GEEK SQUAD EXPOSED!!!

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Geek Squad, Friend or Foe?

  • Friend

    Votes: 16 19.8%

  • Foe

    Votes: 65 80.2%
  • Total voters
    81
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I just checked the Geek Squad prices, for onsite services OUCH!!!! However they have to pay for the VW Bugs they drive, the gas, the insurance, plates, and city stickers, not to mention maintence this added to paying the employee. If you take that all into consideration unfortunately its not that outrageous. On that 129 mem install they are making around $50 - $70. I used to do onsite service for a company and these costs add up, we didn't charge 129 for onsite mem install though.

I also checked there instore prices, those are very reasonable. They have been the same since before geek squad. Mem install is $29, If I didn't know how to do it, I would pay it.
 
I've been in I.T for four years now mostly doing network and desktop support. Every firm i've been in we use free diagnostic tools (and some we paid for) The money is for the services of that tech and not the tools. The way i look at it is that someone is paying me lots of money to fix their computer so I make sure that the job gets done so why does it matter how they fix it as long as the fix it to how you want it.
 
I am a computer tech and has been for years.

When you walk in to a store to have a computer fixed, you are buying their knowledge and experience. Most good techs have spent more time in their field then what it takes to get a degree from college.

They know where to get the tools they need to fix your comptuer, and they know how to use them. I my self use mostly free tools to clean up spyware, diagnose problems, and where free tools dont cut it, spend the money on software and tools that cost $500 or more.

However, going back to my original statement, "you are buying their knowledge and experience". Techs at Best Buy and the like are mostly kids that just got their A+ and just started working on computers. They have a higher mistake rate, and a longer repair time because of the extra learning and research time. You are not getting a good deal when you buy knowledge from Best Buy's Geek Squad. Beter to spend your money on a smaller shop with people who look like they know what they are doing... and dont have 20 tatoos saying Devil in 20 different languages.


Tools dont make the tech.
 
Companies are all rip-offs when i bought my 6600GT from bestbuy they asked me if i would want them to install the card for 40 bucks i was like ok lets do that.....not....

40$ TO INSTALL A GFX CARD INTO A SLOT 8O ? OMFGWTFSAUCE. a friggin monkey can do that if given a bananna!

BTW all the people who work for Geeksquad are monkeys :wink: Just so you know. Low wage cost and plus they can do anything like use anti-virus software.

In all every body rips off everybody else bestbuy rips me off i rip them off :twisted: it how the world stays in balance.
 
Yea, Geek Squad is a total rip off! My hard drive went dead so I took it to them and they wanted $150.00 to recover 20GBs! Total rip off! :evil:
 
Well now, for dead hard drives. $150 is very reasonable for Data Recovery.

No, you don't use it to get your years of MP3s/hackNcracks/pirated softwarez/pr0n/saved games or whatever. If that was all it was for then yes, $150 is outrageous.

Data Recovery is for people who have things that they really need and cannot under any circumstances (because they didn't back it up) get it from somewhere else.

If that was my 20gb hard drive, and it was full of years of family trip pictures, birthdays, honeymoon photos, and so on, I would gladly pay $150 to get it all back, if not only to punish myself for not backing it up in the first place.

Another group of people who use it is companies who have vital company/customer records stored on them.

Unlike pulling out the old vid card and slapping in the new one, data recovery takes a lot more and delicate labor. It has to be done in a 100% dust sealed, EMI proof, air tight environment. It takes time and know-how to do this.

Only a well trained, well fed, and genetically altered monkey could do it.

I edited the "$120s" out and replaced them with the rightful "$150s"
Still reasonable to pay for data that you're connected to.
 
Figured out one of the reasons they're expensive, acutally saw a Geek Squad geek driving a Geek Squad black and white Geek Squad VW Beetle. It has to be the the paint job that really dirves up the cost. A 1950s black and white police cruisor paint job can't be cheap.
 
i agrie with You the part" i know more" , that is in regards to myselfe, i asked couple times couple guyz from gs about some things, and their answere was more of a "maby", "it depends", or i just left because a guy was thinking to loong(that was when he tried to sell/give me ddr to put it in a ddr2, when i told him that he game me ddr ram, and i need ddr2 the idiot just took another stick and handed to me another ddr......gues he thought i will have dr2 then...one time in 2002 before there was gs and it was called best buy's tech's i took my sony vaio for a hd replacement(on waranty) and the idiot took out a main psu cable out (fan controller) and dint plug it in, and it was not even close to the hd ide plugs, at that time i ddint know much about pc's (compared to what i know today) I just pluged it back in, but com on, those guys are nothing special, would complain a bit more, but i gues this would be boring, and im nt the type that complains ...atleast not much :wink:
 
LOL; Geek Squad charges you $250 to do a Windows install, along with updating everything. Installing Windows is so easy; all you do is click next a bunch of times.
 
LOL; Geek Squad charges you $250 to do a Windows install, along with updating everything. Installing Windows is so easy; all you do is click next a bunch of times.
Click to expand...

