+TutsWithRock Believe it or not, I have in fact encountered machines that had both malware infections (specifically, a rogue antivirus) and an HDD failure (dead write head causing newly-written data to be unreadable). The machine still booted and displayed the infection clearly, although Firefox couldn't start due to the profile being unreadable.
TutsWithRockunfortunatly there's people out there especially middle aged to old women who know close to nothing about computers would actually believe it.
Even in the video, the first Geek Squad does the job perfectly fine. I've had good experiences with them too honestly, but I'm not stupid enough to think that means the company as a whole doesn't have problems that need to be dealt with.
Stuff like that should be a high charge. That individual is being paid by the hour to sit there and click. It's a choice, not a rip off. Laziness of the mind and body comes at a price, that is a luxury.
Alan Burns No doubt. I hate doing that shit for myself, but it's simple as hell. If somebody else wants me to do it for them, they are definitely paying. I'd take 20 an hour cash for a friend, 20 homemade cookies from my mother or 40 for anyone else.
That first guy is my favorite type of tech guy, does it for the challenge and the fun, it's why I fix computers. Old vid I know but I hope his business got a massive boost.
Mike Willett II, I agree! I immediately paused video to write that down. Then scanned comments for...YOURS. That quote is T-shirt worthy. I hope other viewers took his words to heart.
"We take any misdiagnosis very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to be consistently accurate" translates to "Fuck, we are annoyed that you caught us."
anna dees TwstedTV Thanks! :) I just thought I had to put it out there in the clear. :) Actually, if they were sorry, and/or not doing it on purpose, they would have responded some other way. Like, I dunno.. maybe give money back to customer and fire whoever did it?
+Daniel Åkesson or translates to "We're not interested in what you have to say. Scamming is our job. Here's a generic apology so you'll think we're watching out for you, while we're really trying to re-think our strategy to continue scamming people."
I have 18 years exp working on computers and even when i first started out just formatting hard drives and reloading xp i knew better than to take it to geek squad. As a matter of fact a woman where i live just took both of her computers to a local bestbuy and was told that the next update for 10 which is supoosed to be 1810 will cause computers to crash and be unable to be repaired just so microsoft can sell more computers.
@@shiftylips6939 here is the thing though if they did it would ruin them and they would go bankrupt with in 24-48 hours. Everyone from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to Asus and EVGA and everyone in between would be suing them.
That got me laughing so hard when I saw that. Sad part is, so many people probably have fallen for that. "Youve got a virus on your CPU! What's a CPU you ask? Fuck if I know!" -Geeksquad
Aaron Berkofsky I don't understand why that's funny or why op even mentioned it at all, they were just adding things to help convince the customer to buy another computer. The sad thing isn't people falling for it but these worthless scamming scumbags
Platinumrings Im not sure if you're joking or not, or if Im totally misinterpreting your comment all together, but Ill go with it. Im laughing cause it's pitiful that BestBuy does stuff like that. Really goes to show how much of a terrible thing a massive corporate company can be. Also, there is nothing to add up. There was no broken HDD, there was no diagnostic, there was no virus. And even if there was a broken hard drive, a high end, 1tb drive (keep in mind that a few years ago 1tb was a big number) would be a maximum of $150 MSRP.
People like my parents would fall for it because they simply don't know, same with if you go to a Mechanic or Lawyer they can throw all these words to you and you wouldn't even know so you almost have no choice and that's where they screw you.
I took my Toshiba laptop to Geek Squad ONCE, because I told them it was overheating and crashing constantly while I was trying to use it. I told them that I'm 99% sure it's just that the fan is dirty and if they could just show me WHERE I needed to use compressed air to clean the fan, then it'll be fine. Apparently, without even looking at my laptop, they "knew" that the hard drive must be corrupted and the fan is not working at all and that's the ONLY reason my laptop would be doing that. The guy behind the counter asked how old the laptop was and I told him it was about 2-3 years old. I was then told that the laptop is NOT worth repairing and that I was better off buying a new one laptop because mine was too OLD to bother repairing. Really? It's only 2-3 years old and 3 years was the absolute MAX age that it was at the time I brought it in, it has an i7 Core processor, advanced graphics, etc but because it was a couple years old, I should just trash it and buy a whole new laptop >.>. I told him I wanted MY laptop repaired, I do NOT want a new laptop and he went on a whole rant about how he would have to ask his manager if they could even take it because the laptop was so "old" and I told him to bring the manager then. The manager just asked if I was sure that I wanted the laptop repaired, I said yes and he told the guy I was originally talking to to go ahead and take it. He asked me if I was ok with losing all my data on my laptop, because "sometimes that happens when they're repairing the laptop" and I told him no, I'm not ok with that. He then told me I had to buy a separate hard drive to backup all my data before I let them have the laptop to repair. I told him I'll do it at home, but if he could please just blow out the fan for me to make sure it won't overheat and crash while I'm backing up my laptop. He blows it out and tells me that my fan was really dirty and that when I brought my laptop back, it would be $70 just to send it out, not even for "repair" and they didn't even guarantee that it would be repaired, that was just to send the laptop out! 1+ years later, and my laptop still has NOT gone back to them because I have had NO problems with it ever since....
Yayyyy...sock it to them! Just wanted to sell off another product! Crazy, commercial world that we live in :-( If all of us can behave in the same way, we'd have a more sustainable, trash-free world! Great going MsOsabear!!!
Dodger tech people. I hate them. I can get parts for desktops aged up to 6 years. Not easy but doable. It's thievery to make people think otherwise. And best service is do as the customer says and if it doesn't work they will come back.
***** No, I just don't have time to sit there and play with my computer. Seeing that Best Buy is 10 minutes from my house, going there is not a big deal. The fact that they thought they could scam me was their own stupidity. Also, how cute, you came back twice to try to talk shit… I imagine you're a very productive member of society ;)
***** Sorry, I don't eat Mcdonald's, considering I can afford much better. Hat? Funny, I hardly wear hats meaning you must be going through my profile, how sweet ;)
Not necessarily, depends how you define broken. I've had a harddrive that was acting weird, like when deleting files, they wouldn't delete. And later on, windows xp wouldn't install on it, cause of a bad sector. So I would say it was broken even though it was still working (as in running windows). I think a lot of old people have never opened up their pc, perhaps from fear of breaking it. And they have probably never needed to go into the bios for anything, so they don't understand the basics of how the computer works. So it makes sense for them to get help from time to time, good to see that most computer businesses are legit.
Colin Java "I've had a harddrive that was acting weird, like when deleting files, they wouldn't delete." ==That might be due to a Win XP bug. I had that problem. I searched the web. The solution is to delete from the command prompt.
I got kicked out of a Best Buy once because there was a lady on the floor looking for a good computer to download pictures from her digital camera onto. The Geek Squad guy told her that she would need a $800 computer they had on the floor, plus an upgrade to a $300 Graphics card, that they would install for X amount of dollars. I told her that all she needed was the $400 budget laptop that they had on the floor, and that the computer he showed her was for advanced gaming. and that the graphics card was a top of the line card that most current games didnt even need. She thanked me and bought the laptop. Shortly after the manager came up and escorted me out of the store.
Being kicked out of a store, that's the price of being and honest guy, LOL. It's very nice to know that there are people who still wants to do the right thing.
I highly doubt any of that. They would not escort you out, in fact they cant. Geek Squad do not do computer sales, they aren't allowed. And there is no way they recommended a $300 graphics card as they do not carry high value cards in-store, its all special order. Geek Squad are not on commission, and even if it was a salesperson, why would they recommend a computer worth so much that the customer ends up just saying no? If they were being aggressive in sales, then they would just up the cost by a hundred,
***** Im guessing Best Buys Geek Squad work on commission, there were a few places around here that were bad for that and all of them were on commission
When I was 12 I Paid em $80 to install a stick of ram... and then googled it later that night to find out it only takes 5 minutes... omg. I mean now I know how to build my own pc, but the fact that they would rip off kids is just pitiful.
literally take off the side and slide it into place. Just for reference that's pretty much how you do any repair on a computer, the only difference is some parts need screws.
thomas fleck I don't know... I've gotta say the easiest thing to do is turning it on. If you're talking components I'd say it's the battery actually. I can think of a few people that would struggle installing RAM. So judgy, geez.
I used to be a Tech Supervisor at Best Buy. I left when Geek Squad came on board and the company started "over pricing" customers. (Can't use a stronger word cheating for legal reasons.) Before GS if a customer had a warranty we were allowed to Restore a computer for free, after GS we had to charge $69.00. After a few months the charge became $69 for a diagnose AND $69 for the Restore. Shortly thereafter the cost went to over $200. $69 diagnose, $69 Restore, AND $69 for virus/spam removal. Yes, we were instructed to charge for removing Viruses and Spam even though we Restored the customers computer with the Manufacture's System Restore CDs. I could no longer work at such a dishonest place.
My dad had to use them once when I was away and couldn't come fix his pc for him. All he needed was a new PSU installed. They charged him for new psu, installation, wiped his HD / reinstalled OS (without backing anything up), and for virus removal. Bunch of scamming bastards.
Ben Allen A lot of these places wipe the HD and reinstall the OS - they say it's to make sure there are no viruses, but really it's lazyness. They do tell you to back up before giving them your machine - but if your machine won't even turn on, you can't backup. Of course they offer a backup service for $$$. Major scam
***** this exactly, and a bigger kick in the squad's balls is there are videos on youtube here, that show how to purely disinfect a computer without wiping it, now with this new knowledge, I will do that to my family's computer first before resorting to something lazy any customer can do themselves for free if anything goes wrong, theres rougeamp, and another guy that demonstrates
Blue screens are rarely hardware related. I quit when "Pushing" services and replacement computers became the company's main goal. THe Geek Squad is not there to save the customer money.
William Maxey they only sell new machines, and charge extra to "optimize it" (aka uninstall the trial antivirus bundled with the computer in 5 hours or more) so FUCK the nerd corperations youtube and the internet for repair help youtube, sevenforums, eightforums are excelent resources for self repair and diagnosis with the enthusiest nerds that aren't saleshoes themselves im glad geek squad couldnt hire me due to my 17 year age at the time because i would have gotten fired for actually FIXING a problem like they claim they do
1:22 She seems surprised that paying for a tech to travel out to their location, spend an unknowable amount of time troubleshooting a computer with an unknown problem, potentially spending time to repair the issue or at least make a backup of the machine, potentially traveling back to and from their normal place of business for parts, and then finally traveling back to the shop after completing the job would be expensive.
Geek Squad once cut wires inside of my newly purchased computer about 10 years ago and attempted to blame it on me and my family while charging nearly $300 in diagnostic fees. They are nothing more than another reason to learn a skill for yourself since trusting retailers in the 21st century is out of the question.
Depends whether you are fixing unplagged hard drive in your PC or monitor in laptop, I mean you can do most repairs yourself but for some you need specialized tools and it might be cheaper and faster to let service do them. Though for the less serious repairs it should not be that hard to find tutorial or ask your family geek or some friend.
Learning computers is a good skill to have anyways. Built my own PC for really cheap compared to the pre-built PCs which would have cost me $3,000 more than the parts separately. Not to mention pre-builts always skimp on the parts. You also don't have to depend on these scammers for the most basic stuff, 99% of the problems they fix can be fixed with a little research and googling yet they still manage to get that wrong.
thats how you success in life: the strongest survives, and the strongest is the one making money. How do you make money? By scamming people. If I wrong, then why are your comment valid?
+PCG try impossible unless you put it on there yourself. To change your bios you have to flash it this is very different from saving files on your hard drive. anyway i think it's pretty clear that the store in question was trying to milk money from from the customer
dafrandle No. It is possible to have a BIOS Virus from the manufacturer. Like I said, it is incredibly rare (hence why I say "technically"). Obviously it is different from a virus on the hard drive, but OP was asking if it was even possible to have a virus without the hard drive. Here is a story of this happening: www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1jl11v/virus_in_the_bios_no_really/
Had similar results when I tried to take my laptop in to ask about a boot error. They told me I needed to buy a new hard drive online and bring it back for a 150 dollar installation, then got embarrassed when I told them they were full of shit.
I used to have an ad out in the paper for in home computer repair. It was only a side business that yielded about 1-3 jobs each weekend. Each repair averaged $30.00+travel to location expense. When Geek squad was announced, my business almost halted entirely. Calls would come in 1-3 per month instead of each weekend, eventually only a few people would call me because I could see them right away to eventually nobody calling at all. I saw Geek squad vans/cars rolling around my town almost twice a week. Last year I started getting calls again, I told them "I'm out of the business, you called Geek squad instead of me because they were the hot new thing and pushed me aside. You baked the shit pie, now you eat it." At this point I hang up. Now I'll just sit back and watch it burn.
Same here buddy. I used to do $40 an hour no drive out fee. This was my livelyhood on top of that. You were lucky it was a side thing. Geek squad rolled in and other little Indian repair shops. Come to find out most of those guys dont even have work visa's or anything like that they would fly over say they are just here visiting and then setup shop. Here one day gone tomorrow. If they get caught they are just sent back to India and maybe a 6 month bar from entering the us. They wait 6 months and do it again. Same as you I went down to a few calls a week with maybe one repair to eventually nothing. Also same as you Ive recently got some calls and some emails and I pretty much said similar to what you said. "geek squad and the fly by night Indian shops are your buddy now and put me out of business. Sorry they wanna charge you $300 to put in a hard drive and install windows good luck!"
people make mistakes, they probably wanted to pay in credit too, maybe. sometimes the bigger places seem like they will be cheaper. im so glad i dont need their services.
encycl07pedia He blames them because he offered a better service at a cheaper price, and because everyone decided to follow trends, and still not call him after they were ripped off he left them be.
Wait. The computer doesn't boot, so how could they, with any confidence, lie about it having a virus?? They sound like those Indian telephone scammers.
Alan Burns Yeah, but she needed a new hard drive anyways. Then they tried to charge her for a virus afterwards. If they replace the hdd, they'll have done both. No reason to charge her for 2 things. It's like me charging you for wiping your hard drive when all i did was buy a new one.
The geek squad is such a shit operation. I cracked my laptop screen and it needed to be replaced. They said they could do it for $500 with labor. I ended up learning how to replace it myself and did it in 11 minutes.
***** yeah where I use to live in Florida. There was a big store called tigerdirect same as company USA. Which are similar to best buy , that use to rip people off by taking working parts and putting crappy parts in the computer. I'm a technician and I have fixed more than 200 computers phones and cameras over the past years and I would never steal from somebody cause that makes a bad reputation
Maybe someone should investigate the BBB... why would they willingly allow a company to consolidate reports with stores in another state? It is blatantly obvious that the choice of the Minnesota stores was a calculated move to obfuscate their poor reports. It really makes me wonder why the BBB would allow such a move and if they actually have provisions in place that allow for such a deceptive practice, then their ethics and integrity as a consumer reporting agency should be called into question.
