BestBuy Charges $1,700 for CD Drive Replacement?

[Climber]

It would of been covered under warranty and the customer wouldn't be charged.

What you fail to see is data recovery for a failed HD is not covered and the customer was told this before it was sent out.

No the customer was not told this. They were asked if they want data recovery protection, but their answer was no since the HDD was not in question the cd rom was.

if there is a 1500 charge for a necessary repair outside of warranty then the customer needs to be made aware of that before hand. I honestly don't see why this is such a hard concept to grasp. No other repair center in the world can get away with this. You can't send something in under warranty then start willy nilly charging fee's outside of the warranties protection without notifying the customer first.

 

[Dantrax]

Let me try to explain this one more time.

The PSP/black tie protection warranty sold at best buy STATES CLEARLY IN THE TERMS that if something is defective on a PC, whether it be the reported problem or not - it will be fixed. If a computer is under warranty, service center agents are not allowed to send it out defective. It has to be 100% functioning. Granted, sometimes things slip by and they don't realize something is defective or it gets past quality control. But if an agent fixes the reported problem, runs the post-tests, and discovers the hard drive is bad - it's getting replaced. Period.

They don't go out of their way to replace hard drives. Why? Because an agent (a repair tech) has NO incentive to do so. They don't get any bonus, nothing. They have a daily quota to meet and replacing the hard drive would only make the repair take longer and increase the chance that unit doesn't go out that day.

Personally, I agree they should send the bad hard drive back to the customer. But the reason they don't, is because they get a discount on new parts by sending the old defective parts back to the manufacturer. The manufacturer wipes the data, repairs the drive, and sells it refurbished. That's the way it works. The only time a bad part comes back to the customer is if the PC wasn't under any warranty and the customer had paid for the entire repair themselves.

Look guys, Geek Squad has a bad rep amongst tech savvy individuals and a lot of it is certainly deserved. But don't jump to crazy conclusions when you don't know the facts. I can completely understand your mis-trust of Geek Squad and I don't hold any bad blood towards you for it. Just chill out people :-P

So why didn't they do a backup & charge her $100 for the repair instead of $1500 for recovery? Alot easier on BB, GS everyone to get $100 & keep a customer happy & just plain keep a customer. Don't think she will be shopping at BB anymore do you?

 

[QwertyJuan]

Finally got it through my brother-in-law and sisters head to get an external hard drive to store photos,, music, documents, etc... on instead of the interal one. They took a laptop in for screen repair once and got a formatted system in return. They were told its their policy to wipe all hard drives clean regardless of the repair. This was years and years ago so I would think they have changed that.

They took a desktop in for warranty work and were told it would be $100 to back up the data. I told him fuck that, bought a data cable and transferred all his files to my laptop in about 10 minutes and told him that is what BB was going to charge him a $100 to do.

TERRIBLE advice, unless you also told them to back that external HDD up.... external HDD's go bad too eh??

 

[Xaero_toast]

Anything is possible but wouldn't you like to be informed of how much it will cost you prior to having the work done?

A point that I think many have missed, is that these people ARE NOT being billed $1700 for the repair of their computer. The repair of the computer is being covered by the warranty. The hard drive was unexpectedly replaced under that warranty, and the $1700 bill is the cost of performing data recovery on the unexpectedly failed hard drive. At least, when I scrutinize the article, that's what I come back with.

Another poster stated the $200 gift card is the automatic response for complaining to best buy corporate. All they should have to do is complain another 7 1/2 times, and that will cover it.

$1700 is not an unreasonable fee for data recovery. Depending on the hard drive condition, that's barely over $1/hr. For example, the current project in my test rig:

That drive was backed up 10 days before the crash, and fortunately, lost data newer than that most recent backup was not of substantial value. I will most likely give up on that recovery process before it completes, with a schedule like that, but it just illustrates the point, data recovery is expensive, for a reason.

 

[Xaero_toast]

TERRIBLE advice, unless you also told them to back that external HDD up.... external HDD's go bad too eh??

Not terrible advice, just not perfect. For the average joe, who cannot service a pc, data on an internal hard drive becomes inaccessable due to any failure (power supply, monitor, motherboard,cpu,ram,windows,filesystem, hard drive). Data on an external drive, can be read from another system, and is easily not sent in with the pc, for repair.

You make a valid point, that external disks fail as easily (or more, if rough handling) as internals, but many of the failures I listed in the above example are solved by plugging the external drive into another machine. For the tech-illiterate average joe, this may be the only solution of which he/she is capable.

