• Buyers will be 'pre-qualified' via a series of questions.
• Customers with corporate/business plans will have to go to AT&T to purchase their phones, only phone for personal use can be purchased at the store.
• You will be required to present valid US government ID to purchase the phone
• You will be required to provide your social security number to a store employee in order to do a credit check.
• You will be required to pick a plan and pay the activation fee at time of purchase.
• Phones will be activated in the store.

The last two have already been disclosed to the press but I think the rest is new information. If true, it looks like they're really trying to cut down on iPhones being unlocked and getting resold overseas. Be sure to bring your driver's license and memorize your social security number before camping out on Thursday night.

(Photo: hanapbuhay)

The powerpoint, created by a Comcast account executive and currently getting passed around inside one of their call centers, sounds a giant klaxon that the company is extremely screwed up. It warns of the perils of not addressing bad tech behavior, demoralized employees, high turnover, baroque customer service templates, and metrics that force employees to upsell additional services on top of the ones that aren't even working right in the first place. There's quotes and stories from real customers, like the one about the tech who said he had to go out to his van to get a screwdriver, and just drove off, rather than bother completing the install. Or how routine it is for techs to ring or knock and then bust out before they can even get to the door. Or how customers are getting lied to over the phone about plans and pricing. The embarrassments just keep coming and coming. Some choice quotes:

"On average, gas is $4.07 (too high for unnecessary truck rolls) and very shortly cable will go from a 'need' to an option for some people."

Comcast Quits Early

Technicians are not showing up for appointments and it appears they are not being held accountable.

* Comcast technicians and subcontractors routinely cancel/reschedule customer appointments without approving or even notifying the customer of the change when they are tired of working.

* Several of my customers have complained that the technician was rude or short with them when they refused to let him come earlier than scheduled.

Scott of New Hudson MI (01/29/07) “I made 3 separate appointments to have Comcast come out and install cable, phone, and high speed internet as part of their Triple Play deal. The first appointment came and went, nobody showed up or called. Set up another appointment, but they did call to cancel that one…”

We've got it here in Google Doc, but for the full effect with all the nifty sound effects, download the original powerpoint (right click and "save link as).

Using simple and attractive slider bars, you input your current credit card balance and credit risk. BillShrink then you shows what cards on the market will save you the most money. You can narrow the results by saying which bank you want a card with, what kinds of rewards programs you might be interested in, what goods or services you would most use the card for, and what extra card benefits you're interested in receiving. There's even an option to say about how many times a year you might miss a payment.

Ok, that sounds pretty obvious for a site like this, but here's the real game-changer: the terms and conditions for each card are broken out one by one. In one section, BillShrink translates the entire credit card contract from lawyers-speak into two paragraphs, in plain English.

Most cards have introductory offers, like 0% balance transfers or a higher level of rewards. So a series of bar graphs by each card shows you how much money you save changes over the next three years.If you decide that you want to switch your credit card to one of the ones show, you just click a button next to the card. The site will make money by sending credit card companies these referrals, and remain free for consumers to use.

After you create your credit card profile, BillShrink sends you an email if any of the terms and conditions of your card change (they will). If your card becomes no longer the best value for you, BillShrink suggests what card out on the market is better. The site will also tell you when you're coming towards the end of any of your introductory offer periods, so you know if you'll want to change your usage patterns or switch to another card.

I asked Pham whether when they launched the wireless comparison component, if there was any negative pushback from the providers. I could envision the carriers getting upset about not being able to capitalize on customer confusion as much.

The two wireless companies BillShrink spoke with, Pham said, were excited about the service. Sprint was one of the companies. See, the service essentially filters, educates, and primes the customer for service. For the cellphone or credit card company, it reduces the costs of servicing customers who sign up because a bauble or freebie was dangled in front of them, but don't arrive informed about the particulars of the plan. Those customers end up frustrated and increase churn. But deliver a highly informed and ready customer, and you've got a win-win-win situation.

When we first wrote about BillShrink, readers said they found the service's coverage maps to be inaccurate. Those coverage maps are drawn from the maps on the carrier's websites, extracted down to the pixel, and then overlaid onto GoogleMaps. The inaccuracies are because the cellphone companies purposely don't provide accurate and granular coverage data. The company is looking into buying 3rd party data to beef up their maps, but I wondered whether there was chance of a similar slippage between BillShrink and reality with credit cards. This doesn't seem very likely, as carriers can fudge a coverage map, but credit card companies can't fudge credit card offer's terms without opening themselves up to serious legal repercussions.

BillShrink's credit card comparison service is scheduled to launch at the end of July will 100 cards in its database. Their goal is to get that up to 200, and then 400 within a year's time.

Pham sees it as a "thumb in the eye" to the credit card industry. “The information is out there, consumers are going to get to it eventually," he said.

Next industry on the hitlist? Auto insurance, with cable perhaps not too far behind.

(Photo: Getty)

Anonymous writes:

I recently wrote to the consumerist about the fact that Verizon is acting in a manner most would consider inconsistent with a customer-first attitude. Only in bizarro world could the statements that were made be construed as an attack on it's employees. Unfortunately John Bonomo, Verizon's director of Media Relations, saw it as exactly that. He believes that it did 'his or her colleagues a disservice and dishonoring the work that they do on behalf of our customers.' Mr Bonomo also said that there were 'a number of inaccuracies', but failed to identify any. All he did was state that customers entitled to the tv will get them, and acknowledges that delivering the set would take some time, and we said that as a part of the promotion.' That's funny, I never stated that Verizon wasn't going to give everyone their tv's, only that it was taking longer then it takes conceive and deliver a baby.

Mr Bonomo goes on to say that employees should be commended and here I am in total agreement. For far too long we have suffered at the hands of individuals posing as management, people who have no clue how to properly run a company. They actually believe it's acceptable to refuse to credit a customer who we admit we over billed, simply because we're given too much credit to everyone else. They think it's perfectly fine to knowingly send out fliers advertising a price, then decide not to honor them, and to then claim they were sent out *in error*.

Some readers of the consumerist have asked 'how do we know what he said is true?' Excellent question. To prove it, I submit to you the emails from the director and the head of marketing which is the basis for most of what was stated in my previous article. I believe they stand for themselves, and I challenge Mr Bonomo to defend the policies that these emails impose on us as employees, and on the customers who they claim to value.

First is the NJ marketing summary which clearly state on the 2nd page that effective 2/18 the blitz offers were to be made permanent. Second is an email from Judy Peters stating that all offers are rescinded. Following this is a far more detailed email dated 3-15 detailing what has been rescinded, why, and what is left to offer. The language is very threatening (even to management, which is referred to as IHD) This email was sent only a few weeks after half a million letters offering these rates were mailed out, and it clearly stated as so in the NJ marketing plan on our website. After being rightfully called out for being so asinine, Judy Peters sent another email explaining that the offers are now back in effect, but ONLY if the customer indicates awareness of them. We can't proactively offer them. Note the specific use of the phrase 'letters sent in error' which contradicts Verizon's own internal marketing information, which indicates that the offers were in fact meant to be sent.

Following that is an email informing us of the first of what would be two times where we simply didn't give anyone their proper discount if they had a specific bill date.

Then we have three emails from our director and the head of marketing. The first one, dated March 3rd, tells us that we're been partially neutered and that we are now only able to adjust $150 without first needing to seek management approval. Pay particular attention to the last paragraph if you want real insight into how management thinks. Then there's a followup sent March 18th cutting it to $50. Finally there's an email telling us that we are not to give any credit to anyone for any reason for the remainder of the month.

PREVIOULY: LEAKS: Insider Says Verizon Isn't Fulfilling Advertised Discounts For Tens Of Thousands

RELATED:
Verizon Changes "Free LCD TV " Promotion To "Free Digital Camcorder" Promotion
Verizon Responds To Angry Customers Who Have Not Received Their Free LCD TVs
Verizon FiOS "Free LCD TV" Promotion Resulting In A Lot Of Angry Customers

(Photo: davidbivins)

(I'm not certain about this one, but I think they only stopped doing Universal Default after the Senate held several hearings investigating some of the worst excesses of the credit card industry...).