Not to sound like an apologist for the Geek Squad, I think one of the major problems with tech support in gneral is that it is time consuming. It takes several hours just to install Windows, drivers, and all the updates and if you're out in the field, i.e., at the customer's house, there isn't really much you can do while you're waiting for installs. Same with cleaning out viruses, spyware, etc. As far as on-line support, walking someone through diagnostics can take a long time, e.g., just getting someone into Device Manager. In order to keep cost down companies pay lower wages and so end up with a lot of people that don't know what they're doing. I think another problem is the fear of technology a lot of people have, you have to keep reassuring them regarding what you're asking them to do, which takes time and patience.
 
Look dude, this is what all pc shops do, glad you found out.

They are only for noobs though, like people who buy dells and shit.

Who else would be stupid enough to take their pc into a computer store? And for that matter, need to take it in to get parts even :roll:
 
Ummm about 80% of the market would take their PC's to a PC shop. like it or not, Geeks who techout on this stuff are a minority of the 300,000,000 people in the united states alone. Most people get the pc's to do their email and not be hasseled with learning how things work. (Wonder how many of you can pull your television apart and repair them? or your Refigerator...or your car) People for the most part don't buy **** to tear it apart and figure out what makes it go....they just want it to do what they bought it for.

You know untill a few years ago I built all my own PC's but these days my time is more valuable to me than tinkering with the innards. So I have learned to advance myself and let people like Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Voodoo do the grunt work freeing me to do what I feel like doing.
 
Ummm about 80% of the market would take their PC's to a PC shop. like it or not, Geeks who techout on this stuff are a minority of the 300,000,000 people in the united states alone. Most people get the pc's to do their email and not be hasseled with learning how things work. (Wonder how many of you can pull your television apart and repair them? or your Refigerator...or your car) People for the most part don't buy **** to tear it apart and figure out what makes it go....they just want it to do what they bought it for.

You know untill a few years ago I built all my own PC's but these days my time is more valuable to me than tinkering with the innards. So I have learned to advance myself and let people like Alienware, Falcon Northwest and Voodoo do the grunt work freeing me to do what I feel like doing.
Click to expand...

While I agree most people could care less about learning to fix and/or avoid common problems, this in and of itself is a problem. I'm old enough to rememver when your TV quit working you pulled the tubes and went to a local store to test them and if one was bad, replace it. Same with being able to tinker with cars to keep them running. Both TVs and cars are sufficiently advanced to be very reliable and pretty much fool proof. By comparison computers are technologicallly primative and someone in the home should know the basics to avoid things like losing data (multiple drives and backing up), clean trash files, defragging, etc as well as basic security. The latter is especially important because it affects all of us when hachers hijack vunerable computes. This stuff is brain suregery. Computer mfg could save themselves a lot of time and pi$$ing off customers with crappy tech support by partitioning the hard drive and providing simple instructions
 
They do partition the hard drive (namely Sony), and its annoying. To the average Email user, the computer is nothing more then a coffee pot, or a toster. The fact it costs just a bit more then those means customers will at most bother to take it to be fixed and not much more.

What computers need to come equiped with is a training video for basic topics instead of that stupid flash welcome screan. When you buy a car, you get a manual / training DVD. You should when you get a computer too.
 
:) Thanks G-Paw, now I don't feel like the only geezer out here :)

Ohhh for the days of tubes....(you don't want to know how many hours I would have to spend feeling for cold tubes in thousands of amplifiers and or multicouplers in my day)

You would think that people would want to know this stuff but in thinking that you overestimate the average idiot...(they are called that for a reason)

As for PC's costing a bit more than a Coffee maker.....look again :)

MY other half spent as much or more on her (I gotta have my perfect coffee) coffee maker than I did on the PC I built for my son.
 
:) Thanks G-Paw, now I don't feel like the only geezer out here :)

Ohhh for the days of tubes....(you don't want to know how many hours I would have to spend feeling for cold tubes in thousands of amplifiers and or multicouplers in my day)

You would think that people would want to know this stuff but in thinking that you overestimate the average idiot...(they are called that for a reason)

As for PC's costing a bit more than a Coffee maker.....look again :)

MY other half spent as much or more on her (I gotta have my perfect coffee) coffee maker than I did on the PC I built for my son.
Click to expand...

Many we outht to start a group of geezer geeks to deal with some of these young whipper snappers. If my wife spent more on a coffe maker than I do on computers, it better do somethings for her better than I can, although being replaced by a coffee maker would be kind of embarring. 😛
 
They do partition the hard drive (namely Sony), and its annoying. To the average Email user, the computer is nothing more then a coffee pot, or a toster. The fact it costs just a bit more then those means customers will at most bother to take it to be fixed and not much more.

What computers need to come equiped with is a training video for basic topics instead of that stupid flash welcome screan. When you buy a car, you get a manual / training DVD. You should when you get a computer too.
Click to expand...

You should learn that and more.

A computer isn't close to a toaster, but some people, like my dad, seem to think it's just going to work when they.. want to check their email

I can honestly say it takes years of hands on work to efficiently use a computer, even if it's just to check your email.
 
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