 

[obobski]

typical geeksquad bullshit, and because this is "too new" for legislature, I doubt theres any consumer protection laws here (why else do you think geeksquad gets away with charging $200 to throw away a box that your TV came in, or $950 to deliver your PC to you? auto mechanics can't pull that kind of bullshit, but its also taken what? 20-30 years of consistent consumer lawsuits and advocacy groups lobbying for proper laws?)

yeah yeah we all get that data recovery is expensive (xaero toast, 1190 hours, LOL, thats >solid month of 24x7 run), but the point is:

shit should've NEVER HAPPENED in the first place

this is like scheister car mechanic tactics in the 1980's and 1990's, you bring the car in for an oil change, and they find some other "fault" (like your entire transmission) to be "Broken", immobilize the vehicle by removing it, and then at minimum you're paying them to re-install the part, but more likely than not, paying them to put a new transmission in (so you just went from what? like $25-$50 of repairs to something upwards of $4000)

in other words, motherfuckers need to read the customer needs, and only fix what they're authorized too, even if BB wants to play the "BUT BUT BUT THE LAW SAYS WE CAN DO WHATEVER WANT", who cares, you're next on the chapter 11 chop block, so either get your shit straight or have fun with that

theres a reason CompUSA and CC entered a period of consistently failing sales: they couldn't get out of the "shaft the customers" business model (had a friend that worked at CC, and the BS they pulled pre-sales and post-sales, especially on computers, is unreal, it makes even the worst car dealers look like saints, and the worst part, the employees are basically told "you do it this way, or you're done")

 

[piscian18]

I can't really back up their complaint. Im on their side the Geeksquad is crap, but it's common occurrence. Otherwise they wouldnt have offered to back up the drive.

 

[Weenis]

Not terrible advice, just not perfect. For the average joe, who cannot service a pc, data on an internal hard drive becomes inaccessable due to any failure (power supply, monitor, motherboard,cpu,ram,windows,filesystem, hard drive). Data on an external drive, can be read from another system, and is easily not sent in with the pc, for repair.

You make a valid point, that external disks fail as easily (or more, if rough handling) as internals, but many of the failures I listed in the above example are solved by plugging the external drive into another machine. For the tech-illiterate average joe, this may be the only solution of which he/she is capable.

Exactly, also take into consideration that the common person does not use their equipment as hard as us enthusiasts Someone who might backup a few gigs of pictures/music is not reading/writing all the time to the disk.

I would just tell them once a month or so to copy all the files they want to the hard disk for backup, unplug it and keep it somewhere safe.

But let's be honest... who really has data that needs backed up THAT badly..

If its pictures upload it somewhere; there are tons of free services.. just password them and don't give them out.

Documents? Email them to yourself.


There are tons of free solutions for a majority of the data that you would need backed up.


As for the best BB stuff, they should warn customers of the potential risk of hard drives being replaced and that fees could be very expensive. Then again they should also offer to backup their data for a more reasonable price... 100$ for 10-15 minutes worth of work?

All they would have to do to keep things safe and secure is keep a nice large raid array of drives, and dump images to it LOCALLY, encrypt it all and only have the manager/upper level tech support have access to it.

 

[stefan231]

people need to read the stuff they are signing at geeksquad when drop off computer if read it it basically says they are not responsible for your data you are and most stores have signs at the counter selling backup services and warnings that you may lose data if computer sent out. One thing to note when I worked at Geeksquad we replaced Cdrom/dvd in store. It was also common knowledge that if any thing was sent out the services center wipes the HDD no matter what they just do this as standard practice.

 

[ivesceneenough]

there are A LOT of important details left out of the story.

but heres some important things:

when a customer brings anything to GS, before any work is done they sign a piece of paper that lays out all of the terms. the geek should have explained it to them, and they should have READ it before signing. in those terms it clearly says, that if they are interested in keeping their data, they NEED to have it backed up, either by geek squad, or themselves. this is especially important if its going to service. a hard disk might work at home, but you ship it through a few warehouses (most units get shipped through UPS) isn't surprising a few die. They also say that best buy will preform all services needed to get the hardware operational. So if a unit gets to service with a bad CD, they run diags and find a bad HD as well, its getting replaced. just like when you RMA a video card, at the service center the core unit is kept for warranty purposes. (if a unit is for work outside of warranty, the old parts get shipped to the customer)

the original problem is that the customer did not back up any data. $50 will get you a clearance external HD which at least provides some form of backup. Thing is, most people don't care about their data till its gone.