James Moore True enough, but it is a consumer reporting agency that is widely considered the "go-to" source for exposure of bad business practices and they do have power in a lateral sense. While they cannot personally enforce the shut down of a business, they can certainly affect the amount of business a company gets when they have a poor rating. If the BBB is willing to be complicit in covering up bad PR for mega-corps like Geek Squad then they are unduly affecting smaller competing businesses that either lack that recourse due to not having other chains to combine with or not enough clout to force the BBB to compromise their integrity. When I say someone should investigate them, I meant investigative journalism, just like they did with these PC repair shops. It's a "Who Watches the Watchmen" sort of scenario.
I disagree. I can't think of the last time I've looked at the BBB before heading to a business. Maybe for older generations, but the BBB is useless compared to Yelp reviews. While Yelp reviews aren't always the best, it's usually a decent indicator of quality.
Rob Vella Just because you don't personally use the BBB, doesn't mean it isn't used or is outdated. How arrogant. Yelp is easily manipulated and very unreliable. There have been numerous reports on the integrity of Yelp, and none of them are favorable. Your confirmation bias of Yelp is based on the average expectancy clause in that the vast majority of customer experiences are neutral, at best. So you see a 4 star review, don't encounter a shit-storm when you go, and confirm that Yelp was accurate, but that would have been likely in any event. Yelp knows this, and preys on that bias. The BBB is purely for reporting business malpractice and the quality of a report from them stems from the lack of content, not the overly generous flood of banal experiences inflated to a wondrous moment or distortions created by fake reports. Check out the CBC report on the Cheezed Off truck for an example of your vaunted Yelp.
+I Am The Shitzu Yeah people don't realize how easy it can be. a phillips screwdriver is the only tool required along with 2 cables to change out the drive. Computers are NOT freaking magic!
+Morganamilo "you broked it, the magical smoke is gone and now it wont work anymore" a long pause "can we use a fan to push the magical smoke back in?"
I'm a very savvy computer repairman and I've had to fix lots of my friends computers after they first took them to PC repair shops. They got to charge money and ruin the machines whereas I fixed them for free. Best advice I can give is to make friends with someone who is good at PC fixes and when they look at problems offer them a nice pie. Way better than shady repair shops.
+Doug Vandegrift A very wise old man once told me, "Business is business and we all have to make a living somehow. Since my enemies won't do business with me, I have to charge my friends." I'm diabetic. I don't want a friggin' pie. Jedi mind tricks don't work on me, only money.
Rich Price that's fine if you're trying to make a business out of it, but I'm just making a point that you can trust friends more than businesses in many cases. This whole video is about businesses taking advantage of their customers unless you already forgot.
+Doug Vandegrift Didn't forget anything. I was in the IT business from 1984 until 2013. No "trying" about it. You don't keep a successful business going for 29 years if you can't be trusted. People hire carpenters instead of friends. Electricians instead of friends, accountants instead of friends, plumbers instead of friends, glaziers instead of friends. Why? Friends don't generally tend to possess a professional level of skill and education for the job. With the exception of a very limited few, businesses are more trustworthy, because they are professionals. The whole video explained that the ONLY business who got a failing grade was a single Best Buy store, unless you already forgot.
Geek Squad tried to rip me off also. Told me the hard drive was dead and it would cost $650 to recover all my wife's photo files. She thought she was backing up but wasn't. A local computer guy was able to get almost all the files, the drive was failing but not dead, only a few could not be recovered. He also showed us how to copy the files to google drive for a backup. Total charge, about $90 with tax. Gave him $100 and keep the change. Well worth paying for honest service.
I was told to leave bestbuy just for helping a customer make up his mind on buying a ps4 or a Xbox 1. He bought a 12 month ps plus card, Dying Light and NBA 2k15, and then the playstation. So I helped him do all that and shortly I was told I "should" leave. Idk what's up with bestbuy sometimes, my local bestbuy are slackers on helping people. The man was browsing around and no one was there to help him or ask if he needed anything.
***** Halo is meh, Playstation has more than enough to make up for that. In fact Destiny multi-player is better anyway imo, so i don't really miss halo at all (went from 360 to ps4).
+PraiseTheSun20 There are many different fixes that can be done at home at a relatively low cost depending on the hard drive. Any reputable PC repair shop will tell you the risks/benefits of doing things yourself, or tell you what needs to be done. Even still, most hard drive recovery won't cost that much.
Even to try and find recovery software is quite pricey. Yes you can try to do it yourself. Or use cheap software and risk losing everything. I've got some skills with computers, but even for me it was not easy at all and required a lot of research and patience.
Few years back my mom bought a TV from there, and for the the low price of $150 geek squad would come set her it up for her. I laughed and said I could plug it in and and run a channel scan for free. All they do is try to scam older people out of there money.
im a geek squad employee starting soon. (in limbo of computer sales and geek squad), and the main point about the home installation services we have is so that if we mess up the installation or the device we are installing, its covered by us. and lots of people dont have the time to install it themselves and drill holes into walls to hide cables. its a lot of work to make it pretty.
Caseymanbrodude, if you think that's a lot of work you have no idea what work is. What you just described takes 1 hour TOPS and that's if you have NO IDEA what you're doing. This should take you 20 minutes. Unpack tv, install mount bars on back of tv or tv stand, istall mounting bracket on wall, run wire which is normally already run, plug in tv, scan channels. The scan alone takes 10 minutes out of that 20. Thats how easy it is.
PaddiM8 recovering data from a corrupted hard drive costs way more than $580, requires a clean room and costs thousands. They were just going to install a new hard drive, guarantee it.
This video looks like it's from the mid to late 90's. Hard drives weren't exactly cheap back then. Shit, the price a a 2TB HD now would be a bargain compared to a 4GIG HD back then. Lol
I was scammed into buying an Asus computer at a Best Buy in AZ. They had me sign up for the Geek Squad services too. I am not computer savvy. A month after buying the computer, I began having issues with it. I would contact them several times a week and they would work on it remotely. Well, just about every time, I was left with the original problem not fixed and additional issues. This went on for months. Eventually, the computer performance worsened. Finally, after two years of this, they informed me that the mother board was irreversible broken. I told them how could this be? The computer was barely two years old. The warranty ran out and then they had the audacity to tell me it would cost me a lot of money to fix it and that I'd be better off buying a new computer. I reported them to the BBB, but they refused to make amends of any kind. I ended up going somewhere else to buy a new computer (this new one works great). Now, if I have issues, I have my family member work on it (he's a computer technician). I will never trust the Geek squad or that particular Best Buy again. I feel I was scammed out of over a thousand dollars and I even suspect that they may have done something to damage the computer on purpose. I was told by a computer tech that if the computer is dropped, the mother board can become damaged. I never dropped it but, on more than one occasion, I did leave it at the Geek Squad store when they had to physically work on it because they, supposedly, couldn't fix the "problem" remotely. So, just for the sake of giving these jerks some bad publicity, the store is located in Ahwatukee AZ 00177, 5051 E. Ray RD. 85044. It's a public address, so I feel confident to publish it here Stay away from them.
Panama Girl you gave them remote access to your computer, that was where you went wrong the second time. The first time was buying from them to begin with.
Interesting. I just posted. I can fully back you on that. I have personally fixed dozens of computers that that store had "repaired". Issues that are not possible to occur unless you know how to cause them. Sorry you ened up as one of their victims.
I'm laughing so hard because a 4TB hard drive costs only $154.88. What makes this even funnier? The hard drive they were using for this segment was probably under 250GB, which is less than $30.
+Lost Sandwich thats so true. I am quite sure they are still doing this exact crap everyday to every customer that walks in, just another reason to build your own computer.
+cope_dipper i've been trying to learn how to build a pc because i want to switch from console gaming to pc gaming but i have no idea where to get started. know where i could go to learn about that stuff?
+Epicvampire800 There's this nifty new thing called the "internet." You could start there. A Google search will help you find the "internet" if you don't know where to find it.
+Epicvampire800 There's plenty of guides on youtube, I suggest looking at, at least, two videos of professionals putting a computer together. I suggest looking for *linus tech tips*, *jayz two cents* or *newegg*'s videos. They're all very accurate on computer building and selecting the parts.
As a former Geek Squad employee, I'm not surprised! My Forte was Audio/Video which I learned in the military, as well as when I was a new products tech for Cabletron. I started at a new Best Buy, Portsmouth NH, store 535, and was quickly certified as a PC tech. Because of my background I was able to fix simple issues but relied on the other techs for the more problematic issues. Fortunately, as we were the original techs when the store opened we knew the limitations each tech had and worked around that to get the customer the best service possible. As time went on, and techs moved on to other employeers, the capabilities shrunk where the ones in house when I left were barley able to wipe their nose let alone fix a computer. As in this video, most would push the customer to buy a new machine, but I was one of the few that took pride trying to get the customer the best buy for tyheir buck. I eventually left as I could no longer deal with the "up sell" as they refer to it. I know Best Buy is not always the "best buy", please forgive the pun.
Back when the Ps3 was coming out during the holidays, I was in a Best Buy in Mankato, MN that was charging $50!!! TO UPDATE THE SYSTEM FOR YOU.. Some people were in line and I walked up to them, told them it was FREE to do on their own at home. They thanked me, Geek Squad sneered at me and I left laughing.
Geek Squad hires people who actually don't know what they're doing, I wouldn't call it a scam though, just incompetence. A friend of mine was told by a Geek Squad manager, "If you have your A+ Certification, you're over qualified." --- For those of you who don't know, the A+ Certification is the base level certification for I.T Support. So they're literally saying, they'd rather you have no knowledge than any knowledge at all.
trucidotk I actually work at best buy and originally was declined for geek squad because they either have to a base certification or college experience. Thats at least how it works at my store but then again they also don't hire inexperienced sales people or customer service reps at my store.
I worked at my local one for the first 3 years it was open, and was there top tech. I came in with my MCSE, A+ and electronics certifications. Yup, I was pretty much told as well I was over-qualified, but they wanted people to see they had at least one certified tech ( and I was the only one, and if you have 3 MCSE's you can be a certified solutions partner). It was called Product service then, and became Geek Squad later on when the bought the name from 3 guys in their home town for $3m. I had customers come in and ask for me by name, and after I left, they found me privately. Can't tell you how many redo's I had from other techs there from when I still worked there to years after, and to this day.
I always tell people that Geek Squad is a rip off. They nickel and dime you for dumb things, and by the time they give you a price, it's double the amount of your PC. I needed a hard drive replaced a few years back and Geek Squad told me I also had a virus, but they didn't know my friend was a computer engineer and he even said there was no virus. I got it back and I replaced the hard drive at a local computer shop for less than half the price of geek squad..........oh, and he still never found a virus.
Sports Fanatic local comp shops are the way to go it seems...I busted a flash drive once (snapped it at the connector while it was plugged in), and the gut tried for 2 hours to get power to it, but he couldn't and then said no charge! my dad felt so bad for all the work he did he paid him anyway...
Sports Fanatic Why would you care if there was a virus or not if you were replacing the harddrive? I love how people expect "simple" changes for free but are unable to do it themselves. Either you need them to do it and to pay for their time, or you can do it yourself for free. You come in to receive a service; they aren't there to do it for free. And everything there is a menu. There is no nickel and diming. They'll tell you what they think you need and you decide to do it or not. Take it or leave it. Appreciate that your super friend can look at PC and know whether or not there's a virus. You obviously had an issue to have to replace the drive.
nope, but i know it makes no sense to remove a virus on a harddrive you are replacing, so bitching about that is a waste of time. it's useless information. but regardless of that, your computer engineer friend, be it software or mechanical isn't going to know if there's no virus running the free version of avg or whatever other malwarebytes garbage he downloaded on the Internet.
Casey Paver So you think you know now how he figures how there is viruses??? haha Do you just randomly troll peoples comments to fish for likes??? Go into geek squad and blow everyone there, you know you want to.
Actually the high school kid will actually do a better job. My wife tried Geeksquad once (before we were married). They had her laptop on the shelf for a week. We walked in to check on the status and they told us they hadn't even touched it yet. BTW, Geeksquad charges (or at the time) by the day, so it came to a lot of money for them to format and reinstall Windows.
Given the problem was an unplugged HD cable, I'd trust a savvy HS kid before I'd trust the Geek Squad. Actually I could have fixed that problem myself. And it's so unlikely that a cable plug that was properly seated in the first place to come loose that if I were a crooked repair person I'd suspect I was being set up.
I wonder how many gigabytes of dedicated ram it can give to Minecraft. Gotta get skywars going on my private server with all of my non existent friends.
joblessalex To be fair, not booting could be a boot sector virus, corrupted bootloader, disabled boot partition. Checking the basics should be the first thing like the smaller shops did. Anyone who doesn't and charges an extreme amount of money for a less than $100 part is a scammer. If you have problems with your computer, Google or TH-cam are your friends. If you need certain parts cheap and know what you're doing or know someone who does, eBay is your friend. None of it is that hard to do.
"We take any Misdiagnosis very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to be consistently accurate. In other words. I am really pissed off inside that we were caught.
NEVER go to Geek Squad... Took my old laptop there once, and they wanted to charge me $150 just to see what was wrong with it. I didn't know any better at the time, so I went through with it. They told me my motherboard was dead. And that I would need to buy a new laptop. After that, a sales associate offered to show me new laptops, tried to sell me on one. First and last time I ever use Geek Squad. Extremely over priced, and they didn't even fix my laptop.
NEVER bring your computer to a shop to diagnose / fix if you don't have an intermediate knowledge about computers yourself. Get a geeky friend to help you, and treat them some nice dinners.
Being one of those geeky friends, you can just go figure it yourself. It's not my job to bail you out. I work for a living just like everyone else and deserve to be compensated. Don't abuse your relationship just to try and save a buck.
Jayson Nickols Trading work doesn't always pan out that well with computers and electronics either. For some reason people see these skills as worth less value than say a mechanic or a plumber. Well, when their computer slows to a crawl or they can't use their devices, they can find somebody else if they have that attitude. I put in the time to learn, and that's likely the part they don't understand because they don't witness it. The stuff is constantly changing, and I have no idea going in what they did or what their habits are. If I have to sit there for 3 hours cleaning up their digital garbage, they can do a little maintenance on my car without acting like it's worth so much more. Labor for labor, just supply the parts. I have my skill specific tools, they have theirs. It makes sense to a rational mind, but I'm finding that there aren't that many rational minds out there anymore.
+Jayson Nickols Being a half-decent person I couldn't see myself telling a friend to fuck off and go to Best Buy. I have a hard time believing you're one of those "geeky friends".. Maybe a "geek" but you can go ahead and drop the friend title.
The *BBB* has become a totally worthless _profit-making_ venture. Business can purchase _"memberships"_ to get better scores. So where's the _"Independent and impartial"_ rating system? *_Yelp,_* by the way, has started pulling the same crap.