I told her readers were complaining about APRs skyrocketing on perfectly good customers. She replied with a story about the Citi Dividend Card was put out with a 5% cashback reward. But the company was losing money left and right, so they had to to pull back and offer only 2%. There was a big backlash, but it was just a bad decision, it should have never been put out to market, she said. I pointed out that while that may be, to a customer it looks like a bait and switch.

I moved on to opaque contracts, some of which the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a 2006 usability study to be written at the 27th grade level. I said that these contracts made it easier for the company to control their customers if their customers can't even understand what they're signing.

She told me that all the contracts are in fact written at the 7th grade level and that the reason why it has legalese is that it's written by lawyers.

Oh, ok, that makes it all better then! I didn't have a computer with me but if I did I would have liked to pull up this section from the GAO survey where a usability consultant tackled the gnarly and inscrutable language in credit card contracts. He took a section from a real credit card contract and rewrote it in plain talk:

Here's it translated from Klepdor:

This is strictly confidential, but all the paperwork is signed and ready to go, and XM has fully acquired Sirius Radio. Come May, there will be a substantial price increase for XM Radio, as it will, in June or so, host all the Sirius channels. It would be best to simply extend your XM plan as we will honor your current contract price per month before we begin hosting the Sirius stations.

• 30,000+ people nationwide have still not received the free HDTVs Verizon promised new FiOS triple-play subscribers
• Verizon totally screwed up the "blitz" promotion, leading some customers signing up and not getting their discounts, others getting too much discount, and others not getting their discount for months
• Employees issued over $1 million in credit in January '08, double what was given out in Jan '07
• $250 in discretionary credit has been reduced to $50
• Internally, Verizon refers to customer service reps who give out "too much" credit due are called "offenders."

If his allegations are true, they could prove fodder for the NJ AG's office.

Full letter scan, inside...

Confessions of a Verizon Consultant

I work for Verizon in customer service and I think it's time your readers knew the truth about just how screwed up Verizon's marketing and billing is. Your readers are probably familiar with the tv promotion, but that is only the latest failed marketing attempt. In fact it is one in a series of clusterfucks, caused either by our marketing department, our accounting department or both. I should first emphasize that I work in NJ, so what I've witnessed isn't necessarily representative of what goes on in other states, but I suspect it probably is.

Our primary offer at Verizon is packages or bundles of services: phone, internet and cable. In areas where FIOS is available, we offer that; where it isn't we offer Directv. The phone component is our freedom essentials which offers 3 services with unlimited long distance. Beginning in the fall of 2006 Verizon began aggressively promoting our packages with offer after offer in quick succession. Almost all of them have been disastrous. Among the mistakes made by our marketing department:

* advertising promotions before they were allowed to
* sending offers meant only for new customers to existing ones
* listing the end of promotion dates incorrectly
* failing to give the employees accurate information on the promotions

About 18 months ago we started offering what we call the blitz. It is a discount off of the freedom essentials price, and it was only meant to be offered to new customers. What's important to know is that it is incompatible with any other bundle offer or any other promotion. Unfortunately inadequate training and lack of ethics by some employees led to it's being offered to all customers, and being combined with other discounts. The amount of the discount was initially $15, then increased to $19 and then to $20. When we raised our rates on the plan by $it meant we had to increase the discount by $2 as well. With the change in the amount of the discount, and the change in the rate itself, it isn't surprising that accounting started fouling up. Some of their failures include:

* Some customers never got their $2 increase in discount.
* Others got too much and received a $4 increase in the discount
* Some customers get a double discount even though were eligible for a triple discount.
* Some customers don't see their blitz discount for 2, 3 even 4 months, despite multiple employees submitting a request.
* As a result of multiple requests by employees for the discount, some customers actually got the discount multiple times. In some cases customers got free service as a result.
* Some customers got the discount even if they canceled the plan, again resulting in some customers having zero bills. The same thing happened on accounts on winter suspension.

What happens if you are promised a price, and then your bill doesn't reflect that price? Shouldn't you get credit that month? Not according to Verizon. Employees were told to refuse to credit these charges because the discount, once applied, would last for 12 months. You would get your discount in months 2-13 rather then 1-12. Or 3-14 or 4-15, whenever we finally got it right. So your discount was deffered because of our inability to properly process the discount. Service reps who did credit customers in the 1st or 2nd month were called "offenders" in one email inadvertently sent to everyone.

Then there's the tv debacle. In October 2007 we offered a free 19 inch HDTV to anyone who signed up for a triple bundle. Customers were told they would get their tv within 4 weeks. Then we found out they get a confirmation letter in 4 weeks, and once they responded to it, then they get the tv 4 weeks from then. Except not everyone got their letter. Some customers got letters for the double bundle (which gave them a camcorder) when they were actually eligible for the tv.

Weeks stretched into months and by February we had many irate customers. Some went to ABC news and in their February 1 news report, a Verizon PR person was quoted as saying that there were only a "handful of complaints." A handful? 30,000 is not a handful. That's right, as if this moment there are 30,000 tv's nationwide that haven't been delivered and that's just the FIOS customers. Who knows how many non-FIOS customers are still waiting their tv's. Let's put that number in perspective. We added 250K FIOS video subscribers in the 4th quarter and an unknown amount in the the first 2 months of 2008, perhaps another 150K. If 30K still don't have their tv that means that roughly 10% of those eligible don't have their tv's. And remember that's just the FIOS customers.

Even those figures don't tell the full picture because that doesn't take into account the thousands of customers who think they're eligible for the tv but aren't. As I said at the start, the blitz offer and the triple bundles are incompatible. If you signed up for the triple bundle, you were eligible for the free tv. If you got the blitz or a combination of the triple bundle and the blitz, then you weren't eligible for the tv. Who knows how many people were verbally told they were eligible, only to receive the blitz price, rendering them ineligible? The only way for that to be resolved is for them to know that there's a price problem and to bring that to an employee's attention. When someone says they didn't get their tv, we just pass them to our fulfillment center, which will then tell them they're not eligible and no amount of complaining to them will help them. In the past few weeks we were told to look carefully for eligibility before referring a customer to the fulfillment center, but that's unlikely to happen. Management is all over our ass about sales, and opening that can of worms is not something many of us want to do.

At the same time that ABC news was being told it was a handful, customers who were waiting got letters saying if they wanted the original tv from the offer it may be another 8-12 weeks. Alternately they could take a Magnavox 19 inch HDTV and get it 4-8 weeks. Or they could take the $200 best buy gift card that was originally offered as an alternative to the tv.

Compounding the problem is that in FIOS there are no HD set top boxes available. Even if you got your HDTV, you won't be getting a HD picture any time soon.

As bad as the tv debacle is, it gets worse. In February 2008 we sent thousands of mailers out to customers offering them the blitz price on freedom essentials. or on a bundle package. Three weeks later Verizon decided we weren't going to honor the blitz price. So, you got ot a mailer that said you could have the blitz? Sorry, too bad. You were signed up 3 months ago and are still waiting for your blitz? Sorry, too bad. They're removed all ability to issue blitz discounts from our computers. Management has told us to soothe the customer, but tell them they can not have the blitz. If I made up prices I'd get fired, but apparently Verizon can announce one price, then decide not to honor it and that's perfectly fine.

Meanwhile, employees have issued twice as much credit as we did a year ago. According to Andrea Custis we gave out over 1M in credit in January 08, double the amount from January 07. Why might we have to give so much credit? Could it be that our billing systems are for shit? Or that our price quotes are completely off the mark because there's so many promotions and they're changing them every day that so we don't know what we're talking about? Or that people are out of service longer because we have so many techs dedicated to installing FIOS?

At a time when we are screwing up like never before, Verizon has decided: no more credit. That's right: we screw up, but you still have to pay. Service reps used to have the discretion to issue up to $250 of credit without needing to ask permission. Then they started cracking down on the "offenders" and two weeks ago reduced our credit limit to $150 and last week to $50. Today we got an email from our director Erica Kelly saying that "our adjustments are tied to our revenue" so no more credit is to be issued by anyone (including management) for any reason till after March 30th. So, we could charge you incorrectly and we won't adjust it and why? Cause finances are a bit tight this month. What a crock of shit! If a customer tried telling us that we'd shut their phone off!What unmitigated gaul they have, at a time when every thing we do is a disaster, every promotion is a failure, every promise is broken, to tell customers "tough shit if we made a mistake. Pay up anyway." Who do these executives think they are? And the worst part is WE (the frontline employees) have the pleasure of sounding like Ebeneezer Scrooge when we tell customers that yes we made XYZ msitake but no, we're not going to remove the incorrect charge from your bill.Send

Are these problems company wide? I can't say with certainty but judging by the responses to the tv threads here on the Consumerist I'd say it probably is..It's time Verizon stop treating customers like crap. It's time Verizon stopped expecting it's customer service agents to be the zookeeper who has to cleans up their steaming piles. It's time Verizon stoped lying to everyone, and stopped pretending that problems don't exists. It's time for Verizon to fix their broken systems, fix their lousy billing, train us properly, and only offer promotions they can actually make good on. It's time Verizon took action against the employees who purposely make up prices and say anything to get a sale.