 

[ivesceneenough]

As for the best BB stuff, they should warn customers of the potential risk of hard drives being replaced and that fees could be very expensive. Then again they should also offer to backup their data for a more reasonable price... 100$ for 10-15 minutes worth of work?

All they would have to do to keep things safe and secure is keep a nice large raid array of drives, and dump images to it LOCALLY, encrypt it all and only have the manager/upper level tech support have access to it.

The $99 service realistically takes a good 1 to 2 hours of a techs time. First you have to take a part the unit, which on some models is really easy, other old Dells and HPs can take 10 minutes to get a HD out if you are not familiar with them, then you need to get it into an enclosure to hook it to the backup computer. (no, windows filesharing is not going to work, it will take longer and leave a few serious liabilities) At this point, you then hope the HD works, and doesn't need jumpers set or isn't just DOA. Because if it doesn't work then you get to refund the $99 and you just wasted 15 minutes. IF the drive does work then you need to find all of the documents or files the customer is interested in. Think about who most people who would go to Geek Squad are, when asked "where are your files?" their eyes glaze over. They do not know. So realistically you have to hunt for them. once you have found them you need to copy them off, $99 buys you up to about 10 gigs of backup, which on a slow hard disk can take several minutes to a half hour to copy. (raptor? isn't that a dinosaur??) Once copied over, you need to give the customer their copy of the data, (they are not going to pay for something as non tangible as data on a server) so you will need to burn them on to DVD. Burning the DVDs will again take a good 15 minutes, if you don't have any coasters. Now here's the fun part, unlike solo techs working with 1 person at a time. A Geek Squad agent has to deal with all the other computers that need fixing, checking all new repairs in, old repairs out, getting people coming up to the window asking for free tech help, customer service reps needing returned products getting inspected, general managers demanding you go out on the floor to help sell new computers, deal with angry customers who may or may not have good reason to be angry, setting up new computers, getting asked to fix various problems around the store etc etc etc. Once you ad in that Best Buy is not a charity, they have to pay the geeks, provide them a building, and STILL want to make a few dollars on top of that $99 Is unfortunately reasonable. Tech repairs in a structure like Best Buy do not get more efficient until you scale them up much larger than a single store. your average geek has to do way more tasks than just fix computers (if only it were that easy)


i may have done this before.

 

[Tokamak]

Anything is possible but wouldn't you like to be informed of how much it will cost you prior to having the work done?

The work done (replacing the HDD and the CD-Rom) was covered by the warranty and therefore free. The $1700 was for the data recovery on the HDD not covered by the warranty.

 

[Tokamak]

I wasn't clear in my above post; she has NOT been charged $1700 for data recovery. That's what the estimate to recover the data is. She also did not say whether they would give her the old HDD back, I'm guessing they will, but it's dead. They must still have it if they've quoted her for data recovery. I had a laptop HDD die years ago under warranty from BB and they gave me back the old HDD along with the box for the new one.

That drive could have died any time during the whole process. It happens.
I'm guessing the consumerist agrees since they don't seem to have contacted BB HQ. Usually if someone gets really hosed, they help make it right.

 

[myndcrime]

this is why I'm so glad I can fix my own computer

 

[jbailey]

Here's how Geek Squad works when you have a service plan.

You bring it in, tell them what's wrong, and they look at that issue as well as test all of the hardware.

If any of the hardware fails testing, such as the hard drive in this case, they are obligated to replace it under the service plan. They cannot knowingly give your computer back to you with a known bad hard drive and continue to cover it under the service plan unless that part is replaced.

If the unit is to ever leave the store for any reason at all, the store must get approval from the customer to send it out.

This person is definitely not telling the entire story. Best Buy/Geek Squad actually have a data recovery facility where data can be recovered off defective hard drives. This isn't just plugging it up and doing a raw read of the drive, it's actually taking the platters out of a dead drive and attempting to read it in another enclosure. The only time I've ever seen a drive where data couldn't be recovered is when the platters themselves actually had scratches. This lady had to approve sending the hard drive in for a data recovery attempt and had to sign at least two or three papers authorizing the drive to be sent out, as well as pay a $50 or so deposit for having them look at it. The data recovery people have to call the customer directly to get approval for data recovery, especially when it's this large amount. If the customer approves, they do the work, send it back to the store, and the customer pays for it on pickup.

