Geek Squad Charges $415 Dollars for Service; Customer Does All The Work

by Jordan Yerman | March 2, 2007 at 09:41 am

1655 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

Yikes. When I do a hard-drive installation on my own, it's so I DON"T have to pay someone else to do it. This is horrible customer service. Companies get away with this because the average computer customer does not know enough about his or her own device to have an idea about what could be wrong with it. Just like when dealing with mechanics, there are many good ones out there, but many shady ones as well-- when you come to them with no working knowledge, you are at their mercy.

At my day-job I work at a computer place, adn I deal directly with the public and with businesses. Less than 10% know anything about how their new $2000 machines work, and they have no idea that the hard drive is what stores info (not the motherboard) and that RAM is a different type of memory. If I wanted to, I could rip people off left, right and center, but I don't. Others do not share my ethics. Educate yourself.

Reader O.'s laptop stopped working, so he consulted the oft-advertised but rarely recommended Best Buy "Geek Squad" for assistance. They told him the problem was called "Blue Screen of Death," (yes, really) and quoted O. the following estimate:

Price to diagnose was $69.00, OS Install $129.00, Back up transfer $99.00, NO Guarantee.

Estimated repair time seven to ten days.

Seven days later, they hadn't even looked at the machine. After 8 days, they'd begun testing the laptop. On the 10th day the exhaustive tests were still being done, but things weren't looking good for O.'s data files. On the 11th day, O. was given the sad news that his hard drive was fried and would need to be replaced for an extra charge of $118.00. On the 12th day, O. was given his laptop, and his non-working hard drive.

But were the data files really beyond saving? After all, Geek Squad had charged O. $99.00 for the unsuccessful back-up...

From O's email:

Disappointed that I had lost all of my data files, I started talking to other computer persons about this problem. I took the "un-working" hard drive to a friend at work. We installed the "un-working" hard drive into another working laptop computer. In about 15 minutes, he told me that the OS Windows system was corrupted BUT the hard drive was fine and the data could be recovered.

We used a IDE 2.0 IDE Adaptor, CD/DVD-ROM Combo/External, Plug & Play, High Speed / data transfer, 52x write speed, switching adapter input AC 90V-264V, USB unit. Cost $20.00.

We first hooked it up to a Windows system and the adapter hesitated, but it did run the hard drive.

Next we hooked the "un-working" hard drive to a computer with a LINIX system.

Guess What !!! All the data on our "un-working" hard drive was recovered in about 20 minutes.

Naturally, Best Buy gave a full refund on the failed back-up procedure, right? Nope. O. got 1/2 off.

Sunday 2/25/07 Spoke with Allen, Geek Squad manager. He explained they should of told me about a disk recovery program, but the computer would have to be sent to a outside source for repairs. I received a $49.00 refund off the price of the $99.00 back up charge. I still lost $248.00 plus dollars, because of their repair contract.

What's the moral of this story? It seems that despite the fact that Geek Squad bills itself as a friendly alternative to scary computer repair places who'll rip you off, they're not even as good as your friend at work. Maybe O. would have been better off if he'd just offered his friend $250.00 if he could get the computer to work. Food for thought