firedog
Update: Circuit City says the repair should have been free. Here's their response. Travis writes that a friend of his just bought a new computer from Circuit City, and after turning down all of the Firedog's "it won't work unless you also buy this" offers, he noticed a $40 fee on his receipt. Turns out the associate claims he had to flash the computer's BIOS or Vista wouldn't work. Travis writes, "Regardless of the fact that Vista booted up just fine with out the update, he was more disturbed with the fact that Circuit City would sell him a computer that they knew didn't work, or so they say." So does Circuit City sell computers that don't work without a preliminary repair, or do they lie in order to generate extra fees?
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computer repairs
A Denver TV crew unseated a RAM chip and then
took it to seven different repair centers for a diagnosis. The resulting displays of incompetence were pretty evenly distributed, with two Best Buy Geek Squads, one Circuit City Firedog, and one locally owned repair center (CTI) all failing miserably ("It's the motherboard!" they each said). Of the three locations that correctly diagnosed and fixed the problem, Action Computers charged $50, Geek Squad charged $30, and the Firedog tech who hands-down won the challenge "reinstalled the memory cards in less than two minutes, free of charge."
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bad install
Tiffany Byrd hired Circuit City's Firedog to install her 40-inch Samsung TV over her (fake) fireplace. When she told the Firedog rep that she wanted the TV above a "fireplace," Firedog told her it would cost an extra $169 because fireplaces were often made of brick and other substances that make it difficult to attach TVs. Tiffany told them that her fireplace was
fake and the wall above it was
normal drywall. Firedog said that if the tech got to her house and found that the fireplace was indeed fake, her extra $169 would be refunded. The tech installed the TV with no problems and noted on her receipt "Basic wall installation. Waive Charge."
Now Circuit City is refusing to refund the money and not even a call from her local TV news station could compel Circuit City to change its mind.
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insiders
Yet another valiant former Firedog writes in to share insider info that will help you successfully navigate the rough waters of big box computer repair. The most important takeaway—Don't let them "preinstall" anything on your new computer. According to our tipster, it's both expensive and pointless. Lots of good stuff inside.
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firedog
I bought a new 46" Sony Bravia TV in January of this year from Circuit City in the Sugarhouse area of Salt Lake City (Store#3350 801-463-4600). Being a pretty technical guy, I tweaked the brightness, contrast, color temperature and other settings to my content. The picture looks great, but I was told from friends that it's good to have the TV calibrated from a professional as they have access to a service panel that your normal everyday consumer can't get to. They're supposed to tweak the settings according to ambient light in the room, and an end result is they also reduce power consumption making the TV last longer.
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undercover
Channel 10 out of Columbus, Ohio recently conducted a sting operation in which they equipped themselves with an easily repaired laptop and took it to Geek Squad, FireDog and Micro Center to see who could figure out what was wrong.
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circuit city
Stealing porn from customer's computers isn't just for
Best Buy, one reader reports they're doing it at Circuit City, too. He writes:
I wanted to write in about my recent experience with employment at circuit city. I work at a circuit city in Colorado, I was recently hired as holiday help. I was hired on as firedog, but only got the position for a few days, while I was at the post I got a standard firedog USB flash drive as a part of my job, it belonged to my supervisor. It was apparent he had wiped it before he gave it to me, which made me rather suspicious that he wouldn't leave the standard firedog tools on there...
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department of lies
PC World wants to let you know that you don't
need to buy the "recovery disks" that Best Buy and Circuit City are always trying to sell you. PC World says they've heard from consumers that Circuit City is telling people that they
need FireDog to create these disks and that they can't do it themselves.
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Consumerist
confessions
firedog