What's probably going on is this person approved the work and has now decided they don't want to pay. The unit never would have been sent out for data recovery unless she actually filled out the appropriate forms and then paid the deposit. If the data recovery guys don't get the deposit receipt and don't have absolutely everything filled out, they send the stuff right back to the store.

Best Buy is really pushing hardcore on customer privacy and data issues like this, so it's hard for me to believe that this would just happen out of the blue.

Everyone always sides with the people bitching about stuff like this because they don't know the whole story, and the consumerist is always right there to make them sound like they've been had. It's really sad.

 

[Lemurion]

The moral of the story is don't ever buy an extended warranty from Best Buy. If they didn't have the warranty all they would have touched was the optical drive.

 

[jbailey]

Sorry I misread some of the original article, but still...

The lady was told her hard drive needed to have professional data recovery performed on it. She approved, the hard drive was sent out, and now she's pissed that it's going to cost an arm and a leg. It sucks, but it happens that way sometimes. She could very easily get her hard drive back. What she's complaining about is that it's going to cost so much to get the data off. This service has nothing to do with Best Buy's service plans. I'm not advocating purchasing them, as I very rarely do, but a lot of people seem to be confusing the issue.

The lady's hard drive and data are not being held hostage. It's just going to cost a lot to get the data off, so she's mad and making a big deal about it. She could always go through someone else that will end up telling her the same thing.

 

[darkpaw]

I'm sorry, I hate Geek Squad as much as the next reputable geek, but anyone that doesn't back up thier data before handing the computer over to BB or anyone else should not be surprised if they lose something.

Same thing could have happened with Dell, HP, Apple, or any other warranty provider. Your data is your responsibility. Even in elementary school in the 80s I remember seeing those backup your floppies posters on the wall. With USB drives and online storage, there is no excuse for this crap. My mom is a computer idiot and even she knows to backup her photos through Picassa.

Backup early and often, if something fails you're the only one to blame.

 

[Tolyngee]

That drive was backed up 10 days before the crash, and fortunately, lost data newer than that most recent backup was not of substantial value. I will most likely give up on that recovery process before it completes, with a schedule like that, but it just illustrates the point, data recovery is expensive, for a reason.

Spinrite's now so outdated that I'm surprised anyone uses it anymore. I stopped using it completely when I realized it was useless for big drives, starting at 1TB, or maybe it was the 750GBers that were too big...

I can't say it ever did, would or even could recover any data anyway. I just used it to determine whether a drive under warranty really did now need to be RMAed, and to determine if there's any usability left in drives OOW...

FYI - there are better and faster tools than Spinrite available now. Spinrite might supposedly (cough cough supposedly) do more, but if the other tools say the drive's utter crap, Spinrite's going to end up telling you the same thing... Only it'll take a month longer to say it...

 

[DTN107]

So some members are saying is that geek squad is innocent?

So I go to my stealership and ask for an oil change and they decided to just replace my engine for $xxxxx instead of doing a $20 oil change without informing me everything should be alright?

Geeksquad screw up somewhere and is not admitting fault but rather have the customer eat the cost through their whole policy on "data loss". If anything geeksquad is abusing their own policy on the customer. There is nothing innocent about that.

 

[Tolyngee]

this is why I'm so glad I can fix my own computer

This.

But what bothers me is not just the ignorance of typical users, but the sheer unwillingness to learn a single darn thing to keep themselves out of these messes.

My mom has had three computers since 1994, all either built by me or bought under my advise. I tell her anything important to keep somewhere extra beside the hard drive.

Not only does she still not understand that C:\ is the hard drive, but she doesn't understand or even want to learn how explorer works and how to move a file from C:\ onto A:\ (back when she still had a floppy... Hey, a copy on a floppy is a better back-up plan than no extra copy at all...)

She asks "is there a book on it?" Like you need a book for that? And yes, I've brought her books... But she could also look this stuff up on the internet...

She had a problem with Word (she actually took classes at some school for it...), something with configuring tabs... Not only was it clearly in the book she had on her desk (although tabs was about 20 pages earlier in this book than where she was looking... she could say the word "tab" all damn day long, but when she opens a book, mysteriously "tab" gets mistranslated into "margins"...), but when I typed "tabs" into Word's help, it came up with more than one hit... (the second hit was the most relevant one...) But because it came up with more than one hit, my mom gave up, and refused to look at anything...

My experience is people give up helping themselves when it comes to computers the moment that doing something with the computer isn't almost 100% automatic... It's a computer, it should do it itself...