We've told management about these issues and no one is listening. Maybe they will finally listen if you tell them you're not going to take it . Here's a few emails you may want to try. The penny pinching director for the state of NJ is Erica Kelly. Her email is erica.j.kelly@verizon.com. The head of NJ's Marketing department, the one that likes to offer you one price but and then tell you you can't have it is Andreas Custis. Her email is andrea.l.custis@verizon.com. If you want to go right to the top, contact Ivan Seidenberg, our CEO. His email is ivan.g.seidenberg@verizon.com.

If you would rather bypass the bureaucrats, then you can contact Anne Milgram the NJ Attorney General, or the BPU. Their numbers are in the blue government pages of your phone book. As for you Verizon sufferers outside NJ I would direct you to contact Ivan Seidenberg. He's the CEO for the whole company, not just NJ. Or you can go over their heads and contact your state attorney general or your board of Public Utilities.

Yours Truly

A Disgusted Verizon Consultant

In response to this post, John Bonomo, Verizon's director of Media Relations, writes:

The employee who anonymously faxed the "mysterious" letter to your headquarters is doing his or her colleagues a disservice and dishonoring the work that they do on behalf of our customers. It's more appropriate to cheer for thousands of our customer service representatives who are helping our customers every day.

Even worse, this self-described employee's letter contains a number of inaccuracies, and readers here should be aware them. For example, we've stated publicly that customers who qualified for the free TV under our recent promotion will receive one. We also acknowledged that delivering the set would take some time, and we said that as a part of the promotion.

We've also said that we have begun taking new orders from new customers for HD set-top boxes, and we are fulfilling back orders that we placed for some customers who had service installed during our temporary shortage. We have a strong commitment to serving our customers and for making things right when an issue is called to our attention.

Of course, any customer who isn't getting the service they deserve should contact us, and customer service representatives will work hard on their behalf.

RELATED:
Verizon Changes "Free LCD TV " Promotion To "Free Digital Camcorder" Promotion
Verizon Responds To Angry Customers Who Have Not Received Their Free LCD TVs
Verizon FiOS "Free LCD TV" Promotion Resulting In A Lot Of Angry Customers

(Photo: davidbivins)

Why do customers need to be stereotyped, you ask? Because some customers are good, and others are bad, and Best Buy employees need to know which ones are which.

Back in 2004, the Wall Street Journal announced that Best Buy had a new customer service strategy. The meat and potatoes of the new strategy was this: Best Buy would concentrate on outwitting pesky bargain-hunters (now known as "demons")and cater only to its most profitable customers, or "angels." This new philosophy was based on the work of Larry Selden, a professor at Columbia University's Graduate School of Business, and consultant to Best Buy.

Larry is all about the customer. He hates products, "...the obsessive focus on products needs to be replaced by an even more obsessive focus on the customer," he says.

One might assume that with this customer-obsessed guy directing Best Buy's strategy, there'd be an emphasis on customer service. Not so.

In fact, the first thing Best Buy did after adopting Selden's method was amend their return policy to include a 15% restocking fee. Too many "demon" customers were returning things.

The most important part this new world order is the "persona." Personas are essentially stereotypes that Best Buy's salespeople study in order to sell their most profitable services to different "types" of customers. Young urban males are called "Buzz." Upper middle class women are known as "Jill."

Each persona comes with a customized sales approach. Jill wants Best Buy to "help me find and fuel my new passions so I can remain true to myself," whereas upscale suburban Barry wants "premium brands presented as a total solution."

And what happens to those bargain-hunting demons? Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson told the Wall Street Journal in 2004 "that Best Buy will first try to turn its bad customers into profitable ones by inducing them to buy warranties or more profitable services."

"In most cases, customers wouldn't recognize the options we've tried so far," he said. Maybe this new document (which adds several new categories to the known Best Buy persona universe) can help.

NEW PERSONAS:
Meet Carrie (Young Urban Female), Maria (Middle American Female), and (Empty Nesters) Helen and Charlie!

Click on the pictures below to bring up the slides. navigate using arrows that appear (when moused over) at the left, top and right of the slide, or using the "previous" "next" and "gallery" links at the bottom.

PREVIOUSLY: Best Buy Profiles Customers

UPDATE: Monster Responds To "Monster Cables, Monster Ripoff" Story

Some cables, like the 19ft HDMI-DVI cable, have markups as high as 80%. Retail: $179.99. Wholesale, $99.40, a profit of $80.54. Or consider the 16 ft S-Video cable, which Radio Shack buys for $61.24 and sells for $114.99. We found non-name brand versions of both on Meritline.com for under $20. It's not just limited to Radio Shack, Best Buy charges the same retail price, and, presumably, gets them for a similar wholesale price.

Here's the thing: digital cables, by definition, have no signal loss. A cable is either digital or it's not. As long as its built to HDMI standards, the only difference between a "fancy" digital cable and a no-name one is the price.

The worst part isn't really the markup. Stereo equipment routinely has markups of 80 to 100 to 200% by the time it hits the shelves. It's the initial inflated price, and how gadget stores try to push the cables so hard, telling people that Monster cables offer superior picture and sound then what you would get with another cable. But that simply isn't the case. Our sister site Gizmodo ran a battery of tests and found Monster cables are for the most part, completely unnecessary. (see The Truth About Monster Cable - Grand Finale (Part III), HDMI Cable Battlemodo Resumes, The Truth About Monster Cable, Part 2 (Verdict: Cheap Cables Keep Up...Usually), and The Truth About Monster Cable).

Our recommendation? Buy generic digital cables on Monoprice.com, Meritline.com, eBay, or other places online. If you're the type who wants Gucci-brand cables, then god bless, and at least buy them on eBay. Our tv looks fine without Monsters.

Full price list of Monster products below.

