Geek Squad

Bought the Samsung S5 for $ 99 with a 2 year contract from Best Buy. I opted for the geek squad protection since I had used GS protection for my last phone and was impressed with it (my toddler put my cell in a glass of iced tea, the phone stopped working, took it to Best Buy, they gave me a loaner, sent my phone to GS and within 3 days, I had a newly refurbished phone perfect again at no cost). Thought it was a no brainer with my new S5. However, when son 2 dropped a can of soup onto my phone, started the procedure through GS to get it replaced (I pay $ 10/​month for GS protection). I now found Best Buy is completely out of the process, and you have to do it all online through
. So basically, you fill the form out, they send you a refurbished phone and you then you send back your damaged phone. Seems simple enough… HOWEVER… THEY NOW CHARGE YOU $ 149.99 SERVICE FEE ($ 161.99 after taxes on the service fee!), ontop of the protection plan cost!!! WTF! So, I paid $ 10 a month for the GS protection plan for 15 months so far. That’s $ 150 then the service charge of $ 161.99 for a new refurbished phone. That’s $ 312 for a refurbished phone replacement. This is what they DON’T TELL YOU about their protection plans, that there’s a minumum $ 149.99 service fee for ANY DEVICE ontop of the price of the protection plan! Total rip off since I can buy a brand new S5 for the less than that! Buyer beware! As I was in Best Buy recently, I over heard the sales rep offer a man the GS protection plan on his new tablet, and at no time did he mention this $ 149.99 minimum serice charge!

I purchased a new all-​in-​one computer that I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t connecting to our
network. Called Best buy and I made an appointment with the Geek Squad. It was an excellent experience. Nicholas K called early morning to tell me the time he would be here. He arrived at that time and went right to work. In my fiddling with the computer I goofed some things up that he troubleshooted and fixed. Up and running in less than an hour. Last month I hired a private party to configure my Surface to the same network and it took hours and was twice as much.
Thanks to Nik I am up at full speed and spent half as much $. Next issue… I’m calling him first.

Oh my goodness — incompetent time wasting at a high price — stay away. We have been trying to get a simple fridge repair accomplished for three weeks — everyone you talk to has a different answer none of which are helpful. First tech changed and charged for a circuit board only to find out it did nothing to make the fridge work and now wants another $ 800 TO «Trouble shoot» and try to find out what’s wrong —- Total waste of time that cost me money.

If I could give 0 stars, I would!!! DONT EVEN waste your time. I had the accidental damage insurance for my iphone 5s that was brand new when I purchased the phone. I paid $ 200 for insurance up front, well I cracked my screen and called the insurance to get it replaced, and they told me I had to pay for the replacement fee (WTH, I thought thats why I had insurance, so I didnt have to pay for another phone!!) well so I paid $ 189 to get a new phone and they sent one out to me. Well I cancelled the insurance because of the awful experience. I then cracked my screen yesterday and took it to Apple to get replaced, and they wont touch my phone because the replacement phone given to me has no serial numbers on the back and is a «Frankinstein» phone that has other parts. so now I am out a phone! DONT waste your time, this insurance sucks!!!

I called the 800 number for Geek Squad and it ate up several hours of my day and all I was trying to do was SCHEDULE AN IN-​HOME appointment! Couldn’t get it done on-​line (really?!). Took me a ridiculous amount of time to schedule with being transferred 3 times. We resolved the issue ourselves and it took even longer to get the appt cancelled — with 5 transfers! Ridiculous! I thought this was their specialty and they are «the best». Would never use again if I don’t absolutely have to!

Appointments are now required to have your computer looked at. There is no notification of any kind, on the website or in the store. I drove from downtown San DIego to Encinitas with a 30 second question and they wouldn’t take me. Were they busy? There were 3 Geeks standing there and one customer. I called later and got in after a long wait on the phone, while the Geek tried to figure out how to schedule. I got to the store and explained to the woman behind me about the appointment policy, as she did not know either. But following me, he dove right into helping her! Now is there a standard policy or did he just feel like being mean and inflexible? I’ve been coming there for years and I will avoid giving them any of my business when possible. Word of mouth is your best and worst advertising. Pass it on.

We have used the Geek Squad in the past to work on our home theater, but after the communications we had with them yesterday and today trying to setup an appointment I encourage everyone to seek out any other vendor, but them.
Maybe in the Best Buy stores their service is better, but their business is really screwed up if you need to schedule them to come out to your home.
One hour on the phone yesterday and another hour on the phone today. They have one of the most inefficient customer service processes I’ve experienced in any companies.
They are centralized and have no connectivity to the people on the ground in the local community.
They have ridiculous high priced charges regardless of the scope of work.
Go online or to Craigslist, but you can find equally qualified and technical people for repairs and make your life much easier.
Geek Squad should be a MINUS 5!