I hope BB counter-sues this bitch...

You just can't help the ignorant and lazy, you can only hope they die soon...

 

[nissanztt90]

Customer in the article did nothing wrong. The accuracy of the article is a whole other debate, and the chance that the letter reflects actual events is another, if the letter is real to being with. Best Buy already has plenty of horror stories.

I bought a Gateway digital camera some years ago, took it back because there was blue grainy shit in photos. They took it in the back, put it down for a few minutes, and i know this cause i watched them, someone picked it up a few min later and said there was nothing wrong with it. At that point i reliazed the 100 bucks wasnt worth my time. Now i only buy things from Best Buy that they dont make any money on, or very little, like movies and games.

 

[Tolyngee]

So I go to my stealership and ask for an oil change and they decided to just replace my engine for $xxxxx instead of doing a $20 oil change without informing me everything should be alright?

If you have 100% full coverage on the car, and the dealer informs you that under 100% coverage they will check everything during your oil change and fix everything they find and you agree, then yes, wouldn't you expect a fresh engine if they determined it's bad?

 

[ivesceneenough]

So some members are saying is that geek squad is innocent?

So I go to my stealership and ask for an oil change and they decided to just replace my engine for $xxxxx instead of doing a $20 oil change without informing me everything should be alright?

Geeksquad screw up somewhere and is not admitting fault but rather have the customer eat the cost through their whole policy on "data loss". If anything geeksquad is abusing their own policy on the customer. There is nothing innocent about that.

i love car analogies.... yours doesn't work.

the closest you could get is, you needed your radiator changed, but the headgasket was bad as well, so the dealership replaces both WITHOUT COST to you, which you signed papers agreeing to but you get mad because the headgasket was signed by Mario Earnhardt (yes you heard that) and the autograph was messed up, which you signed papers to acknowledging might happen, so they offered you an opportunity to get it back for $1,800, which you then post on the internet.


rough, but cars dont really have data.....

 

[nissanztt90]

i love car analogies.... yours doesn't work.

the closest you could get is, you needed your radiator changed, but the headgasket was bad as well, so the dealership replaces both WITHOUT COST to you, which you signed papers agreeing to but you get mad because the headgasket was signed by Mario Earnhardt (yes you heard that) and the autograph was messed up, which you signed papers to acknowledging might happen, so they offered you an opportunity to get it back for $1,800, which you then post on the internet.


rough, but cars dont really have data.....

How bout an Xbox analogy?

Youve got this nice shiny airbrushed piece of shit abomination Halo 3 edition Xbox...and bam...RROD...sent in to MS, and you get a nice white box back...

 

[Xaero_toast]

ivesceneenough makes perfect point.

IMO, the deciding factor of "fault", is if data recovery is necessary because the hard drive was that far gone, or if that faulty hard drive was formatted or otherwise erased. If that drive was still functioning, but came up with some bad sectors, or some smart errors, or other signs of an impending failure, then, from a practical standpoint, they could have imaged off that drive to the new replacement (replacement drive had to have an image from somewhere, why not the original drive if it is still that functional?). This just seems to be what makes sense.

I think everyone involved deserves a big hearty FU for this one. BB/GS sucks. That's an FU for them. It can be inferred from the article that the customer hasn't backed up data in over 5. That's worthy of an FU2. Everybody gets F'd. If there was alcohol involved, this would be what is known as a party.

 

[Atherton213]

I work at Best Buy so this may sound slightly biased to others, but here goes.
The customer did note that she was informed and had been recommended of performing a backup of her data. She also stated that she declined said backup knowing it was her only copy of the data. At the store level everything was done as it was supposed to be done by the employees so there is no fault there. Now the service centers work in a very different manner. All computers fixed by Best Buy under warranty are sent out to Geek Squad City (located in Kentucky). That means over 1000 stores are sending in 1-10 laptops each DAY to this place (my store usually get 5-8 per day minimum as I work in a very high traffic store). So due to the extremely high work load the technicians run full diagnostics on all units and simply take it for what they say. So if they run an hdd scan and it fails, they replace the hard drive (at least that's the way it's been working in my experience). To protect customer privacy, the replaced hdds are to be destroyed within 2 days of replacement. If the customer wants their data back after this, it is usually extremely difficult to do so and requires data recovery services (which we all know is very expensive). Price is non-negotiable because Best Buy doesn't perform the data recovery themselves, it is done through a third-party company which charges $1200 starting for recovery on non-functional hdds plus price of external hdd and shipping and handling (all done and priced at the data recovery center). The customer was issued a $200 gift card because EVERYONE that calls corporate gets a gift card for complaining, even if the customer is the one at fault. Best Buy does this to try and appease the customer and keep them shopping at Best Buy. But asking Best Buy to pay $1700 for something that wasn't their fault is ludicrous. The customer was informed from the beginning of the possibility of data loss, knowing they didn't have a backup, and now wants to blame someone else for their faults. As far as I see it the customer is totally at fault here UNLESS the hdd was incorrectly replaced. ALSO, the customer was not charged on pickup, she was told she would be charged if she wanted her data recovered, as this is not covered under warranty.