Item | Retail Price | Wholesale Price | Profit Margin

MONSTER 19FT HDMI-DVI | $179.99 | $99.94 | $80.05
MONSTER 8M L 26.24' | $137.99 | $73.49 | $64.5
MONSTER 19FT HDMI-HDMI CA | $169.99 | $105.5 | $64.49
"MONSTER 21' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $149.99 | $88.87 | $61.12
MONSTER HTS 950 | $149.99 | $90.89 | $59.1
MONSTER SLVR FLAT MNT-37I | $149.99 | $91.44 | $58.55
MONSTER 16FT DVI-DVI CABL | $149.99 | $93.08 | $56.91
MONSTER 13FT HDMI-DVI CAB | $149.99 | $93.08 | $56.91
MONSTER 6M L 19.68' - COM | $114.99 | $61.24 | $53.75
MONSTER 8' DIGITAL FIBER | $114.99 | $61.24 | $53.75
MONSTER 25' SUBWOOFER W/R | $114.99 | $61.24 | $53.75
MONSTER 16' S-VIDEO CABLE | $114.99 | $61.24 | $53.75
MONSTER ULTRA 8FT HDMI CA | $119.99 | $69.3 | $50.69
MONSTER ULTRA 4FT HDMI CA | $99.99 | $49.5 | $50.49
MONSTER 8FT COMPONENT CAB | $91.99 | $41.6 | $50.39
MONSTER 50' GOLD XLRS | $119.99 | $71.1 | $48.89
MONSTER 4M L 13.12' | $103.99 | $55.25 | $48.74
MONSTER 8FT HDMI CABLE | $99.99 | $52.23 | $47.76
MONSTER FLAT SCREEN HDMI | $99.99 | $55.7 | $44.29
MONSTER 20' GOLD XLR | $129.99 | $86.05 | $43.94
MONSTER HTS1000 MKII SURG | $149.99 | $107.04 | $42.95
MONSTER THX V600 4' HDMI | $79.99 | $38.23 | $41.76
MONSTER THX 600 4FT COMPO | $68.99 | $27.52 | $41.47
"MONSTER 12' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $99.99 | $59.24 | $40.75
MONSTER 4FT HDMI CABLE | $79.99 | $41.78 | $38.21
MONSTER 3FT HDMI-DVI CABL | $99.99 | $62.04 | $37.95
MONSTER 3FT HDMI-HDMI CAB | $99.99 | $62.04 | $37.95
MONSTER 36' PIECE 10.97M | $84.99 | $47.1 | $37.89
MONSTER 16' SUBWOOFER W/R | $84.99 | $47.1 | $37.89
MONSTER 19' RCA ADV AUDIO | $89.99 | $55.83 | $34.16
MONSTER 8' RCA AUDIO INTE | $74.99 | $41.38 | $33.61
MONSTER 30' GOLD XLRS | $79.99 | $47.39 | $32.6
MONSTER THX V500 CV-8 | $54.99 | $22.41 | $32.58
MONSTER 24' PIECE 7.32M | $67.99 | $36.47 | $31.52
MONSTER 6FT HDMI-HDMI CAB | $89.97 | $58.57 | $31.4
MONSTER 10' GOLD XLR | $74.99 | $44.42 | $30.57
MONSTER 18' PIECE 5.49M | $57.99 | $28.13 | $29.86
MONSTER 8' DIGITAL COAX C | $99.99 | $70.31 | $29.68
MONSTER 16' RCA AUDIO INT | $99.99 | $70.31 | $29.68
MONSTER HTS800 HP SURGE | $99.99 | $70.31 | $29.68
MONSTER 4M OPTICAL CABLE | $64.99 | $35.66 | $29.33
MONSTER 12' PIECE 3.66M | $64.99 | $35.66 | $29.33
MONSTER 24' PIECE 7.32M | $79.99 | $51.27 | $28.72
MONSTER RADIOPLAY 300 | $59.99 | $31.9 | $28.09
MONSTER THX V500 CV-4 | $45.99 | $18.35 | $27.64
MONSTER 500 SPEAKER CABLE | $64.99 | $37.47 | $27.52
MONSTER 19FT AUDIO W/RCA | $54.99 | $27.53 | $27.46
"MONSTER 6' 1/4"" AUDIO CAB" | $54.99 | $27.53 | $27.46
MONSTER 3FT DVI-DVI CABLE | $69.99 | $43.05 | $26.94
MONSTER GAME TO GO MOBILE | $99.99 | $73.15 | $26.84
MONSTER 6M 19.68' | $51.99 | $25.28 | $26.71
MONSTER 13' RCA ADV AUDIO | $69.99 | $43.43 | $26.56
MONSTER 18' PIECE 5.49M | $69.99 | $44.87 | $25.12
MONSTER 4' DIGITAL COAX C | $62.99 | $38.14 | $24.85
"MONSTER 21' ANGLED 1/4"" P" | $59.99 | $35.54 | $24.45
MONSTER 1000 SPEAKER CABL | $59.99 | $35.54 | $24.45
MONSTER FLAT SCREEN F-PIN | $49.99 | $25.69 | $24.3
MONSTER HT800 SURGE | $79.99 | $56.24 | $23.75
MONSTER PC800 HP SURGE | $79.99 | $56.24 | $23.75
MONSTER 4M 13.12' | $45.99 | $22.42 | $23.57
MONSTER 13FT AUDIO W/RCA | $44.99 | $22.22 | $22.77
"MONSTER 21' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $49.99 | $29.61 | $20.38
"MONSTER 21' 1/4"" PLUGS " | $49.99 | $29.61 | $20.38
MONSTER 15' GOLD XLRS | $49.99 | $29.61 | $20.38
MONSTER 50' PRECISION XLR | $59.99 | $39.7 | $20.29
MONSTER 4FTDIGITAL OPTIC | $35.99 | $16.25 | $19.74
MONSTER SIRIUS HOME ANTEN | $49.99 | $30.31 | $19.68
MONSTER HDMI TO DVI ADAPT | $34.99 | $16 | $18.99
MONSTER DVI TO HDMI ADAPT | $34.99 | $16 | $18.99
MONSTER 6' RCA ADV AUDIO | $49.99 | $31.01 | $18.98
MONSTER 2M DIGITAL COAX | $49.99 | $31.01 | $18.98
"MONSTER 1M 1/4"" SEND&RETU" | $39.99 | $21.08 | $18.91
MONSTER GAMELINK 450 COMP | $69.99 | $51.2 | $18.79
MONSTER AV800 | $39.97 | $21.42 | $18.55
"MONSTER 12FT ANGLED 1/4"" " | $44.99 | $26.65 | $18.34
MONSTER 6' PEICE 1.83M | $34.99 | $16.91 | $18.08
MONSTER 6' RCA TO 1/8 MIN | $49.99 | $32.04 | $17.95
MONSTER 8M L 26.24' | $40.99 | $23.08 | $17.91
MONSTER 12FT SUB | $39.99 | $22.32 | $17.67
"MONSTER 4M STEREO 1/4"" PL" | $39.99 | $22.5 | $17.49
MONSTER 4M XLR CONNECTORS | $39.99 | $22.5 | $17.49
"MONSTER 21' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $49.99 | $33.07 | $16.92
MONSTER 400 STEREO RCA TO | $32.99 | $16.51 | $16.48
"MONSTER 400 1/4"" .75M " | $32.99 | $16.51 | $16.48
MONSTER INSTRUMENT 12'-1/ | $39.99 | $23.69 | $16.3
MONSTER 12' 1/4 PLUGS | $39.99 | $23.69 | $16.3
MONSTER 10' GOLD XLRS | $39.99 | $23.69 | $16.3
MONSTER 500 SPEAKER CABLE | $39.99 | $23.69 | $16.3
"MONSTER 10' STRT 1/4"" PLU" | $39.99 | $23.69 | $16.3
MONSTER 2M OPTICAL CABLE | $44.99 | $28.83 | $16.16
MONSTER 1M S-VID | $29.97 | $13.93 | $16.04
"MONSTER 4M 1/4"" RCA " | $34.99 | $19.51 | $15.48
"MONSTER 4M RCA-1/4"" " | $34.99 | $19.51 | $15.48
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 4M 1/4 | $34.99 | $19.51 | $15.48
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 4M RCA | $34.99 | $19.51 | $15.48
MONSTER 500 SPEAKER CABLE | $34.99 | $19.51 | $15.48
MONSTER 100 SPEAKER CABLE | $44.99 | $29.76 | $15.23
MONSTER 3FT ADV AUDIO W/R | $39.99 | $24.8 | $15.19
MONSTER 1.5M L 4.92' | $28.99 | $14.05 | $14.94
MONSTER TYPE A MALE TO TY | $34.99 | $20.55 | $14.44
MONSTER 6M L 19.68' - COM | $39.99 | $25.62 | $14.37
MONSTER 4M TRS-TRS CABLE | $34.99 | $20.72 | $14.27
MONSTER 4M XLRM-XLRF CABL | $34.99 | $20.72 | $14.27
"MONSTER 6' STRAIGHT 1/4"" " | $34.99 | $20.72 | $14.27
MONSTER 13FT HDMI-HDMI CA | $99.97 | $85.74 | $14.23
MONSTER SIRIUS ANTENNA EX | $44.97 | $31 | $13.97
"MONSTER 2M 1/4"" SEND/RETU" | $44.99 | $31.09 | $13.9
