Comments on: Why Computer Repair Services Like Geek Squad Suck

By: Devan

Devan — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 16:55:00 +0000

I got into this type of deal recently. My laptop would not turn on so I though why not support a local business, so I took it to a small local repair shop. I am low on cash so the first thing I asked upon entering the office was “How much is your hourly fee?” the man behind the counter said, and I quote “We don’t have an hourly fee.”

He then proceeded to tell me if I wanted to pay $50 to have it looked at quickly I could or it would be free to diagnose and he would charge me to fix it.I thought this sounded awesome. I would have paid an hourly fee, but I am more likely to pay a high repair fee when the diagnosis is free.

When my husband went to pick it up(over two weeks later) the guy told him it was $35 for diagnosis. He then said he would waive that fee if I would pay the $35 as a fee to have the files transferred. He said the motherboard was shot and it wasn’t worth fixing a one year old base model laptop. Really?

It’s not worth it to put a one hundred dollar part in to have a new laptop? Wouldn’t that still be cheaper than a new one? Even if he charged a hundred to put it in. I believe he just wanted to keep my computer for himself and probably sell it to someone for a couple hundred bucks.

So it went from no fee to $35 to give me my broken computer back. I really don’t mind the fee….however I do mind being lied to. On top of that when I got home and plugged it in….”fried motherboard” and all, it started charging again.

I’m assuming something was disconnected. It has worked ever since. I will never take anything there again. Waste of time and money and poor business ethics. These people give a bad name to “geeks.”

By: Jessica

Jessica — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:30:00 +0000

Hey guys- I had a problem with MacBook pro and because my warranty is done I stupidly went to best buy. Geek Squad told me that it would be a to 5 day turn around- this was on a Monday morning.

Friday came and I called- they said it would be done by Sat morning, sat morning I called and they said it was still nect in line and would be done Sunday, I called sunday and they still hadn’t touched it.

I was about to pull it out but they assured me the guy who was working on it tarted it and when I spoke with him (it was a missing OS X file so we tried to re-install the the disks and they would not install. He said that a new harddrive would fix this and put it in. $239.99 I got back the computer the same way it went in. No booting, not reading the OS disks.

We had an identical MacBook pro we can use for parts so we took out the new harddrive and used the second Mac’s harddrive and what a shock it booted! A 3 year old could have been able to see at that point that is was a dvd drive issue. Anyway I already returned the new hard drive so that was $99.99 back.

Now from what we found I feel as if the 20 minutes this tech spent on the laptop was NOT worth $140 as he didn’t correctly diagnose or fix ANYTHING. I am getting the rest of my money refunded today and filing a complaint with the BBB if they do no honor this. Thoughts?

By: Adam

Adam — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 22:51:00 +0000

I disagree with Bill, it is very simple to diagnose 99.9% of issues and I’m not exaggerating. Any competent repairman will almost never need diagnostic software to diagnose an issue. It is sad that most computer repair shops higher technicians with little experience and no education. I challenge Bill to give us a situation where he would need diagnostic software to pinpoint the issue. The only time I would ever use any type of software would be to test a new hardware piece that has been installed. Stress tests for compliance is about it.

By: Mexica

Mexica — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 21:25:00 +0000

Oh, I see the language police have arrived. Newsflash, the internet is international and English isn’t the only language in the world. I’d venture to guess that you only know one language. Also, being an English only speaker doesn’t give you Carte Blanche to be a d***head.

By: Bill

Bill — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:11:51 +0000

There is no way I would diagnose a PC for free. People shouldn't be getting ripped off, but people have bills to pay. Unless some charity wants to collection donations and give them to me to be the "free PC repair guy" I am going to charge for a diagnosis. I probably won't charge $100, but I'm definitely going to factor in the cost of electricity, my time, etc. into the cost.

There is a difference between lying (or being flat out wrong about something) about a problem and then asking for exorbitant amounts of money to fix it and honestly evaluating a problem. If I look inside a machine and all I have to do is plug in an IDE cable then that is maybe $5. If I have to run hardware diagnostics for two days straight and swap parts out it will be more.

I definitely don't want to trick people into getting services they don't really need, but I am definitely not going to get stressed and spend my time fixing problems for next to nothing.