BEST BUY Extortionate Repair Fee, Bad Customer Service Dublin, California

My experience was very similar to Dave's report yesterday. We bought my wife an HP notebook in April last year from Best Buy. Apart from a temporarily sticking keyboard, it had worked fine until a couple of weeks ago. 

My wife had been using it all morning, then decided to tilt the screen a little more towards her. The screen immediately changed, with a curved line down the screen, and the right half of the screen showing vertical coloured lines. We took it back to Best Buy where we waited ages for the Geek 'Squad' (when did one service person constitute a squad?) to book it in. He noted it on the service report as a 'graphical glitch' and said that it would need to go to their service centre.

A few days later we received a phone call telling us that it would cost $638 to repair the screen as it wasn't covered by the manufacturer's warranty. As the notebook had only cost us $629 in the first place, we were less than impressed. Then, when we went into the store (already feeling pretty angry), we again had to wait ages to be served, and were then treated to a display of total disinterest from the Geek behind the counter. It was clear that he thought we'd damaged the screen, which was absolutely not the case, and would not budge on the issue. Eventually he furnished us with a phone number where we could contact HP, and we left feeling even more disgruntled than when we had gone in.

Today I contacted HP where the experience was totally different. A pleasant, helpful and sympathetic customer service person told me that, if the screen is cracked, it would cost $398 to repair it ($231 less than Best Buy), but they would see if there's a way of sorting it out for free.

Best Buy have lost our business for good, and anyone else's that we can persuade not to buy there. They clearly overcharge for repairs and their Geek Squad customer service is abysmal.