Flame all you want, but I reiterate that the customer was informed of all possibilities (aside from the data recovery estimate charges) prior to sending the unit out.

I work at geeksquad right now (dont hate me its just a job )... and this is (what z said) is EXACTLY what happens... the service center we send it to does a scan on everything no mater what the issue is so that it doesn't come back to them in a week for a bad hdd or something... Every customer that checks something in is told "we offer data backup service if you want it cause there is always a good chance of data loss NO MATTER WHAT WE DO"... the lady obviously denied it and signs a paper saying so... so service center will see that and go ok they dont have anything important and it shows the HDD is failing we will repalce that to to solve an issue that might come up later on... point is... lady signs a paper saying she doesnt need a data back up and that we are not liable if data is lost... its her fault she didnt keep a backup not geeksquads for replacing her HDD, so dont always hate on geeksquad some of us know what we are doing... even though our prices are ridiculous and a lot of the people hired are more "sales" people....

 

[Atherton213]

ahh no edit... i skipped a page in reading but basicly all of what i said was explained before... for once in all these horror stories you hear about geeksquad (i know some too) its the customer fault not geeksquads

 

[RiZnO]

Hmm where can I find this software that people are saying tells you when your Hdd is about to fail and needs to be replaced? Seems like a great program.

 

[Hulk]

There's no way I'm going to read every single post in this thread.

Holy smokes though, $1,700 for a CD Drive Replacement??? Why not just buy a whole new PC/laptop!?!?

 

[stop!theradio]

$1,700??!! What the fuck? This is the most overboard crap I've heard of regarding Best Buy and their shady BS. A simple CD drive replacement ending resulting in a different hard drive and a $1,700 fee. Wow.

 

[Gorankar]

Hmm where can I find this software that people are saying tells you when your Hdd is about to fail and needs to be replaced? Seems like a great program.

There are several, starting with your drive manufacturer's own drive diagnostics. It can be generally be downloaded from their website. Then there is Disk Doctor, Spinrite, and literally dozens of other 3rd party apps as well.

 

[sinikar]

First off - I do work for Best Buy, and I did work as a tech (prior to the label 'geek squad') in a store and at a service center. There may be a couple of points I could clear up.

Aside from the original contract for the customer's "PSP" (extended service plan) the disclaimer that was signed at the time the customer dropped off the computer also has a couple of lines that say something to the effect of (this is from memory... i may be off a bit): Best Buy will attempt to repair all defects to return the product to it's originally, fully working state, even if the problems are not immediately evident. It also states that Best Buy is not responsible for data loss, and that it is the customer's responsibility to back up their data prior to sending the computer in. Policies are in place to give a customer every opportunity to use the services that Best Buy provides, and in this case the customer declined. Yes - it only came in for a CD Rom drive. The hard drive was defective - it was replaced. If the motherboard, processor, memory or modem were defective, they would have been replaced as well.

Service technicians try to get the customer's computers fixed the same day they are received at the facility. To do that they need to rely on stores to do their jobs when they are face to face with the customer (and in this case, the store absolutely did!) so that they can do their jobs that they are trained to do... which is simply to fix computers. I don't know about anyone else - but I sure can't replace 12 laptop motherboards in 8 hours. I see people doing that every day though! Laugh all you want at the gimmicks (the uniform, the bugs, the silly names and secret agent theme) but some of these people have some mad skills. Some of the people at the facility I work at have over 30 years of experience. They were fixing computers before I was born.

It would be fantastic to be able to see this resolved to both parties satisfaction (for example the customer being able to buy the hard drive back from Best Buy with that $200 gift card? with some money left over for an external drive for future backups?) but if the drive has failed, the customer will still be left without their data unless they have a friend or family member who is familiar with data recovery. Data recovery isn't cheap and at some point either time and effort, or money will need to be spent to get that data off of the failed drive.

