One of the PCs in our office has been having some problems for quite a while, so I decided to bite the bullet and call for help. I called Geek Squad because I thought they knew what they were doing. Not so much.
Cutting to the chase, the computer in question, which is the one on which I typed this post, is still having problems. In fact, while typing this post Firefox crashed and lost several minutes of work. Hang on a moment. Let me save so I don’t lose more in case Firefox crashes again.
OK. File saved. Now it’s on autosave.
When Geek Squad showed up at my office for the appointment on Monday, April 13, 2009, I explained the PC’s recent behavior to the agent. After several minutes of trying to explain the problems I wasn’t hopeful. I still had a few more things to explain, but at that point he seemed checked-out and wanting to sit at the machine to do that voodoo. So I let him.
After about an hour and a half of diagnosis, he couldn’t find “anything wrong with it.” Curious. If nothing was wrong with it, why would I call Geek Squad in the first place and why were we getting the following errors?
- Security package not updating correctly.
- Firefox crashing about, oh, eight times per day.
- Irregular recognition of external hard drives.
- OSA.exe error notices.
- PC crashing periodically upon Outlook booting.
- Generic host process for Win32 services on start-up, periodically.
- Periodic notices at start-up that Windows had recovered from a serious error. (Yes. No kidding. I think the most serious error was to buy a Windows machine in the first place.)
- Periodic file checking notices in Outlook due to a file not closing last time Outlook in use.
Interesting that with all those problems he couldn’t find “anything wrong.” So, instead of the $300 I was quoted when I called in for the appointment, the agent charged only $139 for their “Quick Fix Service.” He went happily on his way.
But I wasn’t happy.
For days after the visit, the machine kept making the same errors, and new ones were added to its dastardly repertoire.
- Upon shut-down, blue screen errors occurred saying there was a memory management problem.
- Windows would not update automatically.
- Software installation was disabled.
- Outlook archive folders MIA.
I looked at the Geek Squad Service Agreement for information about warranty and here’s what it says:
Item 4 – Labor Warranty: Geek Squad guarantees services provided to you at your home or business for 30 days; however, for repairs necessitated by a virus or spyware, the 30-day warranty is valid only if the antivirus and antispyware protection for your product is installed or updated during repair or before you access the internet again. If there is a problem with the service provided to you at the Geek Squad store and if you notify us at 1800 GeekSquad (1-800-433-5778) within the 30-day time period, Geek Squad will work to remedy your original problem quickly and at no cost.
So I called them. Two service reps told me that the “Quick Fix Service” was exempt from their warranty.
HUH? Where does it say that in the warranty?
The original problems were not caused by a virus or spyware, that much the agent determined. So, they couldn’t pull that clause out on me. After debating the semantics of the warranty statement with two service reps who just kept repeating the same company policy that the warranty doesn’t cover Quick Fix service, I told them that this incident would take one of two courses of action.
- They could honor their warranty and return an agent to my office to fix not only the original problems, but the problems that started to occur after their visit, which a reasonable presumption would say that they caused, and after such visit everyone could go away happy or
- Because I believed they were violating federal law by refusing to honor a stated guarantee, which was in writing, I would clear my desk of all my other work and make their life a living “heck” (yes . . . I said “heck” because I didn’t want to swear on a call I knew was being recorded). I said unless they got me someone quickly I would complain to the Federal Trade Commission, my state consumer protection division, my county consumer protection agency, my municipal attorney, their municipal attorney, their county consumer protection board, their state consumer protection agency, my state’s attorney general, their state’s attorney general, and anyone else I could think of who might be interested in listening and who would bury Best Buy and the Geek Squad in paperwork inquiries and depositions from now until the next ice age.
The Geek Squad service reps told me there was nothing they could do, i.e., they chose the second alternative.
After I hung up with their reps, I reasoned that taking course #2 would cost me more time than the whole incident was worth. It would, after all, be more cost-effective to chuck this piece of crap PC running Windows XP in the trash and buy a Mac. But I thought I’d try one more thing first. I started to tweet. What a powerful tool.
I tweeted for almost an hour, sending the same tweet over and over and over and over and over, about how Geek Squad didn’t fix my problem, made it worse, and violated my warranty. I knew they were “listening,” but I wasn’t sure if they’d respond.
They did respond, and in a short period of time. An agent from the Best Buy Online Community called me and said he wanted to make things right. Too bad I had to tweet for almost an hour to get them to do something they should have done upon a simple request to honor their warranty. Cut to Scene 3.
I told the Online Community agent that I wanted them to fix the original problems, plus remedy the ones they apparently caused, and with a different agent since the first one didn’t find “anything wrong” and didn’t really give me the feeling like he knew what he was doing. The Online Community agent did make an extraordinary effort to get another agent out to my office and relatively quickly. I was impressed, but still disappointed that I had to make such an effort to get them to do something they should have done in the first place, like honor the warranty.
The second agent came to my office on Tuesday, April 21, 2009. This guy seemed a lot more on the ball than the first guy. My second agent listened attentively to what I was saying about the computer, he asked me questions before he started, and during his work on the machine. Ultimately he diagnosed a few problems that he thought would be causing the original problems, which weren’t mentioned by the first agent. To remedy those problems and those I suspected were caused by the first agent, he recommended that I change security software because he thought the packages I had might be causing some of the original problems. So although there was no charge for the labor, he charged me $40 for a different security package.
After about two hours of work, he left. And I felt a bit more confident about the machine. But as I go through my work each day subsequent to the second visit, the machine continues to perform about the same as before the first visit.
I can only conclude that, as the second agent suggested, Windows will never run perfectly. Like the old joke, if Microsoft made cars, the highways would be littered with crashes, resembling that of a battlefield. No matter what these guys do, this machine will never operate as it should, and that really is the fault of Microsoft more than that of the Geek Squad. And after all, the Geek Squad warranty does say “Geek Squad will work to remedy your original problem.” Their warranty does not guarantee satisfaction. How can they really? A Windows PC is such a mish-mosh of code, it’s about as susceptible to catching a bug as a preschooler in a classroom of drippy-nosed toddlers.
And with an inferior product such as Windows, how could they possibly guarantee satisfaction.
So, although I don’t blame Geek Squad entirely, I would caution anyone before they call Geek Squad, or any other PC fixer company, to consider the quality of Windows and then proceed from there.
The world now has another Apple customer. I’ll be buying Macs soon. And when I do, we’ll have a viking funeral for these PCs. Hoping to get video.