MONSTER PRINTER HIGH SPEE | $39.99 | $26.45 | $13.54
MONSTER KEYBOARD 12' -1/4 | $39.99 | $26.45 | $13.54
MONSTER 30' PRECISION XLR | $39.99 | $26.45 | $13.54
"MONSTER 8"" ANGLED 1/4"" PL" | $29.99 | $16.52 | $13.47
"MONSTER 2M STEREO 1/4"" PL" | $29.99 | $16.52 | $13.47
MONSTER GAMELINK 350 S-VI | $49.99 | $36.55 | $13.44
MONSTER GAMELINK 400 COMP | $49.99 | $36.55 | $13.44
MONSTER 3FT AUDIO W/RCA | $26.99 | $13.65 | $13.34
MONSTER 2 HIGH RES VID CA | $34.99 | $22.43 | $12.56
"MONSTER DJ CABLE 4M 1/4""-" | $29.99 | $17.76 | $12.23
MONSTER DJ CABLE 4M RCA-R | $29.99 | $17.76 | $12.23
MONSTER 4M ANGLED RCA-RCA | $29.99 | $17.76 | $12.23
"MONSTER 8"" ANGLED 1/4"" PL" | $29.99 | $17.76 | $12.23
MONSTER 1000 SPEAKER CABL | $29.99 | $17.76 | $12.23
MONSTER GAMELINK 300 S-VI | $44.99 | $32.9 | $12.09
"MONSTER 2M 1/4""-RCA " | $24.99 | $13.52 | $11.47
"MONSTER 2M RCA-1/4"" " | $24.99 | $13.52 | $11.47
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 2M 1/4 | $24.99 | $13.52 | $11.47
"MONSTER 1M STEREO 1/4"" PL" | $24.99 | $13.52 | $11.47
MONSTER 500 SPEAKER CABLE | $24.99 | $13.52 | $11.47
MONSTER LCD POWER PROTECT | $29.99 | $18.78 | $11.21
MONSTER 2M L 6.56' | $29.99 | $19.2 | $10.79
MONSTER GAMELINK 300 S-VI | $39.99 | $29.25 | $10.74
MONSTER 2M TRS-TRS CABLE | $24.99 | $14.79 | $10.2
MONSTER 12' 5 PIN DIN | $24.99 | $14.79 | $10.2
MONSTER PRINTER HIGH SPEE | $29.99 | $19.82 | $10.17
"MONSTER 4M RCA-1/4"" CABLE" | $29.99 | $19.82 | $10.17
MONSTER 100 SPEAKER CABLE | $29.99 | $19.82 | $10.17
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 1M 1/4 | $19.99 | $10.54 | $9.45
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 1M RCA | $19.99 | $10.54 | $9.45
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 1M RCA | $19.99 | $10.54 | $9.45
MONSTER GAMELINK 200 A/V | $34.99 | $25.58 | $9.41
MONSTER MALE DVI-FEM HDMI | $29.97 | $21.06 | $8.91
MONSTER 2M XLRM-XLRF CABL | $24.99 | $16.51 | $8.48
MONSTER 2M XLR CONNECTORS | $24.99 | $16.51 | $8.48
"MONSTER 21' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $24.99 | $16.51 | $8.48
MONSTER 15' PRECISION XLR | $24.99 | $16.51 | $8.48
"MONSTER 2M RCA-1/4"" CABLE" | $19.99 | $11.83 | $8.16
MONSTER DJ CABLE 2M RCA-R | $19.99 | $11.83 | $8.16
MONSTER 1M TRS-TRS-CABLE | $19.99 | $11.83 | $8.16
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 2M RCA | $19.99 | $11.83 | $8.16
"MONSTER 8"" 1/4"" PLUG " | $19.99 | $11.83 | $8.16
MONSTER GAMELINK 200 PS2 | $29.99 | $21.92 | $8.07
MONSTER LIGHTWAVE 100 FIB | $29.99 | $21.92 | $8.07
MONSTER OUTLETS TO GO | $19.99 | $11.97 | $8.02
MONSTER SIRIUS CAR ANTENN | $39.99 | $32.13 | $7.86
MONSTER ICARPLAY 200 | $49.99 | $42.46 | $7.53
MONSTER 10' PRECISION XLR | $21.99 | $14.53 | $7.46
MONSTER 1M XLR CONNECTROS | $24.99 | $17.78 | $7.21
MONSTER 1M L 3.28' | $19.99 | $12.79 | $7.2
MONSTER LCD SCREEN CLEAN | $19.99 | $12.95 | $7.04
MONSTER HTS850 SUR | $67 | $59.97 | $7.03
"MONSTER DJ CABLE 2M 1/4""-" | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
MONSTER 2M ANGLED RCA-RCA | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
MONSTER 1M XLRM-XLRF CABL | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
"MONSTER 8"" ANGLED 1/4"" " | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
"MONSTER 12' STRAIGHT 1/4""" | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
MONSTER 100 SPEAKER CABLE | $19.99 | $13.2 | $6.79
MONSTER 6' 5 PIN DIN | $19.99 | $13.23 | $6.76
MONSTER STUDIOLINK 1M 1/4 | $19.99 | $13.31 | $6.68
MONSTER 2M S-VID | $26.97 | $20.45 | $6.52
MONSTER DJ CABLE 1M RCA-R | $14.99 | $8.87 | $6.12
MONSTER 1M ANGLED RCA-RCA | $14.99 | $8.87 | $6.12
MONSTER 3' 5 PIN DIN | $14.99 | $8.87 | $6.12
MONSTER PLX12 AC POWER CO | $19.97 | $14.03 | $5.94
MONSTER GAMELINK STD 100 | $19.99 | $14.6 | $5.39
MONSTER GAMELINK STD 100 | $19.99 | $14.6 | $5.39
MONSTER GAMELINK X-LINK E | $19.99 | $14.6 | $5.39
MONSTER GAMELINK STD 100 | $19.99 | $14.6 | $5.39
MONSTER 7' USB | $12.97 | $7.83 | $5.14
MONSTER DJ CABLE 1M RCA-1 | $14.99 | $9.9 | $5.09
"MONSTER DL CABLE 1M 1/4""-" | $14.99 | $9.9 | $5.09
MONSTER 7' USB CABLE | $19.99 | $14.97 | $5.02
MONSTER 6FT HDMI-DVI CABL | $69.97 | $65.08 | $4.89
MONSTER ICLEAN SCREEN CLE | $14.99 | $10.5 | $4.49
"MONSTER 3' STRAIGHT 1/4"" " | $12.99 | $8.58 | $4.41
MONSTER GC COMPOSITE CABL | $19.97 | $15.82 | $4.15
"MONSTER 8"" STRAIGHT 1/4"" " | $9.99 | $6.59 | $3.4
MONS AUDIO W/RCA | $19.97 | $16.73 | $3.24
MONSTER MINI-AV | $19.97 | $17.91 | $2.06
MONSTER PATOL 49MH | $19.57 | $17.97 | $1.6
MONSTER PATROL 27M | $19.02 | $17.97 | $1.05
MONS 1M COMPONENT | $29.97 | $28.94 | $1.03
MONSTER IEZ CLICK | $9.97 | $9.97 | $0
MONSTER DVI400 2 M DVI CA | $29.97 | $29.97 | $0
MONS 1M OPT CABLE | $19.97 | $19.97 | $0
MONS 2M COMPONENT | $29.97 | $29.97 | $0
MONSTER SNOWBOARD (D) | $0.97 | $0.97 | $0
MONSTER PATROL (D) | $19.97 | $19.97 | $0
MONSTER TRUCK SPEED BOOST | $0.97 | $0.97 | $0
MONSTER TRUCK TIRE/WHEEL | $0.97 | $4.09 | $-3.12
MONSTER PWR PS2 | $4.97 | $9.82 | $-4.85
MONS 1M DIG COAX | $8.97 | $22.32 | $-13.35
MONSTER 360 COMPONENT AV | $29.97 | $43.88 | $-13.91
MONSTER 360 VGA VIDEO CAB | $9.97 | $29.97 | $-20
MONSTER SIRIUS RADIO/TV C | $29.97 | $52 | $-22.03
MONSTER ICASE TRAVEL PACK | $6.97 | $42.16 | $-35.19
MONSTER MP AVS2000 | $1499.99 | $909.12 | $590.87
MONSTER MP HTS7000 | $1299.99 | $787.9 | $512.09
MONSTER MP HTS5100 | $699.99 | $453.5 | $246.49
MONSTER MP HTS3600 | $499.99 | $355.27 | $144.72
MONSTER BLACK TILT MOUNT- | $249.99 | $152.43 | $97.56
MONSTER SILVER TILT MOUNT | $249.99 | $152.43 | $97.56
MONSTER HTS2600 SURGE | $349.99 | $253.43 | $96.56
MONSTER MP HTFS500 SURGE | $299.99 | $211 | $88.99
MONSTER FLAT BLK MOUNT-60 | $199.99 | $121.94 | $78.05
MONSTER FLAT SLV MOUNT-60 | $199.99 | $121.94 | $78.05
MONSTER BLK TLIT MNT-37IN | $179.99 | $109.74 | $70.25