 

[Freezebyte]

Whats great is that me and many other people make a good living from other peoples stupidity in regards to an implacable object created by man.

 

[stop!theradio]

First off - I do work for Best Buy, and I did work as a tech (prior to the label 'geek squad') in a store and at a service center. There may be a couple of points I could clear up.

Aside from the original contract for the customer's "PSP" (extended service plan) the disclaimer that was signed at the time the customer dropped off the computer also has a couple of lines that say something to the effect of (this is from memory... i may be off a bit): Best Buy will attempt to repair all defects to return the product to it's originally, fully working state, even if the problems are not immediately evident. It also states that Best Buy is not responsible for data loss, and that it is the customer's responsibility to back up their data prior to sending the computer in. Policies are in place to give a customer every opportunity to use the services that Best Buy provides, and in this case the customer declined. Yes - it only came in for a CD Rom drive. The hard drive was defective - it was replaced. If the motherboard, processor, memory or modem were defective, they would have been replaced as well.

Service technicians try to get the customer's computers fixed the same day they are received at the facility. To do that they need to rely on stores to do their jobs when they are face to face with the customer (and in this case, the store absolutely did!) so that they can do their jobs that they are trained to do... which is simply to fix computers. I don't know about anyone else - but I sure can't replace 12 laptop motherboards in 8 hours. I see people doing that every day though! Laugh all you want at the gimmicks (the uniform, the bugs, the silly names and secret agent theme) but some of these people have some mad skills. Some of the people at the facility I work at have over 30 years of experience. They were fixing computers before I was born.

It would be fantastic to be able to see this resolved to both parties satisfaction (for example the customer being able to buy the hard drive back from Best Buy with that $200 gift card? with some money left over for an external drive for future backups?) but if the drive has failed, the customer will still be left without their data unless they have a friend or family member who is familiar with data recovery. Data recovery isn't cheap and at some point either time and effort, or money will need to be spent to get that data off of the failed drive.

I really don't care what the small print says. In all cases, yes, the small print says what it says, and the customer signs it - but they went their to get their damn CD-ROM drive replaced, that's it. A CD-ROM drive replacement takes, what, like 3 minutes? They ended up having their data lost and a new hard drive? See, when most people go to get something specific fixed, they expect to get that problem fixed. If they wanted an all over, all-bases-covered hardware checkup and replacement, then they'd ask for that. Best Buy knows that most people won't understand that when taking in their computers for something as simple as a CD drive replacement, they'll get charged for a full checkup - yet they do this anyways because they know that customers are normally unsuspecting. Had the customer known they'd get fucking wallet-raped for some shit they never wanted done, then they never would have brought it into the store.

I don't think there's any excuse for this. Sure they signed the forms - but Best Buy knows people will be confused by what's on the paper. They know that most customers are confident that they'll only get repaired what they ask for - yet they do this to people. it's ridiculous.

 

[Reimu]

stop!theradio: most of the firms COUNT on the fact that you don't care about the fine prints. Legally speaking, the moment you sign, you have assumed knowledge of what's to be done even if you didn't care. Companies will do this to people without fail.

 

[mynamehere]

Replaced hard drives should ALWAYS be returned to the owner, especially in this day and age of identity theft. Who knows what Best Buy really does with them.

EXCELLENT point, but they'd probably claim they have to return it to the manufacturer to get reimbursed (thus contradicting the 2 day destruction claim IINM). When you have your vehicle (and probably most other things) repaired you have the right to ask for the old parts, so why not the same for PCs? Many places don't like to return your old part though, probably because it'd be fairly easy for you to spot many of the unnecessary repairs that were done. My old neighbor worked for either a goodyear or firestone shop & they got commission, so they found everything possible to replace, even if it was worn, but still well within factory specs.

I wouldn't trust BB GS with anything, I don't doubt there are some who would do whatever it took to gleen sensitive info from the drive before destroying it, they've got 2 days to do it which is plenty of time.

What I don't get is why it's so hard for these idiots (not just BB GS) to backup imortant data before working on a pc. There's software that pretty much automates it, just work on another pc while it does its thing. If her CD drive was the only way to back up her data, then it's hard to point the finger at her & say, "We told ya so dummy".