I used to work at a Best Buy Geek Squad. The problem is there is an enormous amount of pressure on selling services. When I was there we were issued sales stats every hour and it was up to us to stay on top of our sales numbers. The process is basically this: During check in we spend a few minutes to see what could be wrong. If it's something as minor as reconnecting a cable we didn't charge for that and off you went. If we needed to run further diagnostics then we'd check in the computer for diagnostics. The guys in front are usually just glorified sales associates that know slightly more than the average joe on computer repair. That's also where we'd try and push for the data backup to make a backup copy of the customer's data since their data. It's an expensive add on and depending on how much data we're backing up the customer may also be required to purchase an external hard drive for the service to be rendered. The main diagnostics are done in the back where there's typically one or two guys that know their stuff along with a remote access system called Agent Johnny Utah. It's a system in which we connect the computer to the internet and workers based in India remote in and run the diagnostic tests. If all 12+ stations were taken up it'd be queued up and MAYBE one of the guys that knows their stuff will be doing the diagnostic. It's worth noting that India does not have the same privacy laws as the United States so whatever info they gather from the computer is under India's law; sadly most customers are not aware of this. All and all Geek Squad agents are hired for their retail experience, not so much their technical prowess. Most serious repairs such as cpu or motherboard replacements are sent out for repair to a Geek Squad City facility. Also, at least when I was there, it was standard procedure to recommend a new PC to customers with a computer that was older than 3 years; then sell them the most expensive one we could with as many accessories as possible that they may need. The add ons are what matter on the sales ticket especially the service plans. So you have high pressure sales without commission, people with little technical knowledge sans the exceptional few that get hired on and do know their stuff. Geek Squad is one of the higher paying positions in the store so promotions there are highly sought after.
BestBuy is BS. My mom and I went to BestBuy so I could get a new hard drive for my computer. The employee said, "This one is fast, good, yeah. Only $100." It was a 600 GB. A customer went up and said, "Don't listen." He pointed out a $60 1 TB HDD. I immediately thanked him and grabbed it. Picked up some speakers too. I still have the hard drive...
AlphaLineGaming | R.I.P Satoru Iwata | Gaming Videos Just because a hard drive has larger storage capacity doesn't make it better quality. The hard drive he pointed out was likely much faster.
Nope, the one I got is a 7200 RPM, the 600 GB one was 5400 RPM. Either way, I could tell he was trying to rip me off because I said all I wanted was a 1 TB and he goes for a 600 GB one.
+AlphaLineGaming | R.I.P Satoru Iwata | Gaming Videos Your have to realize that companies have to make a profit in someway, but I understand your point.
+Austin Spencer that's a disguising excuse, they make plenty of money without trying to fuck people over with mis direction and lies, its just greedy people in the control seats, nothing more
+Nate Higgers not really, tricky, that's marketing. different routers do many many different things. its very common to find different "levels" of the same thing in 2 or 3 different spots.
they're still just as bad... If not worse. I had a dead CMOS battery(which is just a watch battery that powers the motherboard timer when it's turned off) which I took to them because I didn't want to accidentally void my PC warranty while replacing it myself. It turned out that after they attempted to replace the battery in store, it would not boot up. They told me that it must be something else, so they sent it off to their main repair facility which took a little over a week. It turned out that the CMOS battery was the only problem. In addition to that they factory reset my PC and recommended a new OS. I know it didn't need a new OS and there was no reason to perform a factory rested during a CMOS battery change. In fact they should not have even logged into my PC because the CMOS battery is entirely hardware and changing it does not affect anything software wise. Basically the store didn't assemble my PC correctly and the main repair facility factory reset my PC for no reason. They also tried to upsell me by recommending that I buy a Windows OS from them(not an upgrade; the same one on my computer just a fresh download. (FYI you can buy restore disks for much cheaper form the PC manufacturers website, so it was purely a marketing strategy)
that price includes a whole new EULA install of windows as well as pay for labor, maybe 3h at $75/h. macs are not EULA. the license transfers with the computer. but if the tester had bought the computer new there should be a license code somewhere in her documents if she kept them and they can just install with any windows cd and use the code from the factory.
+Invincible Skolas Nope. Used to work at Best Lie. In Computers. With a tech background. With the intent of getting promoted to Geek Squad. It is COMPANY POLICY to promote the best SALES PEOPLE to Geek Squad. Not the most knowledgeable. This is because Best Lie bought the Geek Squad name specifically to scam their low information customer base. Fact.
+Ronin Tetsuro Maybe when it comes to the front of the precinct they want to hire sales people but the back of the precinct, they actually want people who know the ins and outs of computers and technology. I know for a fact that every single one of my fellow ARA"s who work in the back are pretty knowledgeable about computers. I know
+cheesesteakphilly The problem that can (and does) happen is these larger companies have hyperagressive policies to drive sales. It can and sometimes does lead to people in those companies lying to make a sale. I've seen it myself n I'm sure many here have as well. As ronin tetsuro said it's standard practice, they only make some flimsy excuses when caught. A friend worked in a similar store in the repair department, guess who got promoted.... not anybody there the longest or most experience but a blonde with double D's who's only knowledge was sales. Thats not the exception either.
i bought a BRAND NEW laptop off the shelf in best buy and did NOT leave the store with it or turn it on but took it straight to their geek squad to upgrade the ram from 4gb to 8gb. geek squad had to order the ram for it because store was out. they kept comp in shop until ram arrived then installed it. they used the wrong type and fried the circuit board so the comp was toast and useless. they refunded the computer BUT REFUSED TO REFUND the geek squad fees ($150) for the install that destroyed the computer. stating that their fees are nonrefundable. i recorded the entire incident on video. went to court and they lied saying i had taken the computer home and that was why they didnt refund the fees because they said the circuit fried was not their fault. never mind the store security cameras and mine both showed i never turned it on or left the store with it. because they are a big business and have fancy lawyers i lost the case. geek squad are frauds and thieves and should be put out of work!
I did the same thing and got a settlement of $ 10,000 no court but it took me 3 years plus I got to keep the shit I had bought, What won it for me was a breach of contract x 3
my friend took his notebook up to best buy because it wouldnt connect to the net even tho it was plugged in it would say local area connection but no webpage. he took it to best buy and they said 400 for virus removal. i did a system restore and saved him 400 bucks.
Most Geek Squad locations aren't into fixing things but instead are there to sell expensive products consumers really don't need or charge fees for not being able to fix anything.
I worked in PC sales and loved helping people find the most cost effective pc solution and not selling them things they didn’t need. Needless to say, my supervisors weren’t happy with me at all.
I worked in Best Buy many years ago in college. From the minute we sell geek squad on anything from tvs to computers or appliances it's all a scam! Protections only cover a certain amount of years way before the life span of anything and there's fine print on almost all work done. geek squad is nothing but a business within a business. Geek squad to me only takes advantages of the fools who think they are benefiting from anything being done there. Help your mom and pop repair places not only do they deserve your business more but more than surely your computer will be diagnosed correctly.
Geek squad needs to be shut down. I had a laptop get knocked off my desk and got the screen shattered. I bought the PC for $350 for school. Geek squad told me it would be $120 for the screen and $230 in labor because it would take 2 hours to replace. I found a new screen on Amazon for $50 and replaced it in less than 10 minutes!
@@ralphobrien1615 OP doesn't specify make and model do it is difficult to say, but 10 minutes is achievable with many notebook screen assemblies. If it is a Dell, for example, I have no trouble believing 10 minutes for many of the models; as you are only looking at snapping off the screen and keyboard bezels, less than a dozen screws and seating the wiring. Sure, there are some systems out there where it is going to take much longer, but we cannot know without the OP specifying the make and model. Though I will agree this would not include any testing, but the OP never tested the screen. Let's face it, they switched on the notebook and saw the display working, that's all they needed.
We dont quite labor its included in the $85 fee to send it to the service center then you get a quote on how much the part is so in total if the part was 125 you would pay the 85 then the 125 that's it
I took my laptop to Tiger Direct for a log in problem,[ it wouldn't let me in at start up] the service guy, ran some diagnostic program for about 45min, and it fixed the problem. He told me no cost, because they didn't have to keep it.[ he had me fill out the form just in case] I was so greatful to him that I tipped him $20. He was shocked, never had that happen before. He saved me over $100, with the $70 min. take in charge, plus repair fees. Now he knows me, and helps any way he can. I learned very young to tip, it usually pays off. He could easily have beaten me, because I didn't know jack about computers.
This makes me sick. I'm an ex-con(selling pills) and I'am a PC/Phone/TV/Car Audio/A/V/Technician and I would NEVER EVER lie to a customer, although I have made honest mistakes in repairing devices. I love the fact that I have a skill and a little bit of kindness and respect will bring you through anything. WTF is wrong with people? I can't get a job at Best Buy or Geek Squad or a LOT of places because of my background and I could run circles around most of these so called PC repairmen.I'm thankful for y'all uncovering these thieves.
Yeah I went in to best buy when I didn't know how to hook up my PSU, GPU, and they wanted 70$ lol, and then to hook up my stereo was like 160$ fuck best buy rather learn urself.
+2 Reese Cups you're not returning them if that's the case, returns are a full refund, you're selling it back to them, and can always say no to their price, and go somewhere else, or sell it yourself. While I dislike GameStop and their shady practices, they do still need to be able to make a profit from it including the amount it takes to keep that game on the store shelf.
I am GLAD i finally found this video. I have been ripped off so many times by Geek Squad! i bought a "warranty" that was practically worthless for 150.00 from them.
Back then I bought parts and built a computer, but I think I missed a cord and I cannot figure out which one is not plugged right. So I went to the local computer repair shop. It was obvious, that the computer had no problem, it was not broken. Yet, they charged me $75 just for looking at it and plug a cord. They also charged me for a new fan, however I didn't need a new fan. The other fan was brand new. They took another 13 dollars for that. Next time the computer broke, we went there, left the computer there for a day and then they called that the Hard Drive was not in it. I told them that it doesn't matter, because the computer won't start. The HDD is fine, just make the computer pass the BIOS. They refused to do that. I went there, picked up the broken computer, and dropped at another computer repair shop. The owner was a nice Arab guy, I left the computer there and he called me like 2 hours later, told me that a memory stick was dead. He just umplugged it and the computer started right. This "fix" was also kinda expensive, but cheaper than the 1st shop's offer and the 2nd shop is actually did the job, they didn't ask for my HDD to fix a memory stick error. Also, at BestBuy an employee sold me the wrong computer with the wrong processor. I told him what I needed, and he sold me something completely different. Some shops are just ridiculious, overpriced and the employees know less about computers than I do. :-/
thatmaninblack Also, if you think about it, why did they want my HDD so badly? Maybe they wanted to steal my work projects and original software programs? I'd say probably.
I would never trust a computer repair company or a mechanic for your vehicle or anything like that. 75% of them bullshit you and take advantage of your ignorance. I'd rather try using the internet to figure out the problem myself which usually works and it's easy.
I personally run my own shop, "Always Chiefin" and ALWAYS strive to treat my clients (not just customers) as I would want to be treated if I were on the other side of the counter. There are plenty of honest people out there. You can't just lump everyone together because you've had bad life experiences. And while you are able and willing to weed through the internet to solve your issues, some people just don't have the time or basic knowledge to know where to begin and want a knowledgeable expert to solve issues quick and reasonably. Being dishonest only cheapens my soul, in my opinion and I want my children to see a certain type of man when they see me in my dealings with other human beings. Instead of being angry, and mistrustful of all but 25% of the other 6 billion people you share the planet with, maybe help some of those people that you call ignorant (it will make you feel good), and when you don't have the resources to solve your own problems, don't automatically assume you're going to be "bullshitted." Stick with local, non-corporate technicians, etc. Oh! and maybe stop listening to rap... that stuff will make anyone angry! :) (that part is a joke. Good day)
My computer wouldn't boot up I couldn't figure out why, I tried the pushing f10 and control button still no luck. So I took it to a computer repair shop in Farmington mo. They did the same thing and it worked, and they also ran a hard drive test at no charge.
Yeah, GeekSquad did the same thing to me as well. Took my laptop in for repairs and they claimed my hard drive was broken as well and would need to be repaired, when I really just needed a new install of Windows.
Did you ever think that diagnostic testing pointed to the hard drive starting to fail. More often than not I see clients come in with working computers save for a few viruses and rogue malware only to find that the hard drive failed diagnostics and would need to be replaced. Better to get it done right away then remove the viral activity give the client back their computer then a few months down the road they come back wondering why their computer stopped booting into windows.
people seem to forget when best buy got in trouble with sony because they were charging $50.00 for a firmware upgrade on new ps3's....something you could do at home by just pressing the x button.
I took my laptop to them so see how much it would be to replace my disk drive...... they told me it was going to be $100 for labor and $250 for a new disc drive. I told them ok I'll just go a few feet grab the usb desc drive for $25 and call it a day. They had the most pissed off face ever, a few weeks later I went there and surprise surprise they moved the computer parts to the very back of the store and no usb disc drives either.
Kap pa 250 for a drive? wow... What kind of drive was it anyway? Not even a Blu Ray drive would cost that much. and the average optical drive for a laptop seems to be between 20 and 40 bucks.
I took my son's computer to Best Buy because it would not start-up, and within a few hours, they said that they could not recover the data and asked if they could re-install OEM software thus, overwriting everything. We agreed to do this (and lose the data) but a day later, they said that the hard-drive was damaged beyond repair and there was a fault on the mainboard too. They suggested the cost to repair this (est. over $800.00) was nearing what a new computer would be. I indicated that my son was getting a new computer for Christmas anyway (all this taking place in early November) so, no worries. So, I requested to pay for their time and be done. They packed up the computer and when I got to the store, they told me NO CHARGE for the nearly 8 hour of time they held our computer, as they were not successful in fixing it! That impressed me.
"Ma'am... it looks like your Hard drive belt was broke. We had to replace it. Your DVD drive fluid was low so we topped that off. Also, your USB ports needed a realignment so we went ahead and fixed that. That will be $900"
So what's the hiring process like for the 'geek squad' ? "Do you know anything about computers?" "Well..not really." "Ok, how comfortable are you to pretend that you do?" "Very." "Great, you're hired."
I work in canadian Geek Squad. I watch this, and I wonder how they might have missed that. Policy is different across a few stores, but even if we took it in for diagnosis, if it was that simple, we'd refund the fee.
Maria Elena Gonzales And you know what? that is totally your prerogative. You don't want to deal with us? I can totally understand, not everybody has a good experience with geek squad. There are plenty of smaller repair shops that do similar service. Most days I don't want to be there either. Just understand that I'm a human being to and I would appreciate it if you didn't start with the name calling. I'm just a store level grunt, there's only so much I can be possibly blamed for.