"...a customer would be qualified for a loan because their credit score and other factors based on the written product description, however, when I went in to put their (this only happened to African-Americans) - they were not qualified for the loan product and had to be referred to Countrywide's subprime mortgage company Full Spectrum. Full Spectrum offered higher rates and fees. I got wise one day and started not inputing the race so the computer could give me "approval."

Most of my troubles with Countrywide began when I was told I needed put customers in more exotic products such as the "No Income-No Ratio (NINA)," "Stated Income-Stated Assets (SISA)," any ARM product or the classic "Pay Option ARM" (where you have a choice of 4 payments). Countrywide offered incentives for putting customers in those types of products. My customers needed stability on their loan and didn't need to refinance every two to three years stripping them of their equity (provided they had any). I didn't agree with their policies so my tenure was short-lived.

Policy

Washington Mutual will make a reasonable effort to provide a private, secure space to nursing mothers for the purpose of expressing breast milk. This guideline addresses how to locate suitable facilities and arrange for time off to express breast milk, and provides additional resources.

Requesting a Lactation Room

The Health Promotion Department is responsible for handling inquiries regarding lactation rooms or locating other spaces suitable for expressing milk. Employees and managers should contact the Health Promotion Specialist assigned to their region with such requests.

Existing Lactation Rooms

Designated lactation rooms exist at some corporate office sites. Existing lactation rooms should be used whenever reasonably possible. Employees should observe all posted guidelines such as signup sheets, hours of availability, and security guidelines. If the condition of a room requires maintenance attention, contact the Facilities Service Center at 888-745-8680.

Employees in work locations that do not have a designated lactation room should arrange with their managers to use a private office to express milk, provided the office has a locking door and a means to obscure view into the office (drapes, blinds, etc). If the office needs to be modified in any way to make it suitable, contact Corporate Property Services before proceeding.

If no lactation room or other suitable space is available, contact the regional Health Promotion Specialist for assistance.

Lactation Support

Employees have access to professional lactation consultants and additional support and education for breastfeeding through WaMu's Work/Life Assistance Program. To access these services, contact Work/Life Assistance at 866-808-5004.

Time Off

Time needed for lactation purposes should be taken during regularly scheduled break periods. If that is not possible, Washington Mutual will attempt to provide employees with additional unpaid breaks (consistent with business needs) to permit time to express milk. Any such additional breaks must be approved in advance by the employee's manager.

Equipment and Storage

WaMu provides enhanced lactation support through the Work/Life Assistance Program, including a subsidy on a hospital-grade personal breast pump for participants. Employees are responsible for providing and storing any equipment and accessories needed for breastfeeding including storage containers and a cooler, if a refrigerator is not available.

Any necessary equipment (breast pump, storage containers, etc) should be securely stored at the employee's workstation or at another storage area designated by management. These personal items should not be stored in the Washington Mutual lactation room. Loss or damage to equipment is not the responsibility of Washington Mutual.

Storage of Expressed Milk

In some cases, a refrigerator may be provided in the lactation room. If a refrigerator is not provided, expressed milk should be stored in a personal cooler secured at the designated storage area. In either case, expressed milk should be stored in a spill-proof container labeled with the employee's name. Expressed milk must be removed from Washington Mutual premises at the end of the employee's work day.

Questions

If you have questions about this or any other HR Policy or Guideline, please contact the Employee Service Center online or at 866-4-WAMU-HR.

Feedback

If you have suggestions or feedback about our HR Policies and Guidelines, please submit your comments via HR Policy feedback.

(Photo: quentinr)

Already:
New product shipments have ceased, what's already shipping and in the warehouse is it.
TAP Warranties are run by Assurant and so they will probably all be valid.

Monday/Tuesday:
General Managers get told what's going on:

Tuesday:
Last day to check in your computer for repairs.
Tuesday is the last day for returns.
Employee discount ends.

Wednesday:
10% off sales start
Repairs get shipped to Blue Raven
All sales final and if a return is accepted, it will be on a case by case basis

After Wednesday:
10% is only the beginning. Prices will be dropping weekly.

PREVIOUSLY: CompUSA Will Close All Stores After Holidays

(Photo: quentinr)

I had worked for Geek Squad for over a year, and Best Buy a year and a half before that and was recently let go. Back when they started scanning computers, they said they found downloaded music and movies on our machine and we were to send them the hard drives. So we boxed them up and sent them out.

A month or so later the interrogations happened. We all had our turn, and when it was mine, I walked into a room with the table pushed against the wall and two chairs in the middle of the room sitting two feet apart with nothing in between.

Our store's loss prevention manager and the district loss prevention manager was there, and I reached out to shake his hand. He shook mine, looked me in the eyes and said "I already know if you are going to tell me the truth or not," with an intimidating grip on my hand still. Then we sat down, our knees inches apart. He asked me how long I had worked there, and how many hours a week I worked, why I liked working there. He didn't really care why, he just wanted to tell me why he liked working for Best Buy. He told me, "Well, I used to be a cop, and when you're a cop everything you do is reactive, you can't really stop people from committing crimes. Here I normally get to come in and make sure processes are in place so we don't have problems. But here we have a problem, and now I have to be reactive and be a cop again."

From there he asked me all sorts of questions about why there was music on our computer and where it came from, which was mostly us backing up customer's music because they paid us to, and my coworkers and i bringing in our iPods, which was ok with all the levels of management in the store. He even made a joke about how that wasn't "SOP" (the Best Buy bible), but he knew that our store LP manager was ok with it. It was ok because they trusted us. I was asked why we had Linux isos, which made me laugh. Also, during the interview anytime I was asked a question, I don't know wasn't an acceptable answer. At one point I stopped answering him because I was just sitting there saying I don't know. Then he had me write down everything I knew about in the precinct and sign it at the bottom. The district manager told me he would read it over afterwards to make sure it was "what they needed." I filled out the paper, signed it and gave it to him. Then they told me if I talked to anyone about what happened I would be fired.

Then the interesting began. My supervisor immediately started looking for another position at one of the 3 new stores opening in our area. He got one and put in his two week notice and stopped caring about his job. Everything started falling apart, then he left so we had no supervisor. So I put in my two week notice and found another job. The thing was our supervisor didn't know anything about fixing computers. All he card about was "selling our services" to people so he would meet his budgets and then tell us techs to fix whatever the customer wrote down which more than once included "retrieve deleted files" which yes we could have done if we were allowed to use the software, but we weren't. So he left and everything got better. And I talked to my general manager about staying, and he told me he saw how I had helped being a leader once our supervisor left and he was impressed and would like to see me move up in the company. A few days later we had a new supervisor who was a really nice guy and knew his stuff about computer fixing.

Now, I know you guys know about Jonny Utah (internally Geek Squad drops the 'h' so they don't get sued). Well I despise JonnyUtah. The entire time I worked there we were given goals of a certain number of computers which were to be fixed by JonnyUtah each week. The goal was seven. Most of the time we didn't hit our JonnyUtah goals because we were able to fix all the computers we brought in ourselves without needing help. I disliked it because:

1) I didn't get to work on the customer's computer
2) Someone in another country that does not have the same privacy laws as the United States was fixing our customer's computers.
3) Anytime we asked where the JonnyUtah guys were located we were told either it was "Top Secret" or "An undisclosed cave in a mountain on a remote island." Seriously.
4) We did a much better job than Jonny ever. We had so many people bring computers back that those guys "fixed" still having problems or hardware issues that you can't really fix over a remote connection.

On October 18th, the day after my birthday I came into work early and the entire district staff (probably 6 or 7 people) were hanging out in our area where we fix computers talking to my friend who was one of the other full time techs. I went into the break room to eat my lunch and my buddy came in and told me the district guys were asking him if he would be offended if he had to go out on the floor and sell Geek Squad services instead of fixing computers, and having JonnyUtah fix more of the computers. I clocked in and five minutes later was told by my general manager that I was being let go for having music and movies and unapproved software on the computer.