Why don't they clone the HDD if they have to replace it? They could have a spare drive for just that purpose, thought it'd be a 3 step process; clone old drive to temp drive, then clone that to the new drive & install it. HOW HARD IS THAT GEEK SQUAD?! and all you other "tech teams". It's not rocket science, just common sense, oh wait, that's not taught or encouraged anymore. I've sure there'd be an extra charge to milk the customer, but it should be an included part of any repair they do when there's a chance of data loss. which with them seems pretty much inevitable.

Whenever I work on anyone's pc I back up any important info I can find, format, reinstall & fully update Windows, install & update necessary programs & drivers to the latest available versions (not always easy on some of the dinos I'm brought), and I charge FAR less (most would say it was laughable, but I do it for low income, disabled people who are in the same boat as I am, except they're basically clueless about PCs...the Gov't allows us a laughable amount to exixt on each month...many of you make more in a week than we're allowed fot the entire month.) than what those places get for formatting (thus deleting everything) & reinstalling the OS w/o even updating anything, hell, they probably dont' even make sure the NIC driver is a functional version, always fun trying to get updated NIC drivers when you can't even get online. I have pc's that recognize & install a NIC driver, but the NIC's not functional until I update the driver.

Then again, I'm an individual who takes pride in what I do, and know that since I worked in it...well, we all know how that goes. At least I do get some compensation for my time & effort. I take me much longer to do things than a shop would want, but people get back a PC that's as up to date as possible when I give it back, though I've often had updates come out right after I've given it back to them, sometimes that same day.

I learned most of my PC building skills right here on the [H] and other fine communities (several of which no longer exist), so you know I have to go that extra mile.

I realize I used a couple car references, but I think they were reasonably appropriate, unlike many auto/PC comparisons we've all seen used.

 

[myndcrime]

This sort of seems like a combination the girl (it ALWAYS seems to be a woman.... hmm) being ignorant and the Turd Squad guys trying to make as much $$$ as possible....

But this kind of stuff goes on all over the place, I saw one computer shop charging $100 for a virus and spyware scan...

If you don't know one thing about computers, chances are you're going to get screwed one day.

 

[Minion187]

the story should seriously be changed to remove some of the confusion popping up here.

the lady didn't get charged $1,700 for a CDROM replacement. She didn't get charged ANYTHING, she was given an estimate on data recovery services for her dying/dead hard drive. Or perhaps she had them send it to the data recovery lab and changed her mind afterward.

Bottom line is, she didn't send her PC in for a CDROM replacement and suddenly wind up with a $1,700 bill. Everyone saying as such, is misunderstanding the story. She took her PC to Geek Squad with a problem covered under her warranty. They offered backup services (yes, way overpriced). She DENIED. It gets to the service center, hard drive turns out to be failing as well as the CDROM. Failing to the point that you can't just plug it into another PC and copy the data off. HD is replaced, and customer offered data recovery services which are far more expensive than the simple backup offered at the store. Sucks to be her, but it is HER fault entirely for not backing up her data either by the store or on her own.

It's easy to misunderstand (or misrepresent) the situation and blame Geek Squad. But this time, they have no fault. She's betting on people's dislike of Geek Squad to turn it into a PR blunder and play the role of the victim - possibly resulting in the return of her data for free.

Best Buy is not extorting her for money. They don't run the data recovery center(s). It's a different company, Best Buy just has a deal with them to send HDs out for recovery services. If she doesn't want to pay $1,700, fine. She can get her PC back, in working condition. She'll probably never do business with Best Buy again, but if she ever needs her PC fixed again you best believe she'll backup her own god damn data before sending it out to wherever she goes. It's still her own fault for not reading the fine print on the paper she's signing.

Everyone knows about the fine print. Everyone is aware of the stipulations in every contract. If you don't read it, and something unexpected happens - it's YOUR FAULT. I agree it's a shady tactic to stick things in small print or buried in technical jargon but nobody can plead ignorance to the existence of it. We all know about it. It's capitalism.

 

[xX_Jack_Carver_Xx]

Good luck trying to explain it to the Judge in civil court. And enjoy the counterclaims for the defamation and credit reporting violations that will inevitably come from BB sicking the collection agency on the poor schmuck.

Common law Fraud, Defamation when they report to your credit report for refusing to pay, etc, etc. I'd be asking for $100,000 in my countersuit when their collection attorney finally sues me for refusing to pay.

Let that be a lesson to the great unwashed, never take your computer in to get it "fixed" at any major store chain.... instead, if you don't want to learn how to do it yourself, just buy a new PC and toss the infected one out.