Geek Squad is the Firestone of computers. Firestone told me once that my wife's car needed a part that costs $25 online for $500 and all they had to do was remove a few screws. On top of that the part didn't even fix the problem. Geek Squad told a friend of mine his computer had a bad hard drive or a virus too, when the problem was his antivirus definition. It caused a BSOD whenever he opened up internet explorer. Once I removed the anti-virus, problem was gone. Geek Squad said they would've charged him over $350. Me? $10.
I took my computer to Geek Squad they told me $550 for a cracked screen on my laptop. So I decided to take my computer to another computer store one of those private or family-owned. they only charge me $213. And it functions as if nothing happened to it.
I charge less than $80 for screen replacements in my store I run myself (small local business). Most screens are universal, so you can typically get a generic screen for $30 or so and fit it in around 10-20minutes
Matt Bates Wow that's cool. Companies ripping people off. I bet they would take the shirts off their backs and shoes off their feets. At outrageous prices thats pretty much it.
the problem with retail tech support from when I worked in the easy tech department at staples we were "forced" to order parts from this shitty supplier who always overcharged for the part plus we would charge for our "services" to install the part so it doesn't surprise me they wanted 550 but it is complete BS. I no longer work for staples but i always tell everyone I meet never to go to geeksquad or easy tech
I know right? I had a "dead" hard drive, not only did I get a new one and replace it for about 50 bucks, I also was able to get a donor drive to change the boards out on the dead drive to get the info off of it before it friend out 100%
The Geek Squad is a part of a large corporation and their job is to hit sales numbers. Period. Management and staff are under that pressure. They are in competition with small shops that get business by using competence and integrity.
I went to geek squad to ask if they could factory rest my computer since it was corrupted and I couldn't get into the settings, and they wanted to charge me $120 for them to look at it and $50 or more to fix it. Later that day I finally figured out a way to do it which only took 30 mins to do after I pressed literally 3 buttons to put it into recovery mode. Geek squad in general is a scam and costs way too much to do anything.
Josh Battershell yes. that's how a services business works. You pay a plumber for only a few minutes of work right? and he gets paid hundreds of dollars. This is no different.
I worked at the Best Buy here in my area from the first day the door opened and for 3 year after. It was called product service to start with and changed to Geek Squad a few years later. The name was bought from 3 guys that had the name and service in the hometown of Best Buy to the tune of $3m so they could use it for their product service. I never ripped anyone off the entire time I was there and did a lot of free jobs for customers for simple 5 minute repairs so they would want to come back again. There were other techs there I had to redo their work later due to the lack of knowledge and I was the ONLY one who was Microsoft certified and had electronics certification in the building. They went to hooking units up over the internet and having them remote diagnosed from Texas, that is where I drew the line and left. For years now, I have been fixing their mistakes from my previous customers who found me privately and what I have found is shocking and amazing. Their are people who claim to know their "stuff", but clearly do not. I refused to be their upsell salesman when I was there and that did not bode well either. Small shops, like mine, are more likely to get it right due to we want to have a good reputation and return business through word of mouth.
I bought an Xbox 360 from Best Buy new in 2007. They asked if I wanted to the "Extended Warranty". I asked them what that was. They said if it ever broke down to bring it in and they'd exchange it in store for free. Two months later it breaks down. I take it in and they say "Ok we'll send it in, should be back in a few weeks." I said "No, you'll exchange it in store" They said no we don't do that. So why did I pay extra for something I could have done for free? The local news even went in undercover after I told them my story. Best Buy is such a huge rip off. I miss Circuit City and Good Guys.
Brian Haley i no there a scaml i remember my desktops dvd drive was broken and i was to busy to replace it myself so i decided ill go down to them since its a reputable store etcand they tried making me buy a new pc even though the desktop was only 2 years old and was still quite high end specs. i told them to fly a kite and did it myself
That's what big companies like that do. Geek Squad guys are all salesmen first and foremost. When I was fresh out of college with an IT degree I tried to get a job, certain I was more than qualified with all of my certificates and whatnot, but you know why I got rejected? No sales experience lol. If they can't up sell theres no way they'll stay afloat. Another related story: When I was buying my first smartphone from Verizon (for $150 more than the same phone at Wal-Mart might I add) the salesman guaranteed me that I could have the phone without having to pay an extra $30 for data each month. Cool right? Since I never use data I went ahead and bought it, but when the first bill rolled around guess what? $30 for Data. Took it back to the store and told the manager I was told no extra charge would be incurred. His response? "Theres no way an employee here would say that. It's simply not true." I kept the phone, but never have I trusted a salesman again. And after a bit of research I also buy all my phones from third party places and have saved a ton of $. Screw GS and Verizon.
I know everything else was messed up with that geek squad, but what caught me attention was $580 DOLLARS TO REPLACE A HARD DRIVE?!?!?!?!?!? a 5tb hard drive doesn't cost nearly that much, let alone what ever size that mechanical drive was.
I am a PC technician and have been since the 80's. I have no papers or courses but I guarantee you that I will do a better job than these clowns. You can't beat hands on experience and that is all I have. Forget the computer degrees these people have, my experience trumps all of those and I will give you a fair price. I am honest. Period.
I no longer go to BestBuy for any reason. I had bought a pc there with the expensive warranty and started having problems right away. Took it in 8 different times and each time was told it was fixed, by low employees to managers, asked them if they had actually done anything after the first couple of times. Always showing me diagnostic testing. Each time never being fixed. Low and behold warranty runs out pc still not working and am told it has a bad motherboard which would cost more than the actual computer. How funny because it was the same guy and his lying manager who kept saying it was fixed on numerous occasions. I tell everyone not to make big item purchases there.
At the end this video showed that the Better Business Bureau cooperated with the Geek Squad to hide Geek Squads criminal behavior. Business crooks of a feather. The brilliant George Carlin was spot on when he talked about " the criminal business class".
I went to Best Buy to purchase a basic inexpensive computer for my daughter for just over $200. The geek squad employee was trying to up-sell me a service contract, anti-virus protection etc. for an additional $300 +. I laughed at him and asked if he didn't see how ridiculous this was. He, in all seriousness, toted the standard line of how important it is to protect (and so on....) I tried to explain that I could just purchase another computer for less. He could not understand this logic and still tried to convince me and give me the standard sales pitch. I walked out shaking my head (I bought neither)
The VG Prodigy There are many high-quality free anti-virus software out there and how would you even get a virus that locks you out of your computer? Sounds like user error.
They have a virus "wand" they wave over it, if the green light comes you know your computer has a virus. The wand looks a lot like a garage door opener.
Its easier to blow away your hard drive and reload the O/S and hand it back to you than take the little extra time and 'do it right' by finding the problem. It's called being lazy, and also being pushed by main headquarter to sell their new products, even if it means lying to you.
gone fishin Wow. I keep praying that you're kidding me, but my gut tells me you're on the level. People can be so gullible! People have a great resource at their fingertips! TH-cam has tons of videos that can help you diagnose simple pc problems.
Geek squad actually brought in my laptop in for a quote (it had a broken charging port) and returned it with a broken keyboard (underlights weren't working and It wasn't typing) and my track pad wasn't working either. Geek squad also told me that my USB port was broken as well, when he took out a USB I had in there for my computer mouse that was just working. Do not trust geek squad, they are expert scammers who will break your computer to force you to get it repaired or buy a new one.
"We take _______very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to _______. I'm working closely with ______ going forward to ensure that the highest level of service is maintained consistently for our customers in ______" There MUST be a "scandal response template" out there somewhere 'cause EVERYONE spews this exact same garbage when they get caught for anything ever.
"Your hard drive is broken but it's working enough to tell us you have a virus."
exactly lmao atleast make it believable
+TutsWithRock Believe it or not, I have in fact encountered machines that had both malware infections (specifically, a rogue antivirus) and an HDD failure (dead write head causing newly-written data to be unreadable). The machine still booted and displayed the infection clearly, although Firefox couldn't start due to the profile being unreadable.
+NetRolller3D nerd
Miguelin Chavarria and how exactly? giving your opinion proves my point that you're a low life peasant
TutsWithRockunfortunatly there's people out there especially middle aged to old women who know close to nothing about computers would actually believe it.
Visited Geek squad 2 days ago... they wanted $100 to diagnose.
Went to Office Max. He found I had a bad power cord in under 5 minutes. No charge.
office max is underrated
F Huber Good pun!
DutchGamer21 you sound like geeksquad brah
Even in the video, the first Geek Squad does the job perfectly fine. I've had good experiences with them too honestly, but I'm not stupid enough to think that means the company as a whole doesn't have problems that need to be dealt with.
F Huber giving genuine geeks a bad name!
Geek Squad: "Do you want us to install that software for you? We can hit [next] repeatedly for you for the low price of $39.99"
Stuff like that should be a high charge. That individual is being paid by the hour to sit there and click. It's a choice, not a rip off. Laziness of the mind and body comes at a price, that is a luxury.
Alan Burns No doubt. I hate doing that shit for myself, but it's simple as hell. If somebody else wants me to do it for them, they are definitely paying. I'd take 20 an hour cash for a friend, 20 homemade cookies from my mother or 40 for anyone else.
Geek squad: also would like to add a protection plan as expensive as what you just purchased?
That is true. Hiring someone to do something you could do yourself tends to be expensive.
How much would you charge for simply an install for software already purchased and no shipping involved?
That first guy is my favorite type of tech guy, does it for the challenge and the fun, it's why I fix computers. Old vid I know but I hope his business got a massive boost.
"The best tests are the ones you don't know you're taking". I like that!
Mike Willett II, I agree! I immediately paused video to write that down. Then scanned comments for...YOURS. That quote is T-shirt worthy. I hope other viewers took his words to heart.
@@labauer5314 tf lol
"We take any misdiagnosis very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to be consistently accurate" translates to "Fuck, we are annoyed that you caught us."
+Daniel Åkesson i agree
+Daniel Åkesson omg such an epic post..... luv ya bro :D
anna dees TwstedTV Thanks! :) I just thought I had to put it out there in the clear. :) Actually, if they were sorry, and/or not doing it on purpose, they would have responded some other way. Like, I dunno.. maybe give money back to customer and fire whoever did it?
+Daniel Åkesson or translates to "We're not interested in what you have to say. Scamming is our job. Here's a generic apology so you'll think we're watching out for you, while we're really trying to re-think our strategy to continue scamming people."
Brett Blumfield Haha, yes, that also sounds about right. :)
"Your hard drive is broken but also somehow we figured out there's a virus on it."
Congrats to PC Paramedix for being honest. I'd rather take my computer to a smaller locally owned place and would never go to the geek Squad.
I have 18 years exp working on computers and even when i first started out just formatting hard drives and reloading xp i knew better than to take it to geek squad. As a matter of fact a woman where i live just took both of her computers to a local bestbuy and was told that the next update for 10 which is supoosed to be 1810 will cause computers to crash and be unable to be repaired just so microsoft can sell more computers.
@@TMBSTNE284 Honestly I wouldn't put it past Microsoft
@@shiftylips6939 here is the thing though if they did it would ruin them and they would go bankrupt with in 24-48 hours. Everyone from AMD, Intel, and Nvidia to Asus and EVGA and everyone in between would be suing them.
Wait… Scammer says that there's a virus on the *broken hard drive?* Just think about that for a second…
That got me laughing so hard when I saw that. Sad part is, so many people probably have fallen for that.
"Youve got a virus on your CPU! What's a CPU you ask? Fuck if I know!" -Geeksquad
Aaron Berkofsky I don't understand why that's funny or why op even mentioned it at all, they were just adding things to help convince the customer to buy another computer. The sad thing isn't people falling for it but these worthless scamming scumbags
Platinumrings Im not sure if you're joking or not, or if Im totally misinterpreting your comment all together, but Ill go with it. Im laughing cause it's pitiful that BestBuy does stuff like that. Really goes to show how much of a terrible thing a massive corporate company can be. Also, there is nothing to add up. There was no broken HDD, there was no diagnostic, there was no virus. And even if there was a broken hard drive, a high end, 1tb drive (keep in mind that a few years ago 1tb was a big number) would be a maximum of $150 MSRP.
People like my parents would fall for it because they simply don't know, same with if you go to a Mechanic or Lawyer they can throw all these words to you and you wouldn't even know so you almost have no choice and that's where they screw you.
You can have more than one hard drive dipshit
I took my Toshiba laptop to Geek Squad ONCE, because I told them it was overheating and crashing constantly while I was trying to use it. I told them that I'm 99% sure it's just that the fan is dirty and if they could just show me WHERE I needed to use compressed air to clean the fan, then it'll be fine. Apparently, without even looking at my laptop, they "knew" that the hard drive must be corrupted and the fan is not working at all and that's the ONLY reason my laptop would be doing that. The guy behind the counter asked how old the laptop was and I told him it was about 2-3 years old. I was then told that the laptop is NOT worth repairing and that I was better off buying a new one laptop because mine was too OLD to bother repairing. Really? It's only 2-3 years old and 3 years was the absolute MAX age that it was at the time I brought it in, it has an i7 Core processor, advanced graphics, etc but because it was a couple years old, I should just trash it and buy a whole new laptop >.>. I told him I wanted MY laptop repaired, I do NOT want a new laptop and he went on a whole rant about how he would have to ask his manager if they could even take it because the laptop was so "old" and I told him to bring the manager then. The manager just asked if I was sure that I wanted the laptop repaired, I said yes and he told the guy I was originally talking to to go ahead and take it. He asked me if I was ok with losing all my data on my laptop, because "sometimes that happens when they're repairing the laptop" and I told him no, I'm not ok with that. He then told me I had to buy a separate hard drive to backup all my data before I let them have the laptop to repair. I told him I'll do it at home, but if he could please just blow out the fan for me to make sure it won't overheat and crash while I'm backing up my laptop. He blows it out and tells me that my fan was really dirty and that when I brought my laptop back, it would be $70 just to send it out, not even for "repair" and they didn't even guarantee that it would be repaired, that was just to send the laptop out! 1+ years later, and my laptop still has NOT gone back to them because I have had NO problems with it ever since....
Yayyyy...sock it to them! Just wanted to sell off another product! Crazy, commercial world that we live in :-( If all of us can behave in the same way, we'd have a more sustainable, trash-free world! Great going MsOsabear!!!
Ugggggh. This is criminal.
Dodger tech people. I hate them. I can get parts for desktops aged up to 6 years. Not easy but doable. It's thievery to make people think otherwise. And best service is do as the customer says and if it doesn't work they will come back.
***** No, I just don't have time to sit there and play with my computer. Seeing that Best Buy is 10 minutes from my house, going there is not a big deal. The fact that they thought they could scam me was their own stupidity. Also, how cute, you came back twice to try to talk shit… I imagine you're a very productive member of society ;)
***** Sorry, I don't eat Mcdonald's, considering I can afford much better. Hat? Funny, I hardly wear hats meaning you must be going through my profile, how sweet ;)
How do you find a virus on a broken hard drive? If the hard drive is broken the computer wouldn't boot up?