So whatever I don't work there anymore, I'm not crying. But I wish people would realize that Geek Squad isn't worth what you pay. Best Buy's rules kept us from being great computer techs. They wouldn't let us use linux in the store to do data backups because that required an extra $1500 (not exaggerating) from the customer and we had to UPS the drive to California. We weren't allowed to do laptop repair in the store, even though I'm capable of handling a soldering iron to reattach people's DC power jacks. And they'll tell you this is because they are sending them to the "laptop techs" or whatever, but most of the time that stuff would come back broke anyways and customer's would yell at us. It was a horrible situation for everyone and I think shows that not everything can work on a large scale. For someone like me computer repair is easy. I could have done so much more than they expected of me and brought in so much more money for them and made customers a lot happier not having to wait two days for a guy to put his laptop on the UPS truck. But that's the thing. Geek Squad doesn't want me. They want someone who will take your money and have someone in another country actually do the work. To sell you a $59 diagnostic fee to call you the next day and say "yeah, your laptop is completely dead just like you told us, com buy a new one."

I hope people start realizing that Geek Squad is nothing more than marketing. You see the tie and the white shirt and you assume that the agent knows what they're talking about. The truth is most of them don't. There are no tests. There is very little training and that is mostly on how to sell things. In fact my old supervisor had a motto I heard him use way too often: Perception is reality.

I've enjoyed reading your site since before any of this ever happened, and although in some round about way I ended up getting fire because of an article that was posted on your site, I'll forever support you guys because it's sites like this that can make a difference (and you guys have) in how companies do their business and treat their customers.

Cheers,
Agent Zero

PREVIOUSLY: Leaks: How Geek Squad Investigated Its Own Porn Thieves
Best Buy's Geek Squad Scours Stores In Person For Stolen Porn N' Stuff
VIDEO: Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn From Customer's Computer
(Photo: Victor Chiu)

The start of the internal Geek Squad investigation began this summer as all of the locations throughout the country were entered through remote connection and scanned for violations. The Geek Squad "precincts" that had bench machines containing serious violations had their hard drives removed and shipped to the corporate office. All of this was done rapidly and under the watchful eye of salary managers who had their jobs threatened if this was not executed properly. My store was lucky enough to have scored well enough on the remote scans to keep our hard drives. I knew at this point that there was serious cause for concern if Best Buy was willing to spend the kind of cash necessary to execute remote scans throughout ALL of its stores in one day.

A couple weeks later, the general manager of Best Buy informed me that the remote scans were phase one of the investigation. Phase two was a physical check of policies and procedures done by corporate geniuses. Phase three was called an "interview" and I will come back to that term in a moment. My general manager volunteered our store to go as soon as possible in the "interview" phase because we had nothing to hide, which we didn't. For those who are not aware, Geek Squad has received negative media attention for the way they handle customer data, and these events are what I believed triggered this internal investigation.

The "interview" phase was not an interview. The correct word starts with the same letter; it was an interrogation and nothing short of it. There are a couple different corporate interrogators going to stores through the nation. Stores who received bad scores on the remote scans were flagged to be interrogated; the last number I heard was over 300 stores would be interrogated. Many of these interrogations have not yet occurred to date. My interrogator was named Wayne. I was pulled into the Lost Prevention office, which is a small closet sized room normally used for security and interrogating thieves. I immediately voiced my concern for the way my employees had been interrogated before me, and that I did not believe this was ethical practice for our business. Wayne assured me that this event was necessary to repair and clean up the image of Geek Squad. He stated that this "interview" was not to get everyone fired but to gather information critical to correct procedures on the way we handle customer data (entrapment). As Wayne and I talked he informed me he had been interrogating people for years and he would know if I was lying. He stated, "If you begin to lie to me, the mood in this room is going to change very fast". Wayne made a few other subtle threats throughout our chat. He stated that our store was red flagged before my arrival as supervisor, and this interrogation was going to take place regardless of the results of our remote scans. Wayne called me a liar in our interview and tried to trip me up on my own words. After Wayne left the room, the witness informed me that he also does these interrogations and that his are nothing more than a casual conversation. I had one employee out of town during the interrogations, so when they came back for him, his interrogation was a little different. It was different because I called HR and voiced my serious concern. His interrogation was an interview, it was done in a large meeting room, and where mine lasted almost two hours his lasted thirty minutes. Oh by the way, he kept his job, I didn't. He admitted to me later that he kept his job because he lied and that he felt bad.

There were three Geek Squad members fired from my store including myself. The first two were fired for burning a non-copyrighted CD for another employee on a non company issued blank CD-R. I admitted in my interrogation that I was aware of this, and that I stopped these events after that occurrence. I was fired for being aware of this non copyrighted CD being copied. To quote, I did not provide the proper example of leadership. Keep in my mind I removed over 100 illegal tools and pirated discs upon my arrival as supervisor, as well as some remnants of an internal porn scandal. I had one Geek Squad employee that had a copy of customer related financial material on his flash drive that was confiscated during the investigation, by the way he kept his job. To back track this investigation was intended to address the way we handle customer data, and the one major infraction went unpunished. Supposedly, these results from the interrogation are plotted on a matrix by the corporate office and assigned the appropriate punishment. If I was fired for knowing about a non-copyright CD being burned, then remaining employees should start looking for a new job. The punishments are just beginning to be handed out throughout the country. One neighboring store lost nine Geek squad employees and two salary managers. To top all of this off, other Best Buy employees knew about my termination before I did. Apparently, my General Manager is not intelligent enough to know how to fire three people with the entire store finding out first.

The three Geek Squad employees were by the book ethical employees. The employees remaining employed remained because they lied. Best Buy believes that by launching this investigation they will repair their image. They have betrayed theirs customers for years, and now they are starting to betray their employees. They are terminating young men because they (Best Buy) lacked the ability to clearly define and structure policies in the beginning.

Regards,

The Betrayed

Maybe they could further offset costs by charging people every time they use magenta.

(Photo: JD Pavkovich)

"I am just trying to help spread the truth about how screwed up Comcast is," the insider writes in their first post. "I am not trying to hurt Comcast's reputation or bad talk them, I think they do a good enough job themselves...You will find a lot of good information here. The information you want to see as a consumer and they don't."

We'll be watching, and Comcast will as well.

Inside Comcast
(Photo: cmorran123)

Comcast even has a system ready to go where if you exceed the limit a popup will ask you to purchase additional gigabytes, our source says. The graphical user interface is completely designed and everything, but Comcast hasn't deployed it, because they're waiting for either another ISP to do it first, or to figure out how to do it without angering their customers, whichever comes first.

CEO Brian Roberts is said to have seen a demo and given his thumbs up.

RELATED: Comcast Customer Uses "Unlimited Service" Excessively, Gets Disconnected For A Year
(Photo: cmorran123)

According to the datestamp embedded in the files' titles, these are up to date as of 8/27/07.

For those who don't know, Retentions refers to the group in the company tasked with throwing rebates, refunds and additional services at customers to prevent them from switching to another provider.

East Division (XLS)
MidWest Division (XLS)
North Division (XLS)
West Division (XLS)
Southern Division (XLS)

It's telling how bad things on when they have a whole department just for rescheduling installations.

(Photo: Getty)

There need to be documents employees can refer to, pantra-laterally, to help steer their decisions through times of uncertainty and deal with rapidly fluxing global business enterprise environment.

Like when you need to change the water jug.

Inside, Comcast's official water jug changing policy and instruction manual...

When you notice there is no coffee left, and/or you have used the remainder of the water, please follow these steps to replace the empty water jug with a full one.

1) Locate a full water jug from the stack and place it on the floor.

2) Take the empty jug from the cooler and place it in the full jug's previous location.

3) There are 2 options to prepare the jug to be placed on the cooler:

a. Less water will come out from the opening:
(Recommended for less spilling)
i. Peel back the plastic tag
ii. Poke the stopper down into the water

Or use the other option:

b. More water will come out from the opening:
i. Remove the entire lid by peeling the blue portion hanging from the lid.

4) Lift the jug. (Use your legs, not your back).

5) Aim the jug opening towards the center of the water cooler opening.

6) Gently place the water cooler to fit into the large opening.

The water has now been replaced.

In it, he says, "Is it coming? Why shouldn't I be able to say, just by a little switch on my phone at home that's wired, I'm going off on the wireless now, I want to use this as I ride my motorcycle...I'm bad. Pardon me."

