I have gotten a few people ask me what my problem with Geek Squad is. So
here you go...

I run a PC repair shop (2 in fact, one in Mass and one in Florida) I have
gotten to know quite a few of my customers and I develop good relationships
with them because I am fair and dont sell them more than they need.

Last year while I was up in Mass. My Florida shop was being run by a
trusted employee who had a death in the family. He was forced to close my
shop for 5 days while he went out west of the funeral.

There was nothing I could do except have him post a sign on the door
explaining what happened.

One of my very good customers had a PC emergency and ended up at Best Buys
Geek Squad (her son recommended it).

Let me give you background on my customer...

She is elderly
She only uses the PC for email, weather, and skype/webcam to keep in touch
with her family.
She is on a limited income and because she has been coming to my shop for
years we treat her very well and never sell her things she doesnt need and
saving her money by using parts we have sitting around.

She brought the PC to Best Buy and left it there. She got a call the next
day that her motherboard was dead and she needed a new one.

They charged her $189.00 for a new motherboard. After that was done they
told her she needed new ram because the ram she had would not work with the
new motherboard. They charged her another $149.99 for 2 gigs of ram.

They wanted to keep all her old parts, but she asked for everything back
(we had talked about this before with her and she remembered you never let
someone keep your old stuff).

First thing monday morning she arrives at my shop and my manager talked
with her. She was upset at the cost and wanted him to look it over. She
gave him all the old parts and gave him the sheet from best buy.

Point one:
Her old motherboard was an asus M2N motherboard, no longer made but you can
still find them for about $30.00 online, the one they put in I found at
Newegg for $89.99

Point Two:
They put in 2 gigs of generic ram which I can get for about $40.00 online

They charged her over $500.00 in parts and labor. Not to mention marking
up the price of the motherboard and ram almost $100.00 each.

Long story short

My manager replaced the motherboard, checked all the connections and
everything worked great. There was NOTHING wrong with the motherboard!!

Without seeing the PC when it wouldnt boot its hard to say what the issue
was. It could have been a loose cable, or just a power issue.

With nothing wrong with the parts we probably would have charged her $20.00
to diagnose and fix it.

When her son found out about this he was furious, Best Buy at first refused
to take back the parts and refund 100% of the money. Then they found out
he was a lawyer and she got her money.

-----------------------

Thats my main hatred for the geek squad. This is not the first time I have
heard of them taking advantage of people or charging for parts that dont
need to be fixed.

I have had many many customers come in and tell me they tried Geek Squad
first and how they were ripped off. I have also gained many many loyal
customers due to this.

They also do very little training and even people with very little computer
knowledge have landed in the geek squad. I know this only because I know
someone who is in the geek squad who thinks RAM is a brand of truck.

I decided to start my very first blog here in response to a comment I just
read about how all Computer Companies will wipe your drive in order to fix
a computer.

There are 2 issues here

1) what the local shop will do

vs.

2) what the big manufacturers techs will do

If a PC is brought into my shop, the first thing I do is sit down with the
customer and get a detailed idea of the problem. If its say randomly
shuting down, I ask what programs might be in use, where the computer is
stored (heat problem?), when did it start, etc.

Then it gets brought into the back and we put in a CD of diagnostic tools
and we "play" with the PC trying to recreate the problem. If the error
doesnt occur we leave it on overnight. If the error has yet to happen, we
do 1 of 2 things, we call the customer explain that we have failed to
recreate the problem and we can send the PC home with a diagnostic program
running in the background to catch it when it does happen, or we can take
an educated guess and replace what we think it might be and hope it fixes
the problem.

A big manufacturer will 90% of the time start by wiping your drive and
getting it back to factory state. Then they will try to find the problem.
IF they are like us and cant recreate the problem then they will ship it
back to you and exclaim they fixed it. All the while taking 2 weeks to get
it back to you.

I have had many customers come to me with an HP, Dell, Alienware, etc.
after sending it back to the company and want us to take over. We explain
to them that by us opening the case it will void the warranty, but most of
the time they tell me they dont care.

I have hired a couple of techs who were ex-company techs and they are very
underskilled when it comes to diagnosing an issue. In fact one was
completely lost because I dont have a computer program that tells him what
to look for depending on what he inputs.

Thats not saying they are all like that, but when you make it as easy as
possible and dont allow them to think for themselves they will lose that
ability to troubleshoot on the fly.

I will repeatably tell people to goto a local shop every time. If you dont
like their work try another. I wont lie some of the local shops are worse
than the big companies.