They used gay ray to scan the hard drive.
Not necessarily, depends how you define broken.
I've had a harddrive that was acting weird, like when deleting files, they wouldn't delete.
And later on, windows xp wouldn't install on it, cause of a bad sector.
So I would say it was broken even though it was still working (as in running windows).
I think a lot of old people have never opened up their pc, perhaps from fear of breaking it.
And they have probably never needed to go into the bios for anything, so they don't understand the basics of how the computer works.
So it makes sense for them to get help from time to time, good to see that most computer businesses are legit.
Colin Java
"I've had a harddrive that was acting weird, like when deleting files, they wouldn't delete."
==That might be due to a Win XP bug.
I had that problem. I searched the web.
The solution is to delete from the command prompt.
Vrej Egon Spengler Yeah, but it would fail when installing xp, so I think there were bad sectors.
Doesn't matter now, I only use ssds.
STD's ?
The Geek Squad, more like the thief squad 😂
Queef squad
@@skinnyslims5327 lmao
I got kicked out of a Best Buy once because there was a lady on the floor looking for a good computer to download pictures from her digital camera onto. The Geek Squad guy told her that she would need a $800 computer they had on the floor, plus an upgrade to a $300 Graphics card, that they would install for X amount of dollars. I told her that all she needed was the $400 budget laptop that they had on the floor, and that the computer he showed her was for advanced gaming. and that the graphics card was a top of the line card that most current games didnt even need. She thanked me and bought the laptop. Shortly after the manager came up and escorted me out of the store.
Being kicked out of a store, that's the price of being and honest guy, LOL.
It's very nice to know that there are people who still wants to do the right thing.
I highly doubt any of that. They would not escort you out, in fact they cant. Geek Squad do not do computer sales, they aren't allowed. And there is no way they recommended a $300 graphics card as they do not carry high value cards in-store, its all special order.
Geek Squad are not on commission, and even if it was a salesperson, why would they recommend a computer worth so much that the customer ends up just saying no? If they were being aggressive in sales, then they would just up the cost by a hundred,
I highly doubt you know what your talking about, it wasn't the geek squad guy that kicked me out, he got a manager to do it.
***** Im guessing Best Buys Geek Squad work on commission, there were a few places around here that were bad for that and all of them were on commission
moogmanXanders no they dont work on commission
When I was 12 I Paid em $80 to install a stick of ram... and then googled it later that night to find out it only takes 5 minutes... omg. I mean now I know how to build my own pc, but the fact that they would rip off kids is just pitiful.
literally take off the side and slide it into place. Just for reference that's pretty much how you do any repair on a computer, the only difference is some parts need screws.
NWP // NWProductionsHD I know how now, but then I didnt.
dumb that's the easiest thing to do
thomas fleck I don't know... I've gotta say the easiest thing to do is turning it on. If you're talking components I'd say it's the battery actually. I can think of a few people that would struggle installing RAM. So judgy, geez.
Ryan S I think we're talking about pc's here. so no batteries.
I used to be a Tech Supervisor at Best Buy. I left when Geek Squad came on board and the company started "over pricing" customers. (Can't use a stronger word cheating for legal reasons.) Before GS if a customer had a warranty we were allowed to Restore a computer for free, after GS we had to charge $69.00. After a few months the charge became $69 for a diagnose AND $69 for the Restore. Shortly thereafter the cost went to over $200. $69 diagnose, $69 Restore, AND $69 for virus/spam removal. Yes, we were instructed to charge for removing Viruses and Spam even though we Restored the customers computer with the Manufacture's System Restore CDs. I could no longer work at such a dishonest place.
My dad had to use them once when I was away and couldn't come fix his pc for him. All he needed was a new PSU installed. They charged him for new psu, installation, wiped his HD / reinstalled OS (without backing anything up), and for virus removal.
Bunch of scamming bastards.
Ben Allen A lot of these places wipe the HD and reinstall the OS - they say it's to make sure there are no viruses, but really it's lazyness. They do tell you to back up before giving them your machine - but if your machine won't even turn on, you can't backup.
Of course they offer a backup service for $$$.
Major scam
***** this exactly, and a bigger kick in the squad's balls is there are videos on youtube here, that show how to purely disinfect a computer without wiping it, now with this new knowledge, I will do that to my family's computer first before resorting to something lazy any customer can do themselves for free if anything goes wrong, theres rougeamp, and another guy that demonstrates
Blue screens are rarely hardware related.
I quit when "Pushing" services and replacement computers became the company's main goal. THe Geek Squad is not there to save the customer money.
William Maxey they only sell new machines, and charge extra to "optimize it" (aka uninstall the trial antivirus bundled with the computer in 5 hours or more)
so
FUCK the nerd corperations
youtube and the internet for repair help
youtube, sevenforums, eightforums are excelent resources for self repair and diagnosis with the enthusiest nerds that aren't saleshoes themselves
im glad geek squad couldnt hire me due to my 17 year age at the time because i would have gotten fired for actually FIXING a problem like they claim they do
1:22 She seems surprised that paying for a tech to travel out to their location, spend an unknowable amount of time troubleshooting a computer with an unknown problem, potentially spending time to repair the issue or at least make a backup of the machine, potentially traveling back to and from their normal place of business for parts, and then finally traveling back to the shop after completing the job would be expensive.
Geek Squad once cut wires inside of my newly purchased computer about 10 years ago and attempted to blame it on me and my family while charging nearly $300 in diagnostic fees. They are nothing more than another reason to learn a skill for yourself since trusting retailers in the 21st century is out of the question.
You took the words right out of my mouth. Fixing a computer isn't a hard skill to learn especially in the age of TH-cam how-to videos.
Depends whether you are fixing unplagged hard drive in your PC or monitor in laptop, I mean you can do most repairs yourself but for some you need specialized tools and it might be cheaper and faster to let service do them. Though for the less serious repairs it should not be that hard to find tutorial or ask your family geek or some friend.
Learning computers is a good skill to have anyways. Built my own PC for really cheap compared to the pre-built PCs which would have cost me $3,000 more than the parts separately. Not to mention pre-builts always skimp on the parts. You also don't have to depend on these scammers for the most basic stuff, 99% of the problems they fix can be fixed with a little research and googling yet they still manage to get that wrong.
shit, most men today can't fix anything let alone computers.
BLacKHaLLoW geek squad is no longer what it was years ago
isn't it amazing that the only 'scam artist' was from the big corporate whilst all the small business owners were honest.
thats how you success in life: the strongest survives, and the strongest is the one making money. How do you make money? By scamming people. If I wrong, then why are your comment valid?
holy shit Proccito. Stfu
Michael S
considering with in a capitalist-society, please tell me why Im wrong?
i'm not trying to give an opinion on the matter, i'm just telling you to stfu.
Stfu.
Michael S
no. sorry. I wont.
How can you have a virus if the hard drive is broken?
+The_HBK_23 you cant to be honest. Viruses mess with the operating systems and to have an operating system you need a hard drive
Technically you can have a BIOS virus, but those are incredibly rare.
+PCG try impossible unless you put it on there yourself. To change your bios you have to flash it this is very different from saving files on your hard drive.
anyway i think it's pretty clear that the store in question was trying to milk money from from the customer
dafrandle No. It is possible to have a BIOS Virus from the manufacturer. Like I said, it is incredibly rare (hence why I say "technically").
Obviously it is different from a virus on the hard drive, but OP was asking if it was even possible to have a virus without the hard drive.
Here is a story of this happening:
www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/1jl11v/virus_in_the_bios_no_really/
This reply comes with a virus.
You are virused.
Had similar results when I tried to take my laptop in to ask about a boot error. They told me I needed to buy a new hard drive online and bring it back for a 150 dollar installation, then got embarrassed when I told them they were full of shit.
I used to have an ad out in the paper for in home computer repair. It was only a side business that yielded about 1-3 jobs each weekend. Each repair averaged $30.00+travel to location expense. When Geek squad was announced, my business almost halted entirely. Calls would come in 1-3 per month instead of each weekend, eventually only a few people would call me because I could see them right away to eventually nobody calling at all. I saw Geek squad vans/cars rolling around my town almost twice a week. Last year I started getting calls again, I told them "I'm out of the business, you called Geek squad instead of me because they were the hot new thing and pushed me aside. You baked the shit pie, now you eat it." At this point I hang up.
Now I'll just sit back and watch it burn.
Same here buddy. I used to do $40 an hour no drive out fee. This was my livelyhood on top of that. You were lucky it was a side thing. Geek squad rolled in and other little Indian repair shops. Come to find out most of those guys dont even have work visa's or anything like that they would fly over say they are just here visiting and then setup shop. Here one day gone tomorrow. If they get caught they are just sent back to India and maybe a 6 month bar from entering the us. They wait 6 months and do it again. Same as you I went down to a few calls a week with maybe one repair to eventually nothing. Also same as you Ive recently got some calls and some emails and I pretty much said similar to what you said. "geek squad and the fly by night Indian shops are your buddy now and put me out of business. Sorry they wanna charge you $300 to put in a hard drive and install windows good luck!"
people make mistakes, they probably wanted to pay in credit too, maybe. sometimes the bigger places seem like they will be cheaper. im so glad i dont need their services.
encycl07pedia
He blames them because he offered a better service at a cheaper price, and because everyone decided to follow trends, and still not call him after they were ripped off he left them be.
Wait. The computer doesn't boot, so how could they, with any confidence, lie about it having a virus?? They sound like those Indian telephone scammers.
If you have a virus, getting a new hard drive would fix it....
Alan Burns Yeah, but she needed a new hard drive anyways. Then they tried to charge her for a virus afterwards. If they replace the hdd, they'll have done both. No reason to charge her for 2 things. It's like me charging you for wiping your hard drive when all i did was buy a new one.
Alan Burns Yeah, but you just repeated what I said too. They can't reformat the hard drive if it's entirely broken. Therefore it's not an extra step.
Alan Burns What? My bad. I thought her hard drive was legitimately broken. Hell, it probably doesn't even need formatted if they lied that much.
no they don't
The geek squad is such a shit operation. I cracked my laptop screen and it needed to be replaced. They said they could do it for $500 with labor. I ended up learning how to replace it myself and did it in 11 minutes.
you just earned 450$ in 11 minutes :P
no way that costs 500$. the screen maybe 100 (some screens) labor, maybe 100 or less. depending
***** yeah where I use to live in Florida. There was a big store called tigerdirect same as company USA. Which are similar to best buy , that use to rip people off by taking working parts and putting crappy parts in the computer. I'm a technician and I have fixed more than 200 computers phones and cameras over the past years and I would never steal from somebody cause that makes a bad reputation
Eden Hazard yeah just not were I live now that's in jersey
Should have been 120-150 dollars max including labour
I don't need to watch this to know they scam people. Just look at those prices.
Rabbit0 : : : Especially if you worked for them in the past,makes NO difference !
Maybe someone should investigate the BBB... why would they willingly allow a company to consolidate reports with stores in another state? It is blatantly obvious that the choice of the Minnesota stores was a calculated move to obfuscate their poor reports. It really makes me wonder why the BBB would allow such a move and if they actually have provisions in place that allow for such a deceptive practice, then their ethics and integrity as a consumer reporting agency should be called into question.
Agreed.
The BBB does not have any real power and is not a government agency.
James Moore True enough, but it is a consumer reporting agency that is widely considered the "go-to" source for exposure of bad business practices and they do have power in a lateral sense. While they cannot personally enforce the shut down of a business, they can certainly affect the amount of business a company gets when they have a poor rating. If the BBB is willing to be complicit in covering up bad PR for mega-corps like Geek Squad then they are unduly affecting smaller competing businesses that either lack that recourse due to not having other chains to combine with or not enough clout to force the BBB to compromise their integrity. When I say someone should investigate them, I meant investigative journalism, just like they did with these PC repair shops. It's a "Who Watches the Watchmen" sort of scenario.
I disagree. I can't think of the last time I've looked at the BBB before heading to a business. Maybe for older generations, but the BBB is useless compared to Yelp reviews. While Yelp reviews aren't always the best, it's usually a decent indicator of quality.
Rob Vella Just because you don't personally use the BBB, doesn't mean it isn't used or is outdated. How arrogant. Yelp is easily manipulated and very unreliable. There have been numerous reports on the integrity of Yelp, and none of them are favorable. Your confirmation bias of Yelp is based on the average expectancy clause in that the vast majority of customer experiences are neutral, at best. So you see a 4 star review, don't encounter a shit-storm when you go, and confirm that Yelp was accurate, but that would have been likely in any event. Yelp knows this, and preys on that bias. The BBB is purely for reporting business malpractice and the quality of a report from them stems from the lack of content, not the overly generous flood of banal experiences inflated to a wondrous moment or distortions created by fake reports. Check out the CBC report on the Cheezed Off truck for an example of your vaunted Yelp.
Your hard drive is broken! Spend 580 to fix it or order a better HDD from newegg for 50 bucks
+Jagger Zitemidway Don't forget there is also a virus on your broken hard drive.
+I Am The Shitzu Yeah people don't realize how easy it can be. a phillips screwdriver is the only tool required along with 2 cables to change out the drive. Computers are NOT freaking magic!
CJ99 W The smoke that comes out is magic though.
Morganamilo They'd still claim that smoke out thier asses smells of roses.
+Morganamilo "you broked it, the magical smoke is gone and now it wont work anymore"
a long pause
"can we use a fan to push the magical smoke back in?"
I'm a very savvy computer repairman and I've had to fix lots of my friends computers after they first took them to PC repair shops. They got to charge money and ruin the machines whereas I fixed them for free. Best advice I can give is to make friends with someone who is good at PC fixes and when they look at problems offer them a nice pie. Way better than shady repair shops.
Aw you're just a lil Angel aren't you 🤗
+Doug Vandegrift After I repair a friends computer, I normally say to my friend that they came pay me what they want, even if its nothing.
+Doug Vandegrift A very wise old man once told me, "Business is business and we all have to make a living somehow. Since my enemies won't do business with me, I have to charge my friends." I'm diabetic. I don't want a friggin' pie. Jedi mind tricks don't work on me, only money.
Rich Price that's fine if you're trying to make a business out of it, but I'm just making a point that you can trust friends more than businesses in many cases. This whole video is about businesses taking advantage of their customers unless you already forgot.
+Doug Vandegrift Didn't forget anything. I was in the IT business from 1984 until 2013. No "trying" about it. You don't keep a successful business going for 29 years if you can't be trusted. People hire carpenters instead of friends. Electricians instead of friends, accountants instead of friends, plumbers instead of friends, glaziers instead of friends. Why? Friends don't generally tend to possess a professional level of skill and education for the job. With the exception of a very limited few, businesses are more trustworthy, because they are professionals. The whole video explained that the ONLY business who got a failing grade was a single Best Buy store, unless you already forgot.