We feel bad because you know he's really trying (and for once, completely right) but a guy who can't understand the difference between carburetor and a router shouldn't be on a committee overseeing the internets, but we guess that's just part of our government's interest in appointing the least competent people possible in oversight positions.

PREVIOUSLY:
Ted Stevens Wants To Switch Between Phones "As I Ride My Motorcycle"
Liveblogging The Senate Commerce Committee Hearing On Number Portability

Generally, the process looks like this...for most customers, we use a commercial program called Nero BackItUp (available with Nero Ultra Suite) - we mount the HDD as a slave on our TechPC, and we just select the directories we need to backup, and the process automates itself. Unless somebody goes in and looks, or an occasional oddball case (I found child porn on a computer by the fact that CDFS limits the length of the name of a file, and if you put enough keywords in front of it, Nero wants to know how to deal with it) we don't see any the files. This is true for I'd say....60% of all backups we do.

What causes problems are two things: When a customer doesn't know what to backup, or if the HDD has bad sectors/is overly fragmented.

When a customer doesn't know what to backup, and doesn't state to backup everything, usually we go directory by directory and figure out if there's anything worth backing up. This is how agents can start peeking in your files.

When a drive has bad sectors/is overly fragmented - due to the nature of Nero, if one file won't backup, the backup will just crash out. We then use a free program called ROBOCOPY, which is basically XCopy with better switch commands. We copy the entire HDD wholesale (minus Windows, Program Files, and things like temp files and the hibernate file) to our HDD. ROBOCOPY provides error checking, retries files, and skips damaged files to avoid crashing itself. We then backup off the clone of the user's HDD on our HDD.

This would be fine and peachy - if we deleted it afterward. Most of the time, at least in my precinct, we don't. I can often find backups stored on the desktop of the techpc, or in the network accessible shared "backups" directory, or if I just use TreeSize on the PC. Sometimes we keep it for legal reasons - we may have had some major damage to an HDD, and only gotten a small portion of the data files, and we have been sued before over that. But most of the time, we have no reason to keep a clone of a user's HDD on our computer, but seemingly keep them through apathy or just plain negligence. This allows a corrupt agent to search at his/her leisure. The policy is to delete them immediately, but nobody monitors it. The store managers wouldn't know enough to look, and the GS managers don't care, and even if they did, it wouldn't take long to hide something. Every month, we're supposed to reimage the Techpc, but reinstalling everything takes hours - and doesn't make us any money, so nobody does.

The customers don't help us either. Customers often post nude pictures of themselves on their desktop, or have poorly named folders on the desktop, or even pure video files on their desktop. Every agent in my precinct has a 4GB or higher flash memory stick. I have two complete work related CD images, a dozen more programs, 50 or so music files, all of my writing, and all of my schoolwork, and still have 1.8 GB free on my 4GB stick, and I have two additional 2GB sticks, that if I really wanted to steal personal info, I could just format. I've had customers ask me, when performing virus scans to move their Limewire directory "/Documents and Settings//Shared" out so the remover that nukes Limewire doesn't delete it. That's just asking for it.

The customers and managers expect us to run our procedures off the memory sticks - we don't like using Compact Discs unless we have to boot from them because they cost the store money. The way the MRI works, once it gets going, it installs itself into a temp directory, so the memory stick isn't doing anything. You can easily steal files while running a scan. I have a password stripper for Windows, a password stripper for RAR/ZIP files, and a program that removes the obscuring from password fields on my thumbdrives - they aren't part of the toolset, but I was told in certain situations to do "what needs to get it done", so I could easily start stealing passwords - I could just swipe your registry and steal your passwords when I get home, thanks to IE storing passwords.

The other big problem with file stealing is the scanners. The virus scanners especially list every directory name and every file while they're scanning - and it gets really obvious. So there's plenty of visibility for your files, and plenty of opportunity. Geek Squad doesn't condone it, but my manager, who'd be the only one that could notice an agent stealing data, only works 36-40 hours per week. Above and beyond that, we're on our own, self-monitored and self-enforced.

-Anonymous

Best Buy is America's leading electronics retailer. There's a Geek Squad in just about every Best Buy. According to insider emails, comments, and conversations, the theft of customer's personal files is systemic. Unless you protect it, your data is not safe. Don't leave your house with your doors unlocked, and don't leave your computer with a repair tech unless 1) you don't care what they see 2) you've taken necessary precautions to secure your files, like encryption or keeping sensitive info on an external drive.

PREVIOUSLY:
VIDEO: Consumerist Catches Geek Squad Stealing Porn From Customer's Computer
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Why Geeks Steal Porn From Your Computer

(Photo: bookish in north park (away for a while))

Larger icons received more calls.One of the venues, a Holiday Inn, is only 3 blocks from the White House. There seems to be a confluence of activity in and around the K Street area, where lobbyists, advocacy groups and think tanks have their offices. In one case, two high-volume locations, the St. Regis and the Capitol Hilton, are right across the street from one another, which we suppose is something like competing gas stations next to a busy highway.

DCHOtellalls [Map Builder] (Thanks to Veffekt!)
PREVIOUSLY: Top 10 Most "Ho-Friendly" DC Hotels, Based On The DC Madam's Phone Records

We took the DC Madam's phone records, (she allegedly ran a high-class prostitution ring. It was part of her operating procedure to call the client once to confirm the appointment) converted them to a text file with a OCR (optical character recognition) program, had a batch program run the numbers through a free online reverse number look up service (you enter a phone number and it gives you an address) sorted by call volume, then extracted all the hotel results.

1. Marriott: 489 (18 numbers)
2. Hyatt: 168 (6 numbers)
3. Hilton: 151 (5 numbers)
4. Holiday Inn: 132 (5 numbers)
5. Ritz-Carlton: 118 (4 numbers)
6. Embassy Suites: 117 (3 numbers)
7. Renaissance: 84 (3 numbers)
8. Double Tree: 59 (2 numbers)
9. Westin Grand Hotel: 40 (1 number)
10. Willard Inter Contiental Hotel: 36 (1)

Full listing of all the hotels, inside...

Hotel Name | Number Of Calls | Unique Phone Numbers
Marriot: 489 (18 numbers)
Hyatt: 168 (6 numbers)
Hilton: 151 (5 numbers)
Holiday Inn: 132 (5 numbers)
Ritz-Carlton: 118 (4 numbers)
Embassy Suites: 117 (3 numbers)
Renaissance: 84 (3 numbers)
Double Tree: 59 (2 numbers)
Westin Grand Hotel: 40 (1 number)
Willard Inter Contiental Hotel: 36 (1)
St. Regis: 33 (1)
Four Seasons Hotel: 28 (1)
Washington Court Hotel: 25 (1)
Key Bridge Hotel: 20 (1)
Hamilton Crowne Plaza Hotel: 19 (1)
Red Roof Inns: 19 (1)
City Center DC Hotel: 18 (1)
Melrose Hotel: 17 (1)
Capitol City Hotel: 16 (1)
Churchill Hotel: 14 (1)
Harbor Court: 14 (1)
Hotel Madison: 14 (1)
Fairfield Inn: 13 (1)
Jefferson Hotel: 13 (1)

The results for the Marriott chain are astonishing. With that call volume and number of locations involved , you gotta wonder if the hotel staff isn't in on it somehow.

HOTEL NAME| VOLUME | PHONE | NAME/ADDRESS | ZIP

Fairfield Inn 13 301-572-7100 Fairfield Inn 4050 Powder Mill Rd Beltsville MD 20705
Holiday Inn 13 202-479-4000 Holiday Inn Capitol At Smithsonian 550 C St SW Washington DC 20024
Jefferson Hotel 13 202-347-2200 Jefferson Hotel 1200 16 St NW Washington DC 20036
Churchill Hotel 14 202-797-2000 The Churchhill Hotel 1914 Connecticut Washington DC 20009
Harbor Court 14 410-234-0550 Harbor Court Hotel 550 Light Baltimore MD 21202
Hilton 14 703-418-6800 Hilton Crystal City 2399 Jefferson Davis Hwy Arlington VA 22202
Holiday Inn 14 202-338-4600 Holiday Inn 2101 Wisconsin Ave NW DC 200074
Holiday Inn 14 301-652-2000 Holiday Inn Bethesda 8120 Wisconsin Ave Bethesda