I consistently have a terrible experience with the Geek Squad (you’d think that I would learn right?). The latest thing is that I’ve had to reschedule my TV calibration with them 3 times because they don’t know what they’re doing. They will just not show up and then claim ignorance. The last time I asked to speak to a supervisor and she was not only un-​apologetic, but rude.
I have no idea why Best Buy and/​or Geek Squad remains in business. I know I’m done with them.

I dropped off my computer a week earlier. Was told it would take 6 — 7 days. On the 6^th day I called to find the status. Was told.“The tech is working on it as we speak and it would be ready that night or the next morning.” The next afternoon, I asked again for the status… and behold! It was not ready and apparently the guy was not even working on it. Was told… it will take at least 7 days. I told him it had already been 7 days. I got a blank look and… uhhhh…sorry.
REALLY…if you can’t do the fix… just tell me. I will take it to a local repair shop next time. Bad service and clueless techs.
NEVER TAKE YOUR COMP TO GEEKS SQUAD!

DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT BUY A MAJOR APPLIANCE FROM BEST BUY! REPAIR SERVICE SCHEDULING IS THE WORST EVER!!!
Brand new appliance installed by an over-​scheduled crew in a GREAT BIG HURRY! I didn’t think to check their work because I assumed they knew what they were doing. My bad — I didn’t notice that my over the counter microwave was installed improperly until they were long gone.
Worst Appliance repair scheduling ever!
To summarize: I had to reschedule my original appointment 4 times and ended up waiting an entire month to get a technician to physically appear at my home. The second appointment was rescheduled for a date and time I never agreed with and couldn’t possibly be home for.
Even then, the «window» was 8 – 12:00 noon and the tech calls to say he’ll be out between 1:30 and 2:30 PM. Huh?
20 plus minute waits on hold for each call.
If I had some spare cash and some mechanical ability, I would have removed the item from my home and returned it since it seemed a technician would never show up.
For this — okay, I didn’t pay much for the microwave, but I did pay for the extended warranty.
Very disappointing.

dudes:
I’ve never used Geek squad but I was able to clean up 3 previously FROZEN PC’s from visiting INFECTED porn sites. so I bought the WEBROOT SPY SWEEPER anti spyware. (lime green color box Wedbroot spy sweeper)
from Fry’s or Staples, office depot, etc)
you can pick this up anywhere for about $ 39 dollars (sometimes they give you $ 30 mail in rebate, so check the ads). pop webroot spysweeper into the DVD drive and let it sweep twice or 3 times and the spyware is removed. (it’s been 3 yrs. and it’s still running fine, rid of spyware from porn sites)
*** even if your computer is hopelessly frozen, if you pop webroot spysweeper in 2 – 3 times into the CD drive, your computer would read the drives! AND SWEEEP the virus. don’t give up.
also, may I suggest pissed off customers/​students who desperately need their laptops for school, why not buy a second laptop as a spare as safty? they are so cheap now. one could be had for about $ 499 or $ 350 on sale. a repair from geek places likely would be $ 300 plus. do the math.
give Webroot spy sweeper a try. I tried webroot spysweeper and it worked fine. I didn’t try the Webroot anti-​virus. (there are two to choose from, spysweeper or anti-​virus) I don’t think anti-​virus is strong enough to clean up spyware which makes your computer frozen… slow.
best of luck, students. spend less at the bars and clothes at the mall and buy a second laptop. I don’t mean to sound like your parents and try webroot spy sweeper.
Tho, I never tried it, but Geeky clean PC in PB seems to have rave reviews ON Unilocal and on the up and up. try these guys.

I’d like to offer my experiences with geek squad home service to counter some of the negative reviews pertaining only to the in-​store computer sector of the business… i haven’t needed them for anything computer-​related (b/​c im on a mac, which always just works! ha) so maybe it is true what others have said about that.
In any case it should be known that the people of geek squad, from my experiences (it has been 4 so far), are extremely professional, helpful, competent, and friendly.
As luck would have it, around the same time I had to call in for my TV (from Best Buy) and my front-​load washer (from Pacific Sales, also owned by Best Buy… who would have known!). Scheduling is easy through each company and they even have Saturday appts available. The day of the appt., the geek squad technician calls to narrow down your 4-​hr window appt. to a 2-​hour. Each of the 4 times they had to come out (both product needed new parts to be ordered and installed on another visit) they held up to calling me and coming within that window period. In fact, my 2^nd washer appt. wasn’t even formally scheduled — I was just told to call his work cell when the new valve arrived and he would fit it in on that Sat (since that was my preferred date).
Both Paul (who repaired the tv) and Mike (washer) were so friendly and prompt… and knew their stuff on top of it. They gave me explanations as to why the issues occurred and proved to me how knowledgeable they are in their specialty. Ever since they came everything has been working fine, too. Not to mention each of them helped me with issues going on not related to the repair… just because they are nice guys.
Obviously I don’t have a choice in who services my products when they have issues — but it’s nice to know that the people who will be coming out (if needed) are really cool and know their stuff. I hate that they are getting a bad rep on here… because I have experienced 0% headache from them, only 100% satisfaction!

