[Rockn]

The Geek Squad is an insult to all self respecting geeks. Why would you put on a shirt that pointed out the fact that you are indeed a geek and are a part of a squad.

All they are is the same inept fools that were behind the service counter before there ever was a Geek Squad.

[Smety]

I didnt read after the first page, but I have a Geek Squad idiot story . . .

My neighbor (computer iliterate) took in his computer to geek squad. Geek Squad couldn't figure out what was wrong, so they put this bull sh!tz0r antivirus thing on it. My neighbor got it back, deleted the anti virus because he already had one . . .

So I went over and had a look at it, it was spyware, I used spy doctor and the problem was solved.

Geek Squad= Complete and utter idiots

[I Fix 4 U]

Yah, and those idiots should know you shouldn't have two viruscanners installed at once.
They installed an HD for me for free since I bought it, too bad I lost my computer for a week because it took them that long to figure out how they broke my sound and how to fix it

[Smety]

lmao, yeah totaly incompetent, they are . . .

[sglv]

Originally Posted by iXneonXi

The only time I'd get bestbuy to fix it is if it were "free" as in warranty or they broke it they gotta fix it.

I'm dealing with this right now actually. I never buy warranties, but hubby does. This warranty he bought for his laptop supposedly covers monitors and, of course, they (I have no idea) refuse to honor it. He has an internal crack which, accordingly to the "Geek" there said was probably caused my the drive getting too hot and the screen being placed down. I'm pretty computer illiterate so I have no idea. His computer is in perfect condition, I'll admit he takes very good care of it and is very careful with it. So they ship it off, it comes back and they call saying all fixed on the phone. He gets there, they say "oh, actually it wasn't covered. Here's a bill for $100." To say my hubby went ballistic is an understatement. He didn't pay the $100. Now we're stuck having to figure out how to get it fixed, quick, because it's absolutely necessary for his business. Very angry to say the least

[Smety]

Sue and get rich lol . . .

[sglv]

Originally Posted by Smety

Sue and get rich lol . . .

Thinking about it, but I'll only get the value of whatever it costs to repair, etc. No getting rich from that.

[I Fix 4 U]

Won't u spend more $$ on the lawyer?

[clsxmas]

That's why I joined this forum--to learn more for myself and ditch the Geek Squad.

[PixieStrange]

Just thought you all might enjoy the opportunity to lash out at an Agent first hand. Yes I know I'm sticking my neck out here, and that likely several of you will take a slash at it. But what I'm TOTALLY sick of is seeing this garbage of "OMFG teh Geek Squad is a bunch of n00bs!"

I will be the FIRST to admit that, yes, there are a LOT of dunder heads out there that like to pass themselves off as "Techs" when really they are just overglorified anti-social red-eyed parasites that just like to stay up late looking up pr0n and because they got that spiffy warning from their Anti-Virus that some random trojan was blocked when loading one of their 1337 websites, suddenly they're a Tech. Problem is, You won't find those people HERE, on The Geek Squad.

Am I saying we're perfect? Absolutely not. Can we improve? Absolutely. Are our fees expensive? Well considering that as an independent my average 'bill' was between $150-$400 (the higher end being if I was building a system from the ground up). And that's only counting the people I bothered to charge. No Tina don't worry about it, I'm not going to charge you for taking a floppy out of your drive so that it would boot, even if it is 3am. Just take me to lunch sometime." Yea, like that.

Also, I would just like to say, on a sort of side note, that just having some spiffy slip of paper from some college that says something about the IT field, does NOT mean you know WTF you're doing. We recently had a job applicant who didn't know what RAM was, didn't know what POST was, didn't know what OS stood for, the poor sap didn't even know what the frikken difference between worms, viruses, and spyware/adware was! Now keep in mind this guy was FRESH from college (just graduated), A+ Certified, with a degree in Computer Sciences. WTF?!

And I see some of you bashing the Geek Squad for incompetence, and/or poor technical knowledge(if any). Then I see in your elite signatures "(Insert appropriate HD size here) Maxtor".... MAXTOR?!?!?!?! And you want to call US N00BS?! Compare Maxtor and Western Digital's failure rates to, oh I don't know, say Seagate, then tell me which one is better. Then I'll ask you why you didn't spend the extra $10 for a Seagate drive that will LAST. I understand budget restraints (believe me, you should see what passes for my paycheck), but really, it isn't THAT hard to save just a LITTLE bit, and get some GOOD, as opposed to something that's just plain junk.

Now then, I'm sure some of you are thinking "WTF is this crazy chick talking about?! What makes her think she knows what she's talking about?!" (Yea, She. Female Geeks are NOT a myth!). Well, I love it when some random joe tries to tell me I don't know WTF I'm talking about, and I get to list off just a few of my qualifications. So here is a sampling....

