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Report: #225302

Complaint Review: Toshiba - Best Buy - Geek Squad - Port Richey Florida

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  • Reported By: Spring Hill Florida
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  • Toshiba - Best Buy - Geek Squad Gulfview Mall Port Richey, Florida U.S.A.

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Toshiba laptop died one month after warrantee. Local Geek Squad figured out it was dead too. Wow! They don't touch laptos so sent to Chicago. Subcontractor? Told the motherboard was bad. Repair $640. I paid 600 new.

OK, I had a gold card warrantee so had it fixed even though I had no proof it was the motherboard. Six weeks later, the CD/DVD burner could not be recognized. This burner was used just twice during the first 13 months. Cost to fix it is another $145. Huh? Wasn't me. I never used it after the repair (coldn't), so how come it was my fault. Answer was a shrug.

Bottom line: they have your money so they don't have to do anything else.

Lesson: Stay awa from Best Buy. Never, ever think Geek Squad is there to help you. And I ask myself, would I buy a Toshiba again?

Stratis
Spring Hill, Florida
U.S.A.

This report was posted on Ripoff Report on 12/13/2006 10:55 PM and is a permanent record located here: https://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/toshiba-best-buy-geek-squad/port-richey-florida/toshiba-best-buy-geek-squad-ripoff-give-them-your-money-and-the-partys-over-port-ric-225302. The posting time indicated is Arizona local time. Arizona does not observe daylight savings so the post time may be Mountain or Pacific depending on the time of year. Ripoff Report has an exclusive license to this report. It may not be copied without the written permission of Ripoff Report. READ: Foreign websites steal our content

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REBUTTALS & REPLIES:
0Author
6Consumer
1Employee/Owner

#7 UPDATE Employee ..inside information

professionals?

AUTHOR: Gamer - ()

POSTED: Friday, May 09, 2014

Professionals? Most Geeksquad employees earned their profession working for other companies or schooling that had nothing to do with BestBuy training. 80% of the staff quote to customers what the training systems tell us to say. They in no way have been trained by the store and one I came from and local stores around us learned how to use the so called professional tools by trial and error. And by the way, most of the professional tools we use are actually freeware compacted onto one DVD that just about anyone with some computer sense can download that we subcontract from the original writers. If you manage to end up with a Geeksquad tools DVD left in your drive or happen to download one floating around the net you would see this, and that the only thing Geeksquad had in its making was the actual menu that load all these programs up at will.

As for damaging customers computers, its a well known fact that Geeksquad has been doing this to almost every computer they look at though not many Geeksquad employees know they have in fact damaged people computers. By the way, as one other staffer mentiomed, people line up at our counter with their woes and happy to pay us to fix them for them. If they only knew Geeksquad was responsible for 80% of the problems that come through the door like lambs to the slaughter, not so many would line up so fast. The store I came from I can honestly say only one person out of the 8 knew 100% what he was doing and rarely used the tools DVD if he didn't have to. This whole process is about to come crashing down on the whole company shortly. Every day we learn about companies we trust getting caught comiting crimes and we say to ourselves how stupid they were to throw it all away. Best Buy is one of them. Its funny how much one looks up to a company they knew for years till one works on the other side of the counter. Sadly, because of how well tied in they are, they will like others with the funds just end up paying fines after everything is known then after time goes by everyone will forget and go back as if it never happened.

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#6 REBUTTAL Owner of company

asinine

AUTHOR: PC Consulting - ()

POSTED: Friday, March 28, 2014

You obviously must be in a Best Buy manager positiopn because you have no or limited technical knowledge. I have been a tech for more years than I care to count. The cost opf an OEM DVD droive is between 25- 45 dollars and the replacement time is 3 minutes. There is a concerted effort I feel to deter customers from fixing theier computers only so they will buy new disposable ones. I, as a one man operation am only as good as the last job I did. I live in a rural comunity where eveyone knows everyone. Money is tight for most people in this economy and Geek Squad is guilty of taking advantage with shoddy workmanship. I have cleaned up several of their messes.

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#5 UPDATE Employee

More info

AUTHOR: jko2005 - (United States of America)

POSTED: Sunday, June 24, 2012

Unless I am missing something that you said in your report, I do not see what your complaint with Best Buy or Geek Squad specifically is.

Manufacturers warranties on most products is 12 months from date of purchase. Best Buy will honor manufacturer warranties through Geek Squad, or in some cases a direct immediate replacement depending on the agreement with the manufacturer.

At 13 months you were outside of your warranty which is obvious in your post. Best Buy will typically send all computers to a specific service center, usually one in Louisville, Kentucky to do service work that the stores do not have parts for. They use a central service center for a few reasons, one being that it is easier and cheaper to train a specific group of individuals to be certified in specific manufacturer repairs, than it is to train 8-20+ Geek Squad employees in 1100+ stores.

