Reader Mike consulted Best Buy about removing a Trojan that was infecting his computer. They suggested that he buy an external hard drive, pay Best Buy to back up his data, and use his computer’s restore disc. Mike agreed. 5 days later he got his computer and his external hard drive back — mostly empty, except for the shortcut to the folder where the data was stored. None of the files within the folder had actually been transferred.
Mike writes to Best Buy:
Our home computer was infected by a Trojan that had seriously slowed down our service and had recently caused the computer to cease running a crucial process. When we took the CPU into the Geek Squad, they suggested that our best option was to have them back up the hard drive, and for us to then run the computer’s Restore disc at home.
We were asked to fill out a form that contained the absolute minimum that must be backed up. I listed on that form 3 folders of personal documents and a single Word document that resided on the computer’s desktop. However, we were then informed that the best way to absolutely ensure the Geek Squad’s ability to back up our entire hard drive would be to purchase an external drive whose capacity was at least as large as our computer’s. We thus purchased for approximately $95 a 500 GB external hard drive on which to back up an 80 GB computer.
The process, we were told, would take 2 to 3 days. After 5, we were finally told that our computer was ready.
Having picked up the CPU and brought it home, I checked the contents of the external hard drive before running the restore disc. At this time I discovered, firstly, that only the bare minimum had been backed up—the three folders and one document that we had indicated on the form. Since I had purchased the 500GB hard drive specifically because I was told that this would with certainty allow the Geek Squad to back up the entire hard drive, this was extremely frustrating.
However, the situation almost immediately graduated from frustrating to infuriating. One of the three folders I had marked on the form was the “My Documents” folder. The icon for this folder on the hard drive indicated that the file size was 1 KB. The technicians at Best Buy had NOT backed up the “My Documents” folder, as I had requested: they had backed up only the shortcut. None of the files within the folder had actually been transferred.
There is an expectation upon the part of the consumer that Best Buy’s computer technicians know what they are doing. The fact that they were not tipped off by the “1 KB” notation that I noticed immediately suggests precisely the opposite: that the Geek Squad at Best Buy on 14th Street are lazy at best, incompetent at worst.
I am extremely unhappy. I spent all night last night backing up the computer myself—a service I paid for rather handsomely, and for which I received LESS than the absolute-last-resort minimum that I had indicated on my paperwork. But my biggest regret in this entire fiasco is that I did not avail myself of the Best Buy Geek Squad’s long history of complaints and dissatisfied customers. I might then have saved myself a great deal of time and trouble.
Please be assured that I will not patronize Best Buy again.
Thank you.
Mike
Kudos to you for not waiting until after you nuked your hard drive to check the external. If Best Buy doesn’t offer a refund for the services they did not perform, we wouldn’t hesitate to contact our credit card company and request a chargeback.
(Photo: The Joy Of The Mundane )
@G-16: I agree with the second part of your post, bringing in only the CPU was kinda dumb. He should have brought in the hard drive at least.
@Ben Popken: Whoo whoo! Hopefully, there’ll be more of Dad Ben keeping the Consumerist safe for conscientious commentators!
Would love to see a return of a vengeful Hammer of Ban here. It’d make Consumerist a much more readable, on-topic and valuable blog.
@Neecy: You’re taking two unrelated things and comparing them unfairly.
Removing a virus can be an impressive technical challenge for an experienced user. It would be difficult to expect the average computer user to know how to go about the removal process.
Backing up your data should be a normal, common process that happens on some regular, repeating cycle. If anyone can be expected to review their bank balance and transactions (not sure what to call “balancing your checkbook” for those of us who don’t write checks anymore) then anyone should be expected to know how to back up their own data. Even if you’d prefer a repair shop do it once in a while for you, you should be able to do it on your own, and you should be doing it regularly.
Another example of people getting screwed for paying for a service. I don’t understand how this is even allowed. Backing up a hard drive is the equivalent to an oil change and these imbeciles are supposed to be “the pros”???
Gee Squid.
We really don’t have enough bad stories as BB’s Gee Squid has not been majorly revamped or dismissed. No matter how bad a service they provide or how bad a job they do, as long as it is making money for BB, what does the management care?
@mavrc: No, these posts aren’t getting old. Going to Geek Squad is like being in an abusive relationship. You knew what you were getting into when you signed up. However, these articles are necessary. New Consumerist readers won’t know that Geek Squad is evil. If you signed up to read Consumerist today, would you know that Best Buy is bad? Don’t assume that everybody reads this blog every day, day in and day out.
@Ben Popken: Great. Make Consumerist just like Kotaku where if you voice any disagreement with the blog or the article, it’s an instant ban because in the Kotaku world, alternative opinion = trolling. Of course, the voice of dissension is usually solo BECAUSE all the other voices have been banned.
Geek squad is total shit. Computers are like cars, dont let anyone work on them that you have not researched and can trust.
@sncreducer: I’ll answer your questions here for Ben:
“Common-fucking-sense.”
There are many posts on Consumerist where blaming the OP makes sense, or is at least somewhat reasonable, or is a stretch but not too much of a stretch. But here, there’s simply no reasonable explanation for blaming the OP except trolling or shilling.
Given every single experience I’ve had walking into a Best Buy, my expectation is that a large percentage of Best Buy “experts” suffocate on an annual basis, as they forget to breathe.
How in the world does someone come to expect that Best Buy’s “technicians” know what they’re doing? They’re just as poorly trained as the rest of Best Buy’s cracker-jack sales staff, they just get uglier shirts.
Besides, how difficult is it to drag and drop the files yourself (or, better yet, run an antivirus agent)?
@Ben Popken: It wasn’t the 21st person who said people who go to Geek Squad are total maroons who convinced me not to go there, it was the 22nd! Seriously, the effect of a pile of “Store is known bad, therefore we now humiliate OP” posts is mainly to discourage other people from sending in their letters. Who would seek help from such an unforgiving mob?