When the OP goes back to pick up her computer should ask the techs to SHOW (not just tell)her where the liquid damage is. There is probably a 90% chance that there is none, and a 10% chance that the repair tech actially spilled something on the PC.

wow, it doesn't even seem like it was a hardware issue to start with.

"They had also made a note on the previous repair that there was NO liquid damage internally."

This sounds fishy to me. Why would they make that kind of note before liquid damage was even brought up?? Did they also mention that it didn't apper that there was damage due to lightning strike or rhino stampede?

I wonder if this girl also forgets that she put the Pepsi under her cart.

@homerjay: I think checking for water damage is standard operating procedure, since from what I hear, even living somewhere humid can make those little strips show as having been wet, and the company gets to keep money they would have had to spend doing covered repairs if they declare water damage.

I hate dealing with warranty issues and would prefer to pay the extra in the beginning for having the techs repair things at my house.

This case also outlines why desktops are preferable to laptops. Yea, you can't carry them around but when there's a problem they're much easier to fix yourself. At the very least your neighborhood Geek could handle it.

As a repair technician myself, I've found that about half of the liquid spill damage claims made by repair centers disappear when asked to prove it's there. That being said, unless the technician was visually inspecting the motherboard for replacement when the laptop was being repaired the first time its very likely the technician would NOT have seen liquid spill damage. Liquid spills generally just leave a film on the motherboard and some discolored contacts, not something you'd notice unless you were specifically looking for it. Visual inspection of the part for physical and liquid spill damage is generally one of the last steps before the part is replaced, so unless the damage is severe and obvious such damage is often not noted until the part is just about to be replaced.

I had this same problem with a brand new HP laptop. It arrived inoperable and I sent it back and was told it was water damage. Nothing I said made a dent and they quoted a price to have it repaired. What did work was sending a registered letter to the president of the company. THAT got a response within a few days, and my computer was shipped back and repaired free of charge. Go to the top and make no bones about your unhappiness with this situation and how it will impact your future buying habit.

@cheviot: I agree. Also there would be no reason for them to not repair it under water if there WASNT liquid damage as they get paid for the labor to install the warranted part as well as the part. Now what may have happened if the OP didnt spill something on it herself or sit it on the wet floor of her car is the package may have gotten wet via UPS, in which case a damage claim needs to be filed.

Sweet! They used one of my images! :)

Oh wow. I interned for Best Buy in the Geek Squad before- at the store I interned at this would have been absolutely unacceptable.

Also I used to work for them as well and they CANNOT override the estimate. The only thing that the store WOULD be able to do is approve the estimate and pay for the repairs out of the store funds, which rarely happens due to the huge P&L hit. That being said I haven't looked at the laptop but generally with a LSASS error and BSOD it sounds like the problem was likely a software issue and there was no need to send it out. Some of the new Vundo spyware variants have been causing LSASS errors lately

It sounds like the first tech didn't know how to fix the problem, and decided to ignore it. It sounds like the second tech didn't know how to fix the problem, so he "made up" a problem. Not knowing the computer was just looked at a few days ago. He most likely thought you were stupid.

and to think when I finish with colledge getting my Comp TIA A+ cert i was gonna go apply for geek squad....

isass.exe is part of the user account security system. Its also previosuly been ID'd as a known vulnerabilty. Id run an antivirus or reinsall windows. of course, that wont fix the parts they broke.

This sounds suspiciously like a sasser worm to me. That makes it a software issue, not a hardware one. It may be doable to reinstall windows, but, when this happened to me, I got a new hard drive and installed a fresh copy of the OS. I have never heard from the problem again, and all of my data was recoverable using a $30 2.5" IDE to USB kit.

I know this isn't a tech support forum, but Geek Squad should have known to try this. It could have been a nice easy fix for them...

The lsass.exe error could be caused by a virus, bad hard drive, or somehow it just got corrupted.

You could boot off the XP CD and replace the lasass.exe file using the recovery console.

You could do a repair install of XP or just do a fresh install of XP.

Either way Geek Squad has no idea what they are doing and that tech that signed off on your laptop should be in jail for fraud.

There aren't many things I dislike more, or have less respect for, than the GeekSquad, but c'mon people. When are we, as American consumers as a whole, going to learn to stop using the services of companies that continue to screw us over? Sometimes there isn't much choice (like in a geographic area where Comcast is the only highspeed Internet option), but computer repair? Everyone and their uncle knows someone who can repair issues like a corrupted installation of Windows.

I just thought of this: Repair it yourself using parts, if necessary, from a competitor to BB. Then send an email to the store manager (EECB may be used later) telling them how incompetent their staff is. I would do the labor for free if the OP lived near me.

"Nicole, don't buy for a second that "no one can override the repair center". Unless you've got one of those special repair centers staffed by the Board of Directors themselves, there's always someone in a position of authority to countermand the grunts on the ground."

No, really, nobody in the store can override the repair center. Not even the store manager.

I worked for GS for several years, and even though the repair center techs are a batch of incompetent cretins, NOBODY at the store-level can override their say on a repair ticket.

