9 Confessions Of A Former Geek Squad Geek

Discussion in 'The Guru's Pub' started by Watcher, Jun 12, 2011.

  1. Watcher

    Watcher Ancient Guru

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    http://consumerist.com/2011/06/9-confessions-of-a-former-geek-squad-geek.html

     
  2. Pill Monster

    Pill Monster Banned

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    ^No surprises there...[​IMG]
     
  3. PhatKat

    PhatKat Banned

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    None at all, but now I really want to burn down a Best Buy.
     
  4. fischju

    fischju Ancient Guru

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  5. Brasky

    Brasky Ancient Guru

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    burn it down, burn it down to the ground....[​IMG]
     
  6. sounar

    sounar Guest

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    yea all major retailers such as best buy are massive commercial walk-in credit card billboards to get you to sign up to as many credit card lenders as possible with every purchase. Credit Card debt is the biggest money making machine ever devised, and majority of people are slaves to it.
     
  7. lmimmfn

    lmimmfn Ancient Guru

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    i only noticed insane capitalism while in the US, i.e. stores pushing credit cards, ads on tv for buy now pay 18 months later( during the day for stay at home mums of course ) and what not, couldnt believe what i was seeing tbh. In europe there are card pushers but rarely in a shop and if that shop has its own credit card e.g. TeXXXs( no free advertisement here :) ) then theres just signs up and those working arent allowed to push it on you.

    Not saying its great over here, but kinda gone to hell over there.
     
  8. sounar

    sounar Guest

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    yea im in Canada, and its the same story as in the US
     
  9. IPlayNaked

    IPlayNaked Banned

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    Yes, a best buy employee asking if you'd like to sign up for a credit card is my definition of hell too.
     
  10. Seref

    Seref Guest

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    A year ago or so I went into a Best Buy just to browse. Found myself at the computer hardware, and there was a little section for Memory. I remember seeing a 4 gig 800mhz DDR2 kit (2 sticks of 2 gigs) for $230. I nearly choked, similar RAM at the time was as cheap as $75 from Newegg and TigerDirect.

    Jesus Christ, no wonder Geek Squad's solution to everything is "You need more RAM." They have like a 200% upcharge on that stuff.
     

  11. The Chubu

    The Chubu Ancient Guru

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    There are two things that USA is addicted to. One is petroleum, the other is credit.
     
  12. Pill Monster

    Pill Monster Banned

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    Christ the first half of that interview revolves entirely around PRON lmao...

    Example:
    Naturally I call BS, but hey stranger things have happened I guess...
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2011
  13. sava700

    sava700 Ancient Guru

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    Who would take their computer to Best Buy for repairs is just stupid anyway. I've got signs up around my area for me to do repairs and I charge very low flat rates as compared to local comp shops. Some of these shops charge $60/hour for service at their location for just malware infections.. Hell it takes me sometimes on/off 5-6hours and scans over night at times to remove everything but I only charge a flat fee of $50. A full format I charge $100 and little xtra for data recovery if I can get it, but other places charge again by the hour and only one other charges a flat fee but it's like $175.

    As for the turning someone in for what they have on the computer..nope I have people sign a form that they agree to pay me for services and I agree to keep 100% confidentiality on what I may come across no matter what the hell it is. Last thing I need is someone to accuse me of posting pictures of them online or something else. I'm sure BestBuy had people sign a similar agreement that says BB could do whatever they wanted like turn you in or whatever so another reason to avoid them.
     
  14. Cadoam

    Cadoam Master Guru

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    Sounds about right, my aunt had taken her computer in to bestbuy for repairs before I moved to Oregon. they said the harddrive needed to be "repaired" after they sent it back, It still wasnt functioning so she sent it back to them and they had replaced the harddrive. when I returned, I tested her old harddrive and have been using it as an external harddrive for storage with a 2.5-3.5" IDE to USB cable. works great, I reformatted the computer and backed everything up in an hours time and everything was functioning. I'm a little confused as to how you can mix up hardware and software issues, let alone ripping out the harddrive before you even know what going on.

    lol learn to troubleshoot - almost every customer I get has a horror story in terms of price or performance with bestbuy, in the least it just makes us real computer technicians look a lot better out there. but it really is wrong how much of a household name the "Geeksquad" has become.
     
  15. deltatux

    deltatux Guest

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    Ye, I never give Best Buy to repair anything. Same with Futureshop (owned by the same company).

    I either do my own repairs or actually send it back to manufacturer. Worst case scenario, I'd give it to repair shops if I don't have the tools.

    deltatux
     

  16. PhazeDelta1

    PhazeDelta1 Guest

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    nothing i dont already know and then some. my sister is a store manager for best buy, and i hear stuff like this on a regular basis.
     
  17. The Laughing Ma

    The Laughing Ma Ancient Guru

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    Whilst the tales do not surprise me the only reason they can get away with this is because the 'average' customers uses ignorance and plain lazyness as an excuse to not know anything about what it is they are trying to buy.

    Yes Sales Assistants are there to help you but to simply walk in to a shop and stand their like a gibbed fish and use the excuse I am looking for X and I know nothing about what it is I am looking for, when you also consider the wealth of free and frankly immediate information that will give even the most slack jawed idiot a crash course amount of info in what ever it is they are wanting to buy, well you might as well walk in to the store lube up open your wallet and say take whatever the hell you want.
     
  18. fischju

    fischju Ancient Guru

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    I recently had a similiar hard drive problem, the SMART data was fine, which is what I have used in the past to give a HDD the 'OK' - I still didn't trust it so I ran a surface scan, tons of bad sectors. It was my fault for using the quicker method in the past, I'll be using the more thorough method in the future on suspect drives.

    Depending on when this happened, the same could be true with your drive. Almost all the tasks done by Geek Squad now are automated, they just pop in a diagnostic disk. If it said the hard drive was bad, it was probably right. Of course if this happened years ago it was very likely technician error.

    - So what do you think the problem was, if not the hard drive which seemed to resolve the issue? Unless I'm reading it wrong. You could be dumping data on an external for years and not notice bad sectors that would kill an OS.
     
  19. nvlddmkm

    nvlddmkm Banned

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    Do people actually use GS!?
     

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