Donkeys and Elephants and Delegates,oh my!
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Geek Squad Gouges
consumerist.com — The number one rule of responsible consumerism: know more about what you're buying than the guy selling it to you. But it's a counterintuitive one. After all, you buy based on someone's pitch to you, that you need what he's selling. You get something repaired with the understanding that you don't have the knowledge to fix a problem yourself.
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- schmots, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I was a black shirt (best buy techs before geek squad) and can tell you, that not only does that kinda of thing happen, but management actually told me once to not diagnose systems. That we didn't do fixs or repairs, we only ran antivirus and system "tune-ups" which were pointless. Why didn't I say anything? It was a job, I needed money. I will say this though, while you may have to yell abit, the service plan on laptops is the only one ever worth buying. Don't buy it on anything else, and if you really want to, read it first, don't listen to the sales people, they are counted based on how many of those they sell so they arn't always truthful.
- CraigB12, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"After all, you buy based on someone's pitch to you, that you need what he's selling."
This is just an excuse to remain stupid. I don't buy things because someone is telling me I need it, I buy it because I've researched it and i know what i'm talking about. If people weren't so ***** stupid they would know that what they would get at geek squad can be obtained by reading the blog of a 9th grade student interested in the "puter" his parents got him for his birthday. - NeonDemon, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1i was a white shirt at circuit city. best buys competition if you could call it that.almost all the computers we got in that had been worked on by the geek squad had been royally screwed up. maybe a defrag run on it and cookies cleared. that's not how you "tune up" a computer.
- Seumas, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1FTA: "As many computer technicians know completing a malware removal takes more than 24 hours just for scans."
Huh? Granted, I don't use Windows a whole lot, but I know for a fact that unless you have a few terabytes of filled drive space on your machine, it does not take "more than 24 hours" to do a malware diagnosis and removal. You know they aren't doing any sort of forensics. At most, just running adaware or something. You can run adaware, the bot one (whatever the free thing is called, I forget), an antivirus check, a trojan detector and a number of other things -- all without sitting around and babying them on almost any machine and have it complete in just a few hours at most. And at most, you might have to spend twenty minutes clicking dialogue boxes and confirming removals.
Seriously, what are these guys doing -- running machines with 133mhz AMD-K5s that somehow have five terabytes of data on them? That's the only way I can see it taking 24 hours for that. - Icyfenix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Some things to remember:
A) You cannot hire the best techs in the business for 12.50 an hour. I'm sorry, but you just can't.
B) Geek Squad is a business. They have to make money. They cannot pay 3 techs that have been scheduled to come in for a few hours to stand around while there are only a few computers to be fixed.
C) You are paying for the knowledge. Not the work. If you don't know how to use the malware removers, then you should either take a course or quit whining and pay the 129.99 for a repair. It's just like your car, if you don't know how to clean your spark plugs out, ask someone you know, or pay someone money to do it for you.
D) People Lie. They lie on their resume to make it seem like they know more about computers than they do, so Geek Squad spends money to train and educate them, only to find that their work is shoddy at best. They have two options then: Terminate the employee and waste the training time/money or Educate the employee at the cost of more time/money. It's a dilemma, believe me.
E) Companies have budgets, just like you do. I'm never threatened with termination because I work slow one day, or I have a few particularly challenging computers, that's just an ***** manager you're dealing with. I just am scheduled less and less hours if it keeps up, until I can learn to do it faster, or explain why I am working so slowly. The company cannot afford to pay me the same amount, and have me in the same amount of time, as the guy who can fix 20 computers in a day. It's not practical, and it's just not smart. Would you do this? I think not.
F) Just because this is easy for you does not mean it is easy for everyone. People who buy cars expect them to break, to wear and tear and they expect to have to pay someone to fix them. Mechanics will charge you outlandish fees to do something they have always found easy and simple, but you can simply not grasp this idea. It's the same with computers. People buy them, and do not understand what a registry is or why it is there in the first place. They do not know what the errors that pop up on the screen mean at all, and it is the same as if your car was making a strange noise. You may understand, you may know how easy it is to fix things does not mean they do.
G) We are not all clones. Different managers have different ways to motivate their employees, have different moral senses, care more or less about a customer's needs. Just because your store is run by an ass, does not mean they all are. Just because you adhere to strict charge-you-out-the-ass policy, does not mean they all do. I have heard of stores that charge people to answer questions, and I have heard of stores that perform standard sweeps with PC-Cillin and SpySweeper for free. No Geek Squad Precinct is the same. If yours sucks, go somewhere else. If not, use them. It's as simple as that.
H) Generalizing large groups of people is bad. I think it's called stereotyping. I've heard somewhere that people don't like to be stereotyped because of where they live, where they work, what they eat, or what they look like. It's the individual that matters, not the white shirt and black tie. - basil81, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As a Geek Squad trainee with hardly any tech knowledge, I can say that getting your foot in the door isn't that difficult and you don't even have to lie on your resume. The fact is that the job is simple enough that anyone can be trained to do the work in a relatively short amount of time, but of course some genuine effort needs to be applied. My coworkers are a mixture of certified A+ techs, computer whiz kids, and a couple of older, much less knowledgeable folks.
I tend to pick things up quickly and I'm sure I'll do quite well at Geek Squad, but that doesn't mean that I won't make an effort to actually learn about computers and keep up with the technology for my personal benefit. Others will be satisfied to learn only what the job requires and nothing more, whereas I am studying up for an A+ cert and seek to carve a place for myself in the growing field of tech.
This is why I agree completely with Icyfenix. It's not Geek Squad that sucks. There are most certainly diamonds in the rough and agents that genuinely care about what they do, and are proud of it. I for one already knew about the bad rap Geek Squad had been getting prior to me choosing to switch over from my department, but I didn't care because I knew the quality of agents we have in the store. I suppose that's a credit to the managers who do the hiring, but sometimes you have the bad apples that seep through. They must've lied on their resume.
I must say though, that the service Geek Squad offers is pricey, but for the folks willing and able to spend the cash, it's extremely convenient, especially for those "I'm a go getter business power suit and tie guy/gal with a mission to brown nose and/or cutthroat my way to the top" types. They have the money, and so they'll pay whatever it takes to get their lifeline (read PC or laptop) to "do what they want it to damn it!" Hey, the way I see it, if you find yourself at a Geek Squad counter, then that is where you need to be, otherwise you'd be elsewhere. So don't complain that Geek Squad gouges. Instead, if you are resourceful enough, make friends with a computer nerd and have him do it for a date with your sister (hahaha, just kidding. He'll settle for some nude pics).
Love,
B. - anti_hax0r, on 11/20/2007, -0/+1Dude needs to learn how to write.
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