Take a look at www.notebookmechanix.com

@segamanxero:

College for a A+ Cert? You've got to be kidding me.

@segamanxero: Dude you don't even need A+ to work for GS.

You don't even need to go to college for your A+ cert. Jeez, I studied for my A+ at the kitchen table in between episodes of family guy, not a classroom.

I had the same thing happen to me at US Cellular once. I had a POS Motorola phone that had a bad charge connector (just a bad design). After a while the phone would not charge unless the charge adapter was propped just perfectly while inside the phone.

I took it in for repair and they told me it'd be up to 3 weeks. I finally got a postcard from them that said "not repaired - liquid damage" accompanied by a blurry, magnified photo of three or four solder points that were a a little darker gray than the surrounding solder points. Upon closer investigation of the picture they had tried to re-solder the connector back on (save a few pennies I guess), failed miserably, then blamed water damage to get out of having to pay for the new phone!

Needless to say I was upset and asked to speak to a manager. The manager looked at the blurry photo and took their side, saying it looked rusty, but that he'd replace my phone for free.

After the last 4 months of my contract expired I switched t Verizon and switched to LG for phones and I haven't had a single issue since.

The Best Buy service centers do this kind of shit all the time. Even when your working with a nice guy in the store, if its something that has to go to service, the store has lost all power in repairing your problem. I know that when I worked for GS, I would avoid sending anything to service that I could possibly fix in store, but unfortunately for laptops, the only thing authorized for replacement in store is the hard drive, you are unlikely to be able to get any other parts except for the memory, and if you try to charge it to the warranty, it will deny it. Best Buy even had policies saying that store techs weren't allowed to take apart laptops any farther than the user accessible panels (memory, hard drive, wireless card), and we were also prohibited from updating the BIOS.

I would have to agree with a few of the other commenters in that I would not expect anything to do with lsass.exe to be a hardware failure. Of course, the OP did say that it came back with a new DC jack and keyboard, so maybe the GS guy sent it out for one of those reasons, meaning to fix the SW problem when it got back, but never did. Why you would send it out again for the same SW problem alludes me, however. The only component I could see causing the problem normally might be the hard drive, but if you reformatted the error would certainly change if that was the case. Only whatever files are on the bad sectors are affected, of course.

Hey Guys, this is my first post. I would recommend that you contact the Service center and request pictures of the liquid damage. Email or via the return of the damaged laptop. Normally they will return the product unrepaired after 3 calls, With a convienient 24.95 charge. If they there is liquid damage it is on them to prove it. All repairs are warrantied for 90 days. I would also refer to your previous Service order stating no liquid damage. I know they are very busy at the Louisville KY service center and they have a 3 day turntime to compete with. Maybe the diagnoses was "gun-decked", not to sound harsh but its kind of fishy that the keyboard was replaced and liquid damage wasnt noticed. The charges can be reversed as store wty or to the the PSP (with some clever wording) to prevent a PSP repair rejection to the service center. I would not back off their arses if you do not believe this is liquid damage.

@homerjay: So you're suggesting that this person is completely lying about what the Geek Squad notes say (which presumably Best Buy can verify) and has duped Consumerist in hopes that the massive groundswell of public pressure that no doubt will result from this post will induce Best Buy to fix her computer under false pretenses? Do I understand that correctly?

Victim-blaming in three. Not a hole in one, but nice shot nonetheless.

Someone I know took their laptop to a local Austin repair place because it suddenly turned itself off. The business, Mr. Notebook, reported the motherboard was damaged and offered "data recovery" at $100 per hour. I heard her friend (my coworker) talking about it, and asked to bring it home with me. A brief inspection of it from my boyfriend, someone who actually has a Computer Science degree and a conscience, revealed the solder joints on the A/C power connector had been damaged, a typical problem for older laptops. In reality, no "data recovery" was required as the system was found to be completely functional. Solution? Keep the laptop stationary while in use, and befriend a geek.

@Beerad: Occasionally the victim turns out to be wrong. The customer is not always right. But in this case, no, I've been corrected already.

Why would it need a new keyboard if it was just a software issue to begin with? Maybe there was a small amount of water damage that Best Buy wanted to "ignore" so they could get paid through their insurer for a keyboard install and dc power jack repair, hoping that the water damage wouldn't cause any issues until much later (if ever). Then they got bit in the behind right away...

I don't know why someone that reads Consumerist would willingly take their computer to Geek Squad for any repair......although, my guess is that you bought the service plan and felt that you were forced to use it.

But before the necessity to take your computer to useless tech support, find a friend who is willing to look at the unit to pinpoint the issue prior to sending it in.

@r081984: The one time GS gets a problem fixable by a reinstall, they replace the keyboard. Go figure.

Nobody has mentioned it yet, but a new motherboard costs $200 tops. You can get a very solid motherboard for under $100. So the $700 sounds like an 'eff off' price.

I just built a fantastic system for myself 2 weeks ago for about $550.

Email Michael.Arrighi@bestbuy.com

He took care of my geek squad issues. I had problems when my laptop was suffering from geek squad ineptitude, and he "junked out" my old laptop and got me credit for a new laptop of equal value to what i paid for my last one.. NOT the depreciated value of a laptop of equal specs to my old one.