Certs? None! HA! (And seriously, who even considers A+ worth getting anymore? That test is as outmoded as Win 1.0) Which on a side note I still have a copy of Windows 1.0 Ahhhhhh, gotta love sentimental mushy junk ^_^

7+ Years WORKING Technical Experience
Highly skilled Windows troubleshooting (You name it, I've used it)
Network Administrator for 3+ years.
Unix/Solaris System Administration/Network Administration.
Cisco Router/Switch setup/configuration
I've run more Cat5 cable than you can shake a fist at.
Hardware setup/configuration/troubleshooting? Please, Would you like me to do it awake or asleep? If you let me sleep while doing it, I might forget to charge you, or just let you get away with lighting a nice Jasmine incense when i'm done.
I've beta tested EVERY MS OS since Win 2k (as an aside, I tested ME for all of like, 3 weeks, and tossed it. Talk about junk oi!)

That's a BRIEF listing... Now, you may be thinking "BS! If all that were true, You wouldn't be working on the Geek Squad!" Well, take the following into account. I live in the armpit of hell (also known as the southern USA) where anything computers is almost like running into a Baptist church and screaming "All hail satan!" I did contracting work for a while, was great money. When it was there. Guess what major corporations let their networks get messed with during the Christmas Shopping season? Answer? NONE! So yea, you have to have SOMETHING to pay the bills.

Of course it helps that I believe in Best Buy as a company. I've watched this company bend over BACKWARDS to make sure that their customers leave happy. Are we going to please everyone? Psssh! Impossible. Are we going to try? You bet!

Now this being said, I know there are rotten apples everywhere. But what you also have to understand, is that I deal with a LOT, and I mean, a LOT of "Well I had my cousin's friend's son come over and do some work and I don't think it's working quite right."

I look at the computer and the registry is BEYOND corrupt (it's amazing windows even boots) there are trojans ALL over it, not to mention various pieces of spyware (Love those "Free" utilities that are "THE BEST"), and, my personal favorites, The Keyloggers (intentional? Probably not in most cases, but who knows?), and porn popups "I Swear I don't know where that stuff is coming from!" Suuuuuuuuure....

Now then, if someone comes up to me with a Celeron 450, 64MB RAM, Running Win98SE, and it's totally hosed, and they want it fixed (not to mention some HW issues cause the buggers never bother to CLEAN their computer. Caked on dust won't hurt electronics, neither will cat hair/dog hair/rotting bug corpses right?) I tell them straight up, as does EVERY Agent in our precinct "You don't want us to fix that computer. It will cost WAAAAAY more than it's worth. Best thing to do would be either A. Find somewhere that will fix it for pretty cheap (A lot of the smaller computer shops are generally good about that for older systems), or B. Buy a new one.

Am I out to rip people off? Hells no! Are repair bills sometimes ridiculously high? Probably. But when someone has 20GB worth of information that MUST be saved off that HD that their cousin's friend's son formatted cause he couldn't get rid of some generic frikken virus that has like 80 bajillion removal tools out, and/or a VERY clean cut removal process, the little buggar was just too lazy to bother researching it, and you also find out the RAM is bad, and btw since a virus is what CAUSED all of this in the FIRST place, maybe you should think about NOT using that 'Free' Program that's 'Great' after all and get something that's actually REAL protection. Do I push stuff on people? Not at all. I invite them to check the consumer reports/reviews on the software that I recommend. I welcome it. Why? Because I know that when it comes right down to it, What I recommend may not be THE BEST, but for THAT USER, it IS the Best. After all, Linux may give you a LOT more control over various security policies, and you might be able to tweak it more to your liking that Windows, and all those other things that the ub3r g33ks go on and on and on and on about, but would I recommend it for Mr. Average User here? HELLS NO! Same thing applies to everything I do.

And as another aside, we don't get paid commission, and when it comes right down to it, a lot of times, I don't care if a client takes my advice or not. The bottom line is that When I'm done with them, they're smiling, they appreciate my technical knowledge, and they know that I'm not just out to BS them to get them to buy every little thing on our shelves. THAT is what the Geek Squad is all about. Sure we are here to make money, but you CAN'T stay in business if you don't treat your customers RIGHT. Period.

/rant off

Now so that you can all poke fun at MY machine...

Main system:

AMD 64 2800+
1GB PC3200 RAM
80GB + 200GB Seagate Barricuda 7200 RPM
ATI Radeon 9800 Pro AGP 8x *gag*
MSI (hey, I know I know, but I LOVE MSI, had GREAT luck with them, and for a budget board they deliver GREAT performance, just keep their OEM junk away from me) K8T Neo
Soundblaster Live! 5.1 (hey, was 'uber' when I bought it shortly after it first came out, but Jesus those driver issues are funky sometimes)
Windows XP Pro
17" Samsung SyncMaster 730B LCD (New toy ^_^)

Server:

AMD Athlon XP 1800+
Biostar M7VIP
1GB PC2700 RAM
ATI Radeon 8500 LE
80GB x2 Seagate Barricuda 7200 RPM
Dynex 5.1 Sound (*GAG!!!!* but hey! it was DIRT cheap, and not really a vital component anyway)
Windows Server 2k3 Enterprise Edition

And no, I'm not boasting, I know that a lot of my HW isn't great, but it's all reliable, well, most of it anyway...

[cheese]

Wow.