Geek Squad tried to rip me off also. Told me the hard drive was dead and it would cost $650 to recover all my wife's photo files. She thought she was backing up but wasn't. A local computer guy was able to get almost all the files, the drive was failing but not dead, only a few could not be recovered. He also showed us how to copy the files to google drive for a backup. Total charge, about $90 with tax. Gave him $100 and keep the change. Well worth paying for honest service.
I was told to leave bestbuy just for helping a customer make up his mind on buying a ps4 or a Xbox 1. He bought a 12 month ps plus card, Dying Light and NBA 2k15, and then the playstation. So I helped him do all that and shortly I was told I "should" leave. Idk what's up with bestbuy sometimes, my local bestbuy are slackers on helping people. The man was browsing around and no one was there to help him or ask if he needed anything.
Pc for lyfe. But if I had to choose ps or Xbox I would have to go with ps
*****
well actually PC gamer magazine discussed a possible halo port for pc.
***** don't see why halo can't come to pc it's still Microsoft
ixT0PSH0TZxi because best buy workers get commissions from sales they suggest
***** Halo is meh, Playstation has more than enough to make up for that. In fact Destiny multi-player is better anyway imo, so i don't really miss halo at all (went from 360 to ps4).
$580 to replace a hard drive????? UHM? WHAT???
that was back when they were trying to sell SSDs to people ... hahahaha!
to fix a broken hard drive. If you needed the data off a hard drive that was actually broken it would take quite a bit of time and money to restore.
+PraiseTheSun20 There are many different fixes that can be done at home at a relatively low cost depending on the hard drive. Any reputable PC repair shop will tell you the risks/benefits of doing things yourself, or tell you what needs to be done. Even still, most hard drive recovery won't cost that much.
I had a similar experience with the Geek Squad once... ONCE!!
Even to try and find recovery software is quite pricey. Yes you can try to do it yourself. Or use cheap software and risk losing everything. I've got some skills with computers, but even for me it was not easy at all and required a lot of research and patience.
her voice , fucking hell
What's wrong with it?
HAMMYZ94 Smoked to much.
benr41 She sounds like the chick allstate guy :'D
benr41 too*
John Smith Eh.
Few years back my mom bought a TV from there, and for the the low price of $150 geek squad would come set her it up for her. I laughed and said I could plug it in and and run a channel scan for free. All they do is try to scam older people out of there money.
then y didn't u?
@@stumack9755 why do you assume he didn't?
Sometimes older people don’t have a choice
im a geek squad employee starting soon. (in limbo of computer sales and geek squad), and the main point about the home installation services we have is so that if we mess up the installation or the device we are installing, its covered by us. and lots of people dont have the time to install it themselves and drill holes into walls to hide cables. its a lot of work to make it pretty.
Caseymanbrodude, if you think that's a lot of work you have no idea what work is. What you just described takes 1 hour TOPS and that's if you have NO IDEA what you're doing. This should take you 20 minutes.
Unpack tv, install mount bars on back of tv or tv stand, istall mounting bracket on wall, run wire which is normally already run, plug in tv, scan channels. The scan alone takes 10 minutes out of that 20. Thats how easy it is.
Like they say: The bigger you are the harder you fail. Thats why I go to small repair shops, they more genuine and waaay better expertise.
or just do it yourself? computers are not that difficult as long as you do research.
Bhume TM
Yes they are and you can damage it even more if you don't know the fuck you're doing. The vid was just crazy-ass simple test. Moron.
tell me sir, what is so difficult about computers that you can't look it up and do it yourself?
Bhume TM
Because its broken.
somethings broken? well just order a replacement and look up on youtube how to do it.
$580 to repair a broken hard drive? Yeah if your are going to replace it with a 2TB SSD maybe...
I agree that it is a scam, but they did say "fix", not replace. Fixing a hard drive can cost quite a bit.
PaddiM8 recovering data from a corrupted hard drive costs way more than $580, requires a clean room and costs thousands. They were just going to install a new hard drive, guarantee it.
This video looks like it's from the mid to late 90's. Hard drives weren't exactly cheap back then. Shit, the price a a 2TB HD now would be a bargain compared to a 4GIG HD back then. Lol
4 gig? in 2009? nah, i dont think so...
yeah my laptop i used to play WOW on in 2006 had 80 gigs
Anyone smart enough to work on a computer would know that, odds are, this is a setup. The hard drive cable never just falls off.
MrOnTheCheap This^ I struggle to get mine unplugged when I'm trying to! xD
+UnderSeaGaming LOL, I remember the first time trying to do that, even started thinking it was glued or something.
+Ian M You're probably using a SATA 3 drive, which does actually lock in place.
+MyBrothersMario yea, but on the video they removed the power connector, not the sata 3 cable
MyBrothersMario Nope, it was my old PC and the HDD was a IDE Western Digital (80GB). :D
I was scammed into buying an Asus computer at a Best Buy in AZ. They had me sign up for the Geek Squad services too. I am not computer savvy. A month after buying the computer, I began having issues with it. I would contact them several times a week and they would work on it remotely. Well, just about every time, I was left with the original problem not fixed and additional issues. This went on for months. Eventually, the computer performance worsened. Finally, after two years of this, they informed me that the mother board was irreversible broken. I told them how could this be? The computer was barely two years old. The warranty ran out and then they had the audacity to tell me it would cost me a lot of money to fix it and that I'd be better off buying a new computer. I reported them to the BBB, but they refused to make amends of any kind. I ended up going somewhere else to buy a new computer (this new one works great). Now, if I have issues, I have my family member work on it (he's a computer technician). I will never trust the Geek squad or that particular Best Buy again. I feel I was scammed out of over a thousand dollars and I even suspect that they may have done something to damage the computer on purpose. I was told by a computer tech that if the computer is dropped, the mother board can become damaged. I never dropped it but, on more than one occasion, I did leave it at the Geek Squad store when they had to physically work on it because they, supposedly, couldn't fix the "problem" remotely. So, just for the sake of giving these jerks some bad publicity, the store is located in Ahwatukee AZ 00177, 5051 E. Ray RD. 85044. It's a public address, so I feel confident to publish it here Stay away from them.
Panama Girl you gave them remote access to your computer, that was where you went wrong the second time. The first time was buying from them to begin with.
Interesting. I just posted. I can fully back you on that. I have personally fixed dozens of computers that that store had "repaired". Issues that are not possible to occur unless you know how to cause them. Sorry you ened up as one of their victims.
$580 for a fucking hard drive LOL
lol
I'm laughing so hard because a 4TB hard drive costs only $154.88. What makes this even funnier? The hard drive they were using for this segment was probably under 250GB, which is less than $30.
***** must be a 4TB SSD then
***** They charge you labor to repair it for you. Just like a car repair shop.
PMC PMC Yeah that's true, but still way too much.
It's 2015. Technology is everywhere. Spend some time and learn how to use it and you'll never get scammed for shit like this.
+Lost Sandwich Right people buy shitty pcs for 500$ when you can build your own 4x better for the same price.
+Lost Sandwich thats so true. I am quite sure they are still doing this exact crap everyday to every customer that walks in, just another reason to build your own computer.
+cope_dipper i've been trying to learn how to build a pc because i want to switch from console gaming to pc gaming but i have no idea where to get started. know where i could go to learn about that stuff?
+Epicvampire800 There's this nifty new thing called the "internet." You could start there. A Google search will help you find the "internet" if you don't know where to find it.
+Epicvampire800 There's plenty of guides on youtube, I suggest looking at, at least, two videos of professionals putting a computer together.
I suggest looking for *linus tech tips*, *jayz two cents* or *newegg*'s videos. They're all very accurate on computer building and selecting the parts.
As a former Geek Squad employee, I'm not surprised! My Forte was Audio/Video which I learned in the military, as well as when I was a new products tech for Cabletron. I started at a new Best Buy, Portsmouth NH, store 535, and was quickly certified as a PC tech. Because of my background I was able to fix simple issues but relied on the other techs for the more problematic issues. Fortunately, as we were the original techs when the store opened we knew the limitations each tech had and worked around that to get the customer the best service possible. As time went on, and techs moved on to other employeers, the capabilities shrunk where the ones in house when I left were barley able to wipe their nose let alone fix a computer. As in this video, most would push the customer to buy a new machine, but I was one of the few that took pride trying to get the customer the best buy for tyheir buck. I eventually left as I could no longer deal with the "up sell" as they refer to it. I know Best Buy is not always the "best buy", please forgive the pun.
Back when the Ps3 was coming out during the holidays, I was in a Best Buy in Mankato, MN that was charging $50!!! TO UPDATE THE SYSTEM FOR YOU.. Some people were in line and I walked up to them, told them it was FREE to do on their own at home. They thanked me, Geek Squad sneered at me and I left laughing.
Kaden Hazami same with gamestop when the psp first came out. $5 or $10 for an update I believe.
They do $50 installs too lol. HDMI and power plugged in for $50.
then Obama gave you a 200 dollar bill and declared you the smartest man in existence
I still had dial-up when PS3 came out.
SoosUnknown What does Obama have to do with this?
Geek Squad hires people who actually don't know what they're doing, I wouldn't call it a scam though, just incompetence. A friend of mine was told by a Geek Squad manager, "If you have your A+ Certification, you're over qualified." --- For those of you who don't know, the A+ Certification is the base level certification for I.T Support. So they're literally saying, they'd rather you have no knowledge than any knowledge at all.
Telling them they have a virus on a dead hard drive that won't boot up is more than incompetent. That's a scam.
trucidotk I actually work at best buy and originally was declined for geek squad because they either have to a base certification or college experience. Thats at least how it works at my store but then again they also don't hire inexperienced sales people or customer service reps at my store.
A+ doesnt mean shit when it comes to knowledge. anyone can pass a multiple choice test when you get the questions and answers
I worked at my local one for the first 3 years it was open, and was there top tech. I came in with my MCSE, A+ and electronics certifications. Yup, I was pretty much told as well I was over-qualified, but they wanted people to see they had at least one certified tech ( and I was the only one, and if you have 3 MCSE's you can be a certified solutions partner). It was called Product service then, and became Geek Squad later on when the bought the name from 3 guys in their home town for $3m. I had customers come in and ask for me by name, and after I left, they found me privately. Can't tell you how many redo's I had from other techs there from when I still worked there to years after, and to this day.
trucidotk funny someone at best buy one told me i could work at geek squad, with no experience
I was confused😂😂
I always tell people that Geek Squad is a rip off. They nickel and dime you for dumb things, and by the time they give you a price, it's double the amount of your PC. I needed a hard drive replaced a few years back and Geek Squad told me I also had a virus, but they didn't know my friend was a computer engineer and he even said there was no virus. I got it back and I replaced the hard drive at a local computer shop for less than half the price of geek squad..........oh, and he still never found a virus.
Sports Fanatic Geeksquad WAS the virus.
Sports Fanatic local comp shops are the way to go it seems...I busted a flash drive once (snapped it at the connector while it was plugged in), and the gut tried for 2 hours to get power to it, but he couldn't and then said no charge! my dad felt so bad for all the work he did he paid him anyway...
Sports Fanatic Why would you care if there was a virus or not if you were replacing the harddrive? I love how people expect "simple" changes for free but are unable to do it themselves. Either you need them to do it and to pay for their time, or you can do it yourself for free. You come in to receive a service; they aren't there to do it for free. And everything there is a menu. There is no nickel and diming. They'll tell you what they think you need and you decide to do it or not. Take it or leave it. Appreciate that your super friend can look at PC and know whether or not there's a virus. You obviously had an issue to have to replace the drive.
nope, but i know it makes no sense to remove a virus on a harddrive you are replacing, so bitching about that is a waste of time. it's useless information. but regardless of that, your computer engineer friend, be it software or mechanical isn't going to know if there's no virus running the free version of avg or whatever other malwarebytes garbage he downloaded on the Internet.
Casey Paver
So you think you know now how he figures how there is viruses??? haha Do you just randomly troll peoples comments to fish for likes??? Go into geek squad and blow everyone there, you know you want to.
You will need a GTX Titan X and 2 4k monitors to be able to go on Facebook!
You need something more powerful for word processing.. of course.
Going to a best buy geek squad is exactly the same as going to your local high school and asking one of the students to take a look at your computer.
pretty much xD
Actually the high school kid will actually do a better job. My wife tried Geeksquad once (before we were married). They had her laptop on the shelf for a week. We walked in to check on the status and they told us they hadn't even touched it yet. BTW, Geeksquad charges (or at the time) by the day, so it came to a lot of money for them to format and reinstall Windows.
***** That sucks :/
+Thomas Hudson ah the old keeping it without touching it scam. I think they'd be getting a solicitor's letter mentioning fraud.
Given the problem was an unplugged HD cable, I'd trust a savvy HS kid before I'd trust the Geek Squad. Actually I could have fixed that problem myself. And it's so unlikely that a cable plug that was properly seated in the first place to come loose that if I were a crooked repair person I'd suspect I was being set up.
sick gaming rig fam
Atli Vintersol jij,ul8
I wonder how many gigabytes of dedicated ram it can give to Minecraft. Gotta get skywars going on my private server with all of my non existent friends.
How could they tell if you had a virus if they couldn't even get it to boot¿
joblessalex they didn't. probably a scam.
probably the only thing they could think of when the boot screen said "No Operating System detected."
joblessalex To be fair, not booting could be a boot sector virus, corrupted bootloader, disabled boot partition. Checking the basics should be the first thing like the smaller shops did. Anyone who doesn't and charges an extreme amount of money for a less than $100 part is a scammer.
If you have problems with your computer, Google or TH-cam are your friends. If you need certain parts cheap and know what you're doing or know someone who does, eBay is your friend. None of it is that hard to do.
"We take any Misdiagnosis very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to be consistently accurate. In other words. I am really pissed off inside that we were caught.
NEVER go to Geek Squad... Took my old laptop there once, and they wanted to charge me $150 just to see what was wrong with it. I didn't know any better at the time, so I went through with it. They told me my motherboard was dead. And that I would need to buy a new laptop. After that, a sales associate offered to show me new laptops, tried to sell me on one. First and last time I ever use Geek Squad. Extremely over priced, and they didn't even fix my laptop.
NEVER bring your computer to a shop to diagnose / fix if you don't have an intermediate knowledge about computers yourself. Get a geeky friend to help you, and treat them some nice dinners.
Or, you know, offer to pay them or trade out services. I'd take half the going rate. Win/win. It'd be cheaper than the meal probably too.
Cash is always sweeter/better. That said, either way works for most folks. Good point though.
Being one of those geeky friends, you can just go figure it yourself. It's not my job to bail you out. I work for a living just like everyone else and deserve to be compensated. Don't abuse your relationship just to try and save a buck.
