saving him. Guess what, we weren’t mad at the surgeon.
There are idiots and Mensa members at every retail operation you walk into.
I’m going to second anyone that mentioned that it’s likely a heat
related issue. Check the ventilation and increase cooling capibilities.
A computer will begin to run very slowly when it gets to overheating
and will then automatically shut itself down to prevent excessive
damage.
Other than heat or PS, could be defective RAM. I would boot from something like BartPE and run one of the tools to test system components – helped me figure out why XP wouldn’t install when I had a bad kingston stick.
Sounds like his power supply is dropping voltage across one of the rails, or he has a bad CPU core. And that is just an initial, quicky estimate from scanning his letter online. A _real_ technician would be able to resolve this sort of issue, and know a hard drive wipe would be the least likely solution…
I just want to take a moment to clear up a few things regarding Bezalel’s service at a Geek Squad location. The above postings are correct that when you went to GS to get your computer serviced, you signed off on the fact that you are supposed to make backups of your data before hand because we cannot guarantee the data depending on the type of service performed. Secondly, if you do have a PSP, you should not have been charged at all for any service you came into the store to get done, UNLESS you asked them to support some sort of software issue which is not covered by a PSP (even says so in the brochure). Now, as for your harddrive. GS can recover the data from it if it is just a dead drive that has not been demagnatized or damaged to the point that the data is irrecoverable. If you wanted the data off of it, you would have to send it in for quite a lengthy process where a specialized technitian takes it apart, pulls off the disk, applies it to a working stripped harddrive, and pulls the data off manually. Lastly, it is quite obvious as a seasoned technitian that your issue does lay in the hardware, and why it has not been serviced accordingly by the first technitian is beynod me. Please do not lose hope though, your issue is fixable. You should have been given the correct knowledge from the get-go and given the customer service that you deserve. All Geek Squads are not created equally, if you spoke to anyone on my team, it would have been fixed right the first time.
@NightSteel:
BS. “Random” psshhhh.
The service contract indemnifies us service techs from data loss concerns because otherwise ever person who shows up will say that the drive was “WORKING FINE BEFORE YOU ASSHOLES RUINED IT!!!!!!!!111!!1111!ONEONEONEONEONE”.
They *ALREADY* do that constantly, even WITH the clauses in place. They’re not even in small print, they’re one of the LARGEST THINGS on the forms you fill out.
@wellfleet:
In all my years, I have *NEVER* heard anyone praise Geek Squad, save for a few isolated bits of intelligence here and there (OMG, they actually managed to plug the power supply in!).
I’ve recovered data from DVDs they’ve ruined (the disc wasn’t ‘good’ to begin with, but the Geek Squad dork managed to create a nice pinwheel on the disc by improperly using a resurfacer – the ass certainly made my job a lot more difficult. Bad enough trying to recover 8.5 gigs of data from a DVD that wasn’t written quite right without having to endure EXTRAORDINARILY long read times due to bad resurfacing. It would’ve been better for me if he’d simply cracked the disc in half.), recovered data from HDDs they’ve wiped for no good reason (HP and Sony are still the KINGS of this practice. What the hell does the HDD have to do with REPLACING THE HINGES ON THE LAPTOP CASE, idiots?!), and recovered OSes they’ve somehow managed to hose despite the “Geek Squad” repair CD simply being a bunch of commercial tools they never paid for.
I’m all for cutting the service tech some slack (no, Geek Squad probably didn’t cause your HDD to die. No, they didn’t cause your power supply to catch on fire), but this is a pattern of incompetence from techs who were hired purely because they had one BS cert or another, as opposed to hiring people who know how to do the work.
If you’re competent, you don’t stay at Geek Squad *OR* Best Buy for long.
I recommend finding a local shop and getting it fixed there. There are plenty in NYC so look up a reliable one on Yelp.com or the likes and then take it there. A good way to test them is to tell them your problem and have them make a rough estimate of what it may be. If they tell you that it’s probably overheating then they’re an okay shop to go to because random shutdowns are almost always an overheating issue and any competent technician should be able to tell you that.
Unfortunately overheating can be difficult to cure. Besides cleaning out all the dust bunnies and cleaning off and reapplying any thermal grease inside the computer, there isn’t much more that can be done.
@theantidote:
Larger HS, bigger fans, more powerful fans, more fans, less fans, wrapped cables… Lots of things to help overheating!
“Random” shutdowns aren’t usually overheating, though. Overheating would be suspected if the machine shuts down during periods of high activity, or if the machine stays up for less time with each successive boot, until it is allowed to rest/cool.
Truly random shutdowns are caused by bad hardware.
@athala: Not that I try and go about
correcting the internet’s spelling mistakes, but after the repeated
mispellings of the same word in your post I really do feel inclined to
mention that it’s technician, not technitian. Sorry about the spelling
outburst, it probably won’t happen again.
Never save important stuff on your “boot” hard drive. I have a 2 drive raid-1 for storing my files and a 3 drive raid-5 for doing backups. Always make copies and backups and then another copy or backup of that. Your data is priceless so take the extra precautions to make sure it’s safe.
If one of my computer crashes, it’s not the end of the world because all I lost was the operating system and a few programs. I can have it back up in running in no time. I use Acronis to make images of my computers so that if I get infected with a virus or need to clone a hard drive, I can have a fresh install in minutes. This is coming from someone in the IT Field and that’s how we do it in the professional world.