Geek squad fail

[redkow97]

Geek Squad is a quasi-competitor for my company, and I posted this to our global forum.

The shame is that I'm sure there are GOOD Geek Squad locations out there, and that one bad shop (maybe one bad employee) is the a-hole here, ruining the reputation for the rest.

I agree that Geek Squad is overpriced in most cases, but they commoditize the industry very nicely. Rather than saying, "setting up a router should take 1 hour @ $115/hour," they changed the industry pricing model to "it's $79 to set up a router." period. if it takes us longer, WE eat the cost.

It takes out the guess work in pricing for consumers.

[bandit12]

I am for the biggest part computer dumb and know enough to stay away from Best Buy. My step mom went thru the following process at Best Buy.

Drove one hour, got a new computer then drove one hour home. Computer wouldn't boot up.

Drove one hour back to BB, got a second computer then drove one hour home. Second computer did same thing.

Drove one hour back to BB, got third computer, made them hook it all up and make sure it worked then drove one hour home. Everytime she brags about how good Best Buy and her computer is my dad just rolls his eyes, shakes his head and says if we charged them by the hour, installation and mileage they would owe us money.

I am like the second computer medic guy when I sell something. I would rather be able to say hi to you when I see you next time than worry about getting knots on my head.

[Fonzie]

My sister in law's had nothing but problems with our Geek Squad here in town. Laptop that's been in multiple times in the 2 years since they bought it, and the one time they kept it for several weeks "working on it", only to have to take it back a couple months later

Needless to say.... She's very frustrated & dissatisfied with them

[alienpi]

It's sad that a lot of tech support these days requires dealing with incompetent technicians. It seems like the elite tech support people are only available 25% of the time, it's like a bell curve.

While taking technology related classes I've found that one of the technicians was always complaining about how idiotic many of the other technicians are.

[redkow97]

^ it's not that "elite support people are only available 25% of the time," it's that there is no such thing as an "elite" technician who wants to do the tedious shit like virus cleanup.

Frankly, most virus cleanups take a lot of time and effort. Most of our owners report that unless they can have 3 computers on the bench at the same time, they actually lose money on virus cleanup. (with 3 computers, they can at least have all 3 scanning at the same time, etc.)

The real money is in monitoring and prevention these days. for $25/month, you get GOOD antivirus (not McAfee or some other shit program), system monitoring, patch management (makes sure updates install properly), and online backup.

the real advantage is that someone else has a vested interest in alerting you to potential problems. The technician will get a notification from the monitoring software, "uh, hey - the hard drive cooling fan is failing." and the tech can call the customer, or even shut down the computer remotely before it fries itself.

[jeremygsxr]

My sister in law's had nothing but problems with our Geek Squad here in town. Laptop that's been in multiple times in the 2 years since they bought it, and the one time they kept it for several weeks "working on it", only to have to take it back a couple months later

Needless to say.... She's very frustrated & dissatisfied with them

I call bullshit, who ever heard of sheep with a laptop?