Jayson Nickols Trading work doesn't always pan out that well with computers and electronics either. For some reason people see these skills as worth less value than say a mechanic or a plumber. Well, when their computer slows to a crawl or they can't use their devices, they can find somebody else if they have that attitude.
I put in the time to learn, and that's likely the part they don't understand because they don't witness it. The stuff is constantly changing, and I have no idea going in what they did or what their habits are. If I have to sit there for 3 hours cleaning up their digital garbage, they can do a little maintenance on my car without acting like it's worth so much more. Labor for labor, just supply the parts. I have my skill specific tools, they have theirs. It makes sense to a rational mind, but I'm finding that there aren't that many rational minds out there anymore.
+Jayson Nickols Being a half-decent person I couldn't see myself telling a friend to fuck off and go to Best Buy. I have a hard time believing you're one of those "geeky friends".. Maybe a "geek" but you can go ahead and drop the friend title.
The *BBB* has become a totally worthless _profit-making_ venture. Business can purchase _"memberships"_ to get better scores. So where's the _"Independent and impartial"_ rating system? *_Yelp,_* by the way, has started pulling the same crap.
I used to work at a Best Buy Geek Squad. The problem is there is an enormous amount of pressure on selling services. When I was there we were issued sales stats every hour and it was up to us to stay on top of our sales numbers.
The process is basically this:
During check in we spend a few minutes to see what could be wrong. If it's something as minor as reconnecting a cable we didn't charge for that and off you went.
If we needed to run further diagnostics then we'd check in the computer for diagnostics. The guys in front are usually just glorified sales associates that know slightly more than the average joe on computer repair. That's also where we'd try and push for the data backup to make a backup copy of the customer's data since their data. It's an expensive add on and depending on how much data we're backing up the customer may also be required to purchase an external hard drive for the service to be rendered.
The main diagnostics are done in the back where there's typically one or two guys that know their stuff along with a remote access system called Agent Johnny Utah. It's a system in which we connect the computer to the internet and workers based in India remote in and run the diagnostic tests. If all 12+ stations were taken up it'd be queued up and MAYBE one of the guys that knows their stuff will be doing the diagnostic. It's worth noting that India does not have the same privacy laws as the United States so whatever info they gather from the computer is under India's law; sadly most customers are not aware of this.
All and all Geek Squad agents are hired for their retail experience, not so much their technical prowess. Most serious repairs such as cpu or motherboard replacements are sent out for repair to a Geek Squad City facility. Also, at least when I was there, it was standard procedure to recommend a new PC to customers with a computer that was older than 3 years; then sell them the most expensive one we could with as many accessories as possible that they may need. The add ons are what matter on the sales ticket especially the service plans.
So you have high pressure sales without commission, people with little technical knowledge sans the exceptional few that get hired on and do know their stuff. Geek Squad is one of the higher paying positions in the store so promotions there are highly sought after.
this is completely and utterly false. geek squad has always used an in house software called mri. there are copies of it all over the internet
BestBuy is BS. My mom and I went to BestBuy so I could get a new hard drive for my computer. The employee said, "This one is fast, good, yeah. Only $100." It was a 600 GB. A customer went up and said, "Don't listen." He pointed out a $60 1 TB HDD. I immediately thanked him and grabbed it. Picked up some speakers too.
I still have the hard drive...
AlphaLineGaming | R.I.P Satoru Iwata | Gaming Videos Just because a hard drive has larger storage capacity doesn't make it better quality. The hard drive he pointed out was likely much faster.
Nope, the one I got is a 7200 RPM, the 600 GB one was 5400 RPM.
Either way, I could tell he was trying to rip me off because I said all I wanted was a 1 TB and he goes for a 600 GB one.
+AlphaLineGaming | R.I.P Satoru Iwata | Gaming Videos Your have to realize that companies have to make a profit in someway, but I understand your point.
+Austin Spencer that's a disguising excuse, they make plenty of money without trying to fuck people over with mis direction and lies, its just greedy people in the control seats, nothing more
+Nate Higgers not really, tricky, that's marketing. different routers do many many different things. its very common to find different "levels" of the same thing in 2 or 3 different spots.
HAHAHAHA I go to that best buy all the time. I just found out about this story, I'm totally going to pick on their geek squad the next time I visit.
come back and report the details :)hahhaha
Please im drooling... post a Vid
Have you done it?
no he hasn't
Video it and post it!
they're still just as bad... If not worse. I had a dead CMOS battery(which is just a watch battery that powers the motherboard timer when it's turned off) which I took to them because I didn't want to accidentally void my PC warranty while replacing it myself. It turned out that after they attempted to replace the battery in store, it would not boot up. They told me that it must be something else, so they sent it off to their main repair facility which took a little over a week. It turned out that the CMOS battery was the only problem. In addition to that they factory reset my PC and recommended a new OS. I know it didn't need a new OS and there was no reason to perform a factory rested during a CMOS battery change. In fact they should not have even logged into my PC because the CMOS battery is entirely hardware and changing it does not affect anything software wise. Basically the store didn't assemble my PC correctly and the main repair facility factory reset my PC for no reason. They also tried to upsell me by recommending that I buy a Windows OS from them(not an upgrade; the same one on my computer just a fresh download. (FYI you can buy restore disks for much cheaper form the PC manufacturers website, so it was purely a marketing strategy)
Wow, $580 dollars for a hard drive? WHAT ON EARTH IS THIS MADNESS! HDDs COST LIKE $50 FOR ONLY 1 TB OF SPACE!
that price includes a whole new EULA install of windows as well as pay for labor, maybe 3h at $75/h. macs are not EULA. the license transfers with the computer. but if the tester had bought the computer new there should be a license code somewhere in her documents if she kept them and they can just install with any windows cd and use the code from the factory.
but windows I can get for 30$ and add like 2 terabytes for 50$ add in labor like 30 min so like 100$
labor is 75/hour, they round up. so $75 + $90 (Windows the legit way) + $50 =$115
3 hours though, incompetence takes longer. and *your math is flawed. it's $215 for your figures.* $365 using 3hours.GorumGamer
Ananta Sesa das oh. oops. ty!
my cousin was going to take his laptop to the geek squad to have it reformatted. i slapped him and told him to bring it by so i can do it.
Why can't he do it in windows? Or in bios? Or use another pc? Weird people.
you know what reformatting is right?
+Cory 64 You can't format a HDD in BIOS...
Best Buy has the worst staff.
+cheesesteakphilly that would be a tie with gamestop
+Invincible Skolas
Nope. Used to work at Best Lie. In Computers. With a tech background. With the intent of getting promoted to Geek Squad.
It is COMPANY POLICY to promote the best SALES PEOPLE to Geek Squad. Not the most knowledgeable. This is because Best Lie bought the Geek Squad name specifically to scam their low information customer base.
Fact.
+Ronin Tetsuro I work there right now and it doesn't seem like that at all, so I don't know what the fuck your talking about.
+Ronin Tetsuro Maybe when it comes to the front of the precinct they want to hire sales people but the back of the precinct, they actually want people who know the ins and outs of computers and technology. I know for a fact that every single one of my fellow ARA"s who work in the back are pretty knowledgeable about computers. I know
+cheesesteakphilly The problem that can (and does) happen is these larger companies have hyperagressive policies to drive sales. It can and sometimes does lead to people in those companies lying to make a sale. I've seen it myself n I'm sure many here have as well. As ronin tetsuro said it's standard practice, they only make some flimsy excuses when caught. A friend worked in a similar store in the repair department, guess who got promoted.... not anybody there the longest or most experience but a blonde with double D's who's only knowledge was sales. Thats not the exception either.
i bought a BRAND NEW laptop off the shelf in best buy and did NOT leave the store with it or turn it on but took it straight to their geek squad to upgrade the ram from 4gb to 8gb. geek squad had to order the ram for it because store was out. they kept comp in shop until ram arrived then installed it. they used the wrong type and fried the circuit board so the comp was toast and useless. they refunded the computer BUT REFUSED TO REFUND the geek squad fees ($150) for the install that destroyed the computer. stating that their fees are nonrefundable. i recorded the entire incident on video. went to court and they lied saying i had taken the computer home and that was why they didnt refund the fees because they said the circuit fried was not their fault. never mind the store security cameras and mine both showed i never turned it on or left the store with it. because they are a big business and have fancy lawyers i lost the case. geek squad are frauds and thieves and should be put out of work!
I did the same thing and got a settlement of $ 10,000 no court but it took me 3 years plus I got to keep the shit I had bought, What won it for me was a breach of contract x 3
my friend took his notebook up to best buy because it wouldnt connect to the net even tho it was plugged in it would say local area connection but no webpage. he took it to best buy and they said 400 for virus removal. i did a system restore and saved him 400 bucks.
Most Geek Squad locations aren't into fixing things but instead are there to sell expensive products consumers really don't need or charge fees for not being able to fix anything.
THIS... both the original and secondary comment.
Well Duh!
I worked in PC sales and loved helping people find the most cost effective pc solution and not selling them things they didn’t need. Needless to say, my supervisors weren’t happy with me at all.
A Floyd BULL SHIT
Dorian Gray lol it’s not bullshit, Best Buy makes most of its money scamming clueless old people
I worked in Best Buy many years ago in college. From the minute we sell geek squad on anything from tvs to computers or appliances it's all a scam! Protections only cover a certain amount of years way before the life span of anything and there's fine print on almost all work done. geek squad is nothing but a business within a business. Geek squad to me only takes advantages of the fools who think they are benefiting from anything being done there. Help your mom and pop repair places not only do they deserve your business more but more than surely your computer will be diagnosed correctly.
The VG Prodigy Best Buy employee detected
Geek squad needs to be shut down. I had a laptop get knocked off my desk and got the screen shattered. I bought the PC for $350 for school. Geek squad told me it would be $120 for the screen and $230 in labor because it would take 2 hours to replace. I found a new screen on Amazon for $50 and replaced it in less than 10 minutes!
Fake. GS has never quoted labor time to me.
Another fake story. Greek squad doesn't bill by the hour
No way you ripped apart your screen assembly, installed the new screen and put it all back together as well as tested the system in only 10 minutes.
@@ralphobrien1615 OP doesn't specify make and model do it is difficult to say, but 10 minutes is achievable with many notebook screen assemblies.
If it is a Dell, for example, I have no trouble believing 10 minutes for many of the models; as you are only looking at snapping off the screen and keyboard bezels, less than a dozen screws and seating the wiring.
Sure, there are some systems out there where it is going to take much longer, but we cannot know without the OP specifying the make and model.
Though I will agree this would not include any testing, but the OP never tested the screen. Let's face it, they switched on the notebook and saw the display working, that's all they needed.
We dont quite labor its included in the $85 fee to send it to the service center then you get a quote on how much the part is so in total if the part was 125 you would pay the 85 then the 125 that's it
$580 for an IDE hard drive? What is this 2002?
geek squad wanted 500 dollars to fix my pc. I ended up fixing it myself for 60 bucks 😂
Geek Squad? More like Pre-School drop-out that somehow managed to get this job fixing things they have no idea how to fix Squad
I took my laptop to Tiger Direct for a log in problem,[ it wouldn't let me in at start up] the service guy, ran some diagnostic program for about 45min, and it fixed the problem. He told me no cost, because they didn't have to keep it.[ he had me fill out the form just in case] I was so greatful to him that I tipped him $20. He was shocked, never had that happen before. He saved me over $100, with the $70 min. take in charge, plus repair fees. Now he knows me, and helps any way he can. I learned very young to tip, it usually pays off. He could easily have beaten me, because I didn't know jack about computers.
Sounds nice, i woulda tipped him $20 as well.
This makes me sick. I'm an ex-con(selling pills) and I'am a PC/Phone/TV/Car Audio/A/V/Technician and I would NEVER EVER lie to a customer, although I have made honest mistakes in repairing devices. I love the fact that I have a skill and a little bit of kindness and respect will bring you through anything. WTF is wrong with people? I can't get a job at Best Buy or Geek Squad or a LOT of places because of my background and I could run circles around most of these so called PC repairmen.I'm thankful for y'all uncovering these thieves.
Most of us tech guys love to help people. Do not let corporate tech rip you. They got that big for a reason. Ripping.
Yeah I went in to best buy when I didn't know how to hook up my PSU, GPU, and they wanted 70$ lol, and then to hook up my stereo was like 160$ fuck best buy rather learn urself.
***** Lol. TH-cam I learned many things.
Built my whole computer and diagnosed why it wasn't working properly through you tube lol
That''s the way to do it.
+Felandro yes indeed bro. You can become a developer watching TH-cam. lol
but gamestop does this all the time when u return games for 60 they give you 5 dollars and 2 dollars in store credit whyyy:'(
Dominic Anderson Why are you on this side of youtube?
+2 Reese Cups you're not returning them if that's the case, returns are a full refund, you're selling it back to them, and can always say no to their price, and go somewhere else, or sell it yourself. While I dislike GameStop and their shady practices, they do still need to be able to make a profit from it including the amount it takes to keep that game on the store shelf.
they're not forcing you to sell it to them...
find a local used game shop. GameStop is a bunch shady fucks and a cancer that's killing gaming.
wow fox giving accuratte information, this must be a dream
Juan pablo Cantador The local stations are honest reporters..the cable channel "FOX NEWS" is full of shit primarily.
Juan pablo Cantador as opposed to any news station?
+oduOX
One can be ignorant and one can distinguish bullshit from another, you are just ignorant.
and you are of the bullshit type.
time to get popcorn hahaha
I am GLAD i finally found this video. I have been ripped off so many times by Geek Squad! i bought a "warranty" that was practically worthless for 150.00 from them.
Back then I bought parts and built a computer, but I think I missed a cord and I cannot figure out which one is not plugged right. So I went to the local computer repair shop. It was obvious, that the computer had no problem, it was not broken. Yet, they charged me $75 just for looking at it and plug a cord. They also charged me for a new fan, however I didn't need a new fan. The other fan was brand new. They took another 13 dollars for that.
Next time the computer broke, we went there, left the computer there for a day and then they called that the Hard Drive was not in it. I told them that it doesn't matter, because the computer won't start. The HDD is fine, just make the computer pass the BIOS. They refused to do that. I went there, picked up the broken computer, and dropped at another computer repair shop. The owner was a nice Arab guy, I left the computer there and he called me like 2 hours later, told me that a memory stick was dead. He just umplugged it and the computer started right. This "fix" was also kinda expensive, but cheaper than the 1st shop's offer and the 2nd shop is actually did the job, they didn't ask for my HDD to fix a memory stick error.
Also, at BestBuy an employee sold me the wrong computer with the wrong processor. I told him what I needed, and he sold me something completely different. Some shops are just ridiculious, overpriced and the employees know less about computers than I do. :-/
thatmaninblack Also, if you think about it, why did they want my HDD so badly? Maybe they wanted to steal my work projects and original software programs? I'd say probably.
