Under no circumstances should you ever...

[Drake]

...take your computer to the dorks at Best Buy for diagnostic and repairs. Ever. Bunch of worthless fucking choads.

On the upside, my laptop is now fixed (no thanks to them). Thanks, Geek Squad, for screwing me out of $80 bucks to tell me either shit I already knew -- because I told you in the first place -- or shit that was patently wrong.

"Your RAM is hosed along with your hard drive. You need to replace it."
"The hard drive *and* the RAM? What would cause them both to go out at once?"
"Maybe a power surge. Maybe a virus."
"So why does it boot to Windows about half the time if my RAM is hosed?"
"I don't know, bud. But we can replace the RAM and the hard disk for you for about $450"
"So, do you have any paperwork on the diagnostics you did and the results? I'd like to see the numbers that are leading you to these conclusions."
"Um, no."
"So I'm just supposed to take your word for it?"
"Yup."
"Can you prove that you actually did anything?"
"We cleaned it out. No dust bunnies. That's pretty obvious."
"Could dust bunnies have killed my hard drive and my RAM?"
"Maybe."
"And maybe the dust bunnies get in those little hamster wheels and power the virtual memory up so it will boot to Windows sometimes. Maybe I don't need more RAM, just better trained dust bunnies."
"We took out all the dust bunnies."
"Yeah. My bad. Can I see them?"
"See what?"
"The dust bunnies."
"We don't keep them, sir."
"They did come out of my computer. Technically those are my dust bunnies. Shouldn't you have consulted me before throwing them away?"
"Look, buddy, do you want us to install a new hard drive and RAM or not?"
"Are you going to clone the old one so I don't lose any data, don't have to re-install Windows and don't have to contact all the e-licensed software vendors I've purchased from to get my licenses freed up?"
"We'll backup your data for $20 per 4 gigs."
"But will you clone the drive?"
"No."
"So you can do it, way overcharge me and then fuck me on top of it, or you can sell me a hard drive, I can clone it, do the installation, only be out $100 and have everything on the new drive work exactly like the old drive, only with more space."
"Sure, but most of our customers don't feel comfortable..."
"You're an idiot. You and your stupid tie."
__________________

[Draft Dodger]

ouch

[flere-imsaho]

lol :D

[gstelmack]

So what did the problem end up being?

[flere-imsaho]

Dust bunnies, obviously.

[FrogMan]

yeah, didn't you read the initial report?

FM

[FrogMan]

dola, good stuff though :D

FM

[Drake]

Oh, on top of that, they gave me the wrong power adapter back. Same model, but obviously not mine because the adapter head was different. This one won't plug into my laptop.

Not that I'm complaining. My adapter had developed a short and sometimes I had to jiggle the cord to get it to work (also on my list of stuff to get while I was at Best Buy). So I suppose they saved me the $89 for a new adapter by giving me someone else's.

Which would mean, of course, that I actually owe them $9 (minus whatever it costs me to get a new adapter head from Targus).

Man, but whoever gets my old cord is going to be annoyed.

[Drake]

So what did the problem end up being?

It actually was a bad hard drive. That was why I took it to them. I just wanted confirmation that it was the hd going bad and not a massively botched software uninstall. I wasn't going to drop the cash on a new hd if I didn't need one.

I took it home, booted it to Windows, ran my freeware RAM diagnostic and confirmed that the RAM was good, cloned the old hd with the nifty software that came with the new drive, plugged the new one in and everything works fine now.

[WSUCougar]

No offense, Drake, but isn't this a little like going to Denny's and complaining that the steak you ordered is kinda chewy?

[wade moore]

It actually was a bad hard drive. That was why I took it to them. I just wanted confirmation that it was the hd going bad and not a massively botched software uninstall. I wasn't going to drop the cash on a new hd if I didn't need one.

I took it home, booted it to Windows, ran my freeware RAM diagnostic and confirmed that the RAM was good, cloned the old hd with the nifty software that came with the new drive, plugged the new one in and everything works fine now.
I would have definately cried foul on the RAM... there is no way those places don't have RAM testers... if you don't know, they have testers that you just plug the RAM into and it spits back whether it is good or bad...

[CraigSca]

I think it's cool how a guy was just trying to do his job (no matter how incompetently) and you took so much pride in insulting him and dropping the f-bomb, that you decided to post it in a public forum. Kudos!

[Cringer]

Oh, on top of that, they gave me the wrong power adapter back. Same model, but obviously not mine because the adapter head was different. This one won't plug into my laptop.

Not that I'm complaining. My adapter had developed a short and sometimes I had to jiggle the cord to get it to work (also on my list of stuff to get while I was at Best Buy). So I suppose they saved me the $89 for a new adapter by giving me someone else's.

Which would mean, of course, that I actually owe them $9 (minus whatever it costs me to get a new adapter head from Targus).

