geek-squad

Customer Escapes Best Buy Laptop Purchase Without Optimization Fees

By Laura Northrup on January 31, 2010 4:00 PM 0 views
During a recent trip to Best Buy to purchase a new laptop, Kristene was pleasantly surprised. She discovered that what our anonymous employee tipster told us in the post "Employee: Best Buy Scrambling To Clean Up Optimization Mess" is true, and customers at at least one Best Buy aren't being forced to buy optimized computers. More »

37 Comments

Don't Ask Geek Squad To Reset Your Password

By Marc Perton on January 25, 2010 5:30 PM 0 views

(Photo: geeksquad.com)

Two not-very-sharp thieves walked into a Chattanooga Best Buy toting three PCs, and asked one of the resident Geeks to help override the passwords on the boxes. Instead, the Geek, who had heard that a local school had been robbed the previous night, tried logging in, and saw that the username on the PCs was the name of the school. The store confiscated the computers, and the the alleged perps were arrested. The lesson here: reset the password yourself at home, using open-source cracking tools, instead of paying Best Buy to do it for you. Just kidding! We salute this agent for his vigilance, and hope he gets snapped up for a career in forensic PC security. More »

48 Comments

Geek Squad Finally Replaces My Linux-Infested Laptop

By Phil Villarreal on January 15, 2010 8:00 AM 0 views

(Photo: Maulleigh)

An anonymous Best Buy customer told us in December that the Geek Squad refused to honor his extended warranty on his laptop because he had installed (horrors!) Linux. More »

53 Comments

Customer Waits Six Weeks For Best Buy To Not Fix His TV

By Chris Walters on January 12, 2010 12:07 PM 7965 views

(Photo: schmilblick)

A Best Buy customer has posted his ongoing TV repair saga over at Best Buy's own forums, and it's quite a read. Green blotches! Smoke! Parts were ordered! No parts were ordered! The wrong parts were ordered! Botched repairs! This all started back in November and his $3,000 TV still isn't fixed--although the last time a Geek Squad tech came out, he handed the customer a sheet that said Best Buy had already spent $1,500 on repairs. More »

27 Comments

Is Best Buy About To Ditch Optimization To Sell Crapware?

By Marc Perton on January 7, 2010 10:49 PM 12046 views
Best Buy is apparently dropping some of its "optimization" services, and will instead provide the "Best Buy Software Installer," a new tool that the company says will "radically simplify how you set up and customize your new PC or upgrade an existing one." Translation: Instead of you paying Best Buy to delete trialware from your new PC, Best Buy will get paid by software makers to try to get you to install it. More »

78 Comments

Shocking: Best Buy's "Mac Optimization" Sucks Also

By Meg Marco on January 5, 2010 12:30 PM 9945 views
We didn't include Best Buy's Apple optimization services in our investigation, but Heidi N. Moore of Slate.com took a look at the service and as she tells Consumerist in an email, "unscientifically came to the same conclusion." More »

93 Comments

Best Buy: We Won't Replace Your Broken Netbook, But We Will 'Service' It

By Phil Villarreal on January 5, 2010 8:00 AM 11765 views

(Photo: Ian Muttoo)

UPDATE: Best Buy has replaced the laptop. More »

69 Comments

Best Buy Optimization Is A Big Stupid Annoying Waste Of Money

By Meg Marco on January 4, 2010 8:28 AM 138336 views

This "warning" appears on a Geek Squad sales info folder.

Over the past year, a number of you have been telling us that, due to "pre-optimization" of computers, it's difficult -- sometimes impossible -- to walk into a Best Buy and leave with the advertised deal (in effect, you would be paying a $39.99 surcharge over the computer's advertised price). We decided to look into your complaints. We sent the Consumer Reports secret shoppers to 18 different Best Buys in 11 states, and one of our shoppers was denied the price advertised for a specific model because only pre-optimized computers were available. When the Consumer Reports engineers compared three "optimized" computers to ones with default factory settings, there was no performance improvement. In one case, an optimized laptop actually performed 32% worse than the factory model. The results of our in-depth investigation, inside... More »

247 Comments

Geek Squad Founder Wishes He Would Have 'Put Foot Down More'

By Phil Villarreal on January 1, 2010 8:45 AM 29341 views

(Photo: Maulleigh)

In a 2008 interview Geek Squad CEO Robert Stephens said he had some regrets about the customer-unfriendly behemoth he created, he told Fortune Small Business in a story posted on CNNMoney. More »

38 Comments

Even Best Buy Staff Admit That Geek Squad Is Useless

By Laura Northrup on December 27, 2009 7:30 AM 35934 views

(Photo: James Nash (aka Cirrus))