+Sapling OMG exterminators have been known to do that?? thats horrifying
I would never trust a computer repair company or a mechanic for your vehicle or anything like that. 75% of them bullshit you and take advantage of your ignorance. I'd rather try using the internet to figure out the problem myself which usually works and it's easy.
>using the internet to fix your broken computer
Batrock Watson Does anyone just have 1 computer anymore?
I personally run my own shop, "Always Chiefin" and ALWAYS strive to treat my clients (not just customers) as I would want to be treated if I were on the other side of the counter. There are plenty of honest people out there. You can't just lump everyone together because you've had bad life experiences. And while you are able and willing to weed through the internet to solve your issues, some people just don't have the time or basic knowledge to know where to begin and want a knowledgeable expert to solve issues quick and reasonably. Being dishonest only cheapens my soul, in my opinion and I want my children to see a certain type of man when they see me in my dealings with other human beings. Instead of being angry, and mistrustful of all but 25% of the other 6 billion people you share the planet with, maybe help some of those people that you call ignorant (it will make you feel good), and when you don't have the resources to solve your own problems, don't automatically assume you're going to be "bullshitted." Stick with local, non-corporate technicians, etc. Oh! and maybe stop listening to rap... that stuff will make anyone angry! :) (that part is a joke. Good day)
My computer wouldn't boot up I couldn't figure out why, I tried the pushing f10 and control button still no luck. So I took it to a computer repair shop in Farmington mo. They did the same thing and it worked, and they also ran a hard drive test at no charge.
judging by the age of that computer a hard drive would be 50$ so...
500$ labour to plug it in? LOL
Yeah, GeekSquad did the same thing to me as well. Took my laptop in for repairs and they claimed my hard drive was broken as well and would need to be repaired, when I really just needed a new install of Windows.
Did you ever think that diagnostic testing pointed to the hard drive starting to fail. More often than not I see clients come in with working computers save for a few viruses and rogue malware only to find that the hard drive failed diagnostics and would need to be replaced. Better to get it done right away then remove the viral activity give the client back their computer then a few months down the road they come back wondering why their computer stopped booting into windows.
people seem to forget when best buy got in trouble with sony because they were charging $50.00 for a firmware upgrade on new ps3's....something you could do at home by just pressing the x button.
LOL RLLY?
yep
lol....they do..but I think its set by factory default to be off..its in the settings menu
You're gonna need a new hard drive. Oh and the virus infected your processor and your RAM that's gonna be about $700 to clean out of there ......>>
starstuffb5 Viruses don't affect your RAM, what are you talking about.
that's the joke.
GeekSquad is crap. NEVER go there! Find a friend that knows computer (there are tons of people who do) or Google your problem.
I took my laptop to them so see how much it would be to replace my disk drive...... they told me it was going to be $100 for labor and $250 for a new disc drive. I told them ok I'll just go a few feet grab the usb desc drive for $25 and call it a day. They had the most pissed off face ever, a few weeks later I went there and surprise surprise they moved the computer parts to the very back of the store and no usb disc drives either.
Kap pa 250 for a drive? wow... What kind of drive was it anyway? Not even a Blu Ray drive would cost that much. and the average optical drive for a laptop seems to be between 20 and 40 bucks.
Duros asfdgasf He's talking hard disk drive, not blu ray or dvd player
Then why was the replacement 25 bucks? I don;t know of any external HDDs that cost that little.
Perhaps they were exaggerating the cost, but they were talking about HDD
I took my son's computer to Best Buy because it would not start-up, and within a few hours, they said that they could not recover the data and asked if they could re-install OEM software thus, overwriting everything. We agreed to do this (and lose the data) but a day later, they said that the hard-drive was damaged beyond repair and there was a fault on the mainboard too. They suggested the cost to repair this (est. over $800.00) was nearing what a new computer would be. I indicated that my son was getting a new computer for Christmas anyway (all this taking place in early November) so, no worries. So, I requested to pay for their time and be done. They packed up the computer and when I got to the store, they told me NO CHARGE for the nearly 8 hour of time they held our computer, as they were not successful in fixing it! That impressed me.
"Ma'am... it looks like your Hard drive belt was broke. We had to replace it. Your DVD drive fluid was low so we topped that off. Also, your USB ports needed a realignment so we went ahead and fixed that. That will be $900"
So what's the hiring process like for the 'geek squad' ?
"Do you know anything about computers?"
"Well..not really."
"Ok, how comfortable are you to pretend that you do?"
"Very."
"Great, you're hired."
I work in canadian Geek Squad. I watch this, and I wonder how they might have missed that. Policy is different across a few stores, but even if we took it in for diagnosis, if it was that simple, we'd refund the fee.
shut up scam
That's not exactly nice. I'm just trying to make a living while not screwing people out of money. I'm certainly not a scam.
Keith kinda accurate still. less of a focus on the raw numbers though nowadays. the Canadian best buys tend to be more lax.
Maria Elena Gonzales And you know what? that is totally your prerogative. You don't want to deal with us? I can totally understand, not everybody has a good experience with geek squad. There are plenty of smaller repair shops that do similar service. Most days I don't want to be there either. Just understand that I'm a human being to and I would appreciate it if you didn't start with the name calling. I'm just a store level grunt, there's only so much I can be possibly blamed for.
Maria Elena Gonzales now that right there is a classy lady.
Geek Squad is the Firestone of computers.
Firestone told me once that my wife's car needed a part that costs $25 online for $500 and all they had to do was remove a few screws. On top of that the part didn't even fix the problem.
Geek Squad told a friend of mine his computer had a bad hard drive or a virus too, when the problem was his antivirus definition. It caused a BSOD whenever he opened up internet explorer. Once I removed the anti-virus, problem was gone. Geek Squad said they would've charged him over $350. Me? $10.
I took my computer to Geek Squad they told me $550 for a cracked screen on my laptop.
So I decided to take my computer to another computer store one of those private or family-owned. they only charge me $213.
And it functions as if nothing happened to it.
I charge less than $80 for screen replacements in my store I run myself (small local business). Most screens are universal, so you can typically get a generic screen for $30 or so and fit it in around 10-20minutes
Matt Bates Wow that's cool. Companies ripping people off. I bet they would take the shirts off their backs and shoes off their feets. At outrageous prices thats pretty much it.
the problem with retail tech support from when I worked in the easy tech department at staples we were "forced" to order parts from this shitty supplier who always overcharged for the part plus we would charge for our "services" to install the part so it doesn't surprise me they wanted 550 but it is complete BS. I no longer work for staples but i always tell everyone I meet never to go to geeksquad or easy tech
shawn m . So basically go to small business computer repair shops.
Joseph Coll exactly or even better find your local tech kid or some CS major in college they definitely could use the cash
$580 for a broken hard drive? lol.
All you have to do is buy a new one in that case for a fifth of that cost.
A fifth of 580 is 116. That's close enough.
***** Wow, way to go, you really proved that irrelevant part of his comment wrong, you are a hero!
***** How are you a year ahead of us?
***** Nothing has changed, best buy continues to rip people off... That is why I repair computers so cheap.
I know right? I had a "dead" hard drive, not only did I get a new one and replace it for about 50 bucks, I also was able to get a donor drive to change the boards out on the dead drive to get the info off of it before it friend out 100%
they use a special software that tells them whats wrong, most of them probably don't know what the inside of a computer even looks like
1:00 "the best tests are the ones you don't know your taking." huh, kind of insightful. Quality quote.
The Geek Squad is a part of a large corporation and their job is to hit sales numbers. Period. Management and staff are under that pressure. They are in competition with small shops that get business by using competence and integrity.
$580 hard drive?? Must be a 2TB SSD.
+Giuliana Rexic dude i got my 2tb ssd for 50$ lmao
+TheyBrokeHerFace Would love to you where you get your shit from lol
You can make a who computer with that money!!
+TheyBrokeHerFace where TF can you get a 2TB SSD for 50$?? not possible in a legit buy
+Antonio Trejo its not possible in a fake buy either lmfao
I went to geek squad to ask if they could factory rest my computer since it was corrupted and I couldn't get into the settings, and they wanted to charge me $120 for them to look at it and $50 or more to fix it. Later that day I finally figured out a way to do it which only took 30 mins to do after I pressed literally 3 buttons to put it into recovery mode. Geek squad in general is a scam and costs way too much to do anything.
Your paying for the convenience...not the actual work they do.
LZRD WZRD so it's worth $120 for them to take your computer for a few days to do a few seconds of work?
Josh Battershell yes. that's how a services business works. You pay a plumber for only a few minutes of work right? and he gets paid hundreds of dollars. This is no different.
Elise Copeland yes but this is a lot easier than plumbing and all service businesses are complete scams
@@Phonrphreaker What exactly is "convenient" about Geek Squad?
I worked at the Best Buy here in my area from the first day the door opened and for 3 year after. It was called product service to start with and changed to Geek Squad a few years later. The name was bought from 3 guys that had the name and service in the hometown of Best Buy to the tune of $3m so they could use it for their product service. I never ripped anyone off the entire time I was there and did a lot of free jobs for customers for simple 5 minute repairs so they would want to come back again. There were other techs there I had to redo their work later due to the lack of knowledge and I was the ONLY one who was Microsoft certified and had electronics certification in the building. They went to hooking units up over the internet and having them remote diagnosed from Texas, that is where I drew the line and left. For years now, I have been fixing their mistakes from my previous customers who found me privately and what I have found is shocking and amazing. Their are people who claim to know their "stuff", but clearly do not. I refused to be their upsell salesman when I was there and that did not bode well either. Small shops, like mine, are more likely to get it right due to we want to have a good reputation and return business through word of mouth.
I bought an Xbox 360 from Best Buy new in 2007. They asked if I wanted to the "Extended Warranty". I asked them what that was. They said if it ever broke down to bring it in and they'd exchange it in store for free. Two months later it breaks down. I take it in and they say "Ok we'll send it in, should be back in a few weeks." I said "No, you'll exchange it in store" They said no we don't do that. So why did I pay extra for something I could have done for free? The local news even went in undercover after I told them my story. Best Buy is such a huge rip off. I miss Circuit City and Good Guys.
Yeah I'm a sucker for sure, but the geek squad straight up told me they replace them immediately that day.
Brian Haley i no there a scaml i remember my desktops dvd drive was broken and i was to busy to replace it myself so i decided ill go down to them since its a reputable store etcand they tried making me buy a new pc even though the desktop was only 2 years old and was still quite high end specs. i told them to fly a kite and did it myself
Not really, all they did was send it in to the repair facility for me. It was still under warranty from Microsoft. It's a total ripoff.
Brian Haley you should've just contacted Microsoft then instead of BB
That's what big companies like that do. Geek Squad guys are all salesmen first and foremost. When I was fresh out of college with an IT degree I tried to get a job, certain I was more than qualified with all of my certificates and whatnot, but you know why I got rejected? No sales experience lol. If they can't up sell theres no way they'll stay afloat.
Another related story: When I was buying my first smartphone from Verizon (for $150 more than the same phone at Wal-Mart might I add) the salesman guaranteed me that I could have the phone without having to pay an extra $30 for data each month. Cool right? Since I never use data I went ahead and bought it, but when the first bill rolled around guess what? $30 for Data. Took it back to the store and told the manager I was told no extra charge would be incurred. His response? "Theres no way an employee here would say that. It's simply not true." I kept the phone, but never have I trusted a salesman again. And after a bit of research I also buy all my phones from third party places and have saved a ton of $. Screw GS and Verizon.
I know everything else was messed up with that geek squad, but what caught me attention was $580 DOLLARS TO REPLACE A HARD DRIVE?!?!?!?!?!? a 5tb hard drive doesn't cost nearly that much, let alone what ever size that mechanical drive was.
You'll notice that is a PATA drive, it is not a recent video, that very well could have been the cost of a large hard drive when this was made.
I am a PC technician and have been since the 80's. I have no papers or courses but I guarantee you that I will do a better job than these clowns. You can't beat hands on experience and that is all I have. Forget the computer degrees these people have, my experience trumps all of those and I will give you a fair price. I am honest. Period.
I no longer go to BestBuy for any reason. I had bought a pc there with the expensive warranty and started having problems right away. Took it in 8 different times and each time was told it was fixed, by low employees to managers, asked them if they had actually done anything after the first couple of times. Always showing me diagnostic testing. Each time never being fixed. Low and behold warranty runs out pc still not working and am told it has a bad motherboard which would cost more than the actual computer. How funny because it was the same guy and his lying manager who kept saying it was fixed on numerous occasions. I tell everyone not to make big item purchases there.
At the end this video showed that the Better Business Bureau cooperated with the Geek Squad to hide Geek Squads criminal behavior. Business crooks of a feather. The brilliant George Carlin was spot on when he talked about " the criminal business class".
John Parker well said.
I went to Best Buy to purchase a basic inexpensive computer for my daughter for just over $200. The geek squad employee was trying to up-sell me a service contract, anti-virus protection etc. for an additional $300 +. I laughed at him and asked if he didn't see how ridiculous this was. He, in all seriousness, toted the standard line of how important it is to protect (and so on....) I tried to explain that I could just purchase another computer for less. He could not understand this logic and still tried to convince me and give me the standard sales pitch. I walked out shaking my head (I bought neither)
The VG Prodigy There are many high-quality free anti-virus software out there and how would you even get a virus that locks you out of your computer? Sounds like user error.
How does geeksquad find a virus within a pc with a "broken hard drive" lol.
i was thinkin same thing hahahahaha
They have a virus "wand" they wave over it, if the green light comes you know your computer has a virus. The wand looks a lot like a garage door opener.
gone fishin LOL
Its easier to blow away your hard drive and reload the O/S and hand it back to you than take the little extra time and 'do it right' by finding the problem. It's called being lazy, and also being pushed by main headquarter to sell their new products, even if it means lying to you.
gone fishin Wow. I keep praying that you're kidding me, but my gut tells me you're on the level. People can be so gullible! People have a great resource at their fingertips! TH-cam has tons of videos that can help you diagnose simple pc problems.
Geek squad actually brought in my laptop in for a quote (it had a broken charging port) and returned it with a broken keyboard (underlights weren't working and It wasn't typing) and my track pad wasn't working either. Geek squad also told me that my USB port was broken as well, when he took out a USB I had in there for my computer mouse that was just working. Do not trust geek squad, they are expert scammers who will break your computer to force you to get it repaired or buy a new one.
That's why I fix my computers myself.
"We take _______very seriously, and I personally feel horrible that we missed this opportunity to _______. I'm working closely with ______ going forward to ensure that the highest level of service is maintained consistently for our customers in ______"
There MUST be a "scandal response template" out there somewhere 'cause EVERYONE spews this exact same garbage when they get caught for anything ever.