With hardware i believe its just the luck of the draw (about your maxtor/wd/seagate comments).

People hate ECS, ive had an ECS motherboard run for 6 years with no issues.
I had a job as a tech aide at my school (laugh) and out of replacing bad hardrives, i saw more seagates being pulled then WD.
Ive had my old 20GB WD work flawlessly for 6 years, and now its still going smoothly in a buddy of mines.

You never know if that hardrive is going to be a dud or not. That $10 more you spent on that seagate could put you $10 deeper in a hole

Not that the geeksquad "sucks", but they should hire people that know what their talking about. Not highschool students looking for any job that have expireince with AIM and myspace as credentials

I did not read the whole post, just skimmed over it.. So correct me if im wrong

[PixieStrange]

Not just luck of the draw my friend. While sometimes you just happen to get a bad batch, or, in my case, you just set aside the first three on the shelf because you KNOW they're bad (just my luck w/ electronics in general). But seriously, look at the consumer reports, check the failure rates when crunched. *wink* Ever wonder why RAMBUS got destroyed by DDR? because RAMBUS was junk, plain and simple. It was funny though, Intel was like "The DDR technology just isn't there, it's not reliable. We've got RAMBUS, and it's here to stay!" Sure it is, with a 9/10 failure rate off the line, yea, it'll stick around *rolling eyes*.

As for your 6 year WD, a lot of their older drives are still around and kicking, and there is a reason for that.... WD used to own it up. They're kind of coasting off of that atm. Maxtor? Well.... Out of all of the bad HDs I see, I'd say 60% are Maxtor, 30% are WD, and 10% are Seagate (Though, I should note I've seen 3 bad Seagate drives (not counting OEM junk, I hate all OEM HW), and that is by far not even CLOSE to 10%, but the remainder had to go SOMEHWERE, and I'm too tired to get very specific).

*****EDIT****** Of course it should also be noted that I AM kind of biased since I fell in LOVE head over heels with Seagate's SCSI drives. *sigh* <3
And on a side note, I've still got some Quantums Lying around (anyone remember their Bigfoot Drives? LOL They're junk but these things just won't DIE!). Btw Quantum was bought by Maxtor (or became Maxtor, something like that).

DDR Dual channel though is SUCH a play on ignorance it makes me sick. Anytime I see someone looking at it I'm like "NOOOOO! Trust me it's not all that and a bag of chips."

[Alex Ethridge]

Too many seem to post non-descript comments that have no discernable meaning, using terms like "cheaters", "thieves", "sucks", "ripoffs", and never giving any factual account. One can't come away from a post like that with any useful information.

I tend to stick to backing up my statements with factual accounts.

The bottom line is that When I'm done with them, they're smiling, they appreciate my technical knowledge,

The customers I described in my first post may have been smiling when The Geek Squad left; but, they weren't smiling about it when they discovered they had no security and also discovered they weren't even connecting to the internet through their own network. One was angry enough about it that he was on the phone when I left, raising hell with Geek Squad. He felt he had been cheated, and I agreed.

but you CAN'T stay in business if you don't treat your customers RIGHT. Period.

Not necessarily so. I have 58 years behind me and I've learned you don't need a good product to be successful in business, only a good marketing system. When I was in the construction business, I had a friend whom I grew up with, also in the same business, whom if he ever had a repeat customer, it had to be a freak accident. His work was poor and the way he treated his customers was a good example of why many think all contractors are rogues. I literally would not allow him to supervise the building of a dog house and made it a point to never be seen in his company.

But, he knows how to market and always has plenty of work, even after 30 years. There are obviously new, ignorant customers coming along every day.

I don't believe every Geek is incompetent; but, this scenario is an example why I have never gotten rich in the service business. I won't let my company expand beyond what I can personally be sure is good service.

Also, I don't portend to know more than many competent techs; but, I do know when a service call is beyond my capability and when to back off and let someone more competent handle it.

From my perspective, The Geek Squad's management seems to have a throw-it-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks attitude.

[I Fix 4 U]

Pixie Im gonna have2 agree on your harddrive statement. I like seagate (atm) but the older WD's (like the 6GB-20GB ones) from a decent amount of time ago are still workin fine. I've heard of WD's these days that don't last more than 3 months (so i got a barracuda).

[jiml8]

Compare Maxtor and Western Digital's failure rates to, oh I don't know, say Seagate, then tell me which one is better. Then I'll ask you why you didn't spend the extra $10 for a Seagate drive that will LAST. I understand budget restraints (believe me, you should see what passes for my paycheck), but really, it isn't THAT hard to save just a LITTLE bit, and get some GOOD, as opposed to something that's just plain junk.

I have never - and I mean that literally - NEVER had a Seagate product that connected via IDE that didn't fail early. No exceptions.

The only Seagate drives I have ever had that appeared to show some durability are a couple of Cheetah SCSI drives. I only bought them, even though the price was stellar, because I had been assured by some people I trust that Seagate SCSI is far better than Seagate IDE.

I used to buy Quantum drives all the time, but then Maxtor bought them out and I no longer have an opinion on the product line. I have had adequate luck with WD.