Chris learned a very entertaining lesson this weekend. He tells Consumerist that he went out yesterday in search of a Mini SD card at his local Best Buy. A Mini SD card that the Geek Squad staffer who picked up the phone at Best Buy assured him the store carried. Guess where this is going? More »

98 Comments

Geek Squad Wouldn't Honor My Netbook's Protection Plan

By Phil Villarreal on December 16, 2009 10:15 AM 73306 views

(Photo: epicharmus)

('')UPDATE: Best Buy replaced the laptop. More »

186 Comments

Best Buy 'Optimized,' Raised Prices On Laptop Model I Wanted

By Phil Villarreal on December 16, 2009 8:00 AM 10978 views

(Photo: The Mexican Reader)

The Mexican Reader tells us a Best Buy tale we've heard all too many times -- He goes into a Best Buy to buy a computer, only to find he can't buy the one he wanted at the advertised price because everything in the inventory has been "optimized." More »

110 Comments

Use The Internet To Subvert Bogus Best Buy Optimization Fees

By Phil Villarreal on November 30, 2009 10:00 AM 14178 views

(Photo: amanjo)

Patrick discovered a clever way of avoiding Best Buy's silly optimization fees as he shopped for a laptop: Shop online and opt for in-store pickup. More »

108 Comments

Geek Squad Contributes To Society, Opens Outlet In Children's Hospital

By Laura Northrup on November 18, 2009 2:30 PM 4425 views

The announcement that Best Buy plans to open a Geek Squad outlet inside the Children's Hospital in Minneapolis seems, at first, incongruous. "Geek Squad?" we said. "Haven't these families already suffered enough?" Except this Geek Squad isn't there to profit off sick kids—they're there to help. No, really.   More »

51 Comments

Geek Squad Turns Your Laptop Into An XBOX 360?

By Meg Marco on November 17, 2009 6:47 PM 10346 views

Reader Taylor is a little concerned about his laptop. It died on Halloween and he took it in to Best Buy the next day. Two weeks later, he typed his order number into the Geek Squad website and found that a little Halloween magic had taken place. His laptop was now an XBOX 360.  More »

64 Comments

Geek Squad Agent Doesn't Have Time To Look For Multimeter, Let's Just Send Off Laptop For 3 Weeks Instead

By Chris Walters on November 11, 2009 8:58 PM 13058 views

The usefulness of Best Buy's Geek Squad depends entirely on the competence of the employee you get when you go in for help, and unfortunately Scott landed one of the lazier ones. Here's his sales pitch to Scott over a laptop that wouldn't start: "It's going to take at least 10 minutes for me to get the multimeter or another adapter. It's going to be a problem inside the computer, let's just send it in."  More »

118 Comments

Woman Has Tried To Get Best Buy To Fix TV For 4 Months With No Luck

By Phil Villarreal on October 30, 2009 6:40 PM 8428 views

Kelli bought an HDTV from Best Buy, and the set broke in June. Now it's almost November, and despite scads of phone calls and appointments, her TV is no closer to being fixed today than it was way back when.   More »

69 Comments

Best Buy Offers To "Install" Mario Party8 On Your Wii...

By consumerist.com on October 19, 2009 2:36 PM 10432 views

While shopping at Best Buy, Chris spotted this wacky sticker on Mario Party 8, no doubt an accident, in which the benevolent Geek Squad offers to do the impossible for you and install the game onto your Wii, which doesn't let you install disc-based games.  More »

32 Comments

Best Buy "Optimized Laptop" Features Nothing But An Error Message

By Meg Marco on October 6, 2009 3:55 PM 21376 views

Reader L951B951 saw our recent posts about Best Buy's dubious "optimization" services, so he went to the store armed and ready to demand an unopened laptop. The trouble is — he says Best Buy had opened them all. Did this stop our hero from coming away with a laptop without paying the optimization fee? Of course not.  More »

179 Comments

Best Buy: All The Appliances In Your House Must Break 4 Times Before We Replace Them

By Meg Marco on October 5, 2009 6:39 PM 9965 views

James Lileks bought some fancy-ass Electrolux appliances from Best Buy. Unfortunately. they've turned out to be a bit of a headache. Mr. Lileks thought perhaps since he was a valuable customer who bought fancy-ass items, Best Buy would help him out and swap the problematic dishwasher for a more reliable cheaper brand (turns out that that the washer's control panel is susceptible to moisture, of all things.) He was wrong. They'd rather keep fixing it. Over. And Over. And Over.  More »

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