go somewhere else… if your reading your review its something i wish i would of done before going and wasting 8 days and $ 250 bucks. there is no customer service. they said it would take 5 – 6 days. it took 9 .they never called me. i had to keep calling them. there is never enough people working there .the line was very very long and people were complaning that they were being ignored. i had to finally call the main corprate office to get something done, go anywhere else but here ~

THEY TOTALLY SUCK! So I got the blue screen of death and didn’t feel like paying to completely fix my piece of shit computer, but I needed the memory off of it. I called geek squad because it was the only people I could think of and didn’t feel like searching the world over to find something else. So I call them and after like 30 minutes of holding they finally talk to me and tell me they can come by tomorrow. So I set up a time at 3:00 p.m. and they end up showing up at 4:30 p.m., and nobody bothered to call me to tell me they were going to be late. Well whatever, so the dude starts messing with my computer and at 6:00 p.m. he tells me he has to come back tomorrow to finish because they can’t work past 6:00. I was like, ummm ok. So he sets up another appointment the next day at 10:00 am
Again, he get’s here at 11:00 am and nobdy bothered to let me know. So again the guy starts messing with my computer 2:00 p. m…still nothing…3:00 pm… still nothing…4:00 p.m. the guy tells me «Sorry, I lost the data»…I was like WTF??? Not only did the guy lose all of my data, they made me pay for half the time he was there!!! I couldn’t beleive it, lost my data and lost a ton of money for some dumb shit to fuck it all up. I was so pissed! DON’T EVER USE GEEK SQUAD!

I wasn’t sure what the problem was with my computer, was hoping it was a video card issue as my screen was freezing. So Geeksquad told me it would take 5 or so days to diagnose and I couldn’t wait that long so I had to pay «Express» to get to the front of the line, big mistake as about $ 140 later just to test the sucker out it turned out to be the Motherboard. But of course Best Buy/​Geeksquad doesn’t carry them so I would have to order the part and bring it back to them and they would charge me $ 125 just to install it, CRAZY.
I took my computer home, called a local PC shop and was the best ting I did. Now I see that there are local PC companies right here in San Diego that are way more attentive, some even do FREE diagnostics, and don’t charge extra for house call.
In a nutshell: Call a local company, Geeksquad overcharges for every little component they’re installing and charge for diagnostics with no Guarantees. And they’re waits are too long for you to get back Mr. Computer. Help them stop making fists full of cash and keep a little Lovin’ for local Geeks :)

Hurry the Hell up and fix my sh*t !! Its been almost 2 weeks now.
I’m well aware that the Star Trek thing is currently in town and its currently the place (for you guys) to see and be seen but come on mang !
You guys are probably also gearing up for the upcoming Comic-​Con but for Nick T’s sakes, HURRY.

I called the Geek Squad to assist with one of my laptops. This isn’t my main laptop, so I wanted to set up an appt to drop off at Best Buy. Can you say hard sell!!! They so badly wanted to come to the house — because they charge more $$$$. I was like it’s not that serious — I don’t depend on this laptop — I can drop it off and you guys can take your time. Oh no… the guy goes on and on and on and on about how much better it is for them to come to my home. Sweet fricken Jesus they should call themselves the «Gnat Squad!» Somebody get me some Off, Raid or a blow torch! What a Used Car Salesman! I did not use their service — it may be good, I just didn’t want to take the chance. I found a San Diego company specializing in fixing computers. I will post a review of their services!

Some of the NICEST people ever! =)
They’re here to help, not steal your money.
What a first, huh?
I needed my laptop opened, and I don’t have
a screw driver small enough to open it –
I brought it here to ask if I could just borrow it for a quick
sec, and even though they’re not supposed to —
he even did it for me, AND helped pop out the memory
and replace it with the other.
All the while we’re chatting about memory, ram, Vista,
and it’s all educational and worth while. He had a
great attitude and seemed genuinely happy to help
me out.
CHARGE = FREE.
I’m all smiles for the Geek Squad.