"Still think using Geek Squad to repair your computer isn't such a bad idea?" - Nope, I've ALWAYS thought it was a bad idea.

@no name:
your boyfriend's skills aside, having a degree in Computer Science also does not make you qualified to service computer hardware. Last I checked computer science is a PROGRAMMING discipline, not a hardware troubleshooting and repair discipline. Having a degree in computer Science makes you about as qualified to repair PCs as a typical Geek Squad Agent. In fact, they should rename computer Science to "Software Engineering". Though there are many folks with CS degrees that have gone on to learn hardware troubleshooting and repair on their own.

@backbroken:
Unfortunately the OP's system is a NOTEBOOK and not a DESKTOP. Yes, Desktop motherboards are cheap and readily available. However Laptops use custom designs by their respective manufacturers. So you can't just go to newegg.com and find motherboards for laptops. Sometimes you can luck out and find a motherboard on eBay for cheap if your system is popular and wasn't expensive to begin with. Otherwise you're stuck going to Dell/HP/Gateway/IBM for a replacement part. Those companies would much rather you buy a new laptop than repair a broken one.

@homerjay: I appreciate your sincere retraction, but it just pains me that so frequently people will jump to the conclusion that the OP is running a scam (even otherwise perfectly nice and rational posters like yourself).

While there are certainly folks out there who will try and get you to wire funds to Nigeria, will steal iPods from big box stores, and will even purloin soda from the supermarket and lie about it to the media, I'm generally willing to go along with the spirit of Consumerist. If the editors think it's meritorious, I'm going to assume they got it right. If this site was premised on "we'll post a bunch of fake articles, and you all should squabble about which ones are real" that would be different, but it ain't.

I guess this is a long-winded way of saying thanks for your reasonable response and not flaming me 8 ways to Sunday.

@MrEvil:

Second that on the comment that a CS degree doesn't qualify one to be a hardware tech. There's a big difference between being a programmer and an electronics tech or engineer.

For that matter, most CS guys don't even make good systems engineers.

This isn't usually a hardware problem, it's a software problem. Helpful information here:
[support.microsoft.com]

I've had to fix this problem before, the Microsoft knowledge base has step-by-step instructions for fixing it. The Geek Squad techs are, to put it simpy, incompetent.

uhh, lsass.exe is a windows security process. it's not a hardware problem. it's most likely that the computer is infected with the sasser virus, of which there are many variations. it seeks to exploit a buffer overflow vulnerability in lsass.exe.
just another example of totally incompetent "technicians" which, sadly, is a huge problem in the industry. i've been fixing computers for almost 20 years, and it makes me sick to see how bad things have gotten.

This seems like a one-sided story, although I do suspect something didn't go right.

I work for Geek Squad. The lsass.exe error clearly indicates a software issue. However, since when does a software issue indicate that all the hardware is good? Getting frequent blue screens could also indicate bad hardware. Tests performed in store could have concluded that further repairs were needed.

I can't remember the last time we sent a unit out to service for a repair and they send it back specifically saying there is no liquid damage. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the first tech missed the liquid damage. They handle thousands of computers and mistakes are bound to happen.

They wouldn't do something unethical like cause the damage and try to blame you. Anyone who has any idea who the Chief Inspect is knows he would never stand for such BS. I have seen them mess up units before and they will take the hit for it. Have any of you been to Geek Squad City? No. Cause if you have, you'd see there's practically no way for them to cause liquid damage to the unit.

@Extended-Warranty:

You need to address one problem at a time. While a blue screen can certainly indicate hardware issues, it most certainly does not indicate a keyboard issue.

If you attempt to fork your efforts, looking for hardware issues before you know the software is stable and functioning normally, you will spin your wheels and get nowhere. You must rule out a software issue before addressing hardware. In this case, the Geek Squad techs appear to have been randomly replacing things in the hope that the fault would go away.

i use to work at best buy. i did everything there. i also did computer repair. Dont ever bring your computer in to fix at best buy. Best buy reminded me of a high school. the employees didnt care about the job. If you guys are fortunate to live by a FRYS store go there. I worked there as well--also some idiots but atleast it reminded me of a junior college.

@Extended-Warranty: "I can't remember the last time we sent a unit out to service for a repair and they send it back specifically saying there is no liquid damage. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say the first tech missed the liquid damage. They handle thousands of computers and mistakes are bound to happen." That is a contradicting statement. The first tech DID sau there was no liquid damage. So, if you can't remember the last time a tech sent something back that DID mention that, why would you go on to say that the tech might have just not seen it. If he states that the laptop did NOT have liquid damage, wouldn't that mean he did a more thorough check for it?

I had this happen with dell, but after unloading on few poor Indian representatives, they agreed to fix the laptop. Of course this was for a problem that had gone on for 4 months.

Stick with on site warranties, the computer can't disappear.

@wackyvorlon: Are you fricking serious? If you start trying to play with software while hardware problems are occurring you are asking for data loss. You have it completely backwards. If you were trying to be facetious then I totally missed it and you can just disregard.