Man, but whoever gets my old cord is going to be annoyed.

HP laptop?

[Drake]

If his job is to bilk customers out of hard earned cash because they don't know enough to ask the right questions, then he deserves all the insults and f-bombs he gets.

But you're right. It might have been just stupidity rather than outright corporate malice.

[Drake]

HP laptop?

Dell.

[Butter]

If his job is to bilk customers out of hard earned cash because they don't know enough to ask the right questions, then he deserves all the insults and f-bombs he gets.

I agree. This is different than just getting bad service at a restaurant. If he's trying to essentially take $450 of my money without having diagnosed it worth a shit, basically, then I would've reacted similarly. Maybe the situation would've been different if he had acted like he actually checked it out, but it sounds like he barely cracked it open.

[Qwikshot]

Those dust bunnies are nasty critters, heard they killed a man in Utah for lookin at them funny.

[WSUCougar]

http://www.nrdc.org/onearth/03win/images/livgreen1.jpg

[Cringer]

http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/KeyboardCruft.jpg

[ISiddiqui]

I think it's cool how a guy was just trying to do his job (no matter how incompetently) and you took so much pride in insulting him and dropping the f-bomb, that you decided to post it in a public forum. Kudos!
Do you normally excuse preying on people who may not know that much about computers?

[Qwikshot]

http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/KeyboardCruft.jpg

To quote Booger:

"WEVE GOT BUSH!"

[gottimd]

No offense, Drake, but isn't this a little like going to Denny's and complaining that the steak you ordered is kinda chewy?
Denny's prime rib is outstanding.

[Warhammer]

http://www.mikepope.com/blog/images/KeyboardCruft.jpg

Who wants a moustache ride?

[st.cronin]

Under no circumstances should you ever take your computer to the dorks at Best Buy for diagnostic and repairs. Ever.

well, duh

also, never eat yellow snow

[Marc Vaughan]

I would have definately cried foul on the RAM... there is no way those places don't have RAM testers... if you don't know, they have testers that you just plug the RAM into and it spits back whether it is good or bad...
For future reference- there are free RAM test programs available on the net, these will detect faulty RAM fairly reliably (not as accurate as a hardware test obviously but pretty darn good in my experience).

[CraigSca]

Do you normally excuse preying on people who may not know that much about computers?
No, I normally don't. If it can be deduced that the preying was malicious then I think the person needs to be called on it. Even if it's not malicious, the best recourse probably would have been to discuss this with the store manager, but in a more tactful, gracious manner. If that's their M.O., to take advantage of people, then that's unacceptable.

My apologies to Drake - he probably just wanted to vent about a crappy situation and he has every right to do so. I just took exception to the language and the way he treated the worker.

[PackerFanatic]

Yeah, Geek Squad sucks. And they overcharge.

[Drake]

My apologies to Drake - he probably just wanted to vent about a crappy situation and he has every right to do so. I just took exception to the language and the way he treated the worker.

No apologies necessary. I'll admit that I embellished the account a bit for humor. (I didn't actually call the kid an idiot and I didn't curse at him, because it was pretty obvious he was less a Geek Squadder than a cashier masquerading as a techie. The dust bunny comments were real, but for the most part, these just elicited confused looks from him. He didn't think I was nearly as funny as I did.)

[Buccaneer]

No, I normally don't. If it can be deduced that the preying was malicious then I think the person needs to be called on it. Even if it's not malicious, the best recourse probably would have been to discuss this with the store manager, but in a more tactful, gracious manner. If that's their M.O., to take advantage of people, then that's unacceptable.

My apologies to Drake - he probably just wanted to vent about a crappy situation and he has every right to do so. I just took exception to the language and the way he treated the worker.
"I will speak for you, Father. I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. "

[sterlingice]

See- what you really needed all along was to hire a dust bunny trainer, duh. ;)

SI

[ISiddiqui]

No, I normally don't. If it can be deduced that the preying was malicious then I think the person needs to be called on it. Even if it's not malicious, the best recourse probably would have been to discuss this with the store manager, but in a more tactful, gracious manner. If that's their M.O., to take advantage of people, then that's unacceptable.

My apologies to Drake - he probably just wanted to vent about a crappy situation and he has every right to do so. I just took exception to the language and the way he treated the worker.Fair enough (even though after this post, he admited he didn't), but I think I may have been pissed enough to yell at a worker if the same situation was presented to me (and I normally don't yell).

The biggest problem I had is if Drake wasn't as knowledgable about computers, he'd have gotten gouged, including buying new RAM to replace fully function old RAM! I dunno, that just bothers the Hell out of me.

[SFL Cat]

No offense, Drake, but isn't this a little like going to Denny's and complaining that the steak you ordered is kinda chewy?

LOL. Definitely a top 10 Coug quote. :)