It is no surprise that individual component replacement in any item can be costly and more often than not, be nowhere relevant to the original price of the part (think automobile service). You also have to pay for labor on top of parts, because no one will work for free. Typically labor in that situation is a set price, so the higher cost would have been the part. In the case of a motherboard, those are not universal in laptops, so they must come directly from the manufacturer. Therefor you are at the mercy of the manufacturer of those products, not the store you purchased them from.

Now, you state that you had the repair done through your Gold Card service, which is not Best Buy, and you are unhappy with the repair. 

I will ask what I failed to see in the original post, what is the problem with Best Buy or Geek Squad in your case?

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#4 Consumer Comment

how good the geek squad is

AUTHOR: Richie-Da-Chef - (United States of America)

POSTED: Saturday, June 16, 2012

I took my daughter Dell lap top to the Geek Squad in Spring Hill Fl. They were to make back up disc to protect her information. After almost two weeks they call and we go to get it and they destroyed everything in her laptop. The very same night another person had the same problem she to had her laptop destroyed. We were told that they could do nothing but give her a new laptop which cost about $300.00. Her Dell laptop cost over $2,500.00. We did talk to a tech at Geek Squad on my laptop and he told us they could retrieve her pictures and information but it would be costly. Since then we've had two people telling us they would send it out but couldn't say if we would get the stuff back in her laptop. I told them I would give the laptop back after we got her's back and all her information was back on her laptop. I hope that other people who had their PC's messed up by the Geek Squad contacts me as I will not stop until I get my daughter's information back in her laptop 

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#3 UPDATE Employee

agreed

AUTHOR: Aw - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Thursday, November 27, 2008

the other employee that responded is correct and had some great points...

one thing that was not mentioned, you had your computer repaired and paid for it, good deal, you also get a 30 day warranty so that if the repairs were unsatisfactory, you can send it back to them...unfortunately you waited 6 weeks to find out that the DVD drive was bad...

The DVD drive might not be bad, it could be a Windows issue and Geek Squad could fix it for you in about 5 minutes for $30 I'd bet.

So basically you are blaming a company that would not fix your computer for free even though they have no legal obligation to do so because it was not under warranty. Best Buy is a company and they need to be profitable, just imagine if you ran a company and a customer bought a TV from you, you provide a 1 year warranty that covers "hardware defects" and the customer returns 13 months later with the TV and the screen is now shattered. That customer now wants to just exchange it with a new TV because they are a good customer, even though the warranty has expired and the cracked screen is not covered by the warranty and you should just eat the cost of that TV to make them happy.

Do you think that is going to happen?


I work at Geek Squad and I have lines of people every shift, these customers cannot wait to get up to the counter to tell me about their computer woes...and they are very happy to have us repair it. I don't agree that we are ever ripping people off just because our fees are higher than what your neighbor's grandson would charge you...we have professional tools, trained technicians, we warranty our work too...who else can say that?

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#2 UPDATE Employee

Sorry for your experience

AUTHOR: Animeblast - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Thursday, October 30, 2008

Sorry for your experience with your Toshiba laptop. Truth is that we guarantee everything we told you would would through the time of your service plan under the service plan guidelines if you had purchased one. Thanks for purchasing from my company. We do stand by our service plans and truth be known I had worked at customer service and have seen more people have more huger problems NOT having a service plan compared to having one. If you were out of date on your service plan then it's no longer our responsibility. If you didn't pay for insurance on your car one month could you blame the insurance company for not covering an accident one or two months later?? Of course not, that wouldn't make any sense would it? As for Toshiba and all other brands of computers, they don't make any of the parts inside. I own a Sony VAIO AR series laptop that came with on the inside a TOSHIBA hard drive. The model's VGN-AR605E in case you were wondering. By the way, that disc drive not showing up is a common problem. You most likely wasted your money. It's a Matshita disc drive (by the way, it's the same one in my Sony VAIO...like I said, they don't make the parts inside except rarely the mobo). That can usually be cleared up by deleting the upper and lower filters in the system registry of the operating system. Also we've had many problems like this software related because of all the bloatware on computers. That's why we recommend our "Optimization". Everything we sell is truely to benefit the customers as well as the store. Everyone wins. You walk in anywhere and buy just a computer itself with nothing else, you're guaranteed to have problems. Good luck to you and your new laptop.

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#1 Consumer Suggestion

hello.

AUTHOR: David - (U.S.A.)

POSTED: Thursday, December 14, 2006

thats why i learned how to fix my own pc's/laptops! i learned a lot from reading help files and books, there is a lot of Information posted on the internet to help. i know Laptops are a bit different to work on BUT it helps to have some knowledge to help Troubleshoot problems.

Geeksquad is a JOKE they totally take advantage of people that Do not have the basic Know how to work on there own pc's. so what they say it needs the person paying will say ok go ahead and fix just to squeez that Extra cash out of you!!

i work on my own pc's and do all my up grades and so on. i am self taught from reading and hands on.

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